This post is only going to consist of three links, two of them from Pharyngula, and a national geographic article I thought was neat.
PZ Meyers explains "Junk DNA" - A must read. I considered the Pseudogene argument as a kind of argument from ignorance ("I can't think of what it does, so it must be useless"), pardon the fact that experiment has shown some of it really is nonfunctional, but after reading this I now think of the pseudogenes we share with apes as being good evidence we share a common ancestor.
Deep Homology in the Pharyngeal Arches - "Fish have gills to regulate calcium, and we have parathyroid/thyroid glands to regulate calcium. Do they have anything else in common? One minor thing seems to be location: gills are in the fish's 'neck', and the parathyroid glands are located at roughly the same place, in your neck—and that's interestingly coincidental, since there's no particular need for these glands to be in that particular location."
Are Habitable Planets Common? - A really cool NatGeo article discussing a new study that suggests habitable planets are more common than we thought. Keep in mind that we still don't know how many of these planets may develop life (No one knows in full the odds of abiogenesis), and out of the planets that do develop life, only a few, or perhaps only us, have intelligent life.
That is interesting..I told my 6 year old the other day that Lungs are like outside-in Gills....do you suppose that is an OK thing to say?
ReplyDeleteIf only one of those habitable planets was close enough to jump to when the sh*t goes down here.
We need a Transporter, NOW!