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DURHAM, N.C. -- The wound that ultimately killed a Neandertal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind modern humans used but Neandertals did not, according to Duke University-led research. "What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals. I want to say that loud and clear." But Churchill's analysis indicates the wound was from a...

On May 19 the world met a most unlikely celebrity: the fossilized carcass of a housecat-size primate that lived 47 million years ago in a rain forest in what is now Germany. The specimen, a juvenile female, represents a genus and species new to science, Darwinius masillae, although the media-savvy researchers who unveiled her were quick to give her a user-friendly nickname, Ida. And in an elaborate public-relations campaign, in which the release of a Web site, a book and a documentary on the History Channel were timed to coincide with the publication of the scientific paper describing her in...

21 July marks the 40-year anniversary of the first landing on the moon. In 1969, Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon, a major achievement of space exploration. Apollo 11 was followed by five other moon landings which led to a better understanding of the composition and geology of the moon. However, in this Darwin Bicentennial year, Professor Martin Ward, who is head of Physics at Durham University, made this statement (emphasis added): “Apart from the sheer wonder of seeing on live TV grainy images of man on the moon, many people might ask ‘what has the moon...

Signature in the Cell by: Emily Kanyi, August 21, 2009 Stephen Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell does not attempt to unravel the age-old mystery of the origin of life. Instead, Meyer explicitly moves from the known to the unknown and draws from historical and scientific theories that seek to explain the origin of life, including Charles Darwin’s natural selection and James Watson and Francis Crick’s “revolutionary discovery” of the Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) mystery. Based on his exploration of the science, Meyer concludes that the formation of life can be explained by the process of intricate design found in DNA...

July 20, 2009 — Linc-RNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs) have been promoted from junk molecules to air traffic controllers.  A mystery about these transcripts of DNA that are not translated into proteins is being explained. Science Daily reported on work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute that found these RNA molecules perform a vital task.  “linc-RNAs, once dismissed as ‘genomic junk’ – have a global role in genome regulation, ferrying proteins to assist their regulation at specific regions of the genome.”  Results were published in the July 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National...

Rising Animal Cancers Point to a Dying World by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Cancer affects many humans and their loved ones, and a new report has found that certain animals are also suffering from higher cancer rates. Sadly, this is what is to be expected in a dying and decaying world.The technical results of the study are slated to appear in the July edition of Nature Reviews Cancer. Lead author Denise McAloose, Chief Pathologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Global Health program, said in a WCS press release that “we now understand that cancer can kill wild animals at similar rates...

As soon as Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian geneticist who headed up the pioneering Human Genome Project during the 1990s, was floated as the possible new director of the National Institutes of Health—he was officially named to the post on Wednesday—the criticisms began flying. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, for one, said Collins is too public with his faith. Collins wrote a book called The Language of God, frequently talks about his religious conversion during medical school, and recently launched the BioLogos Foundation, which declares, "We believe that faith and science both lead to truth about...

SHAME ON you for publishing two creationist op-eds in two years from the Discovery Institute, a well-funded propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution. Virtually no scientist takes “intelligent design’’ seriously, and in the famous Dover, Pa., trial in 2005, a federal court ruled that it is religion in disguise. The judge referred to the theory’s “breathtaking inanity,’’ which is a fine description of Stephen Meyer’s July 15 op-ed “Jefferson’s support for intelligent design.’’ Well, yes, Thomas Jefferson died 33 years before Darwin published “The Origin of Species.’’ And Meyer’s idea that the DNA code implies a code...

Evolution’s Guiding Hand Is Far From Obvious July 17, 2009 — A recent example of applying evolutionism to everything was seen on Science Daily and PhysOrg last week. Some psychologists are telling us that evolution taught us to take turns. “It’s not just good manners to wait your turn -- it’s actually down to evolution, according to new research by University of Leicester psychologists.” Cooperation among animals of a species and between species is well known. These psychologists came up with an evolutionary reason for it: there is an “invisible hand,” they said, “that guides our actions in this respect.”...

Until recently, elasmosaurs had never before been found in British Columbia. Nor had any other aquatic plesiosaurs, though similar creatures had been found on the coast of California and in the centre of North America, where once a central seaway split the continent. Elasmosaurs swam the seas for over 130 million years, feeding on the plentiful fish and shellfish.

Not surprising or unknown to readers on the Free Republic, but this article illustrates the bias existing in the "scientific" community. Empirical data are merely observations and numbers - meaningless without interpretation. In the interpretation we see bias. Bias could be circumvented by a plurality of research from other sources, most especially those from dissenting views. However, the mainstream, or "majority rules," mentality has corrupted scientific objectivity and squelched meritorious dissent. Hence we have horribly fallacious THEORIES masquerading as established fact: Anthropogenic global warming, evolution, big bang, etc. Having abandoned scientific principles and objectivity, we are now living in an...

The world of human phylogeny has been hit by a bombshell. Although scholars and textbooks are presenting chimpanzees as man's closest relatives, Grehan and Schwartz have revived the case for orangutans. They consider hominoids to be comprised of two sister clades: the human-orangutan clade (dental hominoids) and the chimpanzee-gorilla clade (African apes). They claim that humans and orangutans "share a common ancestor that excludes the extant African apes". Since it is received wisdom that chimps are the nearest relative to humans because we share over 98% of their genes and since humans are referred to as the "third chimpanzee", the...

Scientists have long suspected that the sex chromosome that only males carry is deteriorating and could disappear entirely within a few million years, but until now, no one has understood the evolutionary processes that control this chromosome's demise. Now, a pair of Penn State scientists has discovered that this sex chromosome, the Y chromosome, has evolved at a much more rapid pace than its partner chromosome, the X chromosome, which both males and females carry. This rapid evolution of the Y chromosome has led to a dramatic loss of genes on the Y chromosome at a rate that, if maintained,...

Trailer: ‘Creation’ — ‘You’ve Killed God, Sir’ Watching the trailer it looks as if they are trying to give a human face to Darwin that seems a bit hard to imagine. The characters are glorified to the point of sticky-sweet perfection which, of course is Hollywood. Judging strictly from the trailer, the message seems to be that Darwin's "science" was perfect knowledge and religion is finally unmasked as the true heresy... more of the same but with a pretty bow on top. The foregone conclusion follows mainstream education in America: that Evolution is science fact and not science theory. All...

Responses from the Darwin faithful to anything touching upon intelligent design are often so thoughtless it takes your breath away. I guess this is how they manage to stay impervious to the evidentiary challenge to their religion -- they just don’t think it through, or even read it. A single article in a newspaper or journal taxes their ability simply to read what a person says and respond to that, rather than to what they imagine he would say. Consider the cases of Ewen Callaway and Jerry Coyne. When Stephen C. Meyer wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe on...

A set of fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex teeth was found in a rock layer that it had no business being in, according to evolutionary interpretations. Discovered in Hyogo, Japan, the teeth came from a 15-foot-tall dinosaur entombed in early Cretaceous rock, supposedly deposited 140 million years ago. The problem is that T. rex dinosaurs of this large size are not supposed to have evolved until about 30 million years later. Thus, what is “known” about dinosaurs must undergo drastic revision.[1] Haruo Saegusa, a curator at the Museum of Nature and Human Activities, recently told JapanToday, ‘‘If the dinosaur belongs to the...

Neanderthals are of course extinct. But there never were very many of them, new research concludes. In fact, new genetic evidence from the remains of six Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) suggests the population hovered at an average of 1,500 females of reproductive age in Europe between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago, with the maximum estimate of 3,500 such female Neanderthals. > "Because there never really were millions of them, they probably were more susceptible to some event that made them go extinct, which to me, suspiciously coincides with the emergence of modern humans," Briggs told LiveScience. >

IN THE battle over how to teach evolution in public schools, Thomas Jefferson’s demand for a “separation between church and state’’ has been cited countless times. Many argue that the controversial alternative to Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, is an exclusively religious idea and therefore cannot be discussed under the Constitution. By invoking Jefferson’s principle of separation, many critics of intelligent design assume that this visionary Founding Father would agree with them. But would he? For too long, an aspect of Jefferson’s visionary thought has been ignored, hidden away as too uncomfortable for public discussion - his support for intelligent design....

Glaciers Can Melt in a 'Geologic Instant' by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Many geological processes can happen much more quickly than is conventionally thought. For instance, mainstream science believes that coal, diamonds, and oil require vast amounts of time to develop, when they in fact can form in under a year.[1,2] Sedimentary rock and fossil formation require only days or months in the right conditions.[3] And broad tectonic plate movements could have (and indeed must have) happened in under a year.[4] Now the rapid melt-back of glaciers can be added to the list...

The Frailty of the Darwinian Hypothesis, Part 1 Editor's Note: Ann Gauger is a senior research scientist at Biologic Institute. Her work uses molecular genetics and genomic engineering to study the origin, organization and operation of metabolic pathways. She received a BS in biology from MIT, and a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, where she studied cell adhesion molecules involved in Drosophila embryogenesis. As a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, she cloned and characterized the Drosophila kinesin light chain. Her research has been published in Nature, Development, and the...