by Richard William Nelson | Jul 11, 2010
Natural selection is a simple scientific theory, according to the American Museum of Natural History, New York. For the museum’s Darwin Exhibit, the museum curator, Niles Eldredge, explains:
“A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.”
“Natural selection.” Eldredge explains, “is a simple mechanism that causes populations of living things to change over time.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Jun 27, 2010
Faced with the failure of the Stanley-Urey model to explain the origin of life, evolutionary scientists have been exploring the RNA World theory. With only the four nucleic acids required to form RNA (pictured left) rather than the twenty amino acids to form a protein, the chance probability tipped the advantage to the RNA-first theory, but that is not all.
In The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins explains –
“This is the RNA World. To see how plausible it is, we need to look at why proteins are good at being enzymes but bad at being replicators; at why DNA is good at replicating but bad at being an enzyme; and finally why RNA might just be good enough at both roles to break out of the Catch-22.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Jun 20, 2010
Why Evolution is True, one of the best-selling books in support of evolution written by Jerry Coyne and endorsed by Richard Dawkins, conveniently fails to address one minor evolutionary issue—the origin of life problem. Charles Darwin had been stonewalled by this problem, too, in The Origin of Species.
In the mid twentieth century, using a simple laboratory experiment, Stanley Miller (pictured left) and Harold Urey (pictured right) were the first to demonstrate how life may have started from simple molecules and energy. In the excitement, addressing the scope of the Miller-Urey probability issue was postponed.
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by Richard William Nelson | Jun 6, 2010
This is the story of the Ida Fossil Fiasco. “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals, with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said Sir David Attenborough, who narrated the BBC documentary in May 2009.
“The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo.”
Really? According to Jørn Hurum, the paleontologist from Oslo University’s Natural History Museum, who assembled the scientific team –
“It tells a part of our evolution that’s been hidden so far. It’s been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there’s almost nothing to study.”,
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by Richard William Nelson | May 30, 2010
The name “chimpanze” was first published in The London Magazine in 1738, meaning “mockman” in Angola. While the “chimpanzee” spelling appeared in a 1758 supplement to Chambers’ Cyclopædia, the “chimp” colloquialism was coined in the 1870’s.
Before the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, Charles Darwin gave his view of the differences between chimpanzees and humans. In a letter sent to Joseph Hooker, a close colleague, it read –
“I cannot swallow Man [being that] distinct from a Chimpanzee.”
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by Richard William Nelson | May 9, 2010
Three years before the publication of The Origin of Species, the first Neanderthal fossil was discovered in Neander Valley, Germany. However, even Darwin questioned whether Neanderthals were human ancestors. More than a decade later, in The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin addressed his issue with the Neanderthal skull size –
“Nevertheless, it must be admitted that some skulls of very high antiquity, such as the famous one of Neanderthal, are well developed and capacious.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Apr 25, 2010
Each fossil record discovery has a unique story, and the Archaeoraptor composite is an exceptional example. In November 1999, a feature article in National Geographic titled “Feathers for T. Rex?” emerged as one of the most spectacular disasters in the history of paleontology. Archaeoraptor disaster rivals the Piltdown Man saga, alleging –
“A true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds.”
The Archaeoraptor storyline began in 1997 in northeastern Liaoning Province, China, following its discovery by farmers (pictured above). At the time, the fossil appeared to have a bird’s body with small, terrestrial dinosaur’s teeth and tail. The name given, Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, was in recognition of its discovery site.
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by Richard William Nelson | Apr 18, 2010
Karl Heinrich Marx (pictured left) was intellectually aligned with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. In 1848, Marx published The Communist Manifesto two decades before The Origin of Species. However, what Marx lacked, Darwin had: specifically, objective, observable, and measurable cause-and-effect explanations for change.
Both theories center on struggle, but Darwin’s struggle is biological and mechanistic, while Marx’s is social and dialectical. However, Darwin had what Marx didn’t: a popular, logical, and seemingly scientific causal mechanism for change – natural selection.
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by Richard William Nelson | Apr 4, 2010
In 1825, at the age of sixteen, Charles Darwin was sent to Edinburgh University to study medicine. Soon, however, he found the study of medicine “intolerably dull” and “hated the sight of blood.” Fearing that his eighteen-year-old son would “ne’er do well,” his father transferred him to Christ’s College (pictured left), University of Cambridge.
His father, Robert Darwin, thought that a generalist Bachelor of Arts degree would qualify him to be a government clergyman. The Church of England offered a low-cost, high-status career pathway, a position socially comparable to medicine, law, or politics.
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by Richard William Nelson | Mar 21, 2010
A consensus understanding of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection varies even among evolutionary scientists. Richard Dawkins (pictured left), in his “Illusion of Design” paper originally published in the Natural History Magazine, envisioned natural selection as –
“Non-random survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions.”
While Dawkins’ explanation of natural selection is widely held, developing a consensus among evolutionary scientists remains contentious. In reference to an understanding of natural selection, Darwin conceded –
“No one definition has satisfied all naturalists.”
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Natural selection is a simple scientific theory, according to the American Museum of Natural History, New York. For the museum’s Darwin Exhibit, the museum curator, Niles Eldredge, explains:
Faced with the failure of the 
This is the story of the Ida Fossil Fiasco. “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals, with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said 
A consensus 