Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / January 2007

Gavin Prideaux and colleagues have published two papers in the last
few weeks describing the faunal composition of cave deposits formed
over hundreds of thousands of years during the Pleistocene in
Australia.  Here's a link to a news story on the latest:

Study provides first genetic evidence of long-lived African presence within Britain
New research has identified the first genetic evidence of Africans having lived amongst "indigenous" British people for centuries. Their descendants, living across the UK today, were unaware of ...

I'm trying to identify a fossil I found in central Kentucky.  It has
white rings encased in rock.  The rings are of all different sizes and
appear tubular (but broken off smoothly).  I've uploaded a bunch of
pictures here:

Science 12 January 2007:
     Vol. 315. no. 5809, pp. 223 - 226
     DOI: 10.1126/science.1133376
Early Upper Paleolithic in Eastern Europe and Implications for the Dispersal of Modern Humans

Science 12 January 2007:
     Vol. 315. no. 5809, pp. 226 - 229
     DOI: 10.1126/science.1136294
Late Pleistocene Human Skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa, and Modern Human Origins

I am reading evolution vs. creation. I came up to an argument about
fossil gaps. Creationists say: "There are Big fossil gaps!"; then
Evolutionists say: "No! The gaps are Small!". OK, but what do they mean
by Big and Small? I mean, *in numbers*. The only page I found on

Over three hundred and fifty years ago Galileo wrote about scaling
properties.  He said that as animals get bigger their bones become much
thicker and their relative muscle strength is reduced.  Because of this
the Africa elephant is the largest animal that can exist today.  While