Developing

Discover Yahoo! With Your Friends

Explore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.

To get started, first

YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

    Darwin's Lost Fossils Found In Desk Drawer

    Hundreds of fossils collected by Charles Darwin and colleagues have been found after going missing for more than 150 years.

    The discoveries were made by scientist Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

    He stumbled upon glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved into a "gloomy corner" of the draughty British Geological Survey .

    Using a torch to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Dr Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labelled " C. Darwin Esq ."

    He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart-in-your-mouth situation," adding, he wondered: "Goodness! What have I discovered?

    "It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realised it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen.

    Dr Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including Joseph Hooker - a botanist and Darwin's best friend - and the Reverend John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Sir Joseph.

    The first slide pulled out of the dusty corner at the BGS turned out to be one of the specimens collected by Darwin during his famous expedition on the HMS Beagle , which changed the young Cambridge graduate's career and laid the foundation for his subsequent work on evolution.

    Dr Falcon-Lang said the unearthed fossils - lost for 165 years - show there is more to learn from a period of history scientists thought they knew well.

    "To find a treasure trove of lost Darwin specimens from the Beagle voyage is just extraordinary," he said. 

    "We can see there's more to learn. There are a lot of very, very significant fossils in there that we didn't know existed."

     
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  14 hours ago
      'A' You said DNA provides no evidence? So here we go again.The earliest human ancestor was a Shrew-sized creature that lived among the dinosaurs was the forerunner to mammals and eventuallly humans.''Juramaia Sinensis'' which means Jurassic mother, The fossil includes a preserved set of teeth and forepaw bones, that scientists believed were closer to the anatomy of Placental mammals than Marsupials, it likely used its claws to scurry up trees and its teeth to eat insects,an existence that would have allowed it to endure and elude larger predators.

      The finding corroborates DNA studies,conducted using Molecular evidence,which also suggested that the evolutionary split occured about 160 million years ago.
      • Terry 13 hours ago
        'A' does that also apply to the 47 million year old Transitional species dubbed
        ''Ida'' that is the missing link in human evolution. speaking of clocks,its late
        goodnight.
      • URBT 8 hours ago
        A: There are copious intermediate fossils. To say otherwise is simply untrue. A lie perpetuated by those who claim it is a sin to lie.
      • Simon 1 hour 38 minutes ago
        Mummy help with my spoon
    • a  •  3 days ago
      One day a 6 year old girl was sitting in a classroom. The teacher was going to explain evolution to the children. The teacher asked a little boy: Tommy do you see the tree outside? 
TOMMY: Yes. 
TEACHER: Tommy, do you see the grass outside? 
TOMMY: Yes. 
TEACHER: Go outside and look up and see if you can see the sky. 
TOMMY: Okay. (He returned a few minutes later) Yes, I saw the sky. 
TEACHER: Did you see God up there? 
TOMMY: No. 
TEACHER: That's my point. We can't see God because he isn't there.
      Possibly he just doesn't exist.
       


      A little girl spoke up and wanted to ask the boy some questions.  The teacher agreed and
      the little girl asked the boy: Tommy, do you see the tree outside? 
TOMMY: Yes. 
LITTLE GIRL: Tommy do you see the grass outside? 
TOMMY: Yessssss! 
LITTLE GIRL: Did you see the sky? 
TOMMY: Yessssss! 
LITTLE GIRL: Tommy, do you see the teacher? 
TOMMY: Yes 
LITTLE GIRL: Do you see her brain? 
TOMMY: No 
LITTLE GIRL: Then according to what we were taught today in school, she possibly may not even have one!

      (You Go Girl!) 

"FOR WE WALK BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT"
      II CORINTHIANS 5:7 

      • Verox 3 days ago
        What an utterly irrelevant story. Waste of photons, electrons or whatever other particles our limited senses do not directly engage with. But they are there and God's not!!
      • a 3 days ago
        Verox - Then "God didn't make the little green apples" after all?
      • Daily Plan it 3 days ago
        A - its a question of evidence when all is said and done. Science is simply about what can be proven to exist or shown to exist, or what can be explained - as to how things work, how things happen, how things are, what things consist of. This is all science is in the end, just a means or a method of testing and analysing and searching for explanation as to how things work, how things are, why things are as they are, rather than as something else. God is not proven or shown scientifically or through unscientific means either, and as such science is not really interested in religion or god as something that requires explanation. Science prefers to seek explanation for things that can be seen or experienced at least at some level or to some degree. This is why science in general is not concerned with issues concerning the meanings or messages or predictions of a god that nobody can prove to exist or can demonstrate that they have in truth experienced in reality.
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  2 days 19 hours ago
      What if there were billions of big bangs, each yielding its own separate, expanding universe? Our universe would then be a single expanding bubble inhabiting a grand cosmic bubble bath of Universes, is there a separate God for each universe? 'A'
      • Simon 2 days 18 hours ago
        Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
        And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
        That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
        A sun that is the source of all our power.
        The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
        Are moving at a million miles a day
        In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
        Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
        Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
        It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
        It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
        But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
        We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
        We go 'round every two hundred million years,
        And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
        In this amazing and expanding universe.

        The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
        In all of the directions it can whizz
        As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
        Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
        So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
        How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
        And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
        'Cause there's b*gg*r all down here on Earth.

        Monty Python - 1983
      • Terry 2 days 16 hours ago
        Simon, that sound good.
    • a  •  5 days ago
      G00gle: To find out why things happen in the physical world, you have to "follow the heat."

      "Every step in the snowflake life-cycle obeys the laws of thermodynamics. Heat is neither created nor destroyed. Heat flows from a hot place to a cold place. Heat becomes less well organized because it is more evenly distributed throughout the universe as cool places warm up, and warm places cool down. Snowflakes don’t violate the laws of thermodynamics. There is nothing miraculous about it.

      "Mineral crystals form for the same reason snow crystals form. Heat is released as minerals in solution form solid crystals, equalizing the temperature all around, increasing entropy.

      "So, evolutionists who claim that snowflakes and mineral crystals decrease entropy, proving evolution can happen, are wrong on two counts. First, they are wrong because entropy of the crystal and the environment around the crystal actually increases, in accordance with the Second Law. Second, the formation of crystals has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of life, or the information in the DNA molecule. The Second Law of thermodynamics really does explain why life, and DNA molecules, cannot form spontaneously."
      • URBT 5 days ago
        Please re-read the W1K1 entry. You didn't understand the first time.
      • a 4 days ago
        URBT, URBT, URBT - You may quote the lines that are so meaningful to you.
      • URBT 4 days ago
        I may, but I'd prefer to offer you some direction and guidance. Consider it an exercise in teaching a man to fish.
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  1 day 15 hours ago
      Im sure 'A' know's the Superstition? All windows should be opened at the moment of Death so that the soul can leave the body.
      • Terry 1 day 14 hours ago
        i just thought you should know 'A' im gonna be cremated, and my ashes
        put in the ocean, i want to return, to where life started, the ocean, thats
        my last wish. for some people thats private, but not for me,its the real deal.
      • Simon 1 day 6 hours ago
        It does sadly come to us all and there is little dignified about death, an aspect of which makes opening the windows the right thing to do, soul or no soul.
      • Simon 1 day 5 hours ago
        You can, I have, express a wish for a humanist service (well, you wouldn't like to think of the splitters bidding you cheerio)
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  2 days 19 hours ago
      Years ago, Carl Sagan emphasized that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. so where's your God 'A' or the Ark?
    • a  •  2 days 20 hours ago
      A n y b o d y -
      1 ) D o t h e v a r i a t i o n s i n t h e g e n o m e o f t h e d r o s o p h i l a m e l a n o g a s t e r c o d e f o r b o t h m i c r o e v o l u t i o n a n d m a c r o e v o l u t i o n ?
      2 ) D o t h e v a r i a t i o n s i n t h e g e n o m e f o r a n y l i v i n g o r g a n i s m e v e r c o d e f o r m a c r o e v o l u t i o n ?
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  4 days ago
      'A' I guess you gave up on the number 13.024, i dont know how, you can get 5 mass extinctions in that amount of time.
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  3 days ago
      i Think 'A' Wants to be the last man standing, like that bruce willis movie? it will just be 'A' and his bible Hymn's.
    • a  •  5 days ago
      According to the math of thermodynamics, the natural origination of Complex Specified Information is impossible. DNA is an example of Complex Specified Information which is mathematically impossible to "evolve."
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  5 days ago
      My favorite comment from URBT.
      The good old biblical god who created 200 billion galaxies each with 200 billion stars and an unimaginable number of planets decides to commission a little handbook to tell earth-bound higher primates how to treat their slaves and livestock,puts it all in context?

      'A' Out of 200 billion galaxies, do you see how ridiculous that sounds 'A' its ludicrous.
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  4 days ago
      False Attributes to Thermodynamics, Creationists have created a ''Voodoo'' thermodynamics based solely on metaphors in order to convince those not familiar with real thermodynamics that their sectarian religious views have Scientific validity, so its a way for you 'A' to twist well established Scientific principles into meaningless B/S
      Get back to Charles Darwin on the Origin of Species,
    • a  •  3 days ago
      Dr. Richard Lewontin, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, put it like this: "It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door" (Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons," New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 28).
      -AllAboutPhilosophydotOrg
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  9 days ago
      sorry guys, i've been gone a few days? i had to buy a new modem, i hope no one, has a bone to pick with me? i need to keep my friends,
    • a  •  5 days ago
      Over incredible lengths of time, the laws of thermodynamics wobble, and, naturally, anything is possible.
    • a  •  4 days ago
      In the beginning there were small numerals: ⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹.

      Small numbers evolved into big numerals: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.

      Evolutionists are waiting for numerals to evolve in such a way that the blind clock maker's toy runs in reverse. (Time running backwards is one of the two ways in which entropy can decrease.)

      If an evolutionology mathematical wizard such as Simon can ever prove that time ran backwards (during the great imaginary periods of punctuated equilibrium, for example), then I'll award him gold star.
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  8 days ago
      'A' in the Philosophy of religion, Occam's razor is sometimes applied to the existence of God, if the concept of a God does not help to explain the Universe better, Then the idea is that atheism should be preferred.
    • Terry  •  Atlanta, United States  •  8 days ago
      instead of the 150 -year legacy of Charles Darwin on the Origin of Species by means of natural selection. we will let you 'A' provide your evidence of evolution to the Scientific Community, and see if it holds any water?
    • a  •  5 days ago
      Evolutionism is NOT science. Don't expect any laws of nature to give credit to evolutionism.
    • a  •  4 days ago
      Microevolution, Macroevolution and Species
      With the discovery of DNA in 1953 scientists now had the necessary tools to
      formally define three key terms, "microevolution," "macroevolution" and
      "species."
      "Macroevolution" is true evolution, which is what this book is all about.
      "Macroevolution" means that each "species," by definition, has a unique DNA
      structure, different than the DNA structure of any other "species" on the planet
      earth.
      "DNA structure" means all animals in that "species" have the same type and
      number of genes, the same "morphing of the embryo" algorithms (to be
      discussed later), etc.
      In other words, the very definition of a "species" means that the species has
      unique DNA, different than the DNA of all other species on the planet earth.
      Thus, if evolution is true, then one "species," which has unique DNA, can
      "evolve" into a different "species" which, by definition, has its own unique DNA
      structure, meaning its DNA structure is different than its "parent" species.
      The term "macroevolution" and "species" must both refer to a unique DNA
      structure. Evolution claims unique DNA structures can "evolve" from a "parent
      species" into a new DNA structure for the "child species."
      However, there is zero scientific evidence that macroevolution has ever occurred
      on this planet or any other planet.
      "Microevolution," on the other hand, is simply variety within species, such as two
      horses with different colors or two different breeds of guinea pigs.
      Two horses can have exactly the same DNA structure, but have different
      nucleotides in the same locations; yielding horses of different colors and/or
      different heights, etc. This is microevolution.
      The term "evolution" and the term "macroevolution" should mean exactly the
      same thing because "microevolution" does not create any new species (i.e. any
      new DNA structures).
      "Evolution" is all about creating new DNA structures for new species (assuming
      the term "species" refers to a unique DNA structure). Thus, "evolution" and
      "macroevolution" mean exactly the same thing.
      --Mathematics of Evolution