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Researchers find that the most common dating method can produce “spuriously old” dates.A team from Europe took a closer look at how uranium-lead ages are determined, and found problems. One of the assumptions going into dating zircons (zirconium silicate crystals encasing uranium that decays to lead) is that the clock is “reset” when the parent rock under goes the high heat and pressure of metamorphism. This team found that nanosphere inclusions of extraneous metallic lead (Pb) can confuse the dating technique, making the rock look older than it is. Writing in PNAS, they say:Zircon (ZrSiO4) is the most commonly used...

Spiders Have Always Been Spiders by Frank Sherwin, M.A. * A University of California Berkley graduate student has discovered two beautiful new species of peacock spiders in southeast Queensland, Australia.1 The student, Madeline Girard, named the two colorful creatures "Sparklemuffin" and "Skeletorus," both of the genus Maratus. They are noted for their ornate mating dances that many viewers find amusing. Are these splendid specimens highly evolved species or have spiders always been spiders?

Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured Flood Evidence Number Six by Andrew A. Snelling March 15, 2009 How could a series of sedimentary layers fold without fracturing? The only way is for all the sedimentary layers to be laid down in rapid succession and then be folded while still soft and pliable. If the global Flood, as described in Genesis 7–8, really occurred, what evidence would we expect to find? Wouldn’t we expect to find rock layers all over the earth that are filled with billions of dead animals and plants that were rapidly buried and fossilized in sand, mud, and...

One of the only well preserved dinosaur skin samples ever found is being tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to determine skin colour and to explain why the fossilized specimen remained intact after 70-million years. University of Regina physicist Mauricio Barbi said the hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago), was found close to a river bed near Grande Prairie, Alberta. The area has a robust "bone bed" but Barbi is not yet sure why the fossil preserved so well. "As we excavated the fossil, I thought that we were looking at...

Conclusion: So the next time someone tells you that it “strains credulity” to think that more than a few pieces of “junk DNA” could be functional in the cell — that the data only point to the lack of design and suboptimality — remind them of the rod cell nuclei of the humble mouse...