Holiday Gifts for Science Nerds

It’s time for the ProfessorTreeFrog First-Ever Holiday Gift Guide!!!
1) This line of plush toys is seriously cute and seriously awesome. They’re called “Evolvems“, and are zip-inside-out plushies demonstrating major evolutionary milestones. They have the Coelacanth-to-Ichthyostega transition, as well as Dimetrodon-Cynognathus, Yinlong-Styracosaurus, and Pakicetus-Squalodon!!!

2) Also a line of plush toys, “Foodchain Friends” is for those with [...]

Darwin-Dissing Alert!!!

Today is the day that Ray Comfort, the creationist of hand-banana fame, will be distributing copies of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species at “the top 100 universities nationwide”. The catch? A 54-page introduction equating the theory of evolution with Nazism, and overall bashing the venerable Charles Darwin with lies and [...]

Nutkin’s Last Stand

Most people I know like squirrels, with the possible exception of bird-feeder enthusiasts. Few Americans realize that the playful Grey Squirrel we know and love is a veritable monster overseas. When the British introduced the Eastern Grey Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) from North America to England in the time of Queen Victoria, they had no [...]

Nifty New Fossils Clarify Evolution of Pterosaurs, Hominids

Two new fossil finds published this month have further clarified the outline of the tree of life. I love these kinds of stories!
#1 – Darwinopterus modularis

First, a new transitional pterosaur has provided evidence of the evolutionary connection between the two major groups of Mesozoic flying reptiles: the long-tailed basal ‘rhamphorinchoids’, and the more evolutionarily derived [...]

The Moon, The Peace Prize, and Cupcakes

Today was an eventful day! You may have heard that NASA launched a projectile into the moon, in an attempt to locate large deposits of water. Here are the facts: our national space agency sent a 2.2-ton empty rocket stage crashing into the south pole of the moon at twice the speed of a bullet, [...]

Extreme Ice Survey: Documenting Climate Change

If you ever wanted direct evidence of climate change, watch this video! Photographer James Balog has spent the past few years installing 26 time-lapse cameras on 15 glaciers globally, monitoring the retreat of these massive reservoirs of ice. This body of work most likely represents the most thorough and dramatic photographic examination of glacier [...]

Ask Professor Tree Frog!

Today I got an email from a random interested person, requesting my assistance with a question she’d been mulling over:
Hi there,
My name’s Julie, and I love your blog!  I have a science question I thought you might be able to help me with. I was looking at this tree in my backyard yesterday and noticed [...]

Texas Steps Backward on Science Standards

This week the Texas State Board of Education voted to place a fudgy ’strengths and weaknesses’-like wording into the state science standards, using the language “all sides of scientific evidence”. This sort of wording allows for the introduction of all sorts of textbook wording that supports creationist-inspired tearing down of Evolution. Just look at the way [...]

Candy Corn in SPACE!!!!

When Astronauts are working on the International space station, they are allowed to bring up ‘crew preference’ items. NASA Astronaut Don Pettit used his available space to bring up supplies for cool microgravity science experiments! And - lucky for us – he filmed them all! Below is one of his vidoes that was recently featured on [...]

Texas School Board Hilarity

It seems the Texas State Board of Education is at it again. The state science standards are up for review again, and some of the comments made by boardmembers are quite interesting. Keep in mind 7 out of the 15 board members are BIBLICAL-LITERALIST, YOUNG-EARTH CREATIONISTS:
“If I can’t understand it, it’s not science.” – Rick [...]