Fossil record shoots down origin of flight just so story.

 Fossil Friday: A Popular Just-So Story on the Origin of Bird Flight Bites the Dust

Gunter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features the early bird Confuciusornis from the Lower Cretaceous of Liaoning in China. Last week I reported for Fossil Friday on a just-so story about ichthyosaur evolution and how it fell apart (Bechly 2023). This week I want use the opportunity to report yet another case of a popular evolutionist just-so story that recently was put to rest for good. It is about the origin of avian flight.

An Old Debate About Birds

There is a long-running debate in evolutionary biology, asking whether birds took off by running and flapping from the ground up (cursorial hypothesis), or whether they jumped as gliders from the tree down (arboreal hypothesis). About twenty years ago there was a modification of the cursorial hypothesis suggested by Dial (2003), based on the observation in chicks of living Chukar partridge: it is the so-called wing-assisted incline running (WAIR) hypothesis, which suggested that wing flapping lifts the body during uphill running. This was also claimed to answer the old question “What use is half a wing?” (Dial et al. 2006), which obviously is not just an iconic question Darwin skeptics came up with.

The WAIR hypothesis quickly became more and more popular, with dozens of studies published on various aspects, such as aerodynamics (Tobalske & Dial 2007, Dial et al. 2008), mechanics (Bundle & Dial 2003), kinematics (Baier et al. 2013), and computer modelling (Heers et al. 2018). “According to the proponents of the WAIR hypothesis, adaptation to WAIR in avian ancestors prepared their locomotor apparatus for the subsequent evolution of forward flapping flight. In other words, WAIR is proposed as a preadaptation to full-fledged avian flapping flight.” (Kuznetsov & Panyutina 2022)

The Function of Wing Flapping

However, last year a new study by Kuznetsov & Panyutina (2022) showed that, contrary to earlier beliefs, the function of the wing flapping during uphill running is not to lift the body, but to push it towards a steep slope. This is the opposite adaptation to powered flight and requires very different muscles. Actually, “it follows that the action of the forelimb during WAIR cannot preadapt the musculature in a non-flying ancestor to free flapping flight. Furthermore, the wing action during WAIR [already] requires highly developed avian flight musculature.”

Therefore, the authors concluded that “Wing-assisted incline running should be regarded as a crown locomotor specialization of birds and is not an appropriate model for locomotion in avian ancestors.” Unsurprisingly, there was not a shred of paleontological evidence for the WAIR hypothesis (Nudds & Dyke 2009), and non-avian feathered dinosaurs as well as early birds arguably were incapable of WAIR (Senter 2006), which is the opposite of the model’s prediction. It looks like yet another evolutionist just-so story bites the dust after empirical data failed to support the imaginative storytelling.

References

Baier DB, Gatesy SM & Dial KP 2013. Three-dimensional, high-resolution skeletal kinematics of the avian wing and shoulder during ascending flapping flight and uphill flap- running. PLoS One 8(5): e63982, 1–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063982

Bechly G 2023. Fossil Friday: Ichthyosaur Birth, Another Evolutionist Just-So Story Falls Apart. Evolution News September 29, 2003. https://evolutionnews.org/2023/09/fossil-friday-ichthyosaur-birth-another-evolutionist-just-so-story-falls-apart/

Bundle MW & Dial KP 2003. Mechanics of wing-assisted incline running (WAIR). Journal of Experimental Biology 206(24), 4553–4564. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.00673

Kuznetsov AN & Panyutina AA 2022. Where was WAIR in avian flight evolution? Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 137(1), 145–156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blac019

Dial KP 2003. Wing-Assisted Incline Running and the Evolution of Flight. Science 299(5605), 402–404. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1078237

Dial KP, Randall RJ & Dial TR 2006. What use is half a wing in the ecology and evolution of birds? BioScience 56(5), 437–445. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2006)056[0437:WUIHAW]2.0.CO;2

Dial KP, Jackson BE & Segre P 2008. A fundamental avian wing-stroke provides a new perspective on the evolution of flight. Nature 451(7181), 985–989. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06517

Heers AM, Rankin JW & Hutchinson JR 2018. Building a Bird: Musculoskeletal Modeling and Simulation of Wing-Assisted Incline Running During Avian Ontogeny. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 6: 140, 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2018.00140

Nudds RL & Dyke GJ 2009. Forelimb posture in dinosaurs and the evolution of the avian flapping flight-stroke. Evolution 63(4), 994–1002. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00613.x

Senter P 2006. Scapular orientation in theropods and basal birds, and the origin of flapping flight. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 51(2), 305–313. https://www.app.pan.pl/article/item/app51-305.html

Tobalske BW & Dial KP 2007. Aerodynamics of wing-assisted incline running in birds. The Journal of Experimental Biology 210(10), 1742–1751. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.001701

Humankind: Evolving with a little help from our friends?

 Intelligent Design in Human-Animal Friendships

Eric Hedin

Our experiences suggest strongly that many animals — mostly but not exclusively mammalian — possess an innate quality that enables them to relate to and connect with humans. Cats and dogs, our most common domesticated pets (estimated at 135 million in the U.S.)1, provide countless examples of the relationships that can develop across the human-animal divide. If the number of pets alone isn’t enough evidence of their importance to our lives, consider how much Americans spend on their pets — estimated at $136.8 billion in 2022.2

Considering the importance we place on our relationship with pets, what is our point of connection with them? A reasonable answer would be our shared qualities of mind, will, and emotions, or what could be termed “soulish” qualities.

Not Merely Animals

By drawing attention to the shared attributes between humans and animals that enhance our interactions, I am not suggesting that this supports any contention that humans are merely animals. Animals can relate to us by sharing certain aspects of a subset of our characteristics, but the overlap is far from complete. While animals share with us the quality of intelligence, we transcend them in significant ways, including our abstract reasoning, language and mathematical abilities, our unlimited creativity, and our ability to visualize and instantiate novel outcomes. Another notably unique human trait is our ubiquitous spiritual nature.

Spirituality is a significant and universal aspect of human experience. The specific content of spiritual belief, practice, and experience varies, but all cultures have a concept of an ultimate, transcendent, sacred, or divine force.3

Worship of the divine is not an observable behavior among animals.

“Winning” the Competition

Does our ability to relate to animals and their responsiveness to human interactions indicate intelligent design in the order of things on Earth? From an evolutionary point of view, human dominance among all species on Earth resulted from our “winning” the competition for survival of the fittest. In this view, an innate animosity could be expected to persist between humans and other animal species. 

Now, some Darwinian aficionados might object to this conclusion by appealing to the genealogical distance between humans and animals, arguing that “time heals all wounds.” If this is so, the soothing of ancient animosities has occurred so effectively that it has been replaced with a distinct inclination to relationship found between humans and many animal species. Interestingly, animals that are conducive to domestication by humans are those that support a mutually beneficial relationship with humans. 

But once domestication got rolling, we didn’t just change the animals we brought into our lives; they changed us, too. Humanity would look very different today — and possibly not have thrived to the extent that it has — without the assistance and support of domesticated animals to help us hunt, bear burdens, provide food and materials for clothing and tools, and so much more.4

Earliest domestication occurred with dogs (approximately 15,000 years ago)5, used in assisting humans with hunting; goats, pigs, and sheep probably came next (9,500 BCE), followed by cattle and horses, with their well-known, mutually beneficial relationships with humans.6 Other domesticated animals include some that might not immediately come to mind, including, chickens, guinea pigs, water buffaloes, pigeons, rabbits, and fancy rats.

Aside from the more utilitarian examples of domesticated animals used for food, bearing burdens, or transportation, the breadth of therapeutic human-animal interactions is profound.

The variety of possible types of interactions that occur between humans and animals results in an equally rich variety of effects on human health and well-being, including behavioral, educational, physiological, and/or psychological effects.7

Our pets provide us what is termed an affiliative relationship, and its benefits are familiar to most people. Even when I was in grade school, I can vividly remember the feelings of contentment and joy that I experienced when two little black kittens my family had recently acquired fell asleep in a purring huddle on my lap as I sat in the sunshine on the milk box on the back porch.

Pets entail a strong emotional attachment that facilitates the exchange of physical and psychological benefits. Pet ownership correlates with a number of health benefits, such as increased physical activity and lower baseline blood pressure (McCune et al., 2014).8

More targeted human-animal interactions have become popular in recent years:

Human-Animal Interaction encompasses many relationships with animals, including companion animals, emotional support animals, working animals, and any Animal-Assisted Intervention.9

An Extremely Wide Scope

The scope of human physical, emotional, and mental needs that are benefited by animal interactions is extremely wide.

Animals have been used in therapies for children with autism, adults with spinal cord dysfunction, older adults with dementia, and prison inmates.

Service animals are individually trained to help disabled persons overcome specific disabilities. They promote a more independent livelihood, facilitating, for example, mobility for the visually impaired, low blood sugar detection for diabetics, or support for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Human-animal interactions of all types elicit positive psychological effects in clinical and nonclinical populations across the lifespan.11

Futuristic depictions of human societies in science fiction movies and many books often portray a world without pets. Star Wars seems to have replaced animal pets with functional robotic companions — for example, the resourceful and intuitive R2-D2. Pets were conspicuously absent in the original Star Trek shows, but the crew shows the effects of their deprivation when tribbles pullulate aboard the Enterprise and the crew absolutely luxuriates in their company.

What is it about animals that gives us the positive benefits from our interactions with them? While human-to-human relationships are vital to our lives, sometimes our human relationships can get complicated. Animals relate to us in a refreshingly uncomplicated manner. We don’t feel judged by animals. They are rarely in a hurry. While they certainly have their own needs, they often seem to be able to sense when we have particular physical or emotional needs and their calming presence with the affection they give helps us towards well-being.

Many people whose lives have been enhanced by their interactions with animals (myself included) could hardly imagine a life devoid of such human-animal companionship. As evidence for intelligent design, the provision of animals that assist our lives in so many ways stands out as not merely fortunate, but profoundly caring.

David Berlinski on the descent of man.

 Are Humans Progressing Toward Evolutionary Perfection?

Andrew McDiarmid

Are humans progressing morally as well as materially? What does it mean to be human in the cosmos? On a new episode of ID the Future, we bring you the second half of a stimulating conversation between Dr. David Berlinski and host Eric Metaxas on the subject of Berlinski’s book Human Nature.

In Human Nature, Berlinski argues that the utopian view that humans are progressing toward evolutionary and technological perfection is wishful thinking. Men are not about to become like gods. “I’m a strong believer in original sin,” quips Berlinski in his discussion with Metaxas. In other words, he believes not only that humans are fundamentally distinct from the rest of the biological world, but also that humans are prone to ignorance and depravity as well as wisdom and nobility. During this second half of their discussion, Berlinski and Metaxas compare and contrast the ideas of thinkers like psychologist Steven Pinker, author Christopher Hitchens, and physicist Steven Weinberg. The pair also spar gracefully over the implications of human uniqueness. Berlinski, though candid and self-critical, is unwilling to be pigeonholed. Metaxas, drawing his own conclusions about the role of mind in the universe, challenges Berlinski into moments of clarity with his usual charm. The result is an honest, probing, and wide-ranging conversation about the nature of science and the human condition. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Rocks are resisting the decarbon agenda?

 Geological Surprise: Ancient Rocks Release As Much CO2 As All the World’s Volcanoes

Scitech Daily

A University of Oxford study reveals rock weathering can be a major CO2 source, rivaling volcanic emissions. This insight is crucial for future carbon budget predictions.

New research has overturned the traditional view that natural rock weathering acts as a CO2 sink that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Instead, this can also act as a large CO2 source, rivaling that of volcanoes.

The results have important implications for modeling climate change scenarios but at the moment, CO2 release from rock weathering is not captured in climate modeling.

Future work will focus on whether human activities may be increasing CO2 release from rock weathering, and how this could be managed.

A Paradigm Shift in Understanding Carbon Cycle

A new study led by the University of Oxford has overturned the view that natural rock weathering acts as a CO2 sink, indicating instead that this can also act as a large CO2 source, rivaling that of volcanoes. The results, published on October 4 in the journal Nature, have important implications for modeling climate change scenarios.

Rocks and the Carbon Cycle

Rocks contain an enormous store of carbon in the ancient remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. This means that the “geological carbon cycle” acts as a thermostat that helps to regulate the Earth’s temperature. For instance, during chemical weathering rocks can suck up CO2 when certain minerals are attacked by the weak acid found in rainwater. This process helps to counteract the continuous CO2 released by volcanoes around the world, and forms part of Earth’s natural carbon cycle that has helped keep the surface habitable to life for a billion years or more.

Discovery of a New CO2 Release Mechanism

However, for the first time, this new study measured an additional natural process of CO2 release from rocks to the atmosphere, finding that it is as significant as the CO2 released from volcanoes around the world. Currently, this process is not included in most models of the natural carbon cycle.

The process occurs when rocks that formed on ancient seafloors (where plants and animals were buried in sediments) are pushed back up to Earth’s surface, for example, when mountains like the Himalayas or Andes form. This exposes the organic carbon in the rocks to oxygen in the air and water, which can react and release CO2. This means that weathering rocks could be a source of CO2, rather than the commonly assumed sink.

Methodology and Findings

Up to now, measuring the release of this CO2 from weathering organic carbon in rocks has proved difficult. In the new study, the researchers used a tracer element (rhenium) which is released into water when rock organic carbon reacts with oxygen. Sampling river water to measure rhenium levels makes it possible to quantify CO2 release. However, sampling all river water in the world to get a global estimate would be a significant challenge.

To upscale over Earth’s surface, the researchers did two things. First, they worked out how much organic carbon is present in rocks near the surface. Second, they worked out where these were being exposed most rapidly, by erosion in steep, mountain locations.

Dr. Jesse Zondervan, the researcher who led the study at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, said: “The challenge was then how to combine these global maps with the river data, while considering uncertainties. We fed all of our data into a supercomputer at Oxford, simulating the complex interplay of physical, chemical, and hydrological processes. By piecing together this vast planetary jigsaw, we could finally estimate the total carbon dioxide emitted as these rocks weather and exhale their ancient carbon into the air.”

This could then be compared to how much CO2 could be drawn down by natural rock weathering of silicate minerals. The results identified many large areas where weathering was a CO2 source, challenging the current view about how weathering impacts the carbon cycle. Hotspots of CO2 release were concentrated in mountain ranges with high uplift rates that cause sedimentary rocks to be exposed, such as the eastern Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes. The global CO2 release from rock organic carbon weathering was found to be 68 megatons of carbon per year.

Professor Robert Hilton (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford), who leads the ROC-CO2 research project that funded the study, said: “This is about 100 times less than present-day human CO2 emissions by burning fossil fuels, but it is similar to how much CO2 is released by volcanoes around the world, meaning it is a key player in Earth’s natural carbon cycle.”

Implications and Future Directions

These fluxes could have changed during Earth’s past. For instance, during periods of mountain building that bring up many rocks containing organic matter, the CO2 release may have been higher, influencing global climate in the past.

Ongoing and future work is looking into how changes in erosion due to human activities, alongside the increased warming of rocks due to anthropogenic climate changes, could increase this natural carbon leak. A question the team is now asking is if this natural CO2 release will increase over the coming century. “Currently we don’t know – our methods allow us to provide a robust global estimate, but not yet assess how it could change’’ says Hilton.

“While the carbon dioxide release from rock weathering is small compared to present-day human emissions, the improved understanding of these natural fluxes will help us better predict our carbon budget” concluded Dr. Zondervan.

Reference: “Rock organic carbon oxidation CO2 release offsets silicate weathering sink” by Jesse R. Zondervan, Robert G. Hilton, Mathieu Dellinger, Fiona J. Clubb, Tobias Roylands and Mateja Ogrič, 4 October 2023, Nature.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06581-9

Natural selection is a conserver not an innovator?

 Paper Digest: What Mutation Accumulation Tells Us About Evolution

Emily Reeves

In 2012, intelligent design proponents Robert W. Carter and John C. Sanford published a paper demonstrating the detrimental effects of mutational accumulation in the influenza virus. Though more than a decade old, this work caught my attention, among other reasons, for its possible relevance to our current experiences with COVID-19.

The paper demonstrates how mutational accumulation degrades genetic code over time — a concept championed by the ID community. The authors present a comprehensive historical analysis of mutational changes within the influenza virus H1N1, examining over 4,100 fully sequenced H1N1 genomes. Their results document multiple extinction events, including the previously known extinction of the human H1N1 lineage in 1957 and an apparent second extinction of the human H1N1 lineage in 2009. They state that the seeming extinctions appear to be due to continuous genetic erosion from the accumulation of mutations in the lineages. 

Fresh Look at a Familiar Virus

From the article, “A new look at an old virus,” in Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling:

It is therefore reasonable to ask if the striking reduction in H1N1 mortality might be due, in part, to natural attenuation resulting from deleterious mutation accumulation. Herd immunity is undoubtedly an important factor in reduced H1N1 mortality since 1918, but this may not be sufficient to explain the continuous decline in H1N1-related mortality over multiple human generations or the eventual extinction of the viral strain. Likewise, improved medical treatments, such as antibiotic treatment for flu-related pneumonia, were certainly a significant factor reducing H1N1 mortality, but these do not appear to fully explain the nature of the pattern of mortality decline seen for H1N1. For example, the exponential decline in mortality began before the invention of antibiotic treatment.

The Generative Power of Mutations 

ID proponents — including Carter, Michael Behe, Douglas Axe, Winston Ewert, and Stephen Meyer — have been critical of the generative power of mutations to produce information. That includes the information required by viruses to mutate into more virulent forms. Instead, these theorists have championed the idea that mutations overall tend to be harmful, degrading information-rich codes. This paper shows the degenerative effects of mutations even in the H1N1 virus, which has access to large population sizes and to the causal efficacy of natural selection. The authors show that mutations break code apart rather than build novel code. Let’s take a closer look.

The H1N1 influenza virus has circulated in the human population for 95 years. In the notorious outbreak of 1917–1918, it infected a staggering 40 percent of the human population. The H1N1 virus caused a death rate of 2 percent and continued to circulate until 1957, seemingly going extinct, only to reappear in 1977. Carter and Sanford pondered whether natural attenuation, resulting from the accumulation of mutations, could be the reason for the virus’s loss of virulence and its apparent extinction. The authors also discuss the relevance of their work for medicine and public policy. For example, given the prevailing belief that mutations produce genetic novelty, there was much anticipation, up to the 2009 outbreak of “swine flu” (a combination of H1N2 and H1N1), of a resurgence of a highly evolved deadly variant of H1N1.

RNA viruses have a known susceptibility to mutational degeneration, and scientists have even speculated that increasing a virus’s mutation rate may be a way to control viral epidemics. The H1N1 RNA virus’s genome has eight RNA segments, which code for 11 different proteins. For this virus, there is a reconstructed version of the 1918 genome and thousands of fully sequenced influenza viruses. Because of this existing data and knowledge, Carter and Sanford could test their attenuation model by examining mutation accumulation rates in the influenza lineage over time. They also looked to see if codon specificity moved towards a particular host preference — human, swine, and bird (duck).

A Relatively Constant Rate

After plotting the relative mutation count (y-axis) over time (x-axis) for the 2009–2010 “swine flu” outbreak, the authors discovered that mutations were accumulating at a relatively constant rate. The rate of linear accumulation also extended back to the original introduction (meaning the rate of mutation didn’t change and mutations kept accumulating), with one exception. There is a sharp discontinuity between the apparent extinction of the virus in 1957 and its reappearance in 1977. The researchers hypothesized that a frozen strain of the virus may have been reintroduced to the population, and that strain had fewer mutations than the major circulating strain that went extinct. This strain circulated until 2009, at which point it also appears to have gone extinct. 

Carter and Sanford argue that the swine flu of 2009 did not arise from the 1977 reintroduced strain. That is because it carried the full mutational load of the strain that went extinct in 1957. This observation led them to think that it was unlikely to be a significant threat, in contrast to if it had had a more intact genome. Importantly their analysis shows that this virus arose not due to adaptive mutations within H1N1 — as expected if evolution has generative power to design new living systems — but from horizontal transmission of new genetic material from other bird influenza strains. They present strong evidence that the H1N1 genome has been systematically degrading since 1918.

This [referring to systemic degradation] is evidenced by continuous, systematic, and rapid changes in the H1N1 genome throughout its history. For example, there was an especially rapid and monotonic accumulation of mutations during a single pandemic (Figure 1). Similarly, there was a continuous and rapid accumulation of mutations over the entire history of the virus (Figures 2 and 3), including a similar steady increase in nonsynonymous amino acid substitutions (Figure 3). While mutations accumulated in the human H1N1s, there was a parallel accumulation of mutations in the porcine H1N1 lineage (Figure 4).

The authors conclude that while some beneficial mutations occur, many more deleterious mutations are also occurring at the same time. Carter and Sanford also observed a clear erosion of codon bias over time without a net movement towards any single host preference (human, swine, and bird). They write:

It appears that the H1N1 strains currently in circulation are significantly attenuated and cannot reasonably be expected to back-mutate into a non-attenuated strain. The greatest influenza threat, therefore, is the introduction of a non-attenuated strain from some natural reservoir. This suggests that a better understanding of the origin of such non-attenuated strains should be a priority. Our findings suggest that new strategies that accelerate natural genetic attenuation of RNA viruses may prove useful for managing future pandemics and, perhaps in the long run, may preclude the genesis of new influenza strains.

Great Contemporary Significance

As we can see, design-based thinking sheds light on topics of great contemporary significance, such as how viruses spread through populations. For me, having lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper was a refreshing read. It provides hope that as COVID-19 continues to degrade, the human population can expect less of a threat from this nasty virus. As, however, the introduction of a non-attenuated strain from a reservoir would cause the pandemic to continue, there are some caveats to this prediction.

Conditionalism is not a kook position. III

 

Conditionalism is not a kook position. II

 

Meritocracy is not how you fight the power?

 

The beast dream of parity with mankind?

 Dreaming Animals and Human Exceptionalism

Denyse O'Leary

Do spiders dream? Researchers have detected something like REM (rapid eye movement) sleep — which is associated with dreaming in humans — in jumping spiders (pictured above). But what does it mean.

Training cameras on 34 spiders, they found that the creatures had brief REM-like spells about every 17 minutes. The eye-darting behavior was specific to these bouts: It didn’t happen at times in the night when the jumping spiders stirred, stretched, readjusted their silk lines or cleaned themselves with a brush of a leg.

CAROLYN WILKE, KNOWABLE MAGAZINE, “DO OTHER ANIMALS DREAM?,” SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 13, 2023. THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

But then we learn:

Though the spiders are motionless in the run-up to these REM-like bouts, the team hasn’t yet proved that they are sleeping. But if it turns out that they are — and if what looks like REM really is REM — dreaming is a distinct possibility, Rößler says. She finds it easy to imagine that jumping spiders, as highly visual animals, might benefit from dreams as a way to process information they take in during the day.

WILKE, “DO OTHER ANIMALS DREAM?” 

An Honest Admission

Inshort, it hasn’t even been established that the spiders are sleeping! In any event, we also learn that REM sleep can mean different things in different life forms, and that it has been observed in birds and cuttlefish but not whales and dolphins. One researcher honestly admits that “ … animals cannot report, and this is the biggest problem that we have in purely scientifically and robustly establishing this.”

Then it might make more sense to ask, what would dreaming actually do for a life form? If spiders did dream, what difference would it make? How would we know? We should perhaps look first at dreaming in animals about which we have some personal knowledge.

What about dogs? According to the American Kennel Club, “What we’ve basically found is that dogs dream doggy things . . . The dream pattern in dogs seems to be very similar to the dream pattern in humans.” And cats? They “dream about things that happen when they’re awake.” Horses? Based on their movements during REM sleep, “there is a chance horses re-enact their experiences during the day.”

Just Like People? Probably Not

We  are given to understand that these companion animals dream just like people. But they don’t. Human dreams often involve abstractions, symbols, and alternative world scenarios that both require and enable insight. That thought world is not available to dogs, cats, and horses.

Yes, companion animals are like humans in that they dream about the things they think about — but it matters that the things they think about are much more limited in range.

Not So Special?

We would never guess the real state of affairs from some of the comments reported in the Smithsonian Magazine story: “If octopuses and cuttlefish dream, ‘it just kind of blows down the walls of what we think about humanity being so special,’ [animal behaviorist Teresa] Iglesias says.” And from neuroethicist David M. Peña-Guzmán: “We want to think that humans are the only ones who can enact that break from the world.” In the real world, humans are special. The content of our dreams amply demonstrates that fact. Attempts to fudge or misrepresent that fact won’t help research into animal behavior at all and may easily hinder it by sending us on the wrong track. 

Interestingly, with birds, the popular advice offered was much more cautious: “It is thought that this kind of dreamlike replay during sleep might aid song learning and memory.” That’s much closer to the level at which we really know things about how other life forms think. It sounds more like science. But it is certainly not as popular as the ground(less) war on human exceptionalism.

On the latest addition to the godhead mandated by trinitarian "logic"

 Isaiah ch.7:3-10ASV"Then said JEHOVAH unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller's field; 4and say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. 5Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have purposed evil against thee, saying, 6Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set up a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeel; 7thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. 8For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken in pieces, so that is shall not be a people: 9and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.

10And JEHOVAH spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 11Ask thee a sign of JEHOVAH thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above."

Note please that Isaiah's speech is equated with JEHOVAH. Thus as mandated by trinitarian interpretive "logic" Isaiah must  be a co-equal member of Christendom's godhead.

File under "well Said" XCVII

 "There are many devices in a man's heart; But the counsel of JEHOVAH, that shall stand."

Proverbs Ch.19:21 American Standard Version

Matter and mind are co- dependent.

 Physicalism Versus the Practice of Science

Angus Menuge

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome the new book from Discovery Institute Press, Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science, edited by Angus J. L. Menuge, Brian R. Krouse, and Robert J. Marks. Below is an excerpt from Chapter 2. Look for more information at MindingtheBrain.org.

Any attempt to use science to discredit the existence of mental subjects is fatally flawed because the bedrock data for all science comes from observation, which presupposes the existence of conscious subjects. The idea that the findings of physical science are unproblematic but mental subjects are questionable ignores the fact that our only access to physical phenomena is via the minds of scientists. Thus, as Charles Taliaferro points out, one “cannot presume to have any clearer understanding of nonmental physical phenomena than [one] does of [the] concepts, reasons and reasoning, grasping entailment relations, reliance on experience and observations that go into the practice of the sciences.” Since concepts, reasons, grasping entailments, and experience all seem to be mental phenomena, and all are required by the practice of science that investigates physical phenomena, we are not within our rights to assume that we have more reliable access to physical phenomena than we do to the mind. 

Furthermore, scientific inquiry assumes that it is one and the same conscious subject that has a research question, and persists over the time necessary to answer that question. How can a scientist claim to discover the answer to his question, or to verify or falsify a prediction that he made, if he is not the very same person that asked the question or made the prediction? For example, consider François Englert and Peter Higgs, who predicted the existence of the Boson nearly fifty years before its existence was confirmed. When these scientists became Nobel Prize winners in 2013, everyone assumed that the very same persons receiving the prize made the prediction decades before. Yet due to the constant flux of matter in our physical bodies and brains over time, physicalist approaches to personal identity find it very difficult to justify this assumption. 

Implicitly Dualist Commitments

What is more, as Daniel Robinson argues, neuroscience in particular has implicitly dualist commitments, because the correlation of brain states with mental states would be a waste of time if we did not have independent evidence that these mental states existed. It would make no sense, for example, to investigate the neural correlates of pain if we did not have independent evidence of the existence of pain from the subjective experience of what it is like to be in pain. This evidence, though, is not scientific evidence: it depends on introspection (the self becomes aware of its own thoughts and experiences), which again assumes the existence of mental subjects. Further, Richard Swinburne has argued that scientific attempts to show that mental states are epiphenomenal are self-refuting, since they require that mental states reliably cause our reports of being in those states. The idea, therefore, that science has somehow shown the irrelevance of the mind to explaining behavior is seriously confused. 

Tom Sowell further dismantles master race delusions.

 

Jesus is the most high God? II

 

Cambridge's Commentary on Hebrews ch.10:27's fiery judgement on JEHOVAH'S enemies.

 Cambridge on Hebrews Ch.10:27 "...and fiery indignation] Lit., “and a jealousy of fire.” He is thinking of God “as a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29) and of the question “Shall thy jealousy burn like fire?” Psalm 79:5 (comp. Ezekiel 35:5).

which shall devour the adversaries] “Yea let fire devour thine enemies” (Isaiah 26:11). It has so long been the custom to interpret such passages of “eternal torments” that we lose sight of the fact that such a meaning, if we may interpret Scripture historically, was in most cases not consciously present to the mind of the writers. The constant repetition of the same metaphor by the Prophets with no reference except to temporal calamities and the overthrow of cities and nations made it familiar in this sense to the N.T. writers. By “the adversaries” here are not meant “sinners,” but impenitent Jews and wilful apostates who would perish in the Day of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 1:8). It is at least doubtful whether the writer meant to imply anything beyond that prophecy of doom to the heirs of the Old Covenant which was fulfilled a few years later when the fire of God’s wrath consumed the whole system of a Judaism which had rejected its own Messiah. The word for “adversaries” only occurs in the N.T. in Colossians 2:14...."

It's OK to rethink the unrethinkable?

 

Plants got soul?

 Are Plants Cognitive, Intelligent Beings?

Denyse O'Leary

As panpsychism (the idea that all life forms are conscious to some extent) takes hold in science, it ruffles some fields more than others. Think of what it is doing to botany…

Well, we don’t have to imagine. The University of Heidelberg warned this week that the belief that plants do things we commonly associate with animals is straying beyond the science:

Plants are often attributed with abilities similar to those known in the animal or human world. Trees are said to have feelings and can purportedly care for their offspring, like mothers. In an article in the review journal Trends in Plant Science, 32 international plant and forest researchers followed up on such assertions.

Led by Prof. David G. Robinson, professor emeritus for cell biology at the Center for Organismal Studies (COS) of Heidelberg University, the researchers analyzed the claims in two popular publications on forests and reached the conclusion that conjecture is equated with fact. They warn against “anthropomorphizing” plants.

HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY, “’DO NOT ANTHROPOMORPHIZE PLANTS,’ SAY PLANT AND FOREST RESEARCHERS,-” SEPTEMBER 30, 2023 THE PAPER REQUIRES A SUBSCRIPTION.

Not Only in Popular Literature

But such claims are not made only in popular literature. Professor Robinson and some of his colleagues have expressed concern on this topic before. 

In 2020, EMBO Reports published a paper by Frantisek Baluška and colleagues titled “Plants, climate and humans: Plant intelligence changes everything.” From the paper’s Abstract:

However, over the past decades, plant science has revealed that higher plants are much more than just passive carbon-fixing entities. They possess a plant-specific intelligence, with which they manipulate both their abiotic and biotic environment, including climate patterns and whole ecosystems. Considering plants as active and intelligent agents has therefore profound consequences not just for future climate scenarios but also for understanding mankind’s role and position within the Earth’s biosphere. 

BALUŠKA F, MANCUSO S. PLANTS, CLIMATE AND HUMANS: PLANT INTELLIGENCE CHANGES EVERYTHING. EMBO REP. 2020 MAR 4;21(3):E50109. DOI: 10.15252/EMBR.202050109. EPUB 2020 FEB 27. PMID: 32103598; PMCID: PMC7054678.

Robinson et al. were skeptical of the claims about “plant-specific intelligence” and wrote EMBO Reports to say,

Plant “intelligence” changes nothing

Attempts to humanize plants may be in line with current trends towards rampant anthropomorphism in biology, but paint a highly distorted picture of plant life. The present article in EMBO Reports adds an extra dimension to the apparent cognitive and social abilities of plants: sentences like “A new view of higher plants as cognitive and intelligent organisms that actively manipulate their environment to serve their needs” and “Humans are not excluded from plants’ manipulative behaviour…” appeal to psychological and neurobiological concepts of social cognition without providing empirical basis for such a far-reaching proposal.

And Baluška and a colleague responded,

Plants are alive: with all behavioural and cognitive consequences

We have always been well disposed towards criticisms — by studying cognition in plants we expect it — but we do not believe that dogmatic attitudes can be helpful for science to progress. If Robinson et al want to continue their claim that 85% of Earth biomass (plants) is made up of organic semi-living machines and that intelligence is a gift belonging only to 0.3% of life (animals), they are obviously free to believe it, but they should support their claims with scientific evidence. 

Incidentally, Frantisek Baluška is part of the Third Way of Evolution group, which seeks to look beyond Darwinian natural selection in order to understand evolution. That may be an underlying source of tension because Robinson et al. stress in their critical letter that “Most ecologists understand that ‘ecological strategy’ is a misleading teleological shorthand for evolved adaptive behaviour determined by natural selection.”

Can Darwinism Withstand Panpsychism?

An underlying issue is, of course, the fact that the Darwinian concept of nature does not credit even humans with having actual intelligence. We merely have “evolved adaptive behaviour determined by natural selection.” In other words, natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) is thought to account for abstract mathematics, the Louvre, and all spiritual teachings, on the theory that they enable their creators and admirers to spread their selfish genes. 

Of course it may be untenable that plants plan or think. But, honestly, Darwinism is untenable too. Will this controversy become a war of untenables?

Meanwhile, pop science media like the new approach to plants. Consider this from ZME Science:

Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) have recorded high-pitched airborne noises emitted by water-stressed plants. The noises could be interpreted as an indication that plants cry out for help (please water me!), much like a distressed animal would.

In their study, the researchers suggest that whenever a plant is cut, suffers from an infection, or is under stress from water deprivation, it repeatedly emits a click sound. Humans are not able to hear these clicks because their frequency is above the audible range (40 to 80 KHz, whereas humans can hear sounds only up to 20 KHz). 

RUPENDRA BRAHAMBHATT, “PLANTS ‘SCREAM’ UNDER STRESS. HERE IS HOW YOU CAN HEAR THEM,” AME SCIENCE, SEPTEMBER 26, 2023 THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

ZME Science asks the inevitable question: “Plants can’t have emotions — or can they?” The researchers said they “cannot say with certainty.”

Darwinians may be the ones who need to learn how to “adapt” to this new environment where panpsychism is increasingly an underlying assumption in science and science writing.

On the wall that fell and the wall that remained standing.

 

Politics is evil.

 Religion NEVER sanctifies politics. Even that one nation founded by the Lord JEHOVAH Himself, can trace the beginning of its fall to the beginning of politics.

1Samuel Ch.8:7ASV"And JEHOVAH said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not be king over them."

JEHOVAH tried his best to warn the people of the Hazzard of turning to politicians for security/salvation rather than him. Especially re:the threat to the relative liberty they enjoyed at the time see Judges ch.17:6

1Samuel Ch.8:11-18ASV"And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots; 12and he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. 13And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. 14And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. 15And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. 16And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. 17He will take the tenth of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants. 18And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king whom ye shall have chosen you; and JEHOVAH will not answer you in that day."

Conversely politics always Corrupts religion.

John ch.19:15NIV"But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered."

But note please that they did not say we have no king save God Almighty. They were too preoccuppied with pleasing men for that. That simply was not where their hearts were see Matthew ch.15:8.

A preoccupation with pleasing men is an inevitable by product  of any attempt to merge religion with politics. This invariable shift in focus from pleasing JEHOVAH to pleasing men is an issue ,because while JEHOVAH'S Servants ought not to be gratuitously offensive in our tone or manner re:the publishing of the divine message see 1Peter ch.3:15 . Our focus must remain on pleasing our master the Lord JEHOVAH.

Acts Ch.5:29NLT"But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. "

Ps. Matthew Ch.10:7NIV"As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’" JEHOVAH'S Servants were not instructed to herald the approach of JEHOVAH'S Republic but of JEHOVAH'S Kingdom.

Recommended reading.

 Alfred Russel Wallace’s Case for an “Overruling Intelligence”

Evolution News

An interlude VI

 

Bloodless medicine : still the gold standard

 

Discussing William Lane Craig on E.C.T.

 

Continuing to rethink the unrethinkable

 

Wallace and Darwin:divided by human exceptionalism?

 Alfred Russel Wallace’s Case for an “Overruling Intelligence”

Evolution News 

2023 marks the bicentennial of the birth of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Unlike Darwin, Wallace thought that biology, chemistry, and cosmology proclaimed clear evidence of intelligent design. With this classic episode of ID the Future, we celebrate the life and achievements of one of the godfathers of intelligent design. 

Host Michael Keas continues his conversation with historian Michael Flannery about his book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. When Wallace broke with Darwin in 1869, it was over the nature of human beings. Flannery explains how Wallace became convinced of an “overruling intelligence” in nature — a cause sufficient to explain the special attributes of human beings: their facility with mathematics, their propensity toward abstract thought, their love of dance, their appreciation of music, and more. “All of these uniquely human attributes do not have per se any survival advantage in nature,” says Flannery. “So…they can’t be relied upon by Darwin’s own principle of utility to be things which developed via natural selection. They have to come from some other source.” And while some may claim Wallace’s view is just a “gaps” argument, Flannery notes that it’s instead a positive argument calling on a cause sufficient to explain the uniqueness of human beings. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

How many Gods?

 

And yet even more rethinking of the unrethinkable

 

Still continuing to rethink the unrethinkable.

 

That time a nation's tribalism was made manifest.

 

Michael brown rethinks the unrethinkable?

 

That's the thing about Just so stories. Easy come easy go.

 Fossil Friday: Ichthyosaur Birth, Another Evolutionist Just-So Story Falls Apart

Gunter Bechly

Ichthyosaurs are an extinct group of Mesozoic marine reptiles that have been known since the early 19th century. They are one of the group of marine reptiles that appeared abruptly in the Early Triassic period and thus contradict Darwinian expectations (Bechly 2022, 2023a, 2023b, Luskin 2023). This Fossil Friday features the remarkably well-preserved fossil of a “birthing“ ichthyosaur. The fossil belongs to the species Stenopterygius quadricissus from the Lower Jurassic (Liassic) Posidonia shale of Holzmaden in Germany, which is about 180 million years old. The photo shows a replica at the Natural History Museum in London, while the original fossil is deposited at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, where I worked for 16 years as a scientific curator in the Paleontology Department.

Correcting Wikipedia

The first report of ichthyosaur embryos is often credited to Chaning Pearce (1846), but indeed was made long before by German paleontologist Georg Friedrich von Jäger. The latter described a specimen with a juvenile in its rib cage, which had already been discovered in 1749 (Jäger 1824), and later interpreted this small specimen as an embryo at a conference in 1842 (Jäger 1852, Böttcher 1990). Over 200 years of paleontological research, more than a hundred specimens with embryos or new born babies have been found (Woodward 1906, Fraas 1911, Swinton 1930, Böttcher 1990, Deeming et al. 1993, Maxwell & Caldwell 2003, Lomax & Massare 2012, Lomax & Sachs 2017, Boyd & Lomax 2018, Stöhr & Werneburg 2023; also see Wikipedia Timeline of ichthyosaur research), including Triassic ichthyosaurs (e.g., Brinkmann 1996, Dal Sasso & Pinna 1996, Motani et al. 2014, LePage & Hecht 2015, Miedema et al. 2023).

The Stuttgart museum holds more than 46 specimens of supposed ichthyosaur mothers with embryos, in different stages of the pregnancy and birthing process (Böttcher 1990). These include specimens with up to ten embryos in the belly, partial births, and specimens with newborn babies outside the body that were likely cases of postmortem fetal extrusion due to carcass implosion (Loon 2013). Most of these specimens suggest that the young were born tail-first, which was generally believed to be an adaptation to fully marine life, where live birth (vivipary) tail-first would have prevented drowning of the babies during the birth process, contrary to a usual head-first birth in terrestrial animals (Miedema et al. 2023). Newborn babies of the most abundant fossil Stenopterygius quadricissus had a length of about 50 cm (Fraas 1911).

Stomach Content or Babies?

An alternative interpretation of the specimens with embryos inside the belly as cannibalistic predation of ichthyosaurs on juvenile specimens was discussed for a long time (Branca 1908a, 1908b, Sehrwald 1913, Ottow 1950), but has been ultimately rejected based on the narrow esophagus and stomach, which were not suited for prey of this size (Böttcher 1990). Also the complete state of preservation of the young contradicts an interpretation as stomach content (Swinton 1930, Maxwell & Caldwell 2003). In 2018 a specimen of a mother ichthyosaur with remains of six to eight embryos was described from the Early Jurassic of Yorkshire (Boyd & Lomax 2018 and University of Manchester 2018), and interpreted as further evidence that the young are indeed embryos and not stomach content, since it seems “highly unlikely that an ichthyosaur would swallow six to eight aborted embryos or newborn ichthyosaurs at one time” (also see Trevino 2018 and BBC 2018).

In 2014 a specimen of the primitive ichthyosaur Chaohusaurus was described by Motani et al. (2014) from the Early Triassic of China (about 248 million years old). The specimen was preserved with three babies: one inside the body, one outside the body, and one in head-first partial birth. The authors suggested that this head-first birth represents a primitive state retained from already viviparous terrestrial ancestors of ichthyosaurs (also see Anonymous 2014 and LePage & Hecht 2015). Sounds reasonable, no?

New Study Challenges Old Ideas

Recently, a new study on ichthyosaur reproduction was published by Miedema et al. (2023), of which the very revealing abstract says (also see Miedema 2023 and SMNS 2023):

According to a longstanding paradigm, aquatic amniotes, including the Mesozoic marine reptile group Ichthyopterygia, give birth tail-first because head-first birth leads to increased asphyxiation risk of the fetus in the aquatic environment. Here, we draw upon published and original evidence to test two hypotheses: (1) Ichthyosaurs inherited viviparity from a terrestrial ancestor. (2) Asphyxiation risk is the main reason aquatic amniotes give birth tail-first. From the fossil evidence, we conclude that head-first birth is more prevalent in Ichthyopterygia than previously recognized and that a preference for tail-first birth likely arose in derived forms. This weakens the support for the terrestrial ancestry of viviparity in Ichthyopterygia. Our survey of extant viviparous amniotes indicates that fetal orientation at birth reflects a broad diversity of factors unrelated to aquatic vs. terrestrial habitat, further undermining the asphyxiation hypothesis. We propose that birth preference is based on parturitional mechanics or carrying efficiency rather than habitat.

In other words, neither the longstanding paradigm of aquatic adaptation of viviparous tail-first birthing, nor the evolutionary speculations of Motani et al. (2014) about an alleged viviparous terrestrial ancestor of ichthyosaurs, stand up to scrutiny when challenged with actual empirical data.

Evolutionary biology again and again proves to be an enterprise in imaginative story-telling rather than hard science. But when intelligent design theorists question the Darwinist paradigm based on empirical data and a rational inference to the best explanation, they are accused of being science deniers. Which science? We ID theorists do not deny any science, but only challenge fancy stories that are driven more by a materialist worldview agenda and actually are contradicted by good science. And we will not let Darwinists get away with a dishonest appeal to the progress of science when they simply rewrite their stories every time conflicting evidence can no longer be denied. This is not how good science is supposed to work but is rather typical for pseudoscience that shields itself against empirical falsification.

References

Anonymous 2014. Tod bei der Geburt – Meeressaurier-Weibchen starb mit einem Jungtier im Geburtskanal. Scinexx February 14, 2014. https://www.scinexx.de/news/biowissen/tod-bei-der-geburt/

BBC 2018. ‘Pregnant mum’ fossil theory confirmed. BBC April 5, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-43652968

Bechly G 2022. Educating “Professor Dave” on the Fossil Record and Genetics. Evolution News December 8, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/12/educating-professor-dave-on-the-fossil-record-and-genetics/

Bechly G 2023a. Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origin of Ichthyosaurs. Evolution News March 17, 2023. https://evolutionnews.org/2023/03/fossil-friday-the-abrupt-origin-of-ichthyosaurs/

Bechly G 2023b. Fossil Friday: The Triassic Explosion of Marine Reptiles. Evolution News March 31, 2023. https://evolutionnews.org/2023/03/fossil-friday-the-triassic-explosion-of-marine-reptiles/

Böttcher R 1990. Neue Erkenntnisse über die Fortpflanzungsbiologie der Ichthyosaurier (Reptilia). Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde B 164, 1–51. https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Stuttgarter-Beitraege-Naturkunde_164_B_0001-0051.pdf

Boyd MJ & Lomax DR 2018. The youngest occurrence of ichthyosaur embryos in the UK: A new specimen from the Early Jurassic (Toarcian) of Yorkshire. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 62, 77–82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1144/pygs2017-008

Branca W 1908a. Sind alle im Inneren von Ichthyosauriern liegenden Jungen ausnahmslos Embryonen? Abhandlungen der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Physikalisch-mathematische Classe) 1907, 1–34.

Branca W 1908b. Nachtrag zur Embryonenfrage bei Ichthyosaurus. Sitzungsberichte der königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (physikalisch-mathematische Classe) 18, 392–396. Brinkmann W 1996. Ein Mixosaurier (Reptilia, Ichthyosauria) mit Embryonen aus der Grenzbitumenzone (Mitteltrias) des Monte San Giorgio (Schweiz, Kanton Tessin). Eclogae Geologicae Helvetiae 89(3), 1321–1344. https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=egh-001%3A1996%3A89%3A%3A1569

Chaning Pearce J 1846. Notice of what appears to be the embryo of an Ichthyosaurus in the pelvic cavity of Ichthyosaurus (communis?). Annals & Magazine of Natural History (First Series), 17, 44–46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/037454809496438

Dal Sasso C & Pinna G 1996. Besanosaurus leptorhynchus n. gen. n. sp., a new shastasaurid ichthyosaur from the middle Triassic of Besano (Lombardy, N. Italy). Paleontologia Lombarda (NS) 4, 3–23. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259757398

Deeming DC, Halstead LB, Manabe M. & Unwin DM 1993. An ichthyosaur embryo from the Lower Lias (Jurassic: Hettangian) of Somerset, England, with comments on the reproductive biology of ichthyosaurs. Modern Geology 18, 423–442. 

Fraas E 1911. Embryonaler Ichthyosaurus mit Hautbekleidung. Jahreshefte des Vereins für vaterländische Naturkunde in Württemberg 67, 480–487. https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Jh-Ver–vaterl-Naturkunde-Wuerttemberg_67_0480-0487.pdf

Jäger GFv 1824. De Ichthyosauris sive Proteosauris fossilis speciminibus in agro Bollensi in Wuertembergia repertis. Cotta, Stuttgart (DE), 14 pp.

Jäger GFv 1852. Ueber die Fortpflanzungsweise des Ichthyosaurus. Gelehrte Anzeigen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 34/1851, 33–36.

LePage M & Hecht J 2015. Stunning fossils: Mother giving birth. NewScientist February 18, 2015. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26975-stunning-fossils-mother-giving-birth/

Loon AJv 2013. Ichthyosaur embryos outside the mother body: not due to carcass explosion but to carcass implosion. Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 93, 103–109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-012-0112-6

Lomax DR & Massare JA 2012. The first reported Lep­tonectes (Reptilia: Ichthyosauria) with associated embryos, from Somerset, England. Paludicola 8(4), 263–276. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265964962

Lomax DR & Sachs S 2017. On the largest Ichthyosaurus: A new specimen of Ichthyosaurus somersetensis contai­ning an embryo. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62(3), 575–584. https://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app62/app003762017.html

Luskin C 2023. New Scientist: Ichthyosaurs Evolved “Astonishingly Rapidly”. Evolution News February 14, 2023. https://evolutionnews.org/2023/02/new-scientist-ichthyosaurs-evolved-astonishingly-rapidly/Maxwell EE & Caldwell MW 2003. First record of live birth in Cretaceous ichthyosaurs: closing an 80 million year gap. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 270(S1), S104–S107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2003.0029

Miedema F 2023. Heads or tails? A new look at birthing strategies of extinct marine reptiles. Ecology & Evolution Community April 20, 2023. https://ecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/heads-or-tails-a-new-look-at-birthing-strategies-of-extinct-marine-reptiles

Miedema F, Klein N, Blackburn DG, Sander PM, Maxwell EE, Griebeler EM & Scheyer TM 2023. Heads or tails first? Evolution of fetal orientation in ichthyosaurs, with a scrutiny of the prevailing hypothesis. BMC Ecology & Evolution 23: 12, 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-023-02110-4

Motani R, Jiang D-y, Tintori A, Rieppel O & Chen G-b 2014. Terrestrial Origin of Viviparity in Mesozoic Marine Reptiles Indicated by Early Triassic Embryonic Fossils. PLoS ONE 9(2): e88640, 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088640

Ottow B 1950. Zur Fortpflanzungsphysiologie der Ichthyosaurier. Arkiv för Zoologi 1, 31–42.

Seeley HG 1880. Report on the mode of reproduction of certain species of Ichthyosaurus from the Lias of England and Württemberg. Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 50, 68–76.

Sehrwald E 1913. Waren die Ichthyosaurier Kannibalen? Umschau (Frankfurt a.M.) 17(27), 541–546.

SMNS 2023. Heads or tails first? New insights into fetal orientation in ichthyosaurs. 

Stöhr H & Werneburg I 2023. The Tübingen collection of ichthyosaurs from the Lower Jurassic (Lower Toarcian) Posidonienschiefer Formation of Württemberg: a historical and curatorial perspective. Palaeodiversity 16(1), 39–97. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18476/pale.v16.a3

Swinton WE 1930. Ichthyosaur embryos. Natural History Magazine 2, 8–12. 

Trevino J 2018. Fossilized ‘Sea Monster’ Found Pregnant With Eight Babies. Smithsonian Magazine April 9, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/180-million-year-old-sea-monster-was-carrying-eight-babies-180968712/

University of Manchester 2018. Prehistoric reptile pregnant with octuplets. Press release by the University of Manchester April 5, 2018. https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/prehistoric-reptile-pregnant-with-octuplets/ (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/482121)

Woodward AS 1906. On two specimens oi Ichthyosaurus showing contained embryos. Geological Magazine 3(10), 443–444. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0016756800118734

On learning to love maths/getting maths to love us.

 

Alas for Darwinism the science seems headed in the opposite direction.

 Four Troublesome Trend Lines for Evolution

David Klinghoffer

I’m thinking of four troublesome trend lines for evolution. No doubt you can suggest others. More and more “junk DNA” and functionless “vestigial organs” are found to have function after all (see, for just the most recent examples, here and here). More time goes by with origin-of-life researchers making no progress (here) in their work to explain how life could have arisen from non-life through blind natural processes alone. Practical science research, meanwhile, takes one biological design after another as inspiration for human technological innovation — this is what fuels the remarkable field of biomimetics (here).

In any of these areas, evolutionists can take a snapshot of the day’s news and dismiss design evidence as an anomaly. As our favorite stalker, Professor Dave, put it regarding “junk DNA,” “Good thing most of it is indeed junk which makes zero sense in the context of design but perfect sense in the context of evolution, eh dummy?” But the trend lines persist, and we merely call them out as such. The trends are what ought to be worrying Darwinists. Taken as a totality, they make “zero sense in the context” of classic evolutionary theory.

You snooze ,you loose (even if you're king of titans)

 

There is no way back for the RNA World?

 Another Headache for the RNA World Theory

Andrew McDiarmid

The RNA world is proposed by some to explain how early life began before DNA. But is RNA capable of maintaining a life-friendly self-replication rate? On a new episode of ID the Future, I welcome back Dr. Jonathan McLatchie to discuss another headache for the RNA world scenario. Before a trial and error process like natural selection can even get started, self-replicating molecules must have a minimal accuracy rate to copy genetic material effectively. The required fidelity rate is estimated to be 2 percent. Any error rate higher than that results in error catastrophe for organisms. The average error rate in RNA copying is estimated to be around 17 percent, vastly higher than the estimated maximum error threshold for survival. McLatchie explains the implications of this for chemical evolutionary theories like the RNA world hypothesis. He also explains how a Bayesian approach to this evidence can provide us with the likeliest explanation for the origin of biological life. “The sorts of features that we observe in life are not particularly surprising if we suppose that a mind is involved,” says McLatchie. On the other hand, things like minimal self-replication fidelity are wildly surprising on a naturalistic hypothesis. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

In search of a "by the numbers" cosmology.

 

The junk DNA trope continues to be deconstructed.

 Former “Junk DNA,” STRs Found to Be “Rheostats” that “Precisely Regulate Gene Expression.

Casey Luskin

A 2007 paper in the journal Genomics Proteomics & Bioinformatics, “A Brief Review of Short Tandem Repeat Mutation,” notes that “Short tandem repeats (STRs) are short tandemly repeated DNA sequences that involve a repetitive unit of 1–6 bp [base pairs].” STRs make up about 5 percent of the human genome. Yet the paper notes that “Although STRs widely exist in organisms, most of them are thought to have no biological uses at all and are regarded as ‘junk DNA’.” That was 16 years ago, during which the “Junk DNA” concept has taken a battering overall. Now a new paper in Science reports, “Short tandem repeats bind transcription factors to tune eukaryotic gene expression.” It finds that STRs have important functions related to gene regulation.

How It Works

The Editor’s Summary provides a nice explanation of how this works:

Short tandem repeats (STRs) are common within regulatory elements in eukaryotic genomes. Although changes in STR lengths often correlate with altered transcription, the mechanism by which they tune gene expression has remained mysterious. Horton et al. show that many transcription factor (TF) proteins directly bind STRs and that TF-preferred STRs need not resemble known binding sites (see the Perspective by Kuhlman). This binding can be explained and predicted by simple additive models in which repeated instances of low-affinity binding sites sum to have large effects. These findings suggest that STRs provide a regulatory mechanism to tune levels of TF binding and downstream gene expression.

The abstract elaborates on how important STRs seem to be:

Short tandem repeats (STRs, consecutively repeated units of one to six nucleotides) provide a good example of these sequence contexts. STRs comprise ~5% of the human genome (compared with 1.5% for all protein-coding genes) and are enriched in enhancers. Variations in STR length have been associated with changes in gene expression and implicated in several complex phenotypes, such as schizophrenia, cancer, autism, and Crohn’s disease.

[…]

Analysis of previously published protein-binding microarray and SELEX data suggests that ~90% of eukaryotic TFs preferentially bind at least one type of STR (see the figure, panel E). Because STRs are highly mutable, we propose that they should be considered an easily evolvable class of cis-regulatory elements. Preferred STRs need not resemble known motifs, suggesting a mechanism by which TF paralogs can be recruited to different regulatory regions and regulate distinct target genes. Although STRs maximize the number of potential weak binding sites, we anticipate that nonrepetitive sequence contexts containing many low-affinity binding sites should similarly increase binding. Thus, we propose that STRs function as “rheostats” to tune local TF concentration and binding responses to regulate gene expression in disease, development, and homeostasis.

What’s a Rheostat?

If you don’t know what a rheostat is, it’s an engineering component that is described as a “variable resistor which is used to control current.” In other words, it can precisely control some function. Rheostats are “often used as power control devices, for example to control light intensity (dimmer), speed of motors, heaters, and ovens.”

Rheostat is a good description for how STRs regulate gene expression by providing additional DNA loci where transcription factors can (or cannot) potentially bind. These TFs don’t necessarily bind as strongly to STRs as they do to the “core gene regulatory sequences” but the binding is still much stronger than with random sequences. This allows STRs to function as a mechanism for fine-tuning gene expression, precisely controlling how strongly TFs bind to DNA and foster transcription of a gene. As an accompanying commentary in Science puts it: “STRs tune transcription factor binding to precisely regulate gene expression.” This fine-tuning is important because “STRs also affect binding kinetics, thereby playing a role in enhancing the speed at which organisms can respond to changing environments.” 

Not Just Wrong

Or as the technical paper puts it, “mutations in STRs occur several orders of magnitude more frequently than short insertions and deletions (indels, 1 to 3 bp) and base substitutions, suggesting that STRs can provide an easily evolvable mechanism to tune transcription.” In other words, STRs seem to be a pre-programmed mechanism to rapidly allow for needed microevolutionary fine-tuning of gene expression. 

A 2023 paper in eLife states:

Historically, repetitive elements within human genomes have been viewed as mostly unregulated ‘junk DNA’ that is not under selective evolutionary pressure. As such expansions of these repetitive elements are unfortunate accidents which become apparent and important only when they elicit highly penetrant and syndromic human diseases.

It now seems that this historical evolutionary view of STRs was not just wrong, but certainly did not anticipate such important functions for STRs.