Via
Geology Page comes excellent news about an open-access fossil database. If you want something more authoritative and reliable than the usual nonsense and ignorance from AiG, CMI or ICR, then this is well worth checking out:
Have you ever wondered exactly when a certain group of plants or animals first evolved? This week a groundbreaking new resource for scientists will go live, and it is designed to help answer just those kinds of questions. The Fossil Calibration Database, a free, open-access resource that stores carefully vetted fossil data, is the result of years of work from a worldwide team led by Dr. Daniel Ksepka, Curator of Science at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, and Dr. James Parham, Curator at the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center in Orange County, California, funded through the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent).
"Fossils provide the critical age data we need to unlock the timing of major evolutionary events," says Dr. Ksepka. "This new resource will provide the crucial fossil data needed to calibrate 'molecular clocks' which can reveal the ages of plant and animal groups that lack good fossil records. When did groups like songbirds, flowering plants, or sea turtles evolve? What natural events were occurring that may have had an impact? Precisely tuning the molecular clock with fossils is the best way we have to tell evolutionary time."
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| Credit: The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT |
Full article
here.
