Evolution Did some dinosaurs survive the K-T boundary 20 Jun 2007 A new paper in New Mexico Geology has the following rather tendentious title: Fassett, J.E. 2007. The documentation of in-place dinosaur fossils in the Paleocene Ojo Alamo Sandstone and Animas Formation in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and Colorado mandates a paradigm shift: dinosaurs can no longer be… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity Couple of organismic blogs 20 Jun 2007 No! Not orgasmic! [There, that should bump up the hits] You all know, of course, the inestimable Darren Naish and his wonderful blog Tetrapod Zoology. What? You don’t? Go there immediately and come back when you’ve read it all, and the old site too. [Fifteen days later] So, I wanted… Continue Reading
General Science Rights for nonhuman apes? 14 Jun 2007 New Scientist is reporting that a case in Austria (not Australia – we share a love of beer, but that’s about it) is set to decide if chimps have rights. They already do in Spain, and in New Zealand (which was, I think, the first country to enact rights for… Continue Reading
Evolution “Species” in the Stanford Encyclopedia updated 13 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 Marc Ereshfsky’s entry on “Species” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been updated, though not to remove the classic “Essentialism Story” that has been called into question by a number of scholars lately. Under the fold, I will quote Marc’s comments and critique them. [I can do this because… Continue Reading
Evolution The kangaroo is the first organism, but the fungus is not the biggest 12 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 So the record for the “world’s largest organism” has again been claimed for a fungus, something Stephen Jay Gould wrote about in his wonderfully titled essay “A Humongous Fungus Among Us” back in 1992, and which was included in his volume A Dinosaur in a Haystack. The previous fungus, Armillaria… Continue Reading
General Science The World According to Genesis: The Flood 11 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 The Flood is perhaps the most scientifically interesting story in Genesis, and it has, in fact, been discussed by scientists for over 400 years. Now we are taking the text to tell us of a world, not taking the world to tell us what to think of the text, but… Continue Reading
Evolution Philosophy is to science, as ornithologists are to birds: 1. Introduction 4 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 This three-part series is a talk I gave a while back to some ecologists and molecular biologists. It is a brief overview of the aims and relationship between science and philosophy of science, with a special reference to the classification wars in systematics, and the interface of science and the… Continue Reading
Evolution The World according to Genesis: Stuff that grows 1 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 We’re in the third day, and Elohim has made dry land, but no sun or stars or moon. Still, he’s keen to see something growing, so he tells the land to produce, by spontaneous generation as it was later known, “seed bearing plants and plants bearing fruit with their proper… Continue Reading