Shape-Shifting Dinosaurs

Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us

Fascinating article about one my most beloved Dinosaurs as a child - the Triceratops (Ceratopsians). This could change everything we know about a great many horn-billed or frill-fringed Dinosaurs. This also raises a question: has Dinosaur diversity been overestimated, perhaps dramatically, because of paleontologists' failure to take important juveline, sub-adult and adult morphological changes into account? Have we postulated species where none, in fact, may exist?

Arrival in Seattle

Well, I arrived in Seattle Thursday afternoon, a full day and a half before the beginning of the Natural Sciences Seminar. There are about 40 students; ranging in all ages and covering a fairly broad spectrum of academic disciplines. There are a few Ph.D Physics students, and several philosophy students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. There is a biochemistry major, a few in the biological and biomedical sciences (such as myself), and a mathematics major. By and large, physics and philosophy students seem to predominate. It's already been an interesting first day, as we explored the complexities of the DNA molecule.

More to come...this blog is going underground for now

Haiku of Fungi

A crown full of spores

In the firmament belongs
The Kingdom Fungi

Does Biology show evidence of Design?

The question is as old as the perennial search for meaning and purposed in the Universe. Does the study of biology show evidence of design? From July 9-18 2010 I have been truly blessed to be participating in an Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences Seminar in Seattle, WA. Those who are knee-jerk Darwinian Evolutionists, materialists, naturalists, or otherwise fundamentally hostile to the notion of teleology in the natural sciences (and most relevant to me, the biological sciences) will be predictably outraged. I am ecstatic. The reading list, however, is ominous.

I just learned that humans and mice share 99% of our genome. Now, at last genomic sequence count, chimpanzees - our closest evolutionary cousins - shared something like 98.7% of our genome (the exact figures aren't really important). Certain species of marine worms have considerably more genes than humans do. I'm sensing a genomic revolution here.

Stay tuned for updates from my trip, starting July 9th!