Early northeast colonial settlers, William Bradford and Edward Winslow, in 1620 sent out a business prospectus: “Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing, for we saw daily great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone.”
The American whaling industry was just beginning. Two hundred years later, New England was the premier whaling center in the world. More than 10,000 men set sail on whaling ships in 1857 from New Bedford, Massachusetts, alone. Certainly, whale evolution or extinction was not a popular topic.
Within the next 100 years, during the lifetime of Herman Melville’s mythical Moby Dick (illustrated), the whaling industry was forced to hunt deeper into the ocean and eventually into the southern Atlantic, leaving the North Atlantic population decimated.
The mystery behind the superiority of bird eyesight over humans is now more mysterious than ever. Joe Corbo, staring into the eye of a chicken seven years ago, saw something startling carpeting the retina. Rather than random distributed color-sensitive cones, like in humans, Corbo observed a uniform distribution of the cones – a pattern previously unrecognized in birds.
Science writer Natalie Wolchover (pictured right below), in A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order published in Quanta Magazine in July, reported that while cones were remarkably uniform in distribution, the actual cone locations seemed haphazard. “The dots’ locations followed no discernible rule, yet never seemed too close or too far apart” – a strange mix of bird eye random regularity.
In the native land of Charles Darwin, for the first time, the Royal Society is challenging evolution academia to develop a new theory of biological evolution. As the original science organization in Western Civilization, the Society explains the problem with today’s most popular current theory:
“Developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution, although the issues involved remain hotly contested.”
Increasingly, the standard theory of evolution has been challenged in the wake of the twentieth-century genomic revolution.
Britain’s peppered moth has long served as an evolution icon. This month, a new genetic discovery unravels the moth’s once iconic status. As ScienceDaily reports –
“Researchers from the University of Liverpool, have identified and dated the genetic mutation that gave rise to the black form of the peppered moth, which spread rapidly during Britain’s industrial revolution. The new findings solve a crucial missing piece of the puzzle in this iconic textbook example of evolution by natural selection.”
“The Brain defects caused by Zika virus ‘could set evolution back 2 million years’ scientists claim” was the leading story in the UK’s Daily Mirror in February. Since then, the global spread of the Zika virus, previously known as a rare virus, continues as a leading headline story – for good reasons. As CNN reports, “This is the first time a mosquito has been found to cause congenital birth defects.”
The New England Journal of Medicine published the article entitled “Zika virus and Birth Defects — Reviewing the Evidence for Causality” on April 13, written by a team headed by Sonja Rasmussen at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
J. Craig Venter, best known for being the first to sequence the human genome in 2000, is recognized as one of the leading scientists of the 21st century. Ten years after his important accomplishment, Venter was credited for successfully recreating “the first synthetic species” in 2010 – named Mycoplasma laboratorium.
In his relentless pursuit to “understand the molecular and biological function of every gene in a cell,” Venter released the latest findings discovered in his genetics research laboratory in Southern California. The paper, entitled “Design and Synthesis of a Minimal Bacterial Genome,” was published on March 25, 2016, in the journal Science. The findings have emerged as a new genomic evolution nightmare for Craig Venter.
R2D2 is the good guy, the favorite character of George Lucas – known for always saving the day at least once in every film. However, R2d2 disses Darwin.
In the realm of biology, however, the R2d2 gene is a Darth Vader villain terrorizing Darwin’s once-popular theory.
Starting with his infamous book, The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin legitimized racism based on the theory of evolution, at one time. The complete title contains the essential phrase “preservation of favoured races” –
“On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”
How his concept of “races” applies to humans was clarified in The Descent of Man(1871). Darwin explains –
“The sole objective of this work is to consider… the value of the differences between the so-called races of man.”
The status of evolution as a science is verging closer to extinction following a workshop in Germany last month. The essence and definition of science were on center stage at this historical convening of the leading physicists and philosophers of science last month.
In the words of twentieth-century evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge,
“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.”
Darwin, Then and Now, the Most Amazing Story in the History of Science, chronicles Darwin's life, how he developed his hypothesis, specifically what he said, and what scientists have discovered since the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.
The book traces the rise and fall of evolution's popularity as a scientifically valid theory. With over 1,000 references from Darwin and scientists, Darwin Then and Now retraces developments in the most amazing story in the history of science.
Darwin Then and Now is an educational resource focusing on understanding the intersection of evolution and science to develop basic skills for analyzing and assessing the theory of biological evolution.
Early northeast colonial settlers, William Bradford and Edward Winslow, in 1620 sent out a business prospectus: “Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing, for we saw daily great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone.”
The mystery behind the superiority of bird eyesight over humans is now more mysterious than ever. 
In the native land of 
Britain’s 
“The Brain defects caused by Zika virus ‘could set evolution back 2 million years’ scientists claim” was the leading 
Starting with his infamous book, 
