News to Note, June 2, 2007

1. Finally Open! Responses to the Creation Museum

Whether you’re a regular visitor to the AiG website or a complete newcomer, chances are (overwhelming chances, we might add!) you’ve heard about the Creation Museum. The Creation Museum is the new Answers in Genesis outreach in northern Kentucky and near Cincinnati—now open seven days a week!

2. Treewalking Orangutans

Although cartoons of an increasingly upright ape—steadily morphing into a craggy troglodyte—are perhaps the most widespread, popular icons of evolution, evolutionists’ theories as to how upright ambulation actually evolved have been largely hypothetical to date.

3. Monkeys: "New" Color Vision

Did the bright colors seen on some monkeys evolve after their ability to see such colors evolved, or before? The traditional belief is that the coloration “arose only after primates evolved the ability to see it,” but Ohio University graduate student André Fernandez sees things differently.

4. Monkey See, Monkey Talk: Ape Communication

An abridged version of this story, which describes ABC NEWS correspondent John Berman’s interactions with apes of the Great Ape Trust, could easily convince the casual reader that apes are as intelligent as humans.

5. BBC NEWS: “Planet hunters spy distant haul”

The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence only merits a brief mention this week. The BBC reported on the 28 new extrasolar planets discovered in the past year, mentioning the prospect of life a mere three times! Meanwhile, a news@nature.com article reports on Villanova University’s Edward Guinan and colleagues, who have proposed that planets orbiting red dwarfs—including one of ten such found—could be hospitable.

Not quite the irrational, “hydro-genesis–fueled” exuberance of several recent weeks. Who knows? Maybe terrestrial intelligence is on the upswing!

6. AP: “Not a snake! Limbless lizard discovered”

We doubt the finding will inspire “lizard-handling,” but Indian zoologist Sushil Kumar Dutta and colleagues of nongovernmental organization Vasundhra and North Orissa University, India, have discovered a limbless seven-inch-long lizard that looks almost identical to a snake. Although the lizard does represent a new species, it is not the first such limbless lizard found.

Surprisingly, this AP release does not term the limb loss as “evolution,” merely stating that “[s]nakes, over millenia, gradually lost their limbs and developed their characteristic forms of locomotion” and citing snakes and lizards as “derived from a common evolutionary ancestor.” Limb loss in both snakes and lizards is a perfect example of an information-removing mutation that, while contributing to fitness, could never result in the upward path of evolution Darwin described.

Further context for limbless lizards and once-limbed snakes may be found at “Does This Evolutionary Claim Have Any Legs?” and “Snakes with Legs? A Preliminary Reply”.