Why Humans Lost Their Penis Bone 

Assorted mammalian bacula

Assorted mammalian bacula

Why humans lost their penis bone | Science | AAAS

Despite the assumptions behind certain slang terms, human males don't really have a penis bone, or baculum, unlike some of our closest mammalian relatives such as chimpanzees and bonobos. The reason why was not really clear until now although evolutionary explanations have been suggested.

The penis bone first put in appearance in mammalian evolution between 145 and 95 million years ago, so was present in the last common ancestor of apps and carnivores, so at some point, and in the case of humans after we diverged from the chimpanzee/bonobo line, the penis bone was lost.

Seahorses - A Creationists' Nightmare!

Tiger tail seahorse. Hippocampus comes.

The seahorse genome and the evolution of its specialized morphology : Nature : Nature Research

The seahorse is something of a creationist nightmare!

No, not because it's that dreaded 'transitional form' being part fish and part horse - which it isn't of course although many creationists seem to believe 'evolutionists' believe such idiocy is part of mainstream biology, but because its evolution flatly contradicts several creationist articles of faith. These articles include:

Ancient Footprints - The Long And The Short Of It

Test-pit L8 at Laetoli Site S.
In the northern part of the test-pit (at the top), the Footprint Tuff is particularly altered, damaged by plant roots and dislodged along natural fractures.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19568.013

New footprints from Laetoli (Tanzania) provide evidence for marked body size variation in early hominins | eLife

If you want to know why science works and creationism doesn't you could do worse than read and understand this paper.

Creationists often claim to be baffled by the way science derives information from historical records without actually being there to witness it. Curiously, they only seem to be baffled by this when it comes to things they don't want to be true. Ken Ham even proudly teaches children to kill any discussion about the distant past by asking 'Where you there?' knowing the the speaker or teacher wasn't and believing this invalidates everything they've said. It's a neat trick to prevent children learning something you don't want them to know and something that will stand any creationist in good stead well into adulthood.

The same creationists also claim to be baffled by the lack of absolute certainty in science and the way it keeps revising and improving on what it knows and how it adopts tentative answers pending further information and is prepared to ditch or adopt that temporary view later on. To these creationists, of course, certainty is far more important than accuracy and fitting the facts into a predetermined and unchangeable narrative is paramount. The actual truth is merely incidental to this objective.

How a Plant Evolved to Eat Bat Poo!

Pitcher plant (Nepenthes hemsleyana) with woolly bat (Kerivoula hardwickii)

Why plants eat faeces when they could eat flesh

Mutualism as a result of evolution is a well-known phenomenon to biologists but this example is, by any stretch of the imagination, unusual and even a little counter-intuitive. It has ended up with a carnivorous pitcher plant switching from a diet of captured insects to one consisting of bat faeces.

Examples of mutualism can be found in for example, the production of nectar by flowers which supplies insects with food in return for targeted dispersal of pollen. The insects gets fed and the plant gets its pollen delivered to another flower of the same species without the wastefulness and hit and (mostly) miss nature of wind dispersal. Another example would be the gut microbes in ruminants and termites which digest plant cellulose providing nutrients from an otherwise indigestible resource in return for shelter, warmth and a ready supply of raw materials.

Just Another Under-Privileged Christian

Sister Sarah Kuteh.

Sarah Kuteh is no doubt an excellent nurse but her nursing skills are not in question, as least in so far as the medical needs of her patients are concerned.

Where her skills are called into question however is in the area of what she determines are their spiritual needs and in this matter, as a devout Christian, she perceives those needs wholly in terms of whether or not they agree with her. If they don't, they have a problem and, like it or not she is going to 'cure' their spiritual sickness too.

According to a report on the Daily Express, as an experienced nurse and a nursing sister since 2012, she had recently taken on the role of assessing the medical health of patients before going into surgery for Darent Valley Hospital, Dartford, Kent, run by Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust. Part of her assessment consisted of going through a completed questionnaire which included questions about the patients religious beliefs. Many patients chose to leave this blank, as is their entitlement. Many of these would have either had no religion or would have considered it irrelevant.

Transitional Feathered Dinosaur in Exquisite Detail

Source: National Geographic

A Feathered Dinosaur Tail with Primitive Plumage Trapped in Mid-Cretaceous Amber: Current Biology

Transitional fossils are the bugbear of creationism. Every fossil ever found, although so obviously intermediate between its parent generation and its offspring, and so obviously a sample of the evolutionary status of its particular branch at that point in time, never-the-less has to be vigorously dismissed as 'not transitional' by creationists.

It's a cardinal article of creationist doctrine that there are no transitional fossils, therefore, that no matter how obviously transitional, it can't be transitional. It mustn't be allowed to be transitional because to admit to transitional fossils is to admit to evolution.

So it is particularly pleasing to be able to present yet another example of an undoubtedly transitional fossil preserved in amber in amazing detail. It is particularly pleasing too that this is a transitional fossil of that iconic class of animals, dinosaurs.

Not So Finely Tuned!

EN-L2Pup-SPHERE ALMA: Composite sight of L₂ Pup in visible light (by the VLT / SPHERE instrument, blue) and ALMA continuum light (orange). The light from the central star is subtracted from the ALMA image to better show as candidate planet.

© P. Kervella et al. (CNRS / U. de Chile / Observatoire de Paris / Lesia / ESO / ALMA)

ALMA observations of the nearby AGB star L₂ Puppis | Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)

With that splendidly panglossian view of the Universe that is so endearing about creationists, they like to imagine they live in the best of all worlds in the best of all galaxies in the best of all Universes - a Universe their special best friend made specially for them.

They have even invented a wonderfully circular argument to try to justify that starry-eyed (or is that rose-tinted?) view. They call it the 'Finely Tuned Universe' theory.

Basically, this says that because the Universe is obviously a suitable place for a sun with a planet on which human life evolved, the Universe must be set up in such a way to make this possible. Because the entity who set it up that way is perfect and all-loving and loves humans above everything else, Earth must be the best possible for humans to live on. And because it is the best possible place, the Universe must have been tuned to produce it.

Catholic Church Still At It Down Under!

Father Tom Knowles performing Mass

Church apology for a 14-year sexual relationship an Australian first | The Sydney Morning Herald.

If you are still under the impression that the Catholic Church under Pope 'Uncle' Frankie has seen the error of its ways and is determined to make amends for its past crimes, this news from Australia should disavow you of that delusion.

It concerns the abuse over a fourteen-year period of a disabled Sydney woman, Jennifer Herrick, by Fr Tom Knowles, then her family priest. Jennifer Herrick, who

Primrose Poser For Creationists

Pin eye

Genetic architecture and evolution of the S locus supergene in Primula vulgaris : Nature Plants

I remember as a child being fascinated by the two different forms of primroses, which, unless you're aware of it, you probably wouldn't notice unless you looked especially closely. What I didn't realise until much later was that this had evolved to overcome a problem potentially faced by all hermaphrodite species and especially plants - the problem of losing the benefits of sexual reproduction by self-fertilisation.

Such is the advantage of mixing genes with those of another individual and so being able to 'try out' new combinations, or to acquire more advantageous alleles and pass these on to your offspring, that there is evolutionary pressure to ensure it happens frequently.

Hey Creationists! What Kind Of Kind Is This?

Asian lonhorn, Anoplophora glabripennis

Genome of the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis), a globally significant invasive species, reveals key functional and evolutionary innovations at the beetle–plant interface | Genome Biology.

Probably because it was intelligently designed to do just that, the term 'kind' as used by creationists is so nebulous that it can mean whatever they need it to mean. The meaning can change at will according to the audience they are trying to get away with using it on or the debate they are trying to win with tactics because they don't have any evidence.

It's almost perfectly designed to allow word play and subtle changes in debate barely noticeable by an unsuspecting audience.

Catholic Fraud in Norway

Bishop Ole Christian Kvarme

Catholic Church fined for overstating number of members to receive more state funding in Norway | The Independent

Faced with evaporating membership and a serious decline in its income stream, the Catholic Church in Oslo, Norway did what any self-respecting welfare scrounger would do, and casually defrauded the state of up to 40.6 million kroner (£3.8 million or $4.8 million) by falsely inflating their membership lists.

The Catholic Church, like other Christian churches in Norway, received a state (read Norwegian tax-payer's) subsidy in proportion to its membership.

Speciation Observed in a Laboratory

Ecological speciation of bacteriophage lambda in allopatry and sympatry | Science

Two central article of faith in creationist circles are that speciation has never been observed and that evolution can't be replicated in a laboratory.

So essential are these dogmas to creationism that nothing will shake their faith in them, not even the evidence of evolution being replicated in a laboratory and speciation being observed in the process. You can rarely make any progress with a creationist without these 'killer' assertions being thrown into the debate. They are almost the motto or battle-cry of creationism. So we can be sure the best available dismissal techniques will be brought to bear on the paper published in Nature a few days ago showing exactly that.

That's right, creationists, scientists have observed evolution, including speciation, in the laboratory. And their experiment is reproducible.