Human Evolution & Archaeology On Pangaea, latitude and rain dictated where species lived PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Aggregating nearly the entire landmass of Earth, Pangaea was a continent the likes our planet has not seen for the last 200 million years. Its size meant there was a lot of space for animals to roam, for there were few geographical barriers, such as mountains or ice caps, to contain them. Yet, strangely, animals confined themselves. "We're answering a question that goes back to Darwin's time," said Whiteside, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown, who studies ancient climates. Turning to climate, the frequency of rainfall along lines of latitude directly influenced where animals lived, the scientists write in a paper published this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The skull of the procolophonid Hypsognathus was found in Fundy basin, Nova Scotia, which was hotter and drier when it was part of Pangaea.
World | Americas | Victors hail US evolution ruling A US court decision to ban the teaching of "intelligent design" has been hailed by anti-creationism campaigners. A federal judge ruled in favour of 11 parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who argued that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact in biology lessons. School administrators had argued that life on Earth was too complex to have evolved on its own. Intelligent design activists criticised the ruling, saying it would marginalise beliefs based on religion. For those fighting the policy of the Dover school board, the judicial ruling offered a boost to the separation of church and state. About 20 US states have seen some form of challenge at local level to the pre-eminence of Darwinian evolution theory in the curriculum of publicly-funded schools since 2001. "We have a federal judge ruling that intelligent design is in fact non-science and that it is religion," said Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. 'Breathtaking inanity' Wider issue
Swiss Scientists Rewire Injured Spinal Cords, Paralyzed Rats Walk Again Here at GeekTech, we've seen lots of contraptions to help the disabled regain some of their mobility. Now, a group of Swiss scientists from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have found a way to rewire the spinal cord of rats after a paralyzing injury. This rat (pictured above) was just paralyzed a few weeks prior and is now running on a treadmill. The treatment starts with a round of injections that contain a chemical solution of monoamine agonists to rouse the dormant spinal cord nerves. Once the chemicals have excited the spinal cord neurons, the scientists start electrically stimulating the spinal cord with implanted electrodes. The rats were first tested on a moving treadmill where they instinctively walked forward with their front legs and previously paralyzed hind limbs. After two weeks, the rats began taking their first voluntary steps on their paralyzed legs. [EPFL via Popular Science] Like this?
Does the Color Pink Exist? Scientists Arent Sure In a blog post, Robert Krulwich of the public radio show Radiolab noted that there is no pink in the colors of the rainbow. Pink is actually a combination of red and violet, two colors, which, if you look at a rainbow, are on the opposite sides of the arc. Remember the old colors of the rainbow mnemonic ROYGBIV? The R (red) is as far as it can get from V (violet). That’s where the trouble lies. I know, of course, that all colors are just waves of light, so every color we “see,” we see with our brains. (MORE: Hues You Can Use) So there you have it. We will leave the debate over the color pink to the experts, because we know one Pink who definitely still exists. PHOTOS: Color My Dog! PHOTOS: Color in the Midst of Protest
50 Reasons I reject Evolution 1.) Because I don’t like the idea that we came from apes… despite that humans are categorically defined and classified as apes. 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) 7.) 8.) 9.) 10.) 11.) 12.) 13.) 14.) 15.) 16.) 17.) 18.) 19.) 20.) 21.) 22.) 23.) 24.) 25.) 26.) 27.) 28.) 29.) 30.) 31.) 32.) 33.) 34.) 35.) 36.) 37.) 38.) 39.) 40.) 41.) 42.) 43.) 44.) 45.) 46.) 47.) 48.) 50.) Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. Ancestral Lines Evolutionary biologists use a cladogram, the treelike diagram of evolutionary branches or clades, to organize species into lines of evolutionary descent across time. Biologists use three types of evidence to deduce evolutionary connections: genetics, morphology, and geologic dating. (Behavior, normally a key part of evolutionary studies, can only be inferred in extinct species — for example, by examining the ecology in which the species flourished and the species adaptations for eating and locomotion.) Analyses of primate fossils and the genetic relatedness of living primates converge to the conclusion that humans and chimpanzees branched from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. The rest of the puzzle must be deduced from morphology (physical form, as reconstructed from the bones) and geologic dating. The cladogram for human evolution shown above currently lacks key pieces of evidence. These are some of the most interesting but currently unanswered questions about human descent:
What would happen if I drilled a tunnel through the center of th& Want to really get away from it all? The farthest you can travel from home (and still remain on Earth) is about 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) straight down, but you'll have to journey the long way round to get there: 12,450 miles (20,036 kilometers) over land and sea. Why not take a shortcut, straight down? You can get there in about 42 minutes -- that's short enough for a long lunch, assuming you can avoid Mole Men, prehistoric reptiles and underworld denizens en route. Of course, you'd be in for a rough ride. For sake of argument (and survival) let's pretend the Earth is a cold, uniform, inert ball of rock. At the Earth's surface, gravity pulls on us at 32 feet (9.8 meters) per second squared. You're still moving at a heck of a clip, though, so don't expect to stop there. Of course, reality has a tendency to intrude on even the best thought experiments.