Flying reptile egg soon to be a major movie ...

Adult pteranodon fossils from Royal Ontario Museum.
Courtesy  Kenn Chaplin from Toronto

Jonathan Amos reports at BBC News (20 January 2011) on a "Fossil female pterosaur found with preserved egg". Wonderful news, and note this:

The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures for the first time.


Writing in Science magazine, the palaeontologists make some broad statements about differences in pterosaurs, including the observation that only males sported a head-crest.

"Broad" statements indeed, about the head-crest. They couldn't really be sure unless they could sex a flock, and there's a risk of being led off course.

The state of the egg's shell suggests it was well developed and that Mrs T must have been very close to laying it when she died.

CreationSafaris has an interesting comment on the risks of storytelling:

Actually, it was Daddy Darwinopterus taking his turn sitting on the egg. Back then, you see, pterosaurs shared parenting responsibilities. How do we know? We don’t, and neither do the reporters ...

The sad thing is, this find is so good, why mess with empty speculations?

Good reads on ID, especially for Baptists

Al Mohler, President

I see where Southern Seminary has a new .pdf magazine out, on the Darwin vs Design issue. Here's the table of contents:

24 the New Shape of the Debate

R. Albert Mohler Jr.

"The debate over Darwinism rages on, with almost every week bringing a new salvo in the great controversy. The reason for this is simple and straightforward – naturalistic evolution "the great intellectual rival to Christianity in the Western world. It is the creation myth of the secular elites and their intellectual weapon of choice in public debate."

[Glad someone has noticed. That’s always been true. It was true in the days of Thomas Huxley’s (Darwin’s bulldog’s) X-Club through his grandson’s Julian Huxley’s proposed religion of evolution when he was UNESCO director, and - as Darwinist Michael Ruse notes - it’s true today. The difference is that today’s taxpayer funds the Darwin cult and it is forced on students at "secular" schools. The Darwinist counts on Christians to holler for Jesus, and fail to organize to do something of consequence. - d. ]

28 the New Atheism and the Dogma of Darwinism
Read more »

New Wallace biography shows great biologist's journey to appreciating intelligence

Michael Flannery, who thinks that Darwin's co-theorist Alfred Russel Wallace should properly be acknowledged as a patron of the intelligent design community, advises that his biography, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life, is now available:

New Biography Reveals Evolution's Co-Discoverer as Early Intelligent Design Advocate

David Klinghoffer January 21, 2011 12:00 PM | Permalink

In a sparkling, concise and controversial new biography of the co-discoverer of evolutionary theory, historian Michael A. Flannery tells a largely unknown story that has been embarrassing Darwinians in the know for almost a century and a half.

In Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life, published by Discovery Institute Press, Flannery shows how Wallace ultimately came to reject the sufficiency of his own theory of natural selection to explain what he called in the title of his final work and magnum opus, The World of Life (1910).

The title was a double entendre. In considering the evidence from biology, from the world of life, Wallace perceived that the world must also be permeated by life and intelligence not perceptible directly to our senses but whose existence may be inferred from biological phenomena -- human consciousness above all, but also the intricate functioning of the living cell and the hemoglobin molecule, bird wings and feathers, butterfly coloration and insect metamorphosis, and much more.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: