Bible geology: a tale of two Missouri caves

Last year, I took my kids to see Onondaga Cave located in Leasburg, Missouri. The state of Missouri runs this site.  The park rangers present visitors with detailed descriptions regarding the geology of the cave.  These descriptions often include time frames that run in the hundreds of millions of years.  Here’s a sample, from the Onondaga Cave website:

About a billion years ago, the Ozarks were a hotbed of volcanic activity centered about 45 miles to the southeast, in Iron and Reynolds counties. The igneous remains of this activity formed the surface of granites, rhyolites, felsites and basalts that are exposed there. These rocks are the basement layer here, about 1,000 to 1,500 feet below the cave. This basement layer is not flat but tilted. About 600 million years ago, this volcanic activity calmed and the region cooled, condensing great amounts of water vapor, which formed shallow (about 200 foot deep) seas. These seas were the birthplace of the Eminence and Gasconade formations of dolomite, chert, sandstone and shale in which Onondaga Cave is formed. It is believed that the Ozarks were uplifted above sea level (or the seas retreated, take your pick) four times before they fell for the last time about 280 million years ago. One final major uplift (of dry land) took place 50 million to 7 million years ago.

For those who enjoy exploring large case, Onondaga is a terrific place to visit. It is a place to see a spectacular natural wonder and to learn …

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Entomopathogenic fungi: a gift from God the sadist?

Is it beautiful to see spores sneak into an ant's trachea, then creep into the ant's brain where they take over, driving the ant to insanity, causing the ant to crawl to the top of a blade of grass, where the fungi destroys the remainder of the ant's brain, then sprouts fruiting bodies…

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Phobic Innumeracy

In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing. The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical…

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No apology for sociobiology

Despite the rhyming title, this is a serious topic. But not always a controversial topic . . . Sociobiology is an un-controversial field of study as long as we stick to studying animals other than human animals. Here's how John Alcock describes sociobiology in The Triumph of Sociobiology (2001): "Genetic differences help explain why people develop differences in at least some aspects of their behavior." (Page 53). Here's another way to put it: "Sociobiologists want to know the evolved function or purpose of whatever aspect of social behavior they are studying." Alcock is a prolific and highly respected biologist who teaches at the Arizona State University. His textbook, Animal Behavior, is currently on its eighth edition. I used his textbook when I took a class on animal behavior a few years ago. It is a terrific resource, highly organized and thoroughly researched. [More . . .]

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Frans de Waal responds to conservatives who try to shove bonobos back into the closet

World-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal is tired of reading the nonsense written by conservatives who are working hard to do the same thing to bonobos that they have been doing to climate change: change the facts to fit the politics. Why are conservatives embarrassed by the bonobo?  Is it, perhaps, because…

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