Skeptophilia

Although you don't tend to hear much about it, the Ordovician Period was a very peculiar time in Earth's history. From beginning (4...

I'm currently reading Michael Novacek's fascinating book Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs , which is about the expeditions led by Nov...

One of the more puzzling aspects of evolutionary theory is the phenomenon of peripheral isolates . This term refers to widely-separated popu...

The difficulty with paleontology is its inherent limitations. There are, of course, things it's very good at.  In the hands of a skilled...

The environmentalists tell us "extinction is forever," and that certainly seems unarguable.  Once a species is lost, evolution wil...

I recently read paleontologist Riley Black's lovely book When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance...

"If humans came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" If there is one phrase that makes me want to throw a chair across the ...

I've written here before about unusual paleontological discoveries -- illustrations of the fact that Darwin's lovely phrase "ma...