Bloggingheads.tv was founded (and still largely run) by Robert Wright, and was once funded by the Templeton Foundation. What does that tell you? For one thing, to expect a lot of faitheism and sympathy for religion — even on Science Saturday, where it doesn’t belong. But what I didn’t expect was sympathy for creationism. Although [...]
Over at the Times Literary Supplement, paleontologist Ian Tattersall reviews Colin Tudge’s new book on Darwinius, The Link.
As you may remember if you read this and other evolution-related websites (see Greg Mayer’s post on this site), Darwinius masillae is an extraordinarily complete primate fossil that was revealed to scientists and the public in May, complete [...]
by Greg Mayer
I’m leaving in a few days for Costa Rica, and Jerry is back, so this will be my last post on Darwinius, at least for awhile. At least three different issues have been debated in the blogosphere concerning “Ida“: 1) What are her phylogenetic relationships; 2) Was the media campaign excessive; and 3) [...]
Carl Zimmer has a good article in today’s New York Times describing the swine flu virus (“H1N1″) as well as other pathogenic viruses, where they come from, and how they evolve. It turns out that the swine flu virus actually derived from humans — from the strain that caused the terrible influenza epidemic of 1918 [...]
Thanks to Carl Zimmer for pointing out a new paper by Jenny Clack in Evolution: Education and Outreach: “The Fish-Tetrapod Transition: New Fossils and Interpretations.” This is a good paper for the non-scientist who wants to know more about the documentation of this important transition. In WEIT I wrote mostly about the Tiktaalik [...]
Over at Time magazine, Carl Zimmer has a good essay, “The Ever Evolving Theories of Darwin”, about Darwin’s contributions and what has happened in evolutionary biology since 1859. The essay was kind of spoiled for me, though, by the ending, in which Zimmer seems to buy into something he calls the “extended evolutionary synthesis”. To [...]
