Why do people still refer to Hovind?

Seriously I wonder that all the time. Anyway another great take-down of Hovind/anti-evolution arguments by Potholer54

Golden Crocoduck Nominees 1

So Potholer54 has the first of his Golden Crocoduck videos for this year! Enjoy.

Correlation and Causation

Sometimes while talking with creationists I feel like I have said this multiple times but it doesn't seem they notice. Anyway enjoy today's SMBC.

C0nc0rdance reads Darwin

Yes I know Sunday was Darwin day sorry I am a few days late. As a treat here is a selection for Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, see my copy here, read by C0nc0rdance, see a previous reading by him here. The recording isn't great but he ends with one of my favorite lines:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Archaeopteryx: The Icon of Evolution

As with the museum posts(page) it really don't make sense search wise to name my book review posts book review # so I am going to go to naming them the title of the book for simplicities sake. Now on to the review.

It was a typical day in the Late Jurassic (Tithonian to be specific) on a small island located in the Tethys Ocean on what is currently the Bavarian region of Germany. The climate was warm and dry and the sun was beaming down on the small bush sized plants that covered the island. Out over the sea a group of pterosaurs (for me I will say Rhamphorhynchus muensteri) caught fish that swam to close to the surface near the reef while the breath of some of the marine reptiles (e.g. ichthyosaurs) broke the surface on occasion. On shore small theropod dinosaurs poked around in the bushes hoping to find a lizard or insect that they may be able to eat. The young Archaeopteryx had watched this scene play out plenty of times but only recently away from the safety of her mother's nest but at least now she could fly, well at least short distances and her flight wasn't very powerful due to her sternal keel still being cartilage. Her black feathers glistened in the sunlight and as a curious Compsognathus got too close she snapped her toothed jaw at it and flew slightly higher out of grasp for the dinosaur. She of course was a dinosaur too but there was something special about her she also had a lot of features that made her look more bird like than dinosaur like except for her long tail and her toothed "beak", and she certainly wasn't the first dinosaur to look bird-like but she would become when discovered one of the most important. As she looked out over the sea toward the dark black clouds that had been approaching for a while now she realized she was hungry it had been a while since she ate after all. Something hit her on the head and then more and more she wasn't quite sure what this was after all it hadn't rained, at least not much, her entire life. The rain drops also disturbed a dragonfly nearby from the branch it was sitting on and she took off after it. As she closed in a strong gust of wind blew her out over the reef, this was further out to sea than she had ever been. She looked toward shore and then the wind picked up even more. 150 million years later, in 1861, a slab of limestone is split from a quarry in the Solnhofen formation and she would again see the light of a new day but the world would be completely different than the one she lived in but she too would change it greatly.

While that story is clearly fictional the idea behind it is the vast amount of information that we have learned about Archaeopteryx lithographica since the first one was discovered in 1861. While most of this knowledge has been out there for years the first time that I truly saw it all compiled in one place was in a book I just finished called Archaeopteryx: The Icon of Evolution by Dr. Peter Wellnhofer (someone really needs to update and expand on his Wikipedia page). In this book we are taken to Solnhofen where we learn about the limestone that Archaeopteryx was deposited in and how this helps understand the environment that this animal lived in. We then learn about the animal itself and Dr. Wellnhofer tries to fit it into a phylogenetic location which includes a discussion on the different views of how birds evolved as well as the evolution of flight. While there have only been a total of ten (well eleven but the most recent one hasn't been published on yet and was just found late in 2011) body specimens and one isolated feather found we know so much about this animal. Part of the reason is how complete the specimens are with most being nearly complete but what I think the main reason for the amount we know about the animal is the just sheer amount of research that has been done on the specimens since it was the first animal found that truly showed the evolution of organisms in action, in this case the evolution of dinosaurs to birds.

This book is exceptionally well written and that is due to the sheer amount of knowledge that Dr. Wellnhofer has on paleontology and in particular the Solnhofen region. If you want to learn about Archaeopteryx or if you want to learn about Solnhofen geology or if you just want a book with really really nice pictures of really amazing fossils this is the book for you. Detailed images of all 10 of the specimens are included including pictures taken using infrared which really helps show off a lot of the soft tissue preserved in the specimen. There is a detailed description of the genus in general as well as where it fits evolutionarily which includes a very through description of the origin of birds including the many hypothesis of what the evolved from, and he, logically, leans toward them evolving from theropod dinosaurs. There is also a brief overview of the different ideas of how flight and feathers evolved and a basic overview of known, as of 2009, Mesozoic bird species.

If there is one fault in the book it is that it is too detailed. At times I felt like I was dredging through scientific papers, this is part of the reason it took me so long to finish, so if you aren't an expert in the field or haven't spent a lot of time reading scientific papers on dinosaur and bird evolution you might struggle a bit through parts. Most of the book is easily readable and the parts that are technical can be skipped or skimmed over without missing the overall point or theme of the section so don't let the technical nature scare you off. The price might scare you off but it is worth it for all the knowledge contained within.

The only other problem is that the book is dated which should say something about how fast the science has come since 2009. This is really that much of a problem after all how was Dr. Wellnhofer supposed to know that since I started reading the book early last year that phylogenetic studies would say that Archaeopteryx is not a bird (Naish et al., 2011; Xu et al. 2011), although at least one study disagrees (Lee & Worthy, 2011), that the color of the feathers would be determined (Carney et al., 2012), and that an even earlier feathered dinosaur would be discovered (Liu et al., 2012) (I got the e-mail about that last one as I was working on this review). So I will forgive the book seemingly being slightly dated since there are so many new specimens found in the paleontology world every year, there have been several new Mesozoic birds found in the past year (e.g. Xu et al., 2011).

This book is very interesting and worth picking up. It is a handy reference for the currently known specimens as well as about the evolution of birds in general. Oh and did I mention it has very awesome pictures, yeah they are very pretty. I will leave you, again, with a picture of the one specimen of Archaeopteryx that I have seen, the Thermopolis specimen, it was a great experience.

Book citation
Wellnhofer, P. 2009. Archaeopteryx: The Icon of Evolution. Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, Munchen, 208p.

References
Lee, M. S. Y., & T. H. Worthy. 2011. Likelihood reinstates Archaeopteryx as a primitive bird. Biology Letters doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0884.

Liu, Y.-Q., Kuang, H.-W., Jiang, X.-J., Peng, N., Xu, H., & Sun, H.-Y. 2012. Timing of the earliest known feathered dinosaurs and transitional pterosaurs older than the Jehol Biota. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology doi: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.01.017.

Naish, D., Dyke, G., Cau, A., Escuillié, F. & Godefroit, P. 2011. A gigantic bird from the Upper Cretaceous of Central Asia. Biology Letters doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0683 (I should note that there is some doubt if this is actually a bird anymore but that shouldn't change the phylogentic tree published within)

Xu, X., You, H., Du, K. & Han, F. 2011. An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of Avialae. Nature 475, 465-470.

Book review page

Explanation of Human Ancestry Made Easy

So a few years ago Potholer54 made a video series pretty much explaining the history of the earth and life and one of those videos was Human Ancestry Made Easy. He apparently got some questions about some of the content. Now I use the term questions loosely here because it is pretty obviously creationists trying to show that evolution doesn't work, even though it does and they are wrong. I think the bigger issue is just the way Potholer54 phrased the statement and he at least tries to explain it here, although I don't think he did a perfect job with it either but he at least got closer.

This Strawman is Getting Old

The last of the Golden Crocoduck videos has been posted by Potholer54 and while there isn't going to actually be voting this year, for reasons you can see here, I figured I would still post this video. I have heard this nonsense so many times and have heard it refuted but as long as creationists keep using it it will keep having to be debunked.

Evolution and Thanksgiving

SMBC is at it again this time combining evolution with thanksgiving also dinosaurs because who doesn't love dinosaurs. Yes I know this was posted on their site almost a week ago but I have been busy.

Happy 150th Birthday Archaeopteryx

I was hoping to have the book Archaeopteryx: Icon of Evolution by Peter Wellnhofer finished by today but as life has gotten in the way I have not been able to do that, hmm maybe I should read not that I am feeling inspired...

150 years ago today (today being 30 September 2011 and 150 years ago being 30 September 1861) an article was published by Hermann von Meyer which while only being 2 paragraphs long the first of which said this [German from the H. v. Meyer (1861) and English translation from Wellnhofer (2009)]

Nachtrüglich zu meinem Schreiben vom 15 verflossenen Monats Kann ich Ihuen nunmehr mittheilen, dass ich die Feder von Solenhofen nach allen Richtungen hin genau untersucht habe und dabei zu dem Ergebniss gekommen bin, dass sie eine wirklich Versteinerung des lithographischen Schiefers ist und vollkommen mit einer Vogel-Feder übereinstimmt. Zugleich erhalte ich von Herrn Obergerichtsrath Witte die Nachricht, dass das fast vollständige Skelet eines mit Federn bedeckten Thiers im lithographischen Schiefer gefunden worden sey. Von unseren lebenden Vögeln zeige es manche Abweichung. Die von mir untersuchie Feder werde ich mit genauer Abbildung veröffentlichen. Zur Bezeichnung des Thieres halte ich die Benennung Archaeopteryx lithographica geeignet.
[In addition to my letter of the 15th of last month I can now report that I have carefully studied the feather in all respects with the result that it is a real fossil from the lithographic shale and perfectly agrees with a bird's feather. Coincidentally I received a message from the "Obergerichtsrath" Witte that an almost complete skeleton of an animal covered with feathers was found in the lithographic shale. It showed several differences from living birds. The feather I had studied will be published along with a detailed description. For the name of the animal I consider Archaeopteryx lithographica as suitable.](emphasis mine)

Obviously there has been some confusion if the feather should be the type specimen or the fossil of the whole animal, which would eventually become the London Specimen, but the ICZN has clarified it as the animal is the type specimen so no worries anymore.

Archaeopteryx is an amazing find and even if it isn't a true bird it represents more than that. The specimens showed transitions between animals it has the feathers and many of the body parts of a bird but they are not completely bird like, it also has long claws and the teeth of the dinosaurs. This showed that dinosaurs and birds were related and while Darwin never used it as an icon for evolution it truly is one. 150 years ago paleontology was still young and we were still trying to understand what we were looking at to find an animal with feathers and dinosaur traits then was amazing and never heard of, after all animals fit neatly into their groups. Today a feathered dinosaur gets its five minutes of fame, nope doesn't even get a full 15 anymore, and then disappears where only paleontologists seem to remember it. It is amazing to see how far we have come! So in honor of that I figured I would share some links to other sites celebrating the day, links to my posts on closely related subjects (if I find more I will post them and if you have anymore feel free to share them in the comments), and some of the pictures I took of one specimen of Archaeopteryx, the Thermopolis Specimen, I was lucky enough to see. Enjoy and do something to celebrate the amazing animal that became part of the scientific record today!

Links:

The Witmer Lab is celebrating by unveiling a webpage that will link to some of their fancy 3D pdfs so I will let you go to their announcement page.

David at History of Geology talks briefly about the first feather.

Dinosaur Tracking gets a rare guest post from the associate web editor for Smithsonian.com Brian Wolly on his recent trip to Munich and getting to see the, surprisingly nick-named, Munich Specimen

My Pages:

My visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in which I got to see the Thermopolis Specimen.

My book review on the book Solnhofen: A Study in Mesozoic Palaeontology by K.W. Barthel, N.H.M. Swinburne, and S. Conway Morris which is the locality from where all the Archaeopteryx specimens have been found.

Pictures (below the fold to speed up page loading and all images are by the author)

Next Golden Crocoduck Nominee

Potholer54 introduces us to his next Golden Crocoduck nominee in his newest video

Population

So this is something that you hear a lot coming from creationists, mostly because they are just regurgitating Kent Hovind, that the population now can only have been reached with an initial population of 2. This new video by shanedk should at least partially answer that question.

Fire Breathing Dinosaurs?

In Potholer54's continuing nominations for this year's Golden Crocoduck award he nominates the man who first popularized the idea about dinosaurs having too small nostrils...well just watch the video.

New Twist on a Famous Image

Although it isn't exactly accurate SMBC has a new take on the famous progress of evolution. Make sure you click on it to appreciate the image fully.

Dinosaur Eggs and Creationism

Potholer54 continues to feature his Golden Crockoduck award nominees, this one deals with dinosaur eggs and how they somehow show that a global flood occurred.

I Want to Believe

The Fox television show The X-Files was a huge hit show in the 1990s. The main plot of the show centered around two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson), as they investigated paranormal activity occurring around the country. I grew up and loved that show I would watch it every Sunday night in my room with the lights turned off, needless to say that led to a lot of really sleep Mondays. One of the things that always stuck out in my mind was a poster that hung in Mulder's office [Image at left of Mulder's office from Wikimedia by Alistair McMillan] with a U.F.O. and block lettering saying "I WANT TO BELIEVE". At the time I wasn't sure why but I in this show rich in cryptozoology and the paranormal I was always drawn to that poster.

A couple (part 1 and part 2) of recent posts over at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs by David Orr got me thinking about that again. As a scientist I have learned to not "believe" anything unless it is supported by the evidence but I still find myself turning on shows like Finding Bigfoot and Monster Hunters sort of as a guilty pleasure when they are on during the weekend and there is nothing better on T.V. but I don't know why. Or at least I didn't until I was finishing up the second post by David the truth is I WANT TO BELIEVE.

As David discusses in his first post mainstream science and cryptozoology have a tenuous history at best. While I won't rehash all his arguments here, seriously go read his posts, it basically comes down to much of the hunting for mythological beasts does not follow what would typically be described as science. Take the search for Bigfoot as an example every movement in the woods of Washington every fur every unidentifiable footprint every black or brown blur on videos is taken as evidence of this mysterious ape. This is the reason why there are very rarely scientists on these shows, and the ones that are normally get drowned out behind the all of the pseudoscience. This does not mean that actual scientists don't look into these events as David points out the discovery of a living pterosaur, or a bigfoot, or a Nessie would bring droves of people that want to find out more about it. Even at the great blog Tetrapod Zoology, Darren Naish often discusses cryptozoology, and as he points out we are more likely to find an unknown creature in the depths of the ocean than in the forests of Washington.

One major flaw I see in modern cryptozoology, or ufology, is that it assumes that ancient cultures did not have the imagination that we have today, or in the case of ufos the willpower to build pyramids etc. We know that we have many advances from the ancients in the form of technology and the understanding of science but that does not mean that didn't have the ability or even the smarts to think up their own legends and to think up ways to build impressive buildings. We have the ability to accomplish what we do today because of those that came before us or to use the phrase common in science, "We stand on the shoulders of giants." To take away the accomplishments of the past takes away not only what they accomplished but what we accomplish today because it means that we as a species do not have the ability to do great things without help. These are things that are often cited as proof of cryptid animals and ufos, this isn't evidence it is condescending.

As a scientist by training I understand the need for evidence and so far none has been presented for these phenomenon I have a hard time thinking of these things as existing. But I have always had an interest in these things for some reason or another. It is on this point that I refer back to Agent Mulder's office, while he did believe he didn't have any want to that poster has more meaning to me. I may not believe in these phenomenon but a part of me definitely want to so let me conclude by saying:

I WANT to believe

Ring Species

In his newest video Potholer54 nominates one more person to this year's Golden Crocoduck. In the video he discusses ring species, I will leave the discussion as to what they are to him but I use a similar example of ring species when trying to teach about evolution and speciation.

I Love Phylogeny

I know that sounds nerdy but I do find phylogeny immensely interesting it shows how interrelated we all are to all the other animals, plants, etc. AronRa has yet another great video this time discussing phylogeny. As with all of his videos it has a lot of technical jargon in it but it is phrased in a way that most people should be able to understand.

We Are All Just Mules

Another good evolution/genetics themed comic from SMBC, from yesterday.

Golden Crocoduck Nominee #1

So Potholer54 has moved the Golden Crocoduck award from his other channel to his main one and here is the first nominee for the 2011 award. Let me say that the group that is the first nominee put together a pretty trippy movie for both children and especially for a creationist group.

How do you define a human

AronRa has a new video out defining what exactly a human is. He has previously shown how we are monkeys and apes and this one just helps in the classification more specifically. This is part of his on going Falsifying Phylogeny (see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) series.