News to Note, February 19, 2011

1. Life as an Outcast

Just a few weeks ago we reported that the continued search for habitable extrasolar planets has revealed just how special Earth is. So if aliens aren’t on planets orbiting other stars, where else could they be?

2. How Did Britain Become an Island?

It’s not just young-earth creationists who lean on catastrophic geological processes in explaining earth history. Increasingly, old-earthers are also seeing the work of catastrophes in shaping the planet.

3. Homo Sapiens All the Way Back

More research supports our view that historic humanity and modern humanity were far more similar than we “modern” humans often think.

4. A Bird in Hand

Although the above title is neither clear nor of our choosing, the focus of the article is purportedly “the final nail in the coffin” for those that don’t believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Or is this evolutionary dogma that just won’t fly away?

5. How Long Till Darwinmas?

It seems Darwin is celebrated more widely with each passing year, with popular annual events including Evolution Sunday and Darwin Day. The New York Times examines how a celebration of the latter went off in a few fragments of small-town America.

And Don’t Miss . . .

• Two Oklahoma state legislators are hoping to push back against one-sided evolution education in government-funded schools. Josh Brecheen and Sally Kern are advancing a bill intended, in Kern’s words, to help “students be familiar with [evolution] and able to discuss it” and ensure that “teachers and students [are] free to discuss critiques of the theory.” But Tulsa World, apparently not wanting to appear unbiased, describes the bill as “designed to undermine the teaching of a fundamental of modern science, the theory of evolution.”
• Scientists call fossil seaweed from China evidence that multicellular life evolved sooner than was thought, reports ScienceNOW. The report notes that some of the supposedly 600-million-year-old fossils resemble modern seaweed.
• Researchers have confirmed the authenticity of a rock etching in Utah that shows a mammoth. It is one of only two extant, verified historical impressions of mammoths in the Americas, whereas they are commonly found at European archaeological sites.
• Is the island nation of Kiribati seeing early warning signs of global warming? A look at some inhabitants’ views includes the perspective of former Kiribati president Teburoro Tito, who “believes in the biblical account of Noah’s ark” and suggests that global warming is less of a threat than it is made out to be.