A kiwi on moas 24 Sep 2007 This is a nice post by Christopher Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms, a kiwi studying spider systematics (and what’s not to love about that; cephalopods be buggered!) on the species of moas that used to live in New Zealand. I didn’t realise they’d be forest dwellers. It’s a worthwhile blog to get the feed for. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Species and systematics
Evolution More journalistic idiocy about evolution 9 Apr 20104 Oct 2017 This, from SBS World News, a usually relatively reliable public news service in Australia, on their report on the new hominid. I sent them this message: I have to criticise the moronic commentary in the World News tonight – No, the lack of transitional fossils hasn’t been a problem for… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design The tautology problem 20 Aug 2009 A long time ago I wrote a not particularly good piece on the tautology problem: that natural selection is merely circular definition. I was just out of being an undergraduate when it was published, so it was at best an undergraduate piece. I have been unsatisfied with it ever since…. Read More
Evolution BBC show on Ediacaran fauna 7 Jul 2009 A commenter just posted this: Greetings Ediacara fans, You may be interested in tuning into In Our Time BBC Radio 4, at 0900 BST on Thursday (9th) July. See here for the links. Read More
> cephalopods be buggered Yeah, go on, piss off the people who agree with you about everything else 🙂
Then you’d better get to the NZ Ecological Society conference at the end of this year. “The conference features a major symposium titled “Feathers to Fur: the ecological transformation of Aotearoa”. This is an update of 21 years of progress on the topics that make New Zealand unique, following on from the 1986 conference “Moas, Mammals and Climate” which was published in a special issue of New Zealand Journal of Ecology in 1989.” I spent several days caving with Trevor Worthy examining a new cave system jam packed with the fossils of extinct NZ species, including a number of moa species. Just awesome.