Some great actual biology posts 21 Apr 2008 I just wanted to give you all a heads up to a couple of wonderful blogs: Tetrapod Zoology’s post on the lost lynxes and wildcats of Britain, and Catalogue of Organism’s post on spiders that lose their lungs. It’s things like these posts that make me wish I had been a proper biologist, Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Species and systematics
Evolution Can a Christian accept natural selection as true? 24 Mar 2008 I once sat across the table from Alex Rosenberg, a well known philosopher, who argued persuasively that one cannot be both a Christian and accept natural selection. I think Alex intended this as a reductio for Christianity, as natural selection is both true by definition and also observed in the… Read More
Evolution On the supposed bottleneck 70,000 years ago 3 May 2008 John Hawks has a very nice post for people with basic math, explaining why a recent press release announced that 70,000 years ago the human species encountered a population bottleneck of 2000 individuals, and why it’s most likely wrong. In the process he explains effective population size. It’s a tad… Read More
Evolution Two almost bear patterns from a partial Symocyon of a sesamoid “thumb” 14 Apr 2010 I’m really sorry for that pun. I’ve been waiting for years… Anyway, Laelaps (Brian Switek) has a lovely report on the panda’s “thumb” (actually, the sesamoid wrist bone being independently used by a bear lineage and a lineage closer to racoons than to bears, result in the giant panda and… Read More