Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

If that's all that is needed to get a masters degree, they should also offer a PhD because there's nothing more to learn.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Scientists find 'missing link' in seal evolution
(By Steve Rennie, THE CANADIAN PRESS, 22nd April 2009)

Fossil hunters have found the remains of the earliest ancestor of seals, sea lions and walruses in Canada’s High Arctic.

The discovery sheds new light on the evolution of a group of animals called pinnipeds, from land-bound mammals to aquatic creatures of today.

“What it’s showing us is the early transitional stage in the evolution of pinnipeds,” said Natalia Rybczynski, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

“The puzzle has always been, how did they evolve from a terrestrial form? Our animal fills that gap between the terrestrial ancestor and the marine forms that we see today.”

Scientists dubbed the creature Puijila darwini. “Puijila” means young sea mammal in Inuktitut. The second part of the name is a nod to Charles Darwin, who predicted this type of transitional creature 150 years ago in his seminal work, On the Origin of Species.

It measured about a metre long and probably looked something like an otter. It had a long, thin tail, webbed feet, powerful shoulders, big eyes and a strong jaw lined with large, canine teeth.

Duck and rodent fossils found in the animal’s gut suggest it likely hunted on both land and in the water.

“He probably was fairly agile in the water,” Rybczynski said. “We definitely think that this is a form that could hunt on the lake margins.”

The creature wouldn’t recognize its surroundings today. In its heyday, thought to be 20 million to 24 million years ago, what is now Nunavut’s desolate Devon Island was a verdant forest.

The area is now a bleak patch of cracked, brownish tundra in the pit of a crater from a meteor strike 23 million to 39 million years ago.

The remains, preserved for eons at the bottom of a prehistoric lake in the crater, are the most complete pinniped skeleton found so far.

A four-person team led by Rybczynski discovered the fossils during a July 2007 expedition to Devon Island.

The find was a fluke. The team’s all-terrain vehicle ran out of gas in the middle of the cracked tundra. Team member Elizabeth Ross cursed herself for not filling up the tank. Rybczynski and a photographer went off for fuel, leaving behind Ross and Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pa.

“She’s scuffing around on the ground and she picks up this little fossil, a partial shin bone, and she shows it to Mary, and Mary confirms that’s a fossil,” Rybczynski said.

“They go back and then strewn over the surface you see there’s mandibles and leg bones and it’s just lying out there. So by the time myself and the photographer got back, Mary Dawson and Liz Ross were doing their fossil dance to indicate that they’d found something.

“So we ran over and they showed us handfuls of this black bone. It was beautiful.”

Rybczynski’s team dug up about 65 per cent of the animal’s bones over the next 10 days. They returned to the crater last July and will go a third time this summer to search for more bones.

Quote:

Scientists find 'missing link' in seal evolution
(By Steve Rennie, THE CANADIAN PRESS, 22nd April 2009)

Fossil hunters have found the remains of the earliest ancestor of seals, sea lions and walruses in Canada’s High Arctic.

“The puzzle has always been, how did they evolve from a terrestrial form? Our animal fills that gap between the terrestrial ancestor and the marine forms that we see today.”

It measured about a metre long and probably looked something like an otter. It had a long, thin tail, webbed feet, powerful shoulders, big eyes and a strong jaw lined with large, canine teeth.

Rybczynski’s team dug up about 65 per cent of the animal’s bones over the next 10 days. They returned to the crater last July and will go a third time this summer to search for more bones.

. If one refers to them as nitpickers, they'll want to see proof of the ancestry of the nit.

Of all the OCD people in the world, there's a higher percentage in the IDiots and Creationuts than in any other cross-section of society. If one refers to them as nitpickers, they'll want to see proof of the ancestry of the nit.

McLeroy nomination in jeopardy
(By Kate Alexander, Austin Statesman, April 22, 2009)

State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, faced searing questioning during his uncommonly long confirmation hearing Wednesday at the Senate Nominations Committee.

And Chairman Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, said McLeroy’s nomination is on shaky ground because he might not be able to get the required two-thirds vote from the Senate.

Democratic senators Kirk Watson of Austin and Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso challenged McLeroy over his leadership during a number of controversial Board of Education decisions, including the recent adoption of new science curriculum standards that critics say undermine the teaching of evolution.

Shapleigh said he plans to have McLeroy separated from the others when his nomination comes up on the Senate floor so that it could be debated and voted on individually.

“You’ve created a hornet’s nest like I’ve never seen,” Shapleigh said, noting that 15 bills - “the most I’ve ever seen” - have been filed during this legislative session to strip various powers from the State Board of Education.

First elected to the Board of Education in 1998, McLeroy was appointed chairman by Gov. Rick Perry in the summer of 2007. Since that time, he has led the board through some divisive debates over Bible course curriculum, language arts instruction and, just last month, the science standards.

Shapleigh said there is a perception that McLeroy is using the chairmanship of the State Board of Education as a bully pulpit for promoting his religious point-of-view and pushing it into the public arena.

McLeroy, a dentist, does not shy away from sharing that his conservative religious beliefs form the foundation of his commitment to education. But he has not injected those beliefs into the state’s curriculum standards or textbooks, McLeroy told the committee.

“The hornet’s nest is almost unavoidable,” McLeroy said.

There are different educational philosophies at play, he said, and that is the source of the controversy, not his religious views. And the State Board has been spurred debate over those different philosophies.

We want our children to learn, McLeroy said, and “if that means having to stand up to the establishment viewpoint…I don’t mind having a hornet’s nest.”

Watson, however, said that McLeroy has created controversy time and again by not listening to expert advice and replacing it with his own perspective.

“I’m just talking as a dad,” Watson said, adding that he wants his high schooler to learn from materials crafted by experts. “A dad who gets to ask questions in the Senate chamber.”

And a dad who evidently has some experience cross-examining a witness.

The Republicans on the committee largely stayed away from the touchy issues during their questioning.

“I think you’re going to get your wish,” Shapleigh said. “You’re going to get a debate.”

All of the nominations, including McLeroy’s, were left pending Wednesday night since all but the committee chairman, Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, had left by the end of the meeting.

McElroy's obvious conspiracy theory that scientists are out to destroy souls is like something out of TV's "Supernatural."

My daughter worked as a production assistant for "Supernatural" for its first two seasons. (Since then she has been working as a casting assistant for "Without A Trace".)