Amber-Trapped Spider Web Too Old for Evolution

Amateur fossil hunters looking for dinosaur remains found tiny spider webs trapped inside a piece of ancient amber that was assigned an age of 140 million years—before flowering plants are assumed to have evolved.

Did spiders evolve before the plants that fed their prey? More...

Rapid Rifting Presages Future Events

The Great Rift Valley, harboring a giant fault, extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria to Mozambique in southeast Africa. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia.

These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley. More...

Rapid Rifting in Ethiopia Challenges Evolutionary Model

Volcanic activity in 2005 accompanied the formation of a deep, wide rift in Ethiopia. Studies show that the injection of mantle material that “unzipped” the earth along the fault operated the same way as similar material does in less-accessible undersea rifts.

Scientists knew that rifts were formed in this manner, but the suddenness of this one’s formation astonished them. More...

Image Credit: University of Rochester

A Global Catastrophic Event Wiped Out Ancient Forests

Scientists were investigating organic chemicals trapped in an Italian sedimentary rock formation when they found evidence that an extinct fungus feasted on dead wood during a time when the world’s forests had been catastrophically eradicated.

What could have caused such a universal effect on forests, and why does organic material remain in rocks that are supposedly 251.4 million years old? More...

Paleontologists Target Montana Dinosaur Museum

The Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum boasts Montana’s second-largest set of displayed dinosaur remains. The record is still held by the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. Both are located in Montana near a rich cache of world-famous fossils.

The Glendive Museum stands apart, however, in that it presents dinosaurs as having been drowned and their remains preserved in the massive worldwide flood described in the Bible. This view has prompted reactionary comments from mainstream scientists. More...

Caterpillar Controversy Discloses Deep Evolutionary Disagreement

In August 2009, a retired marine biologist officially challenged the standard Darwinian interpretation of caterpillar origins. His paper was fast-tracked to publication by a “high-placed advocate,” but shortly afterward his ideas were rebutted in the very same journal.

While this back-and-forth exchange has sparked intense criticism over the submission and review processes that were used, the situation also reveals core problems with broad-scale evolution. More...

Shrimp Eye May Inspire New DVD Technology

Mantis shrimps are large, colorful marine creatures that see more colors than humans can. While humans see only three primary colors—blue, red, and green—the eyes of these shrimp detect twelve.

Researchers who investigated the distinct biological machinery inside mantis shrimp eyes have expressed confidence that their ocular mechanism could be used in an advanced generation of digital video players. More...