by Richard William Nelson | Sep 12, 2011
The Australopithecus sediba saga intensified last week with a new series of reports published in the journal of Science. The journal is the official weekly publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS.
Last week’s edition (cover pictured left) featured eight articles and news reports specifically on A. sediba, inflaming a flurry of speculations on the human “missing link.”
This last week was the second Science edition to focus on human evolution findings in South Africa.
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Jan 2, 2011
Leslie Stahl, long-time CBS journalist, interview on 60 Minutes with Mary Schweitzer in December marked a new paleontology arena – the field of dinosaur soft tissue.
Schweitzer, an American paleontologist at North Carolina State University, unexpectedly discovered soft tissues from a Tyrannosaurus rex bone sent from the Museum of the Rockies in Montana.
Schweitzer’s controversial report, “Gender-Specific Reproductive Tissue in Ratites and Tyrannosaurus rex,” published in the journal Science in 2005, revolutionized our understanding of fossil preservation.
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Nov 28, 2010
Craig Venter, the maverick American biologist and businessman captured worldwide attention by announcing the creation of “the first synthetic species,” nicknamed “Synthia.” Venter has the credentials. In 2000, Venter, along with Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health, jointly announced the complete mapping of the human genome.
In a 60-Minute CBS interview with Steve Kroft (pictured right), in the aired TV segment entitled “J. Craig Venter: Designing Life,” CBS touted that Venter’s new synthetic species “gets its genetic instructions from a synthetic chromosome made by man, not nature.”
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Aug 29, 2010
Jerry Coyne, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True, conveniently overlooks any reference to the butterfly, as does Darwin-Discovering the Tree of Life by Niles Eldridge.
Even the California-sponsored website “Understanding Evolution” skirts around the mysterious transformation of the butterfly known as metamorphosis – a butterfly nightmare.
Depictions of mystical butterfly symbols embellished Egyptian, Chinese, and Greek cultural expressions for over 3,500 years. Why is the evolution industry silent on butterfly metamorphosis?
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Aug 22, 2010
The October 2009 special edition of the journal Science (cover pictured right below) entitled Ardipithecus ramidus, kindly known as “Ardi,” featured a series of 11 papers by 47 authors from 10 countries – launching the Ardipithecus ramidus (pictured left) saga.
With an estimated age of 4.4 million years, Ardi is considered the oldest hominid skeleton ever discovered, predating Lucy and casting unexpected clues into the increasingly complex human evolution jigsaw puzzle.
The unexplainable saga, however, actually began nearly 15 years ago.
Continue Reading
The Australopithecus sediba saga intensified last week with a new series of reports published in the journal of Science. The journal is the official weekly publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS.
Craig Venter
Jerry Coyne
The October 2009 