Tag Archives: Antievolution

A Tale of Two Dinosaurs

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The Institute for Creation Research has graced us once again with a brilliant display of their scientific prowess. This time the focus of their efforts revolves around the recently published description of a newly unearthed dinosaur species Eodromaeus murphi.

Eodromaeus is a small (slightly over a meter in length) South American dinosaur from the mid-Triassic (230 MYA). This date makes it one of the earliest dinosaurs and its describers, Ricardo Martinez et al., argue that it should be classified as a basal theropod ―the carnivorous branch of the “lizard-hipped” or saurischian dinosaurs (Martinez et al., 2011).

What has ICR’s, or more specifically ICR “science writer” Brian Thomas‘ knickers in a twist is that in the same paper in which they describe Eodromaeus the authors also argue for the reclassification of another dinosaur, Eoraptor (described back in the early 1990’s), which is from the same location and roughly the same time period as Eodromaeus.

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A New Major Award!

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The National Center for Science Education has announced their ‘creation’ of a new annual  award, the “Upchucky”, to be “bestowed on the most noisome creationist of the year”.  I love it! And they certainly have a nominee rich environment which they can select from.

The contenders for the first annual Upchucky were:

  1. Recently deposed Texas board of education chairperson Don McLeroy; “for his longstanding efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in the Lone Star state”.
  2. Creationist buffoon Ray Comfort (aka Banana Man) of Living Waters Ministries; “for his distribution of copies of the Origin disfigured with his own creationist introduction”.
  3. The possibly over-caffeinated intelligent design creationist Casey Luskin of the Disco toot’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture; “for his logorrheic zeal in reciting the “intelligent design” talking points du jour“ (“logorrheic”, that’s good, I’ll have to remember that one).
  4. And finally a group nomination for Arabic news channel Al Jazeera; “for its wildly misleading coverage of Ardipithecus ramidus“.

And the Upchucky goes to…

The virulently ignorant Don “Somebody’s got to stand up to experts” McLeroy! [pre-recorded applause].

I’m sure it was a tough decision for the judges but when one considers that he was someone with actual authority over what was taught in public schools I think he was the best choice of this line up.

Bravo NCSE!

[Hat-tip to Thoughts in a Haystack]

Epic Horse Exhaust

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OK, it took me a while to get to it but I am, as promised, responding to creationist Arthur Biele’s lengthy comments left in response to my criticisms of his writings on horse evolution. For those interested I suggest you go back and read Mr. Biele’s article and my original critique first. Those that do I think will find that his response didn’t really answer any of my original criticisms. Instead what he did was dump a new load of barely coherent nonsense on me.

A warning though, this goes on for quite a bit (it sure felt like it while I wrote it), which is of course due to the well known fact that accurately and substantially responding to horseshit takes considerably more time and effort than it does to spewing it.

Biele: With regard to Eohippus, If you knew anything about the actual fossil record, Eohippus finds are many and that category has been a dumping ground for certain archaic partial skulls that defy any specific classification, nor are they known to be ancestors of any known ‘evolved’ descendants, and they are mostly from Europe.

While apparently attempting to impugn my knowledge of the “the actual fossil record” Mr. Biele clearly demonstrates his own ignorance of the subject at hand. Let’s break this down in order:

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