Fossils

ORLANDO - Speaking to a supportive crowd today, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings portrayed their often-unpopular visions of reform as the best path to modernizing schools that aren't preparing students for an increasingly...

Collecting dinosaur fossils is an exciting and educational hobby. If you're considering starting this kind of hobby, what are some things you should be aware of when buying dinosaur fossils online? Read more to find out.

Susan Hoi features a slab formed from a huge number of embedded various types of mollusks which can be dated to approximately 40 million years ago. This shell graveyard at Ban Laem Pho was once a large freshwater swamp, the habitat of diverse mollusks. With changes on the surface of the earth, seawater flooded the freshwater swamp and the limestone elements in the seawater enveloped the submerged

Well it took them a long time but finally Ham and his cronies manage to put in their own idiotic edgewise in response to the discovery of “Dakota” the mummified Edmontosaurus through an article entitled Dino Age Is Only Skin Deep [NOT!] where they arrogantly insist that all parts of the fossil record must be [...]

What methods are used by evolutionists to date an archeological find? And do these methods actually support evolution?Radiocarbon dating is a commonly used method to determine the age of archaeological finds. The process, sometimes referred to as "radiocarbon reading," involves measuring carbon decay.Radiocarbon dating is basically this: a radioactive isotope of carbon, C-14, is formed in the atmosphere by cosmic rays. As a result, all living organisms absorb an equilibrium concentration of radioactive carbon. When organisms die, C-14 decays and is not replaced. Since we know the concentration of radioactive carbon the organism had when it was alive, and we also know that it takes about 5,600 years for half of that C-14 to decay, and another 5,600 years for half of what's left to decay, an

HONG KONG - Small human-like skeletons found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island were actually human and their miniature features probably due to nutritional deficiency, some researchers in Australia say. Writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the scientists said these were more likely to be cretin offspring of normal [...]

Comedian/author/playwright/pundit Lewis Black stars in his second HBO solo special, an all-new hour of frenetic, take-no-prisoners stand-up comedy, taped before a live audience at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC. Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed features Black's opinions and insights into such issues as the State of the Union, abortion, frozen embryos, defecation habits, fossils, bad language, FEMA and, of course, Dick Cheney's aim.Stand-up comedian, author, playwright, and actor takes on a few issues regarding faith and science.

Small human-like skeletons found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island were actually human and their miniature features probably due to nutritional deficiency, some researchers in Australia say.Writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the scientists said these were more likely to be cretin offspring of normal mothers who suffered from iodine and other dietary deficiencies.Cretinism is a condition of severely stunted physical and mental growth due to a congenital deficiency of thyroid hormones."We believe they were homosapiens but with this disorder ... cretins born without the thyroid gland," said Peter Obendorf of the School of Applied Sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne."The mothers would be iodine and selenium deficient and would be exposed to certa

Pupils visiting the Mentougou mountainous district in Beijing accidentally discovered several pieces of algae fossils a few days ago. Experts confirmed on August 30 that these fossils dated back one billion years. According to the Beijing-based The First newspaper, a few days ago a summer camp event was held in the Kunying Valley resort village of Wangping Town in the Mentougou District. Participating kids unexpectedly came across several stones, used as the pavement materials, that had images of ancient plants imprinted upon them. Geologists told The First that these stones are usually called "dolomitic calcareous". They are also fossils of neritic algae. The various forms of the ancient algae can be clearly seen on the fossils. The biggest fossil is 1 meter long, 0.5 meter wide and 0.3 meter thick. Geologists estimated that it might be multi-layered inside. Experts also said that they have discovered many fossils consisting of ancient animals, deep-sea creatures and

NO! ........ NO, NO, NO! That title hit newspapers this morning and is so misleading I could scream!I am not an expert on evolution, or for that matter even that well versed in it. BUT! From the little I do know there is nothing about the fact of evolution that has been put in jeopardy. Oh, I know the Creationists and Intelligent Designers will jump all over this and proclaim; "See, I told you this stupid THEORY was wrong!" But that's not the case at all my friends. No!From what I gathered from the news reports this morning it seems there are some points about the process of evolution that need revision. The way it was described in the paper was that instead of a tall oak tree representing human evolution, (with us being the branch that goes highest) the process can be described as being "bushier." That is, more branches coming of the main trunk that we originally thought.This all happened because in our family tree Homo Habilis was assumed to have developed into Homo Erectus, which t

Fossils - The Bangla Band. Fossils are the only bangla band group from Kolkata who really use hardcore guitar, metals etc and try to sing HARD ROCK in bengali language! I love some of their songs. Truely. But sometimes it seems like they are shouting too much, screeming and not really singing! Probably I am [...]

The discovery of fossils on a large scale gave rise to the idea of extinction. Somehow, the imprints of non-existent creatures were in the geologic record. Barring supernatural influence, it soon became clear that these creatures lived long ago--before humans, even! This is not surprising news today, but at the time it was a revolutionary discovery. The prevailing worldview assumed human civilization had always existed in some form; this idea was present in the Christian theology of the time, but non-Christian views of the world also shared similar assumptions.Look backward, there was a thriving community of life long before humans ever appeared on the planet. And looking forward, the discovery of fossils foreshadowed the eerie possibility of human extinction. Humans were thought of as different from the rest of life, though, so the ramifications of this conclusion did not fully set in until the ideas of Charles Darwin.

In 1725 in Würzburg, Germany, Dr. Johann Beringer made a startling discovery. Occasional fossils had been found earlier, but only now were geologists and natural scientists locating large quantities of fossils that questioned their view of the world. Organisms were not known to go extinct, but scientists were finding organisms in rocks that were not observed in the present.Beringer believed that a perfect Creator could not make an imperfect creation, so it was impossible for fossils to be the remains of extinct life. Fossils, he reasoned, must have been placed by God in order to test mankind's faith. Unfortunately for Beringer, not everyone shared his opinion. He soon became the victim of a famous geologic hoax, where he came into possession of a vast number of fossils such as those pictured below.For about a year, Beringer collected these fabricated fossils and wrote a book describing his findings. Soon the fossils took more esoteric shapes, such as shooting stars and Hebrew

The oldest-known animal eggs and embryos, whose first pictures made the cover of Nature in 1998, were so small they looked like bugs - which, it now appears, they may have been. This week, a study in the same prestigious journal presents evidence for reinterpreting the 600 million-year-old fossils from the Precambrian era as giant bacteria. The discovery 'complicates our understanding of microfossils thought to be the oldest animals,' said lead author Jake Bailey (homepage), a graduate student in earth sciences at the University of Southern California. Bailey made his discovery by combining two separate findings about Thiomargarita*, the world's largest known living bacterium. In 2005, Thiomargarita discoverer Heide Schulz, from the University of Hannover in Germany, showed that the bacterium promotes deposition of a mineral known as phosphorite**. The fossils identified as eggs and embryos in 1998 came from southern China's Doushantuo Formation, which is rich in phosphorite. The s

From the New Scientist: Fossil bones of a mouse-sized creature that died between 16 million and 19 million years ago have been discovered on the South Island of New Zealand. It is the first hard evidence that the islands once had their own indigenous land mammals. Today the only land mammals that live in New Zealand are animals like Australian possums - which have arrived since human settlement - although the country does have its own species of bats, seals and sea lions. The find, by Trevor Worthy* of Adelaide University, Australia, and colleagues, includes two jawbones, and one thigh bone, from at least two of the creatures, says team member Suzanne Hand. "The amazing thing is, it is unlike any other fossil mammal found anywhere else," she says. The shape of the fossil bones suggest a very primitive mammal that would have evolved before the mammal-line split into placental mammals and marsupials, 125 million years ago, says Hand of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Austral

Las Vegas - Nevada's state fossil, the giant ocean-roaming fish-reptile known as the ichthyosaur, will have to share the scientific stage after researchers this week unveiled the first fossils of land-based dinosaurs ever found in Nevada.The discovery expands the known range of the prehistoric beasts and offers a new understanding of life in the state some 100 million years ago.Put on display for the first time Thursday were the femur of the raptor, dromaeosaur, the teeth of a sauropod, a tyrannosauroid and an iguanodont and unidentified dinosaur eggshell fragments.Continued at "Nevada dinosaur fossils unveiled"------- Info on The Dromaeosauridae from the University of California Museum of Paleontology:Dromaeosaurs constitute a small clade of theropod dinosaurs which exhibit some highly derived characteristics that they all share, especially modifications of the forelimb allowing for a flexible seizing function (which is thought to have been modified to create the bird "flight stroke"

Location: Oxford Date: January 9, 2005 I love Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Right outside of its doors, there are casts of a Megalosaurus's footprints. Inside there are fossils and more casts of different animals' skeletons. One can easily spend hours in there. Because some of the displays are casts, you can examine it closely. A Megalosaurus's Footprints Edmontosaurus Annectens

From CBC News, Canada: There may be a little Neanderthal in all of us.That's the conclusion of anthropologists who have re-examined 30,000-year-old fossilized bones from a Romanian cave - bones that languished in a drawer since the 1950s*.According to the researchers, these early Homo sapien bones show anatomical features that could only have arisen if the adult female in question had Neanderthal ancestors as part of her lineage.The findings may answer nagging questions: Did modern humans and Neanderthals interbreed on a significant scale? And were the Neanderthals exterminated about 28,000 years ago - as some anthropologists contend - or did they gradually assimilate into the gene pool of people living today?"From my perspective, the replacement vs. continuity debate that raged through the 1990s is now dead," said the study's American co-author, Erik Trinkaus (homepage), a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.* The human bones were first identified at the

Part of the plot in my story involves the creation of false fossils to fool the scientific community and support the anti-evolutionary claims of an extreme anti-science cult. So, I've been researching reports of human tracks that have been found alongside dinosaur footprints.The TalkOrigins website has a great summary of some of the 'man tracks' that have been found in recent years. Most of the tracks have turned out to be geological formations or dinosaur footprints that have been eroded or had sediment deposited within them to make them appear more human like. I find the footprints known as the Burdick Tracks very interesting. They are believed to be carvings and do indeed appear anatomically bizarre with their exaggerated toe joints and near perfect outline.They were apparently found in a shop in 1938 by Roland Bird and Burdick later claimed that they were originally excavated by Bird and lay alongside dinosaur tracks. But the question that I find interesting is who carved them a