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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Spore!

So I’m not ususally a video game kind of person, but the makers of Sims are releasing a new game on Sunday, the long-awaited Spore. This game is basically a large Evolution simulator, where one starts life as a microbe delivered to a virgin planet via panspermia. By eating and performing vital life processes, [...]

150th Anniversary of the Theory of Evolution

Exactly 150 years ago today Charles Darwin presented his and Alfred Russell Wallace’s papers on the Theory of Evolution to the Linnaean Society. This officially marked the formal establishment of the Theory of Evolution. While Darwin had been working on the problem of natural selection and transformism for many years, Wallace had independently developed similar concepts, particularly [...]