The fossil record refuses to play nice with Darwinian apologists.

 

Fossil Follies from Around the Science Literature

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Darwin knew that the fossil record did not support his theory of gradual increase in complexity through time but hoped that new fossil discoveries would fill in the narrative. 170 years of collecting has not helped. The Cambrian explosion is perhaps the best-known mismatch, but there are others. Adding to the difficulty, different dating methods often conflict with each other.

Monkeying with the Data

It would have been convenient for evolutionists if Africa and South America had split after monkeys had evolved, but they didn’t. This left them with klutzy explanations of how Old World monkeys evolved in Africa after the split, and then got to South America to become New World monkeys. The common story now is that they rafted over on vegetation across the Atlantic — a curious speculation, considering that sea captains these days never witness monkey families rafting out in the mid-Atlantic without fresh water or food. 

In PNAS, Campbell et al. manage to pull widely different dates for two sites in eastern Peru closer together. They had to struggle, though, with disagreements between different dating methods for nearby sites. In any case, their work did not help get the monkeys across the ocean. Peru is very far inland from Brazil where a raft might have washed ashore, so time for migration must be factored in. Watching the evolutionists monkeying with the data and hiding their difficulties with euphemisms (“trans-Atlantic dispersal”) is entertaining if not pitiful.

Though anthropoids are rare in the Santa Rosa paleofauna, they are of outsized importance, as they potentially represent the oldest records of that clade in South America, and their inferred age would constrain scenariosfor the timing of the trans-Atlantic dispersal of stem platyrrhines from Africa. [Emphasis added.]

Footprints in the White Sands of Time

Speaking of America, evolutionary anthropologists will have to drastically revise the timeline of the first human arrivals in North America with the discovery of tens of thousands of human footprints, mostly of teenagers, at White Sands National Park, New Mexico. The problem is that they are being dated at 23,000 years old — about 40 percent earlier than the previous maximum date of 16,500 years for the time in which modern humans from Asia are thought to have crossed a land bridge at the Bering Strait into Alaska. (Note, too, that New Mexico is an additional 4,000 miles from the Bering Strait.) Bennett and Reynolds from Bournemouth University in the UK describe this upset in The Conversation — an upset in time as well as in expected behavior for products of evolution.

We tend to picture our ancestors engaged in life-or-death struggles — forced to battle the elements simply to survive. Yet the White Sands evidence is suggestive of a playful, relatively relaxed setting, with teenagers and children spending time together in a group.

Philosophically speaking, until now it was textbook truth that our species arrived in America not more than 16,500 years ago. If the radiocarbon dates of seeds found around the footprints are correct, the truth has evolved. When truth evolves, many connected concepts must also evolve.

The White Sands footprints provide unequivocal evidence that people were in the Americas at the height of the last glacial maximum, rather than some time after, as was previously thought. That’s a big deal for our understanding of the peopling of the Americas and the genetic composition of indigenous Americans.

The research has been published in Science by Bennett et al., “Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.” The BBC News quotes other researchers who are flummoxed by the findings. Gary Haynes at the University of Nevada calls the tracks “provocative” since they are so far south of the Bering land bridge. Does it imply that other people crossed even earlier? Did they move across the continent quickly? Where are their descendants? Dr. Andrea Manica at the University of Cambridge is even more confused.

“I can’t comment on how reliable the dating is (it is outside my expertise), but firm evidence of humans in North America 23,000 years ago is at odds with the genetics, which clearly shows a split of Native Americans from Asians approximately 15-16,000 years ago,” he told BBC News.

“This would suggest that the initial colonists of the Americas were replaced when the ice corridor formed and another wave of colonists came in. We have no idea how that happened.“

Another Instant Cambrian Predator

As noted here already, a large radiodont (related to the Cambrian predator Anomalocaris) was reported by Caron and Moysiuk in Royal Society Open Science. Named Titanokorys gainesi, it was found in the Marble Canyon area which is older than the Burgess Shale by 100,000 years. It dates at 508 million years. Titanokorys had a large head shield or carapace, raptorial appendages for digging or grasping prey, and teeth surrounding a circular mouth. Larger than some other similar species, this one could have reached 50 cm in length. Live Science shows a rotating artist conception of the impressive “helmet-headed sea monster” which was apparently a well-equipped swimming predator. The ease with which reporters ascribe magical powers to evolution needs serious correction. 

Life existed on Earth long before the Cambrian, but during the early part of that period — about 541 million to 530 million years ago — animal bodies got weird. During this boom time for evolution, known as the Cambrian explosion, species evolved and diversified at an unparalleled pace, producing creatures with daggerlike tails; spiny arms; Swiss-army-knife heads; mouths full of needles; and bodies that were so densely covered with bristles they resembled kitchen brushes.

Comb jellies (ctenophores) are also aggravating Darwin’s dilemma. Three scientists writing in The Conversation describe new specimens from Utah that are more complex than ones living today! Then they raise the hypothesis that these complex animals, with nerves, rows of bioluminescent cilia and muscles, are the first animals before sponges. After acknowledging the Cambrian explosion, they say of the Precambrian,

Before then, animals were very simple and largely microscopic, but in the geological blink of an eye, most of the modern phyla of animals (metazoans) appeared, including arthropods, molluscs and vertebrates.Ctenophores have long been thought to be near the base of the animal tree of life, resembling other primitive forms such as cnidarians (corals and jellyfish). Sponges look primitive because they lack a nervous system and organized tissues, and they only have a few cell types.

Ctenophores and cnidarians, despite their relative simplicity, are much more complex than sponges, so it was traditionally assumed that sponges were at the absolute base of the animal family tree — the “sponges-first hypothesis.”

However, some recent genomic studies have proposed that comb jellies are actually even lower on the family tree than sponges, a “ctenophores-first” hypothesis. This radical idea remains highly controversial because sponges have been assumed to be more primitive than ctenophores for more than 150 years.

Whoops, Wrong Date

For the last instance of fossil follies, an embarrassing retraction was made in the Darwinist literature that is quite comical in the scope of its correction. Not long ago, science news outlets were announcing a phenomenal find of animal burrows 1.2 billion years old — 400 million years older than the previous multicellular animal known, and nearly twice as old as the Ediacaran organisms that preceded the Cambrian explosion. Writing in New Scientist, reporter Jason Arunn Murugesu announces that the “Mystery of ancient burrows older than earliest animals has been solved.” 

By comparing the samples to other rocks and fossils in the area, and uranium-lead dating the minerals found in the burrows, the team estimated the holes were made 40 to 50 million years ago. The team found that the sandstone had subsequently hardened due to the arid conditions of the region, giving the impression that the burrows had been made much earlier than they actually were.

From 1.2 billion to 50 million years: that is some error! A correction this large, swinging from the Paleocene to the Eocene at the other end of the geological column, raises questions about scientists’ ability to interpret trace fossils. 

What should astound observers even more is the credulity of many scientists and reporters who had accepted the earlier date. Anthony Shillito at the University of Oxford called this a Darwin victory after the fact by remarking that the correction “fits much better with our current understanding of early animal evolution.” Given the ability of evolutionists to fit any data to the prevailing Darwinian narrative, one can only wonder about the degree of that “current understanding” in the first place. 

Islam: a brief history.

Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion teaching that Muhammad is a messenger of God. It is the world's second-largest religion with 1.9 billion followers, or 24.9% of the world's population, known as Muslims. Muslims make up a majority of the population in 47 countries. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and has guided humanity through prophets, revealed scriptures, and natural signs. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, believed to be the verbatim word of God, as well as the teachings and normative examples (called the sunnah, composed of accounts called hadith) of Muhammad (c. 570 – 632 CE).

Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets such as Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims consider the Quran, in Arabic, to be the unaltered and final revelation of God. Like other Abrahamic religions, Islam also teaches a final judgment with the righteous rewarded in paradise and the unrighteous punished in hell. Religious concepts and practices include the Five Pillars of Islam, which are obligatory acts of worship, as well as following Islamic law (sharia), which touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, from banking and welfare to women and the environment. The cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are home to the three holiest sites in Islam.

From a historical point of view, Islam originated in early 7th century CE in the Arabian Peninsula, in Mecca, and by the 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east. The Islamic Golden Age refers to the period traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, during the Abbasid Caliphate, when much of the historically Muslim world was experiencing a scientific, economic, and cultural flourishing. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and states such as the Ottoman Empire, trade, and conversion to Islam by missionary activities (dawah).

Most Muslims are of one of two denominations: Sunni (85–90%) or Shia (10–15%). Sunni and Shia differences arose from disagreement over the succession to Muhammad and acquired broader political significance, as well as theological and juridical dimensions. About 12% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country; 31% live in South Asia, the largest percentage of Muslims in the world; 20% in the Middle East–North Africa, where it is the dominant religion; and 15% in sub-Saharan Africa. Sizable Muslim communities can also be found in the Americas, China, and Europe. Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world.

On Darwinists' attempts to disinherit a lost tribe.

 

De-Humanizing Neanderthals: A Darwinist Dog that Won’t Hunt

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

The latest Science Uprising video covers human evolution, and features geologist Casey Luskin and biologist Jonathan Wells:

For more on a specific issue touched on in the episode, check out a classic ID the Future podcast with Dr. Luskin. He tackles a neo-Darwinian assertion that theistic evolutionists Francis Collins and Karl Giberson make in The Language of Science and Faith. Giberson and Collins capitalize on the popular notion of Neanderthals as pre-human, cavemen-like beasts in order to bolster their claims for common ancestry. But what sort of common ancestry? And do experts even agree that Neanderthals were drastically different from Homo sapiens? Luskin explores the connection between Neanderthals and humans and points to the growing evidence that Neanderthals interbred with our species, buried their dead, employed technology, had a brain size equal to or even slightly larger than that of Homo sapiens, and were essentially just another race of humans. Some have attempted to use Neanderthals to help bridge the enormous gulf between humans and ape-like predecessors, but it’s increasingly clear that that dog won’t hunt. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

On the designed intelligence of the insect world's apex predator.

 

Dragonflies Make the Most of a Tiny Brain

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Picture the size of a dragonfly’s head, including its eyes and brain. For such tiny assets, one would think its capabilities would be severely limited. But powered flight? Targeting and chasing and intercepting a fast-darting prey? Never underestimate the ability of biological design to pack these feats — and more — into a tiny space. The secret lies in the engineering. Engineers routinely work with optimizing performance within constraints.

In PNAS, Sara Nicholson (Flinders University, Australia) and Karin Nordström (Uppsala University, Sweden) took a look at how dragonflies and other targeting insects achieve “Facilitation of neural responses to targets moving against optic flow.” Optic flow is just what it sounds like: optical information that flows past you when you are moving. Gamers know all about simulated optic flow. They try to stay focused on their objective when information and noise is moving around them. Think “jump to light speed” in Star Wars movies, or dodging rocks as Han Solo tries to negotiate an asteroid belt to get to a planet without getting hit. Optic flow is a major issue for flying insects, and dragonflies come well equipped to deal with it — and use it.

Nicholson and Nordström consider how insects succeed at targeting prey. Consider the noisy environment involved. Get into a dragonfly’s head, like an X-wing gunner, and visualize all the clutter in the heat of battle: enemy craft on the left and right, coming in from a distance, and pieces of debris passing above and below you. Rapid correction of pitch, yaw, and roll is required for your seat and for the craft, but this only adds to the visual confusion. Insects face an even greater challenge, because their fields of view are highly textured, and their prey is small compared to the background. The prey, moreover, is constantly darting in unpredictable directions. “Efficient target detection is a computationally challenging task,” they say, “which becomes even more difficult when done against visual clutter.”

Dragonflies (order Odonata) and hoverflies (order Diptera) are among insect flyers equipped with special neurons for targeting with optic flow.

The ability of insects to successfully pursue targets in clutter is thus remarkable and suggests a high level of optimization, making the underlying neural mechanisms interesting to study. Indeed, insects that pursue targets, including predatory dragonflies and robberflies, as well as territorial hoverflies, have higher-order neurons in the optic lobes and the descending nerve cord that are sharply tuned to the motion of small, dark targets. Target-tuned neurons often have receptive fields in the part of the compound eye that has the best optics. Target selective descending neurons (TSDNs) project to the thoracic ganglia where wing and head movements are controlled, and electrically stimulating dragonfly TSDNs leads to wing movements. Taken together, this suggests that TSDNs subserve target pursuit. However, how TSDNs respond to targets moving against translational and rotational optic flow is unknown.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

One strategy for staying on course is to keep one’s forward vision on the prey, to “lock on” to the target like fighter pilots do. (This is called “gaze stabilization.”) Another strategy is to watch for anything that moves against background. Those are helpful for initial targeting from a stationary position, but things quickly get complicated when taking flight.

However, as soon as the pursuer moves, its own movement creates self-generated widefield motion across the retina, often referred to as optic flow or background motion. In addition to self-generated optic flow, when a pursuer is subjected to involuntary deviations away from their intended flight path, for example by a gust of wind, this also generates optic flow. Quickly correcting such unplanned course deviations is essential for successfully navigating through the world.

When everything is moving — hunter, target, and background — what then? If the hunter rotates, everything in the field of vision rotates with the same angular velocity (rotational movement). If the hunter turns, by contrast, more distant objects move more slowly (translational movement). Surprisingly, many flying insects show “behavioral segregation between rotational and translational movements,” they say. “How this may influence target detection is currently not known.” Into the lab they went.

Flight Simulator

The authors put a hoverfly into a flight simulator, where they could control what kind of motion it perceived with programmed moving dots. Using electrodes, they watched the response of its TSDNs.

We found that orthogonal optic flow attenuated the TSDN target response but to a lesser degree than syn-directional optic flow. This suggests that the vector divergence between the target and the optic flow is important. Most strikingly, we found that counterdirectional optic flow increased the TSDN response to target motion, if the target moved horizontally. We found that projecting optic flow to only a small frontal portion of the eye was sufficient to elicit both TSDN attenuation and facilitation. As descending neurons control behavioral output, the response attenuation and facilitation could play a role in modulating optomotor, or gaze stabilizing corrective turns, as needed during target pursuit.

The first experiments showed that the neurons responded most strongly to counteracting optic flow: i.e., when the target was moving opposite the background optic flow. They narrowed it down further and found that frontal optic flow was “required and sufficient” to trigger TSDN response. “In summary, our results show that a small spatial window of optic flow in either the dorsal or ventral visual field is enough to strongly attenuate (Fig. 3B) or facilitate (Fig. 3C) the TSDN response to target motion.” That appears to be a clever strategy for making the most of a limited set of neurons.

This suggests that the level of vector divergence between the target and the optic flow influences the TSDN responses, so that maximum attenuation is generated at minimum vector divergence, whereas maximum facilitation is generated at maximum divergence.

Further experiments with pitch, yaw, and roll seemed to support this elegant, simple strategy. Since there are other neurons participating, though, the true picture is more complex. Further experiments altering the density of dots added some complications. Upstream small target motion detectors (STMDs) also inform the TSDNs, but in different amounts depending on the type of motion. Vector divergence from optic flow, therefore, was not enough to explain all the responses. Some neurons may inhibit other neurons in some motions but facilitate them in other motions. Further work will be required to disambiguate all the factors in play.

Nevertheless, our findings make behavioral sense. Prior to initiating target pursuit, male Eristalis hoverflies predict the flight course required to successfully intercept the target, based predominantly on the target’s angular velocity. To successfully execute an interception flight, the hoverfly turns in the direction that the target is moving. In doing so, the hoverfly creates self-generated optic flow counterdirectional to the target’s motion. In this case, the TSDNs would be facilitated, which could be beneficial. Importantly, the facilitation would take place across a range of dot densities, suggesting that even relatively sparse background textures would affect the TSDN response.

When the TSDNs are quiet, the insect can assume it is still on target with the prey. Only when contrary optic flow is perceived does the TSDN signal that a course correction is required. How head movements and wing movements factor into these rapid decisions remains to be discovered. The authors did not speculate about how these organs, neurons, and responses might have evolved.

Behold the Beast

A cover story of the IEEE Spectrum shows a magnified dragonfly head. That’s where all this processing goes on. The story, “Fast, Efficient Neural Networks Copy Dragonfly Brains,” tells how “An insect-inspired AI could make missile-defense systems more nimble.” The author, Frances Chance, works at Sandia Labs on dragonflies. Like Nicholson and Nordström., she does flight simulations but in simplified software models instead of making actual measurements on the insect’s neurons. Was a reference to evolution really necessary or helpful in her opening paragraph?

In each of our brains, 86 billion neurons work in parallel, processing inputs from senses and memories to produce the many feats of human cognition. The brains of other creatures are less broadly capable, but those animals often exhibit innate aptitudes for particular tasks, abilities honed by millions of years of evolution.

Her article contains some amazing facts: those ants in your pantry have 250,000 neurons, while dragonflies have close to a million. Dragonflies intercept and capture 95 percent of the prey they pursue. Their eyes are faster than ours, operating at “the equivalent of 200 frames per second.” Without access to GPS, a compass, or gyroscope (as far as we know), a dragonfly successfully intercepts hundreds of mosquitos per day.

What intrigues Chance is how these insects do so much with so little. The AI products that make news come at a huge processing cost. These small animals rival our best capabilities in some aptitudes, and they do it by balancing simplicity with sophistication. Her model results appear oversimplified. Maybe that is due to her assumption of evolution:

It is possible that biological dragonflies have evolved additional tools to help with the calculations needed for this prediction. For example, dragonflies have specialized sensors that measure body rotations during flight as well as head rotations relative to the body — if these sensors are fast enough, the dragonfly could calculate the effect of its movements on the prey’s image directly from the sensor outputs or use one method to cross-check the other. I did not consider this possibility in my simulation….

The simulated dragonfly does not quite achieve the success rate of the biological dragonfly, but it also does not have all the advantages (for example, impressive flying speed) for which dragonflies are known.

Frances Chance is mesmerized by the navigational achievements of insects, and glows with imagined possibilities for biomimicry. She knows she needs to check her simulation against real world dragonflies. ID advocates should encourage her to do so, because often the sophistication of biological engineering that implies designing intelligence is seen in the details. 

Rise of the expertocracy.

Ann Bauer: Science Tyranny, Science Uprising

David Klinghoffer

Do yourself a favor and read a heartbreaking and beautifully written essay at Tablet, “I Have Been Through This Before.” The writer, Ann Bauer, recounts her experience with her son Andrew, diagnosed with autism and subjected to the tyranny of the medical experts with their ever-changing treatments and medications. Andrew died at age 28: “My personal explanation is that he was tired of being controlled by the fickle czars of autism and he was just done.”

“Fickle czars” — of science and medicine — is a great phrase. It belongs in the Science Uprising series.

Bauer recounts the strange and fascinating career of psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, with his cult-like Orthogenic School, who developed the cruel “refrigerator mother” theory of autism that won praise from the experts, only to be sharply rejected later on by still other experts:

This was the moment Bettelheim’s work was entirely spurned by a new group of experts who neatly whipsawed the other direction. They changed positions but held onto the religiosity. Nature was in, nurture was out. Brain chemistry became the only thing that mattered. Everything we’d done during Andrew’s childhood — talk therapy, sensory integration, cross-patterning, behavior training, biofeedback — they rejected as quackery.

That’s far too often the way it is with expertise. 

Where She Is Heading

From the title of Ann Bauer’s essay, you may see where this is going: namely, March 2020.

Suddenly there emerged a cadre of pandemic experts who recommended — then quickly required — extreme and unprecedented things. People shouldn’t see their parents, visit friends, hold funerals or hug. We could never shake hands again. Wearing masks was useless! We MUST mask, both indoors and out. There were hotlines set up in many cities — including mine — for citizens to report their neighbors who did not comply. Police were sent to break up a Jewish funeral in New York City.

Day after day, media rained down information about who was to blame. Millennials, spring breakers, Southerners, motorcyclists. Scientists who proposed different theories were muffled, derided, sidelined. They were deemed dangerous, their ideas “misinformation.” To question was sacrilege.

I had lived through all of this before.

The “Shape” of Tyranny

Indeed, so have I. I’m not talking about the pandemic, or about treatments for autism, but about controversies around the study of biological and cosmic origins — the themes of the Science Uprising series: “To question is sacrilege.”

Bauer cites her husband:

John is an internet security expert with a background in mathematics. He’ll often talk about the “shape” of a problem. This is its outline, its gestalt. He envisions it like dots on a chart, or waves on a graph. I see holographic images — the shape of an ambitious refugee [meaning, Bruno Bettelheim], white coats and flimflam men, glimmering under the figures we see today.

That is a useful way of thinking about the experts and the tyranny they may impose, that we allow them to impose. It all assumes a certain familiar “shape.” There is an eerie sameness.

At any given moment, what the experts say before the next “whipsaw” switch in their favored opinions might prove ultimately to be correct. Or maybe not:

In the end, what I believe doesn’t really matter. History will out. Ten or 15 or 25 years from now there will a reckoning, deep research, a spate of biographies and memoirs from the people who spent 2020-21 under the sway of gurus. News media that trumpeted their wisdom and methods will issue brisk, researched, documentary-style reports. People will swarm out of the shadows to claim they didn’t really believe the experts embodied science and were secretly resisting all along; even those who preached their gospel and strong-armed the public’s obedience will insist they actually did not.

This is how I see the scientific reckoning to come over intelligent design and evolution, which the most esteemed experts tell us will never come, since the theory of evolution is already perfect: “There are no weaknesses in the theory of evolution.” The controversies are different, but the “shape” is hauntingly familiar.

Three less gaps for Darwin's God.

 

Three Stunners Challenge Traditional Darwinism

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Here are three unrelated but surprising discoveries that will be of interest to the intelligent design community.

Shared Code

Scientists at Flinders University in Australia found that our DNA spreads up to a meter around us without even touching anything. We’re leaving breadcrumbs of genetic code everywhere we go!

A person can leave DNA on a surface without directly touching it, a Flinders University study has found, with the longer someone spends in a room the more likely they are to leave a trace of themselves behind.

The researchers placed DNA collection plates half a meter to five meters apart in offices that had been sanitized.

Without anyone directly touching the collection plates, DNA from multiple people was present after only one day, with the DNA profiles stronger the closer the plates were to an individual and the longer they stayed out. [Emphasis added.]

They published their findings in Forensic Science International Genetics. 

This discovery will be alarming to criminals, as they learn that police can follow their trail even without fingerprints. For the rest of us, it illustrates two things: (1) Forensics is an example of intelligent design in action, and (2) Our earth is indeed a privileged planet. It is loaded with complex specified information! What other world in our solar system can boast of such a distinction? Think of it: coded information is everywhere in our world: in clouds, on rock walls, in the soil, and even under the seafloor. Code not only inhabits life; it makes the world habitable, traveling on global transportation systems.

We share our personal CSI everywhere we go, resembling the character “Pig-Pen” in the old Peanuts cartoons, who walked with a cloud of dust around him — except that our dust is the most densely packed information in the known universe. Presumably our whole genome could be reconstructed from invisible particles that float off our skin and breath, as if we are sharing copies of our biography everywhere we go — a biography so information-rich that if printed in 130 volumes would require 95 years to read (University of Leicester).

Cambrian Giant

Remember when fossil hunters found Marble Canyon, a fossil bed in Canada that surpassed the Burgess Shale in extent and species richness? Scientists have extricated another amazing fossil there: a giant predator unlike anything seen before. Named Titanokorys gainesi by the Royal Ontario Museum, it is half a meter long, almost as big as the famous Anomalocaris.

“The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling, this is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found,” says Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM’s Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology.

Like Anomalocaris, it has a toothed round mouth characteristic of radiodonts (round teeth). And like all the Cambrian animals, there is no evidence of transitional forms. Titanokorys carried a big carapace over its soft parts, including its enormous head and a suite of complex organs.

Like all radiodonts, Titanokorys had multifaceted eyes, a pineapple slice-shaped, tooth-lined mouth, a pair of spiny claws below its head to capture prey and a body with a series of flaps for swimming.

Live Science’s coverage begins with a 3D animation of the animal’s body plan. That’s a pretty big and complex animal to explode into the fossil record. Marble Canyon, remember, is thought to be earlier than the Burgess Shale. Remember, too, that a vertebrate fish called Metaspriggina was discovered there.

Calling on the DNA Cable

Proteins communicate long distance through DNA, announces the Weizmann Wonder Wander site. This may provide new theories about how proteins activate genes, contrary to the old “central dogma” that taught one-way communication from DNA to protein.

Proteins can communicate through DNA, conducting a long-distance dialogue that serves as a kind of genetic “switch,” according to Weizmann Institute of Science researchers. They found that the binding of proteins to one site of a DNA molecule can physically affect another binding site at a distant location, and that this “peer effect” activates certain genes. This effect had previously been observed in artificial systems, but the Weizmann study is the first to show it takes place in the DNA of living organisms.

The research also bears on the interesting discovery of horizontal gene transfer occurring in DNA libraries in the soil (see “Non-Mendelian Inheritance Undermines Neo-Darwinism”). A team at the Weizmann Institute of Science was looking into how some bacteria can “enrich their genomes by taking up bacterial gene segments scattered in the soil around them,” when they tapped into a long-distance “conversation” on DNA. When two copies of a transcription factor called ComK bind to DNA, they transmit a signal down the “wire” that facilitates binding by ComK at another remote binding site. The activation of all four copies surpasses a threshold, “switching on the bacterium’s gene scavenging ability.”

“We were surprised to discover that DNA, in addition to containing the genetic code, acts like a communication cable, transmitting information over a relatively long distance from one protein binding site to another,” Rosenblum says.

What is the physical mechanism for this kind of information transmission? They suggest it might involve twisting tension in the double helix. Perhaps, though, that is just the carrier signal on which higher-level information is transmitted.

They found that the sites must be at a specific distance from each other and have the same orientation, but that the intervening sequence of DNA letters had little effect. Perhaps this finding will unveil more function in so-called “junk” DNA.

“Long-distance communication within a DNA molecule is a new type of regulatory mechanism — one that opens up previously unavailable methods for designing the genetic circuits of the future,” Hofmann says.

Their paper in Nature Communications by Rosenblum et al. dispenses with the obligatory Darwin formalities briefly. “Whether natural promoters evolved to efficiently transmit allosteric signals across many nanometres remained largely unclear,” they say. Maybe it’s unclear because Darwinism puts static on the line.

Intelligent Design Expectations

Shared code, another Cambrian giant, and DNA communication all fit within intelligent design expectations, but challenge traditional Darwinism. The more that design advocates can present better explanations for surprising discoveries like these, the faster some researchers may pay attention to the design revolution that is clearly underway.