Alas, for Darwinism; the fossil record's gonna fossil record.

Fossil Friday: Desmostylia, and the Problem of Horizontal Tooth Displacement 

Günter Bechly 

This Fossil Friday features the skeleton of the Miocene mammal Neoparadoxia cecilialina, which is on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This species belongs to the extinct order Desmostylia, which is an enigmatic group of Tertiary mammals that had an amphibious lifestyle similar to modern hippos. 

Desmostylia have generally been considered to be close relatives of sirenians (manatees) and proboscideans (elephants) (Reinhart 1953) within a common clade called Tethytheria (McKenna 1975, Domning et al. 1986, McKenna & Bell 1997). This was disputed by a phylogenetic study of Cooper et al. (2014, also see Beatty & Cockburn 2015), who suggested that desmostylians are basal odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla). Of course, this hypothesis would have to dismiss all the similarities with Tethytheria as convergences, which seems quite implausible. However, other new evidence again supported a tethytherian relationship (Gheerbrant et al. 2016). Therefore, desmostylian affinities are still considered controversial until this day (Matsui & Tsuihiji 2019). Phylogenetics over and over proves to be a rather “soft” science, if it can be called a science at all. We will come back to this question. 

Anyway, with Desmostylia at least the genus Desmostylus also has some kind of horizontal tooth replacement (Santos et al. 2016, contra Domning et al. 1986), similar to the possible relatives of Desmostylia, sea-cows and elephants. Indeed, this phenomenon represents a genuine problem for neo-Darwinism. 

Here Is Why 

If Darwinian evolution is true, we should expect that congruent derived similarities in modern representatives of given lineages are confirmed as homologies in the ground plan of these lineages when early fossil representatives are studied. In other words: similarities in modern relatives should go back to their common ancestor. In many cases the exact opposite is the case, the pattern of similarity found in modern species dissolves into a mess of incongruent homoplasy in their earlier fossil representatives. 

A good example is found in the mammal clade Tethytheria, which includes modern elephants and sea-cows (sirenians). Elephants and sea-cows, even though quite different in habitus and way of life, are considered to be most closely related (sister groups) based on numerous shared derived characters like the position of a single pair of teats on the breast, a two-pointed spherical heart, skull structures, etc. They also share a unique type of tooth replacement: They lack permanent premolars, and as these cheek teeth wear down and fall out, they are replaced by new cheek teeth that slowly shift forward from behind along the dentary in a kind of “conveyor belt” manner. This distinct mode has been called horizontal tooth displacement.

The similarities between sirenians and elephants were first recognized in 1836 by the French naturalist Henri de Blainville, who classified them together in a group called “les gravigrades.” Blainville was especially impressed by the shared mode of horizontal tooth replacement. Such a horizontal tooth replacement is only shared by recent elephants and manatees, but absent in almost all other mammals, so that it would naturally be interpreted as a trait inherited by the common ancestor of Tethytheria. So far so good. 

Or Not So Much 

A first indication that the mode of tooth replacement may be a convergence could be the fact that among living sirenians it is only present in manatees but not in dugongs (Mitchell 1973, Marsh 1980). However, this might as well represent a secondary reduction due to the degenerate cheek teeth of dugongs (Lanyon & Sanson 2006).

Another possible indicator of convergence might be the fact that, contrary to a common misconception in the literature, the mode of horizontal tooth replacement in manatees and elephants is not really identical (Domning & Hayek 1984, Beatty et al. 2012): in elephants the replacement (“mesial drift”) is limited to just three normal molars (Roth & Shoshani 1988, Sanders 2018), while manatees add supernumerary molars as long as they live (Domning 1982, Domning & Hayek 1984). Of course, the latter mode could just be an extension of the former, so that this difference does not exclude homology per se. An even earlier precursor state might be the eruption of permanent teeth well past sexual maturity, which is very uncommon in mammals in general, but found in some afrotherian mammals such as elephants, sirenians, and hyraxes (Asher & Lehmann 2008).

Unfortunately, the fossil record revealed even more incongruence that definitely closed the case in favor of convergence: horizontal tooth replacement is only found in Neogene elephants (Sanders 2018), but not in older and more primitive fossil proboscideans. Among fossil sirenians only the trichechine genera Ribodon and Trichechus had horizontal tooth replacement (Beatty et al. 2012, Self-Sullivan et al. 2014). Finally, in Desmostylia most of the dozen genera apart from Desmostylus show no indication of horizontal tooth replacement. The unique horizontal tooth replacement in Desmostylus, manatees, and elephants obviously originated independently in each of these three lineages and does not support their close relationship. 

A Window into the Past 

Without the benefit of a good fossil record as window into the past, we would never have suspected this. The apparent homologous pattern of derived similarity (so-called synapomorphy), congruent with other data, evaporated under closer scrutiny, and had to be explained away as convergent or parallel development. How many other similarities might mislead us to infer common descent?

After all, convergence turned out to be much more common than believed in the golden era of neo-Darwinism, prior to the genomic revolution. This is also confirmed by the discovery of horizontal tooth replacement similar to manatees in two very far removed species, the Australian rock wallaby or Nabarlek (Peradorcas concinna) (Thomas 1904: 226, Sanson 1989), and the African rodent Heliophobius argenteocinereus (Gomes Rodrigues et al. 2011, Gomes Rodrigues & Šumbera 2015). 

Such striking convergences have often been mentioned as problem for Darwinian evolution, because biological similarities are incongruently distributed among organisms. But in examples like the horizontal tooth replacement the problem seems to go even deeper, because the incongruences are clustered in groups that are thought to be closely related based on other evidence, so that the relationships seem to be reinforced by false homologies. Nature appears to be deceptive. Are Darwinists bothered by such problems? Not at all: Saether (1979) even boldly declared this bug to be a feature and called it “underlying synapomorphies.” So, can phylogenetics be considered a serious scientific discipline? Not according to any reasonable measure. 

References 

Asher RJ & Lehmann T 2008. Dental eruption in afrotherian mammals. BMC Biology 6:14, 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7007-6-14.

Blainville HMD de 1836. Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences, séance du 20 mars 1836, vol. IV, p. 426.

Beatty BL & Cockburn TC. 2015. New insights on the most primitive desmostylian from a partial skeleton of Behemotops (Desmostylia, Mammalia) from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 35(5):e979939, 1–15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2015.979939.

Beatty BL, Vitkovski T, Lambert O & Macrini TE 2012. Osteological Associations With Unique Tooth Development in Manatees (Trichechidae, Sirenia): A Detailed Look at Modern Trichechus and a Review of the Fossil Record. The Anatomical Record 295(9), 1504–1512. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.22525.

Cooper LN, Seiffert ER, Clementz M, Madar SI, Bajpai S, Hussain ST & Thewissen JGM 2014. Anthracobunids from the Middle Eocene of India and Pakistan Are Stem Perissodactyls. PLoS ONE 9(10): e109232, 1–15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0109232.

Domning DP 1982. Evolution of manatees: A speculative history. Journal of Paleontology 56(3), 599–619. JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1304394.

Doming DP & Hayek L-AC 1984Horizontal tooth replacement in the Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis). Mammalia 48(1), 105–127. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/mamm.1984.48.1.105.

Domning DP, Ray CE & McKenna MC 1986. Two new Oligocene desmostylians and a discussion of Tethytherian systematics. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 59(59), 1–56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5479/si.00810266.59.1.

Gheerbrant E, Filippo A & Schmitt A 2016. Convergence of Afrotherian and Laurasiatherian Ungulate-Like Mammals: First Morphological Evidence from the Paleocene of Morocco. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0157556, 1–35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157556.

Gomes Rodrigues H & Šumbera R 2015. Dental peculiarities in the silvery mole-rat: an original model for studying the evolutionary and biological origins of continuous dental generation in mammals. PeerJ 3:e1233, 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1233.

Gomes Rodrigues H, Marangoni P, Sumbera R, Tafforeau P, Wendelen W & Viriot L 2011. Continuous dental replacement in a hyper-chisel tooth digging rodent. PNAS 108(42), 17355–17359. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1109615108.

Lanyon JM & Sanson GD 2006. Degenerate dentition of the dugong (Dugong dugon), or why a grazer does not need teeth: morphology, occlusion and wear of mouthparts. Journal of Zoology 268(2), 133–152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2005.00004.x. 

Marsh H 1980. Age determination of the Dugong (Dugong dugon (Müller)) in Northern Australia and its biological implications. Report International Whaling Commission (Special Issue) 3(3), 181–201. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240628646

Matsui K & Tsuihiji T 2019. The phylogeny of desmostylians revisited: proposal of new clades based on robust phylogenetic hypotheses. PeerJ 7:e7430, 1–17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7430.

McKenna MC 1975. Toward a Phylogenetic Classification of the Mammalia. pp. 21–46 in: Luckett WP & Szalay FS (eds.). Phylogeny of the primates: a multidisciplinary approach. Proceedings of WennerGren Symposium no. 61, Burg Wartenstein, Austria, July 6–14, 1974. Plenum Press, New York (NY). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2166-8_2.

McKenna MC & Bell SK 1997. Classification of Mammals above the Species Level. Columbia University Press, New York (NY), xii+631 pp.

Mitchell J 1973. Determination of relative age in the dugong Dugong dugon (Müller) from a study of skulls and teeth. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 53(1), 1–23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1973.tb01409.x. 

Reinhart R 1953. Diagnosis of the New Mammalian Order, Desmostylia. The Journal of Geology 61(2), 187. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/626067.

Roth VL & Shoshani J. 1988. Dental identification and age determination in Elephas maximus. Journal of Zoology 214(4), 567–588. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1988.tb03760.x

Saether OA 1979. Underlying Synapomorphies and Anagenetic Analysis. Zoologica Scripta 8(1-4), 305–312. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1463-6409.1979.tb00644.x

Sanders WJ 2018. Horizontal tooth displacement and premolar occurrence in elephants and other elephantiform proboscideans. Historical Biology 30(1-2), 137–156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2017.1297436

Sanson GD 1989. Morphological adaptations of teeth to diet and feeding in the Macropodoidea. pp. 151–168 in: Grigg G, Jarman P & Hume I (eds). Kangaroos, Wallabies and Rat-kangaroos. Vol. 1. Surrey Beatty & Sons, Chipping Norton (NSW)

Santos G-P, Parham JF & Beatty BL 2016. New data on the ontogeny and senescence of Desmostylus (Desmostylia, Mammalia). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 36(2):e1078344, 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2016.1078344

Self-Sullivan C, Domning DP & Velez-Juarbe J 2014. Evolution of the Sirenia. http://67.59.130.204/sirenianevolution.pd

Thomas O 1904. On a collection of mammals made by Mr. J. T. Tunney in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory of South Australia. Novitates Zoologicae 11, 222–229. https://www.biodiversitylibraryf.....ibrary.org

 

Planet X: a brief history.

 Hypothetical Planet X 

Overview: 

Caltech researchers have found mathematical evidence suggesting there may be a "Planet X" deep in the solar system. This hypothetical Neptune-sized planet orbits our Sun in a highly elongated orbit far beyond Pluto. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed "Planet Nine," could have a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbit about 20 times farther from the Sun on average than Neptune. It may take between 10,000 and 20,000 Earth years to make one full orbit around the Sun.

The announcement does not mean there is a new planet in our solar system. The existence of this distant world is only theoretical at this point and no direct observation of the object nicknamed "Planet 9" have been made. The mathematical prediction of a planet could explain the unique orbits of some smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy debris that extends far beyond the orbit of Neptune. Astronomers are now searching for the predicted planet. 

In Depth 

In January 2015, Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown announced new research that provides evidence of a giant planet tracing an unusual, elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The prediction is based on detailed mathematical modeling and computer simulations, not direct observation.

This large object could explain the unique orbits of at least five smaller objects discovered in the distant Kuiper Belt.

"The possibility of a new planet is certainly an exciting one for me as a planetary scientist and for all of us," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division. "This is not, however, the detection or discovery of a new planet. It's too early to say with certainty there's a so-called Planet X. What we're seeing is an early prediction based on modeling from limited observations. It's the start of a process that could lead to an exciting result."

The Caltech scientists believe Planet X may have has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and be similar in size to Uranus or Neptune. The predicted orbit is about 20 times farther from our Sun on average than Neptune (which orbits the Sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). It would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the Sun (where Neptune completes an orbit roughly every 165 years). 

When was it Discovered? 

Planet X has not yet been discovered, and there is debate in the scientific community about whether it exists. The prediction in the Jan. 20 issue of the Astronomical Journal is based on mathematical modeling. 

What is its Name? 

Batygin and Brown nicknamed their predicted object "Planet Nine," but the actual naming rights of an object go to the person who actually discovers it. The name used during previous hunts for the long suspected giant, undiscovered object beyond Neptune is "Planet X."

If the predicted world is found, the name must be approved by the International Astronomical Union. Planets are traditionally named for mythological Roman gods. 

Why Do They Think It's There? 

Astronomers studying the Kuiper Belt have noticed some of the dwarf planets and other small, icy objects tend to follow orbits that cluster together. By analyzing these orbits, the Caltech team predicted the possibility that a large, previously undiscovered planet may be hiding far beyond Pluto.

They estimate the gravity of this potential planet might explain the unusual orbits of those Kuiper objects. 

What’s Next? 

Astronomers, including Batygin and Brown, will begin using the world's most powerful telescopes to search for the object in its predicted orbit. Any object that far away from the Sun will be very faint and hard to detect, but astronomers calculate that it should be possible to see it using existing telescopes.

"I would love to find it," says Brown. "But I'd also be perfectly happy if someone else found it. That is why we're publishing this paper. We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start searching."

"Anytime we have an interesting idea like this, we always apply Carl Sagan's rules for critical thinking, which include independent confirmation of the facts, looking for alternate explanations, and encouraging scientific debate," said Green. "If Planet X is out there, we'll find it together. Or we'll determine an alternate explanation for the data that we've received so far.

"Now let's go explore." 

Sources 

Fesenmaier, Kimm, "Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet," press release, last modified January 20, 2015

Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown, "Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System," The Astronomical Journal

Green, James, "A New Planet in our Solar System? NASA Takes a Look," video statement, last modified January 20, 2015 

Still seeking straight answers II

 Revelation1:18KJV"I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." 

If the descent into hell is invariably unidirectional ,why this key?

The thumb print of JEHOVAH : Geography edition II.

 Geologist Casey Luskin: Our Intelligently Designed Planet 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

A new ID the Future episode continues geologist Casey Luskin’s presentation about how Earth is fine-tuned in numerous ways for life. Here in the second half, he highlights the many ways Earth’s precise mix of atmospheric gases is strikingly fit for life. On top of that (or rather, beneath that), Earth’s active geology and water-rich surface — unique in our solar system — are masterful at helping maintain our life-friendly atmosphere over long ages. Luskin argues that these and other finely tuned characteristics of planet Earth strongly suggest intelligent design. He also offers an additional design argument, this one aesthetic in nature, and takes questions from the audience. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Download the podcast or listen to here. Part 1 of his talk is here. 

The great unconformity: a brief history.

 Great Unconformity 

Of the many unconformities (gaps) observed in geological strata, the term Great Unconformity is frequently applied to either the unconformity observed by James Hutton in 1787 at Siccar Point in Scotland,[1][failed verification] or that observed by John Wesley Powell in the Grand Canyon in 1869.[2] Both instances are exceptional examples of where the contacts between sedimentary strata and either sedimentary or crystalline strata of greatly different ages, origins, and structure represent periods of geologic time sufficiently long to raise great mountains and then erode them away. 

Background 

Unconformities tend to reflect long-term changes in the pattern of the accumulation of sedimentary or igneous strata in low-lying areas (often ocean basins, such as the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea, but also Bangladesh and much of Brazil), then being uplifted and eroded (such as the ongoing Himalayan orogeny, the older Laramide orogeny of the Rocky Mountains, or much older Appalachian (Alleghanian) and Ouachita orogenies), then subsequently subsiding, eventually to be buried under younger sediments. The intervening periods of tectonic uplift are generally periods of mountain building, often due to the collision of tectonic plates. The "great" unconformities of regional or continental scale (in both geography and chronology) are associated with either global changes in eustatic sea level or the supercontinent cycle, the periodic merger of all the continents into one approximately every 500 million years. 

Hutton's Unconformity 

Hutton's Unconformity at Siccar Point, in county of Berwickshire on the east coast of Scotland, is an angular unconformity that consists of gently dipping, reddish, Upper Devonian and Lower Carboniferous breccias, sandstones, and conglomerates of the Old Red Sandstone overlying deeply eroded, near-vertical, greyish, Silurian (Llandovery) greywackes and shales. The Llandovery greywackes and graptolite-bearing shales of the Gala Group were deposited by turbidity currents in a deep sea environment about 425 million years ago. The overlying Devonian strata were deposited by rivers and streams about 345 million years ago. Thus, this unconformity reflects a gap of about 80 million years during which deep sea sediments were lithified, folded, and uplifted; later deeply eroded and weathered subaerially; and finally buried by river and stream sediments.[1][3][4]

Exposures of the unconformity at Siccar Point, provided James Hutton, accompanied by John Playfair and Sir James Hall, the clearest example of an unconformable relationship between two sets of sedimentary strata that involved a complex geological history. The clear truncation of near-vertical Silurian sedimentary strata by well-bedded conglomerates and sandstones belonging to the Upper Old Red Sandstone allowed Hutton to demonstrate the existence of significant breaks in the geological record, in this case a break separating strata that were then called alpine schistus and secondary strata. This and other unconformities provided evidence for Hutton's ideas about the recycling of geological materials and for unconformities representing very large time periods. He argued that these concepts pointed to the great antiquity of the Earth and the vastness of the geological time-scale.[1][5] 

Powell’s Unconformity, Grand Canyon 

The Great Unconformity of Powell in the Grand Canyon is a regional unconformity that separates the Tonto Group from the underlying, faulted and tilted sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon Supergroup and vertically foliated metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Vishnu Basement Rocks. The unconformity between the Tonto Group and the Vishnu Basement Rocks is a nonconformity. The break between the Tonto Group and the Grand Canyon Supergroup is an angular unconformity.[6][7]

Powell's Great Unconformity is part of a continent-wide unconformity that extends across Laurentia, the ancient core of North America. It was first recognized twelve years before Powell's expedition by John Newberry in New Mexico, during the Ives expedition of 1857–1858. However, the disruption of the American Civil War kept Newberry's work from becoming widely known.[8] This Great Unconformity marks the progressive submergence of this landmass by a shallow cratonic sea and its burial by shallow marine sediments of the Cambrian-Early Ordovician Sauk sequence. The submergence of Laurentia ended a lengthy period of widespread continental denudation that exhumed and deeply eroded Precambrian rocks and exposed them to extensive physical and chemical weathering at the Earth's surface. As a result, Powell's Great Unconformity is unusual in its geographic extent and its stratigraphic significance.[9][10]

The length of time represented by Powell's Great Unconformity varies along its length. Within the Grand Canyon, the Great Unconformity represents a period of about 175 million years between the Tonto Group and the youngest subdivision, the Sixtymile Formation, of the Grand Canyon Supergroup. At the base of the Grand Canyon Supergroup, where it truncates the Bass Formation, the period of time represented by this angular unconformity increases to about 725 million years. Where the Tonto Group overlies the Vishnu Basement Rocks, the Great Unconformity represents a period as much as 1.2 to 1.6 billion years.[7][10] (See also geological timescale.) 

Frenchman Mountain, Nevada

Edit

A prominent exposure of Powell's Great Unconformity occurs in Frenchman Mountain in Nevada. Frenchman Mountain exposes a sequence of Phanerozoic strata equivalent to those found in the Grand Canyon. At the base of this sequence, the Great Unconformity, with the Tapeats Sandstone of the Tonto Group overlying the Vishnu Basement Rocks, is well exposed in a manner that is atypical and scientifically significant in its combination of extent and accessibility. This exposure is frequently illustrated in popular and educational publications, and is often part of geological fieldtrips. There is a gap of about 1.2 billion years where 550 million year old strata of the Tapeats Sandstone rests on 1.7 billion (1700 million) year old Vishnu Basement Rocks.[11][12][13] 

Possible causes of the Great Unconformity 

There is currently no widely accepted explanation for the Great Unconformity among geoscientists. There are theories that have been proposed; it is widely accepted that there was a combination of more than one event which may have caused such an extensive phenomenon. One example is a large glaciation event which took place during the Neoproterozoic, starting around 720 million years ago.[23][24][25] This is also when a significant glaciation event known as ‘Snowball Earth’ occurred.[23] Snowball Earth covered almost the entire planet with ice. The areas that underwent glaciation were approximately those where the Great Unconformity is located today. When glaciers move, they drag and erode sediment away from the underlying rock. This would explain how a large section of rock was taken away from widespread areas around the same time 

And still yet even more on why ID is already mainstream.

Design Detection in the New York Times — The Issue of Science Fraud 

Paul Nelson 

Microbiologist Elisabeth Bik writes for the New York Times that “Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem.” The illustrations in the article are particularly useful for showing the role of Bill Dembski’s paired notions of “specification” and “small probability” as the two arms of an analytical pincer. When that pincer closes around a pattern, intelligent causation is uniquely implicated. 

The duplicated images isolated by Dr. Bik — e.g., blots from electrophoretic gels, photomicrographs of bacteria — each individually represent a small probability pattern. But when that SAME pattern is reproduced in a putatively independent sample, the specification arm of the pincer closes on the pattern in question. Each duplicated image specifies its original, or another image, with the same small probability, only now we must take the product of those small probabilities. Design is implicated: the deliberate, directed, intentional action of at least one intelligence.

“Rediscovering” Dembksi’s Analytical Pincer

What’s so fascinating to me, at this moment in November 2022, is the independent “rediscovery” of this analytical pincer by Lee Cronin, Sara Walker, and their collaborators, in their Assembly Theory project. Here’s a screen capture from Cronin’s Twitter account, just a few days ago: 

The motto of the Assembly Theory team is “copy number counts.” Why, or how, can we be sure that the bogus images Bik has identified represent science fraud? Why have so many papers been retracted after their duplicated images have been caught?

“Copy number counts.” Or, to use Bill Dembski’s formulation — after all, Bill got there in his Cambridge U Press monograph almost 25 years (1998) before the Assembly Theory project — specified patterns of small probability are caused by design, not undirected physical processes.

By the way, I apologize for the f-bombs, but see this clip from Martin Scorsese’s movie Casino. The first big slot machine payoff specifies the second, and those two payoffs specify the third, when conjoined analytically with the small probabilities in each case. “There’s an infallible way,” says Robert De Niro (playing casino boss Sam Rothstein), to determine that cheating (design) was involved. "they won" 

 

A plague on both their houses.

 Daniel11:27ASV" and as for both these kings, their hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table: but it shall not prosper; for yet the end shall be at the time appointed." 

According to JEHOVAH'S word through the prophet Daniel, the end times of the present global civilisation will be characterized by (among other things) a bitter struggle between a pair of world powers emerging from the ancient greco-Roman civilisation for global dominance. 

The above quote makes it clear that the Lord JEHOVAH does not think very highly of either of these entities. It also puts true Christians and sincere truth seekers on guard against putting faith in their promises. 

Mind over matter again.

Placebos Demonstrate Power of the Human Mind 

Denyse O'Leary 

We don’t often hear about researchers crying but when scientists at Ovid Therapeutics heard the test results for their drug, gaboxadol, they couldn’t help it.

They were testing the sleep-inducing drug to help with the symptoms of Angelman Syndrome, a rare neurogenetic disorder that appears in infancy. It results in a variety of developmental problems such as walking and balance disorders, inability to speak or sleep properly, gastrointestinal issues, and seizures. It affects people in different ways and to different degrees. Notably, those who cope with Angelman smile and laugh a lot and have a normal lifespan.

Waiting with Hope 

The Ovid team had high hopes for gaboxadol in August of this year because even improving quality of sleep would help sufferers a lot. So, at a conference on the disorder, they waited for the news in hope… 

“Ovid’s chief medical officer called into the conference room. He got straight to the point: There was no statistically significant benefit for children who received gaboxadol versus a placebo. The treatment had failed.

The room fell silent. Levin thought about how the company would need to restructure its programs and how its stock would be battered. But mostly he thought about the families and the overwhelming disappointment they would feel.

Levin began to cry. His colleagues, many of whom had also devoted years of their lives to this project, cried too.” 

ANGIE VOLES ASKHAM, “WHAT NEXT FOR ANGELMAN?” AT SPECTRUM (OCTOBER 20, 2022) 

Angelman Syndrome is caused by a loss of function of the UBE3A gene in the 15th chromosome derived from the mother. 

About the Placebo Effect 

But now, about that placebo effect… Molecular biologist Rebecca Burdine, whose daughter Sophie suffers from Angelman, was there to present a keynote address. As Askham recounts, 

One problem, Burdine knew, is that even updated forms of assessment might not capture all of the ways a treatment could benefit a child. Even worse, treatments for many neurodevelopmental conditions, including Angelman syndrome, remain frustratingly susceptible to the placebo effect in clinical trials. Simply enrolling a child in a trial — giving them more medical and parental attention — can cause improvement in some skills. Burdine knew that in the gaboxadol trial, a child who had never walked before took their first steps — but it turned out that they were receiving placebo. That experience told Burdine that, until placebo-controlled trials were run, it would be impossible to know how well a treatment worked.

As the field progresses, Levin and his colleagues are also hoping to understand how people with Angelman syndrome respond to placebo, and how the condition affects people over time. To that end, last month Ovid released the data from its placebo-controlled gaboxadol trial and has encouraged other companies to do the same. 

ANGIE VOLES ASKHAM, “WHAT NEXT FOR ANGELMAN?” AT SPECTRUM (OCTOBER 20, 2022) 

The placebo effect means that, if you are part of a research study where you think you are receiving treatment for a disorder, you may start to improve in testable ways — even if you are in the control group, getting a sugar pill. It is literally “all in your mind.” But, as Ovid’s unfortunate experience shows, it is nonetheless powerful enough to affect a genetic disorder by itself. 

“More Than Positive Thinking” 

Professor Ted Kaptchuk, who studies the effect, explains:

“The placebo effect is more than positive thinking — believing a treatment or procedure will work. It’s about creating a stronger connection between the brain and body and how they work together” …

MENTAL HEALTH, “THE POWER OF THE PLACEBO EFFECT” AT HARVARD HEALTH PUBLISHING (DECEMBER 13, 2021) 

How Does It Work? 

How placebos work is still not quite understood, but it involves a complex neurobiological reaction that includes everything from increases in feel-good neurotransmitters, like endorphins and dopamine, to greater activity in certain brain regions linked to moods, emotional reactions, and self-awareness. All of it can have therapeutic benefit. “The placebo effect is a way for your brain to tell the body what it needs to feel better,” says Kaptchuk.

But placebos are not all about releasing brainpower. You also need the ritual of treatment. “When you look at these studies that compare drugs with placebos, there is the entire environmental and ritual factor at work,” says Kaptchuk. “You have to go to a clinic at certain times and be examined by medical professionals in white coats. You receive all kinds of exotic pills and undergo strange procedures. All this can have a profound impact on how the body perceives symptoms because you feel you are getting attention and care.” 

MENTAL HEALTH, “THE POWER OF THE PLACEBO EFFECT” AT HARVARD HEALTH PUBLISHING (DECEMBER 13, 2021) 

A 2015 paper in Nature on the neuroscience of the placebo effect points to its importance.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. 

 

The insanity that awaits downstream from design denial?

Jonathan Wells: A Story of Heartbreaking Evil from Texas 

David Klinghoffer 

 Writing at The Stream, our biologist colleague Jonathan Wells tells a story of heartbreaking evil, in which the realities of biology are being twisted in the name of the law. The victim is a little boy, and the damage being planned against him, if carried out, will not be reversible: 

On September 21, 2022, Texas Judge Mary Brown decided that a woman could take a 10-year-old boy away from his father to be castrated. The woman, who is the boy’s surrogate (non-biological) mother, divorced the father when the boy was 3. Since then, the woman has been treating the boy as a girl. She gave him a girl’s name and sends him to school in a dress. The woman has announced that she intends to fully “transition” the boy to be a “transgender” girl.

…[T]he mutilated boy will still be a boy. He will still have a prostate. As he grows older he may have to undergo periodic screening for prostate cancer. He will have to continue taking estrogen. And he will never conceive or give birth to a child. He will be a eunuch. 

Of course, the case is not an isolated one, as anyone who follows the news will be aware. How will our culture look back on this period of madness, once we get beyond it, as one hopes we will do soon? Read the rest at The stream  

 

Why teleology remains the elephant in the room.

A Closer Look at the Science of Purpose 

Stephen J. Iacoboni 

In an earlier post, I introduced and defined what I called the “science of purpose.” Let us take a closer look at what that entails. 

The first thing to notice is that there really cannot be a science of organisms, i.e., biology, without understanding purpose. That this fact has been so neglected is, of course, a consequence of neo-Darwinism, which purports to show that purpose and design in life are only apparent, not real. Organisms that survive simply appear to be purpose-driven because those that are not driven by purpose suffer extinction as imposed by natural selection. Of course, this statement offers no explanation of how purpose-driven life arises.Vast and Ubiquitous Purpose

Before saying why that’s the case, let us indulge in the great delight of observing the vast and ubiquitous display of purpose in the natural world that surrounds us. In biology we are dedicated to studying the behavior and physiology of all living things. Extraordinary examples of animal behavior include the 70-mile trek by some emperor penguins to feed their young, the 1,000-mile journey that sockeye salmon may navigate to return to the small stream of their birth in order to spawn and die, and the 3,000-mile annual migration of certain caribou in North America.

Yet as a physician I am equally if not more astounded by the dazzling display of goal-attainment that takes place in every human body in every second of life. Your heart has been pumping since a time about eight months before you were born. Your kidneys filter metabolic waste and retain life-sustaining fluid and electrolytes without fail and without interruption. The hemoglobin in your red blood cells procures, transports, and delivers life-giving oxygen to every corner of your body, every second of every day. And this can only happen because your lungs expand and contract, again without fail, ceaselessly, even while you sleep. Your body cannot survive outside of a very narrow range of temperatures and fluid and electrolyte concentrations. These are assiduously and jealously monitored, adjusted, and normalized. Without this oversight, your life would come to a rapid end.Purpose is the sine qua non of life. It permeates every organism, in every ecosystem. 

How Can Anyone Deny This? 

The short answer is that biology grew up out of the physical sciences. Even Isaac Newton himself was at pains to eliminate purpose, i.e., teleology, from his science. But Newton’s motivation was entirely different from that of modern scientific atheists. Newton believed firmly in the reality of teleology and purpose, but he also believed that it was outside of the ability of the human mind to reduce God’s purposeful wisdom to scientific terms. Some 250 years after Newton, and following the success of the Industrial Revolution, 19th-century scientists began to see themselves as understanding the world without God’s help. Then along came Darwin. As we all know, he said that creatures survived and speciated based on the random and blind — that is, purposeless — actions of a thoroughly uncaring natural world. He made it all seem so simple: survival of the fittest was all there is to it.

Today, modern science embraces Darwin, in part because biologists want to be physicists, and also because it allows them to continue to leave God out. So the myth of Darwinism, in its new guise of neo-Darwinism, endures. 

You cannot see what you are not looking for. You cannot find Br’er Rabbit until you look into the briar patch. Realizing that, we recognize that the entire edifice of Darwin’s theory is based on a single, demonstrable falsehood. Darwin looked at the natural world and observed organisms of every kind striving to survive, competing for food, shelter, and mating privilege. This was the struggle for existence at the core of his theory. 

The Desire to Struggle 

The struggle, however, depends on something else that Darwin didn’t see, something more fundamental. Antecedent to it is the desire to struggle, that is, to act in keeping with the organism’s purpose, to live. Only with this desire does the living thing then go out and fight for its life. The point may seem subtle but it really is not. If as we are told, life is ultimately purposeless and organisms have no innate purpose… then why struggle?

Simply put: Teleology, the purpose-driven innate property of life itself, precedes natural selection as the primary source of agency that explains evolution. Darwinism utterly misses this elementary fact 

 

Why the skilled trades will continue to game college.

 The $8.5 Trillion Talent Shortage 

An extensive new Korn Ferry report finds that by 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled people to take them. 

Michael Franzino

President, Global Financial Services 

It’s probably the most repeated prognostication of the year: Robots are eventually going to take your job, and probably sooner than you think. As it turns out, that would be the wrong thinking, and by a long shot. 

In a new Korn Ferry study that includes a sweeping country-by-country analysis, the biggest issue isn’t that robots are taking all the jobs—it’s that there aren’t enough humans to take them. Indeed, the study finds that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, or roughly equivalent to the population of Germany. Left unchecked, in 2030 that talent shortage could result in about $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues. 

“Governments and organizations must make talent strategy a key priority and take steps now to educate, train, and upskill their existing workforces,” says Yannick Binvel, president of Korn Ferry’s Global Industrial Markets practice.

The surprising figures are the latest in Korn Ferry’s multiyear “Future of Work” series, which describes a looming and unexpected talent shortage across industries and continents. This most recent work, “Future of Work: The Global Talent Crunch,” examined talent supply and demand in 20 economies across the world in three broad industries: finance/business services, technology/media/telecommunications, and manufacturing. Projections were based on forecasts from international labor organizations and government statistics and then analyzed by outside economists. 

Much of the shortage is based on simple demography. Japan and many European nations, for instance, have had low birth rates for decades. In the United States, the majority of baby boomers will have moved out of the workforce by 2030, but younger generations will not have had the time or training to take many of the high-skilled jobs left behind. 

The talent shortage may be hard to see now, with daily headlines about how robots and artificial intelligence are making their way into a growing number of industries. And the study shows how, at least in 2020, there might even be a surplus of talent in Russia and China. 

But by 2030, Russia could have a shortage of up to 6 million people, and China could be facing a shortage twice as large. The United States could also be facing a deficit of more than 6 million workers, and it’s worse in Japan, Indonesia, and Brazil, each of which could have shortages of up to 18 million skilled workers. 

The impact of the talent crunch is so significant that the continued predominance of sector powerhouses is in question. For instance, the United States is the undisputed leader in tech, but the talent shortage could erode that lead fast. In tech alone, the US could lose out on $162 billion worth of revenues annually unless it finds more high-tech workers. “As with many economies, the onus falls on companies to train workers, and also to encourage governments to rethink education programs to generate the talent pipelines the industry will require,” says Werner Penk, president of Korn Ferry’s Global Technology Market practice. Indeed, India could become the next tech leader; the study suggest that the country could have a surplus of more than 1 million high-skilled tech workers by 2030. 

The savviest organizations are taking on the onus of training talent themselves, increasing their hiring of people straight out of school, says Jean-Marc Laouchez, president of the Korn Ferry Institute. These firms are also trying to instill a culture of continuous learning and training. “Constant learning—driven by both workers and organizations—will be central to the future of work, extending far beyond the traditional definition of learning and development,” he says.

Plenty of guilt to go around IV

When Europeans Were Slaves: Research Suggests White Slavery Was Much More Common Than Previously Believed

Jeff Grabmeier

Ohio State News

grabmeier.1@osu.edu 

A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan). 

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793. 

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast. 

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

“As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said.

While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally – in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.

Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

“We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,” he said. “Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.” 

Disinherited no more?

 Human Origins: All in the Family 

Casey Luskin 

Editor’s note: We have been delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin asking, “Do Fossils Demonstrate Human Evolution?” This is the sixth and final post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here. 

In contrast to the australopithecines, the major members of Homo — i.e., erectus and the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) — are very similar to us. Some paleoanthropologists have even classified erectus and neanderthalensisas members of our own species, Homo sapiens.1

Homo erectus appears in the fossil record a little more than two million years ago. Its name means “upright man,” and unsurprisingly, below the neck, they were extremely similar to us.2 An Oxford University Press volume notes erectus was “humanlike in its stature, body mass, and body proportions.”3 An analysis of 1.5-million-year-old Homo erectus footprints4 indicates “a modern human style of walking” and “human-like social behaviours.”5 Unlike the australopithecines and habilines, erectus is the “earliest species to demonstrate the modern human semicircular canal morphology.”6

Arrival by Boat 

Another study found that total energy expenditure (TEE), a complex character related to body size, diet, and food-gathering activity, “increased substantially in Homo erectus relative to the earlier australopithecines,” approaching the high TEE value of modern humans.7 While the average brain size of Homo erectus is less than the modern human average, erectus cranial capacities are within the range of normal human variation.8 Intriguingly, erectus remains have been found on islands where the most likely explanation is that they arrived by boat. Anthropologists have argued this indicates high intelligence and the use of complex language.9 Donald Johanson suggests that were erectus alive today, it could mate with modern humans to produce fertile offspring.10 In other words, were it not for our separation by time, we might be considered interbreeding members of the same species.  

A Neanderthal in Modern Clothing 

As for Neanderthals, though they have been stereotyped as bungling and primitive, if a Neanderthal walked down the street, appropriately dressed, you probably wouldn’t notice. Wood and Collard note that “skeletons of H. neanderthalensis indicate that their body shape was within the range of variation seen in modern humans.”11 Washington University paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus maintains that Neanderthals were no less intelligent than contemporary humans12 and argues, “They may have had heavier brows or broader noses or stockier builds, but behaviorally, socially and reproductively they were all just people.”13 University of Bordeaux archaeologist Francesco d’Errico agrees: “Neanderthals were using technology as advanced as that of contemporary anatomically modern humans and were using symbolism in much the same way.”14

Though controversial, hard evidence backs these claims. Anthropologist Stephen Molnar explains that “the estimated mean size of [Neanderthal] cranial capacity (1,450 cc) is actually higher than the mean for modern humans (1,345 cc).”15 One paper in Nature suggested that “the morphological basis for human speech capability appears to have been fully developed” in Neanderthals.16 Indeed, Neanderthal remains have been found associated with signs of culture, including art, burial of their dead, and complex tools17 — including musical instruments like the flute.18 While dated, a 1908 report in Nature reports a Neanderthal-type skeleton wearing chain mail armor.19 Archaeologist Metin Eren said, regarding toolmaking, that “in many ways, Neanderthals were just as smart or just as good as us.”20 Morphological mosaics — skeletons showing a mix of modern human and Neanderthal traits — suggest “Neandertals and modern humans are members of the same species who interbred freely.”

Indeed, scientists now report Neanderthal DNA markers in living humans,22 supporting proposals that Neanderthals were a subrace of our own species.23 As Trinkaus says regarding ancient Europeans and Neanderthals, “[W]e would understand both to be human. There’s good reason to think that they did as well.”24

Darwin skeptics continue to debate whether we are related to Neanderthals and Homo erectus, and evidence can be mounted both ways.25 The present point, however, is this: Even if we do share common ancestry with Neanderthals or erectus, this does not show we share ancestry with any nonhuman-like hominins.

According to Siegrid Hartwig-Scherer, the differences between human-like members of Homo such as erectus, Neanderthals, and us reflect mere microevolutionary effects of “size variation, climatic stress, genetic drift, and differential expression of [common] genes.”26 Whether we are related to them or not, these small-scale differences do notshow the evolution of humans from nonhuman-like or ape-like creatures. 

A Cultural Explosion 

In 2015, two top paleoanthropologists admitted in a major review that “the evolutionary sequence for the majority of hominin lineages is unknown.”27 Despite the claims of evolutionary paleoanthropologists and unceasing media hype, the fragmented hominin fossil record does not document the evolution of humans from ape-like precursors. The genus Homo appears in an abrupt, non-Darwinian fashion without evidence of an evolutionary transition from ape-like hominins. Other major members of Homo appear very similar to modern humans, and their differences amount to small-scale microevolutionary change — providing no evidence that we are related to nonhuman-like species. 

But there’s more evidence that contradicts an evolutionary model.

Many researchers have recognized an “explosion”28 of modern human-like culture in the archaeological record about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, showing the abrupt appearance of human creativity,29 technology, art,30 and even paintings31 — as well as the rapid emergence of self-awareness, group identity, and symbolic thought.32 One review dubbed this the “Creative Explosion.”33 Indeed, a 2014 paper coauthored by leading paleoanthropologists admits we have “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved,” since “nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication.”34 This abrupt appearance of modern human-like morphology, intellect, and culture contradicts evolutionary models, and may indicate design in human history. 

Notes 

1)Eric Delson, “One Skull Does Not a Species Make,” Nature 389 (October 2, 1997), 445-446; Hawks et al., “Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution”; Emilio Aguirre, “Homo erectus and Homo sapiens: One or More Species?,” 100 Years of Pithecanthropus: The Homo erectus Problem 171 Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, ed. Jens Lorenz (Frankfurt, Germany: Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, 1994), 333-339; Milford H. Wolpoff, et al., “The Case for Sinking Homo erectus: 100 Years of Pithecanthropus Is Enough!,” 100 Years of Pithecanthropus, 341-361.

2)See Hartwig-Scherer and Martin, “Was ‘Lucy’ More Human than Her ‘Child’?”

3)William R. Leonard, Marcia L. Robertson, and J. Josh Snodgrass, “Energetic Models of Human Nutritional Evolution,” Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable, ed. Peter S. Ungar (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 344-359.

4)Kevin G. Hatala et al., “Footprints Reveal Direct Evidence of Group Behavior and Locomotion in Homo erectus,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016), 28766.

5)Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, “Homo erectus walked as we do,” Science Daily (July 12, 2016), https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160712110444.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

6)Spoor et al., “Implications of Early Hominid Labyrinthine Morphology for Evolution of Human Bipedal Locomotion.”

7)William Leonard and Marcia Robertson, “Comparative Primate Energetics and Hominid Evolution,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102 (February 1997), 265-281. See also Leslie C. Aiello and Jonathan C.K. Wells, “Energetics and the Evolution of the Genus Homo,” Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002), 323-338.

8)Moreover, “Although the relative brain size of Homo erectus is smaller than the average for modem humans, it is outside of the range seen among other living primate species.” William R. Leonard, Marcia L. Robertson, and J. Josh Snodgrass, “Energetics and the Evolution of Brain Size in Early Homo,” Guts and Brains: An Integrative Approach to the Hominin Record, ed. Wil Roebroeks (Leiden, Germany: Leiden University Press, 2007), 29-46.

9)Daniel Everett, “Did Homo erectus speak?,” Aeon (February 28, 2018), https://aeon.co/essays/tools-and-voyages-suggest-that-homo-erectus-invented-language (accessed October 26, 2020).

10)Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 144. 

11)See Wood and Collard, “The Human Genus.”

12)Marc Kaufman, “Modern Man, Neanderthals Seen as Kindred Spirits,” The Washington Post (April 30, 2007), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901101_pf.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

13)Michael Lemonick, “A Bit of Neanderthal in Us All?” Time (April 25, 1999), http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,23543,00.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

14)Joe Alper, “Rethinking Neanderthals,” Smithsonian (June 2003).

15)Molnar, Human Variation: Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups, 5th ed., 189.

16)B. Arensburg et al., “A Middle Palaeolithic Human Hyoid Bone,” Nature 338 (April 27, 1989), 758-760. 

17)Alper, “Rethinking Neanderthals”; Kate Wong, “Who Were the Neanderthals?” Scientific American (August 2003), 28-37; Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman, “Neanderthals: Images of Ourselves,” Evolutionary Anthropology 1 (1993), 194-201; Philip Chase and April Nowell, “Taphonomy of a Suggested Middle Paleolithic Bone Flute from Slovenia,” Current Anthropology 39 (August/October 1998), 549-553; Tim Folger and Shanti Menon, “…Or Much Like Us?” Discover (January 1997), http://discovermagazine.com/1997/jan/ormuchlikeus1026 (accessed October 26, 2020); C.B. Stringer, “Evolution of Early Humans,” The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, 248.

18)Chase and Nowell, “Taphonomy of a Suggested Middle Paleolithic Bone Flute from Slovenia”; Folger and Menon, “…Or Much Like Us?” 

19)Notes in Nature 77 (April 23, 1908), 587.

20)Jessica Ruvinsky, “Cavemen: They’re Just Like Us,” Discover (January 2009), http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/008 (accessed October 26, 2020).

21)Rex Dalton, “Neanderthals May Have Interbred with Humans,” Nature News (April 20, 2010), http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/news.2010.194.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

22)Rex Dalton, “Neanderthals May Have Interbred with Humans,” Nature News (April 20, 2010), http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/news.2010.194.html (accessed October 26, 2020).

23)Delson, “One Skull Does Not a Species Make.” 

24)Kaufman, “Modern Man, Neanderthals Seen as Kindred Spirits.”

25)Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005).

26)Hartwig-Scherer, “Apes or Ancestors,” 220. 

27)Wood and Grabowski, “Macroevolution in and around the Hominin Clade.”

28)Paul Mellars, “Neanderthals and the Modern Human Colonization of Europe,” Nature 432 (November 25, 2004), 461-465; April Nowell, “From a Paleolithic Art to Pleistocene Visual Cultures (Introduction to Two Special Issues on ‘Advances in the Study of Pleistocene Imagery and Symbol Use’),” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 13 (2006), 239-249. Others call this abrupt appearance a “revolution.” See Ofer Bar-Yosef, “The Upper Paleolithic Revolution,” Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002), 363-393.

29)Randall White, Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind (New York: Abrams, 2003), 11, 231.

30)Rice, Encyclopedia of Evolution, 104, 187, 194.

31)Robert Kelly and David Thomas, Archaeology, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010), 303.

32)Bar-Yosef, “Upper Paleolithic Revolution.” 

33)Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, “Overview of Paleolithic Archaeology,” in Handbook of Paleoanthropology, 2441-2464.

34)Marc Hauser et al., “The Mystery of Language Evolution,” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (May 7, 2014), 401.

Darwinism: schooled by fish again?

 Without Hemoglobin, How Do Icefish Survive the Cold? By Design

Emily Reeves 

Dr. Gregory Sloop is a Montana physician who knows a thing or two about the cardiovascular system. He has a new article in the journal BIO-Complexity highlighting the sleek design of the Antarctic icefish that allows it to live in super-cold waters without freezing to death.

Icefish, aka the family Channichthydiae, survive at 0oC in the Southern Ocean by maintaining blood viscosity at the set point of 3.27 centipoise — a level nearly identical to human blood. They do this without hemoglobin, which is the primary determinant of human and other red-blooded animals’ blood viscosity.

Since icefish don’t have hemoglobin, how do they maintain blood viscosity? Also, how do they breathe? Turns out they maintain viscosity at freezing temperatures primarily by using a special type of glycoprotein: the antifreeze protein. And because oxygen has a higher solubility at lower temperatures, icefish don’t need an oxygen transport molecule like hemoglobin. 

Why Jack Froze 

In case you were wondering, blood viscosity is the technical reason why Jack (Rose’s buddy aboard the Titanic) froze in less than 23 minutes, but icefish can survive for 15 years in water of a freezing temperature. Viscosity increases at lower temperatures, and at 0oC human blood reaches a viscosity that is not compatible with life. This is because hemoglobin as a protein is not able to keep viscosity low enough at freezing temperatures. But the antifreeze protein can (think: custom design).

While a viscosity too high is incompatible with life, a low viscosity is also unsuitable for sustaining life. This is because a properly functioning cardiovascular system must have optimized laminar flow and low vascular resistance, which can be achieved only through coordinated control of blood viscosity and specification of vascular geometry.

Stop Criticizing Icefish 

Dr. Sloop says icefish have been criticized for expending nearly 22 percent of their basal metabolic rate pumping their hemoglobinless blood compared to at most 5 percent in temperate fish. But he reminds his readers that’s just the cost of doing business in the chilly — well technically, freezing — waters of the Southern Ocean.

Sloop also emphasizes that everything about the icefish is like a custom-fitted suit — appropriate for niche needs. Features included for dealing with the extreme cold are a high-output, low resistance vasculature where the diameter of muscle capillaries is 2-3 times larger than those of other fish.

These fish also have a heavy heart which delivers a larger stroke and therefore higher volume. Together these features enable a high-output, high-velocity, low-pressure, and low-resistance circulation.

Truly, every part of these incredible creatures is optimized for cold. Could all these custom changes be the result of random mutation? Dr. Sloop thinks that is very unlikely. What do you say?

And still even yet more on why ID is already mainstream.

 Search for Habitable Planets Is a Design Detection Exercise 

David Coppedge 

Astrobiology was born in 1996 when NASA held a lively press conference for excited journalists to show possible life forms in a Martian meteorite named ALH 84001. The worm-like structures in the meteorite, appearing as if ready to crawl out onto a lab table, were reproduced in newspapers around the world. They turned out to have inorganic explanations. 

Hardly any scientist believes anymore that the Mars meteorite had anything to do with life. The event served its purpose, though, and soon NASA was flush with funds to begin a new Astrobiology Institute which continues to this day — a science without a subject to study. I sometimes joke that astrobiology has no “bio” in it (reducing it to “astrology”) but the new science has not been entirely in vain. It is bringing clarity to requirements for life. Since 1996, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered, primarily by the Kepler mission (2009-2018). Expectations are high that the James Webb Space Telescope will find more exoplanets, and possibly detect biosignatures — indications of non-natural processes that could indicate life. 

Expanding Real Estate 

Philosophers and novelists have long imagined life in outer space on mythical worlds, but now we have some data on which to build sound hypotheses. The real estate at habitable planets has expanded enormously — and with thousands of exoplanets in the catalog now, astrobiologists are focusing on their properties. Simultaneously, information on physical conditions at potentially habitable bodies in our own solar system has grown. But as the realty has expanded, has the habitability kept apace? 

By analogy, we can compare this question with Douglas Axe’s work on functional protein space within the set of sequence space. Only polypeptides with the ability to fold and perform work are “interesting” with respect to life. Dr. Axe’s research demonstrated that functional space is a minuscule subset of sequence space. Expanding sequence space, therefore, can only go so far to extend probabilistic resources for an origin of life by chance. If that life must emerge on a single planet, where the lucky accidents can coexist, chance can be eliminated on probabilistic grounds.

Similarly, an abundance of exoplanets only supports astrobiology if the subset of “functional” planets (habitable ones) comprises a significant fraction of all planetary real estate in the universe. (We are assuming life is not to be found on or inside stars, agreeing with most astrobiologists that life will be carbon-based with liquid water. We are also assuming the universe is not physically infinite or infinitely old.) Constraining the conditions for habitability in the set of all exoplanets, a factor that Frank Drake labeled ne (the “mean number of planets that could support life per star with planets”), turns astrobiology into a design detection exercise.  

Entertaining Speculations 

A few types of exoplanets can be ruled out of serious consideration. The late Carl Sagan gave wings to his imagination at times, imagining life forms floating in the cloud tops of Jupiter. Star Trek portrayed creatures of silicon that ate rock. While entertaining as speculations, such tales are hardly useful. Scientists need to stay realistic, respecting the periodic table, the four fundamental forces, and the laws of physics. Thus, most of them do not include lava worlds or any world too hot or cold to sustain liquid water somewhere, either on a solid surface or in a subcrustal ocean. Those minimal requirements can be further constrained by reasonable exigencies about types of host stars (e.g., deadly flares, tidal locking), orbital parameters, availability of essential elements, and so forth. Casey Luskin on ID the Future recently made the case for magnetic fields and plate tectonics as requirements. Michael Denton’s Privileged Species books have amassed numerous constraints for complex life as well as for any conceivable life. Intelligent design advocates have narrowed the field since The Privileged Planet. But what do evolutionary astrobiologists say? 

Here Are a Few Recent Statements 

“How do we know distant planets are Earth-like?” appeared on an “Ask an Expert” episode of CORDIS from the European Commission. Their list of requirements included a solid surface — eliminating lava worlds and gas giants — a temperate climate that supports liquid water, and a “suitable atmosphere” (not specified).

On Space.com, Robert Lea reported that a “scorching super-Earth” named GJ 1252b, with a surface hot enough to melt gold, has probably lost its atmosphere. Not good. Eliminate that planet and any others like it.

The Harvard Gazette agreed that plate tectonics combined with a stable magnetic field laid the “geological groundwork for life on Earth.” Researchers believe they have found evidence of an early magnetic reversal in Australia. Geological factors combined to facilitate habitability: 

The reversal tells a great deal about the planet’s magnetic field 3.2 billion years ago. Key among the implicationsis that the magnetic field was likely stable and strong enough to keep solar winds from eroding the atmosphere. This insight, combined with the results on plate tectonics, offers clues to the conditions under which the earliest forms of life developed. 

At The Conversation, Joanna Barstow of the Open University offered four biosignatures the James Webb Space Telescope might detect for clues to alien life: (1) oxygen and ozone, (2) phosphine and ammonia, (3) methane plus carbon dioxide, and (4) chemical imbalances. She cautions against jumping to conclusions, though, suggesting that “rocky planets with mild temperatures and atmospheres dominated by nitrogen or carbon dioxide” might still be experiencing a “runaway greenhouse effect.” Her words hint at several requirements for habitability.

Liquid water may not be enough to infer life. A thought-provoking discovery from Hokkaido University revealed nuances of ocean currents that might be necessary to sustain a life-giving water cycle. They found evidence for an “ocean conveyor belt” initiated by melting sea ice, called frazil ice, that sinks in the North Atlantic. The dense freshwater ice flows under the salt water all the way to the Antarctic! Consider how this aids life: 

“It is important to learn that such a major process is occurring underwater, revealing an aspect of the circulation system that has been at least partially obscured from view,” Kay says.

The researchers also suggest that the frazil ice could incorporate the sediment at the sea bottom and release it as the ice melts. This may yield new understanding of the circulation of nutrients that fertilize plankton to influence the general biological productivity of Antarctic waters. 

SETI and UFO-logy go beyond astrobiology, but Phys.org reported on a design-related story with the title, “NASA announces 16 people who will study UFOs to see what’s natural — and what isn’t.” If it isn’t natural, what is it? Designed!

These articles suggest ways that astrobiologists and design scientists can bring data to bear on longstanding questions about life in space. It’s possible, of course, to go overboard on requirements for habitability, such as insisting there must be molybdenum on the surface. But by reasonably narrowing down the subset of habitable real estate in the set of all planetary surfaces in a universe of finite dimensions and limited time, astrobiology can help philosophers and theologians stand on more solid ground when representing the likelihood of life beyond the earth, and thereby argue whether the probabilistic resources available are sufficient to rule out chance. If so, design would prevail as the best explanation for life’s presence or absence. 

Justice delayed?

 Men exonerated in killing of Malcolm X to receive $36 million settlement after suing New York 

Two men who were exonerated in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X will receive a $36 million settlement after lawsuits were filed on their behalf against both the city and the state of New York last year.

New York City agreed to pay $26 million in settling a lawsuit filed on behalf of Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam, Islam was exonerated posthumously in the killing. Meanwhile, the state of New York also agreed to pay an additional $10 million. 

A New York City Law Department spokesman told ABC News on Sunday evening that the settlement "brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure."

"Based on our review, this office stands by the opinion of former Manhattan District Attorney Vance who stated, based on his investigation, that 'there is one ultimate conclusion: Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were wrongfully convicted of this crime,'" he added.

David Shanies, the attorney who represents Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, confirmed on Sunday evening the terms of the settlement to ABC News. 

The settlement comes after Aziz and the estate of Islam sued New York City on July 14, seeking $40 million for malicious prosecution, denial of due process rights and government misconduct. Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam also filed two multimillion-dollar civil lawsuits in December 2021 aimed at New York state government.

Then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance moved to vacate the convictions of Muhammad Aziz, 84, and co-defendant Khalil Islam in November 2021, citing "newly discovered evidence and the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence."

"Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for decades – 42 years between them – as the result of outrageous government misconduct and violations of their constitutional rights," Shanies said in July. "Justice delayed for far too long is justice denied. Mr. Aziz just turned 84 and Mr. Islam tragically died before seeing his name cleared."

"These men and their families should not be delayed compensation for the gross injustices they suffered," he added. 

Aziz, a U.S. Navy veteran and the father of six children, was 26 when he was arrested for the 1965 murder of Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom. He spent 20 years in prison.

Aziz was released on parole in 1985. Two years later, Islam was released after serving 22 years. They each appealed their convictions and always maintained their innocence. Islam died in 2009 at the age of 74. His estate filed a related claim.

Aziz and Islam were members of the Nation of Islam and belonged to Malcolm X's mosque #7 in Harlem.

Talmadge Hayer -- the confessed assassin of Malcolm X who was caught at the scene -- testified at trial that Aziz and Islam were not involved in the killing. In the late 1970s, Hayer signed an affidavit naming four other men who he said were involved in planning and carrying out the murder. 

But the case was not reopened until interest in the case was renewed in 2020 following the release of "Who Killed Malcolm X?" – a Netflix documentary that follows the work of independent historian Abdur-Rahman Muhammad who spent decades investigating the killing.

"After I had watched the Netflix documentary. I thought there was enough to look at this," Vance told ABC News' "Soul of a Nation Presents: X/onerated - The Murder of Malcolm X and 55 Years to Justice," which aired on Hulu in February.

Vance apologized last year on behalf of the NYPD and the FBI for what he called "serious, unacceptable violations of the law and the public trust."

In his first TV interview since his exoneration, Aziz opened up about the wrongful conviction and trauma of systemic racism to ABC News' "Soul of a Nation."

"If God is on your side. it doesn't matter who's against you. God's on my side," Aziz said in the interview that aired in February.

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