Category Archives: General Science

General Science, Humor, Media Criticism

“Recent” Is Apparently Relative

11 Comments

I love this headline: “Moon’s Scarred Crust Hints at Recent Activity, Scientists Say.”

Yes, it was only fifty million years ago. Seems like it was only yesterday. They grow up so fast.

It reminds me of the joke about the guy nodding off at the lecture on the sun. “What?! When did you say it would expand into a red giant?” “I said a couple billion years.” “Oh, that’s a relief. I thought you said a couple million.”

General Science, Science And Society

A Predator That Ruled Before The Dinosaurs

7 Comments

This is interesting:

the find is important for two reasons: First, Pampaphoneus is the first Paleozoic terrestrial carnivore discovered in South America. Combining this find with earlier discoveries of plant-eaters from the same time frame will help paleontologists “picture a more complete ecosystem during the Permian period,” the statement said.

Second, the skull suggests that this South American species was a close relative to similar dinocephalians previously found in Russia and South Africa. That supports the idea that therapsids were able to disperse easily from one part of the Pangaea supercontinent to the other, during an age when most of Earth’s modern-day land masses were linked together.

Emphasis mine. South America’s a big place, and this is the first time they’ve seen this. It just shows how rare fossils are, and how ridiculous it is for the creationists to demand to see all “transitional species” (a notion that demonstrates nothing except the demander’s ignorance of evolution, because every species is a “transitional” species).