News to Note, October 27, 2012

1. Biological Cloaking of Silver Fish

Biological cloaking design of silver fish offers biomimetic possibilities.

2. Primordial Primate Similar to Squirrel

Primordial primate said to have scampered about the trees in ancient Montana.

3. Preservation of Cellular Proteins in Dinosaur Fossils

Evidence demonstrates preservation of cellular proteins in dinosaur fossils.

4. Unpredecented Global Heat Left Footprints in Teeth

Unprecedented global heat left its footprints in tiny teeth.

5. Editorial Exhorts Veterinarians and Physicians to Embrace Evolution

Editorial exhorts veterinarians and physicians to embrace evolution.

And Don’t Miss . . .

• An online database is being unveiled to make the evolutionary tree of life easily accessible to all. The interactive site, called OneZoom, shows the taxonomic relationships between various species. In an introductory video, developer James Rosindell says, “The tree of life tells us the story of evolution and of how all life is related to a common ancestor. The trunk of the tree represents the first life on earth. And as time passed and species diversified the trunk split into a number of branches.”1 He adds, “After decades of effort, scientists are now probably only a year away from having the first draft of the complete tree of life, and it would be a great shame if having built it, we had no way to visualise it.” Rather than simply cataloging earth’s marvelous biodiversity, the web site is devoted to demonstrating the supposed evolutionary relationships in the history of life. An article introducing the new website says, “We can’t see the trees [the evolutionary tree of life] for the data.”2 But the descriptions of organisms—“the data”—does not demonstrate ancestral evolutionary relationships. Classification systems group similar organisms into categories, whereas the evolutionary interpretation of those categories superimposes an unobservable, unverifiable history on them.