Science News is reporting on a study involving genes of modern fish that code for tetrapod limbs.  Elizabeth Pennisi writes: In the trio of studies published last week in Cell, genes in living fish took the place of fossils as a way to peer back in time. One set of clues came from studies of mutagenized zebrafish, a favorite model for studying development. M. Brent Hawkins, then a Harvard University graduate student and now a postdoc, was shocked to discover zebrafish mutants with two bones resembling the forelimb bones of land animals in their front fins, complete with muscles, joints ..read more

An astrophysicist at the University of Oregon suggests that the universe might not be 13.8 billion years old but maybe just 12.6—a drop of 8.7%. From the university website: Dating the Big Bang, which gave birth to the universe, has relied on mathematics and computational modeling, using distance estimates to the oldest stars, the behavior of galaxies and the rate of the universe’s expansion. The idea is to compute how long it would take all objects to travel backward to the beginning.  A key calculation is the Hubble constant, named after Edwin Hubble, the namesake of the Hubble Space Te ..read more

Science Daily has a story on genetic work done by researchers at Cornell University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that suggests that there is, as yet, another unnamed ancestor to the modern human line. They write: In the new paper, the researchers developed an algorithm for analyzing genomes that can identify segments of DNA that came from other species, even if that gene flow occurred thousands of years ago and came from an unknown source. They used the algorithm to look at genomes from two Neanderthals, a Denisovan and two African humans. The researchers found evidence that 3 percent of ..read more

 Glenn Morton, one of the first people to go public with his recantation of young earth creationism has died.  Todd Wood has the news: I just got word that Glenn Morton passed away on August 5. You can see a brief obituary here. I never met Glenn, but I certainly knew of him. Back in the 1980s, Glenn was an active young-age creationist researcher, looking at questions in by geology. As he continued "digging," he had an increasingly difficult time figuring out how to explain his findings in the context of the Flood geology of the day. So he left, and eventually became a fairly regular ..read more

James Haught once wrote a column, now appearing in the Good Men Project on how science is an honest endeavor.  He writes: To me, the whole issue hinges on honesty. Let me explain: Science, from a Latin word meaning knowledge, is simply a search for trustworthy facts. It is human intelligence at work. The process is honest, because every researcher’s claim is challenged by other researchers. They test and retest by many methods, until a new idea fails or holds firm. (A researcher who falsifies data is a loathsome criminal in the eyes of fellow scientists.) While some individual scientist ..read more

She's not wrong.  Libby Anne, a writer for Patheos has latched onto something that has been an issue with Ken Ham for quite some time: he is scientifically ignorant.  One of Ham's persistent arguments is that we can't know historical science (or predictive science) because, as he puts it, “Were You There”? A moment's thought about this perspective reveals it to be facile.  Libby Anne agrees: Ham argues that some science uses observation and experimentation (what he calls “experimental or observational science”) while other science (what he calls “origins or historical science ..read more

UPI has a story about a discovery in South Africa of a Homo erectus infant that is 200 ky older than the oldest known specimen currently in existence.  From the original Science article:  Fossil hominins from South Africa are enriching the story of early human evolution and dispersal. Herries et al. describe the geological context and dating of the hominin-bearing infilled cave, or palaeocave, at a site called Drimolen in South Africa (see the Perspective by Antón). They focus on the age and context of a recently discovered Homo erectus sensu lato fossil and a Paranthropus robustus ..read more

UPI has a story about evidence from around Lake Baikal that links populations of Siberia to the earliest groups who came over from Siberia to the New World.  Brooks Hays writes: New genomic analysis of ancient remains in Siberia -- detailed this week in the journal Cell -- have offered scientists fresh insights into the movements of human populations across Eurasia and into the Americas at the end of the Stone Age. “Previous studies observed the genetic differences between individuals from different time periods, but didn't investigate the differences by dating the admixture events,” lea ..read more

BioLogos has a post on how to approach the teaching of the historical Adam aimed specifically at parents as they talk to their kids. Christy Hemphill writes: If your kids are hearing a young earth creationist perspective at church or a Christian school, they may find those ideas very appealing and convincing for a time. Depending on your situation and personality, you may have to be careful not to put your kids in the middle of your own power struggles or debates with other adults in your lives. Kids need space and time to build their worldviews and figure stuff out for themselves. If you co ..read more

Here is the link to the film We Believe in Dinosaurs.  I have not gotten around to watching it, but hope to shortly ..read more