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What a Wood Warbler Can Tell us About “Filling the Earth”

Hybridization among wood warblers suggests “filling the earth” through dispersal, speciation and adaptation to local habitats.

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Mr. Potato Head and Evolutionary Anomalies

Much effort has been expended in attempts to arrange living organisms in a pattern based on genealogy. However, a tree-like pattern is not as evident as evolutionary theory would predict.

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Caenorhabditis elegans as a Model to Understand the Role of Epigenetic Heritage in Microevolution

In recent decades, epigenetics has been shown to be a promising field of research, since it describes changes in inheritance patterns that do not involve DNA modifications and are related to interactions between the organism and the environment. Epigenetic marks are chemical changes that occur in chromosomes and result in the silencing or activation of specific genes in different tissues. It has been…

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Modern Bird Lung Design Documented in Rapidly Buried Fossil

A fossil bird recovered from Cretaceous lake deposits in China shows preservation of some soft tissues, including a pair of lungs that appear to have functioned in a way similar to those of living birds.

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Some Things We Can Know

EDITORIAL. Those who study historical topics such as origins often face questions for which no easy answers are evident. Nevertheless, there are some things that can be known, and these should not be overlooked. Published in Origins, n. 65.

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What Vain Pursuit

A review of the book, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique. Theistic evolution, the notion that God is the director of Darwinian-style evolution, is a vain attempt to combine contradictory views of earth history. Published in Origins, n. 65.

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Pterosaurs of the Triassic: An Update

This post complements an article that was written in 2014. Since then, there have been some interesting developments in the area of Triassic pterosaurs that are worth mentioning, the most important being the recent description by Britt et al. (2018) of a Triassic pterosaur from the Nugget Sandstone of Utah.

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Is There Biological Evidence of Life's Recent Creation?

During one of my frequent visits to the office of my high school headmaster, his individual tutelage yielded a life lesson that I’ve never forgotten. His exact words were, “You think you’re right!” Of course I thought I was right, wouldn’t anyone who thought they were wrong change their mind and then immediately think they are right? Now that I’m an adult biologist, I still think that I’m right. Inevitably…

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DNA and Design

Imagine walking down the beach and coming across the words “Romeo loves Juliet” written in the sand. Most of us have experienced something like this and would not be surprised, but most people would be surprised to find the entire text of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet written in sand. Why is this? The obvious reason is that sand is the wrong material for large writing projects. Sand grains…

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Archaeopteryx: Bird or Reptile? Or Not?

Archaeopteryx is arguably the most famous fossil ever discovered. It has a mixture of bird-like and reptile-like traits, and was first reported only two years after Charles Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species. Since then, another eleven Archaeopteryx specimens have been recovered from the limestones near Solnhofen, Germany.

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Preservation of Dinosaur Soft Tissue: An Update

“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This verse from Genesis 3 captures very well the fate of beautifully designed organisms after the entrance of sin into the world. But how long does it take for the organic molecules we are made of to break down after death? In general, the longer the time from death, the larger the amount of decay that should be observed. This is particularly true for soft…

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Homo naledi: An update

Two important papers were published in May 2017, warranting an update on the subject of Homo naledi.

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Organisms in Their Niche: Passive Modeling Clay or Problem-Solving Entities?

One person’s cultural background can bias their view about people from other cultures… even before they have ever met. Could people also have a bias about how they think about other creatures? It may even be possible that scientific culture could prejudice the way researchers see creature-environmental relations with the potential to bias whole research programs.

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Microbes, Symbiosis, and the Lesson of Interdependence

A very common reaction to the thought of “microbes” is a compelling desire to slather up in hand sanitizer! However, it is seldom realized that the greatest majority of microorganisms are at the very least not harmful, and at the most necessary for human life! Many aspects of microbial interaction with our environment allow it to be so perfect for humans. Some of these aspects include oxygen generation,…

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Fossils of the Galápagos: A Review with Implications for Creationist Models

Volcanic outcrops in the Galápagos Archipelago do not appear to provide the wealth of specimens found in other fossil-rich localities around the world. However, fossils are indeed present in the Galápagos Islands. This brief review addresses the where, what, when, and why of fossils in the Galápagos Islands and closes with a discussion of their potential contribution to the development of models on…

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The Cenozoic

The term Cenozoic (or Cainozoic) means “recent life,” implying that the fossils encountered in these layers are more similar to modern species.

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The Mesozoic

Few things in science evoke more interest in children than dinosaurs. Books, films, toys, etc. continue to fuel kids’ interest in the very alien world of our past, yet few Christians know how to respond to their children’s curiosity in a way that is both biblically sound and scientifically accurate. Although a full discussion of the fossils in Mesozoic rocks would require several volumes, a brief synopsis is presented here along with some creationist reflections for those who are interested – parents or otherwise.

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The Paleozoic Rock Record: A Broad Overview of Features and Trends

The rocks of the Earth are like pages of a history book containing information about the past. Geologists who enjoy reading this “book” have found that it consists of two “volumes:” the first, named Precambrian, is mostly devoid of macroscopic fossils. The second, named Phanerozoic, contains layers and sediments providing a rich archive of past forms of animal and vegetal life. The Phanerozoic “volume”…

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What Is Biology? Part 4 of 4

There is no simple clear definition of what life is. This is appropriate as life is a wonderful, complex, beautiful, enigmatic phenomenon that defies any effort to over-simplify it. Still, most people have no difficulty recognizing living things and differentiating them from non-living things.

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What Is Biology? Part 3 of 4

The scientific method uses inductive reasoning to generate theories that explain data. Deductive reasoning is used to generate testable hypotheses that must be true if a theory is true. When the hypothesis is tested, it may fit well with the new data generated, thus supporting the theory (but not proving it true). If the hypothesis is inconsistent with data, then the theory is inconsistent with data…

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