Hysterical distinction of historical science

Do you know the difference between “historical” and “observational”/experimental science?  Well, it makes a big difference to creationists!   You see in an effort to discredit the fossil record and all of geology, it is necessary to make a big distinction (link to discussion at National Center for Science Education) that doesn't exist.  The assumption here is that you can only know something if it was directly observed.  Amazing!  Creationist students are being taught to ask science teachers “How do you know?  Were you there?”  Without direct observation, you cannot know something.  Think about how much knowledge that rules out.  Inference is just so much wishful thinking.  This is a made up distinction that is just plain silly.  Creationist also made up the distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” because it has become basically impossible to argue that “microevolution” doesn’t happen.  No such distinction is made in biology, but what do you expect?  These people don’t know science and they don’t want to know science.  It further demonstrates that creationism is actually know-nothing-ism. 

Ages of plants - Rocks versus clocks

During a recent interaction with a student who expressed doubts about evolution, they contended “that the fossil record just doesn’t support evolution; it just doesn’t add up.” Translation: I really don’t know anything at all about the fossil record, but most people won’t argue with me because they don’t know any more than I do. Well, that isn’t the case with the Phactor. Do you have an example of where the fossil record just doesn’t add up? “There are too many gaps,” he answered. Like where? “Well, fossils just suddenly appear in the Cambrian,” he said. Do you know that the fossil record of life, microscopic organisms, actually extends back to well over 3 billion years? No, he didn’t know and was only parroting what he had been told, and as a pre-med student he had avoided all those organismal courses where he might have learned some of this. The issue of potential medical students who don't understand or accept evolution is another matter.
Most undergraduate students really don’t know just how extensive our historical knowledge of life is. Some of the publications can be rather overwhelming for undergrads, and especially for amateurs, but if you want to peek at one to give yourself some idea of what is actually known, and in what detail, the AoB Blog provides a description of some work published just a bit ago along with links to the papers. The particular paper highlighted attempts to compare ages of plant lineages based on the earliest known fossils (the minimum age) with ages estimated by various molecular clocks (rates of change in DNA) , which generally provide an earlier age, e.g., rocks versus clocks. A tremendous amount of scholarship is represented in this 45 page long scientific article. It takes me an entire semester to explain enough about plant diversity for this all to make sense.

Oldest species on Earth is a fern

The antiquity of very few species has been documented, but most paleontologists estimate that species on average only persist for a few million years. Every now and then the fossil record provides direct evidence of a species with great antiquity, and the current record holder for the greatest antiquity of any living species is a fern. Here is the good part, you can grow this historic plant in your garden.

Fossils of Osmunda cinnamomea, cinnamon fern, were found in 70 million year old rocks! This discovery was published about 10 years ago, and no differences could be found between the fossil and the fern as it is today. So cinnamon fern was alive and well in the Late Cretaceous where it undoubtedly got stepped on and eaten by dinosaurs. Think about how many changes this fern has endured, the rise and diversification of both mammals and flowering plants. The cinnamon fern family is even older with a fossil record going back into the Carboniferous documenting a 300 million year history for this group of ferns.

The "cinnamon" in both the scientific and common name refers to the color of the fertile fronds (seen upright in the center of the image) and the spores they shed.

What a great plant to grow in your garden! It doesn't mind some shade, or wet areas, but is quite tolerant in general. And it is a big handsome fern too. How hard can cinnamon fern be to grow if it has managed to survive on its own for so long? First, prepare the soil with some well-composted dinosaur dung,....