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livia McConnell is only eight years old, but she's already helped introduce a bill to the legislature of her home state of South Carolina, which will name the woolly mammoth as the official state fossil if it's passed.
However, an unexpected challenge to her proposal has arisen in the form of two Republican state senators, Sen. Kevin Bryant and Sen. Mike Fair, who want to amend her bill to make it clear that God created the fossils by adding text from the Bible's book of Genesis.
"I think it's very important that we acknowledge the Creator when we're acknowledging some of his wonderful creations. I don't have a problem acknowledging the Wooly Mammoth as a state fossil," Bryant said, according to Fox Carolina.
Lt. Governor Glenn McConnell, who is not related to Olivia, ruled Bryan's proposed amendment out of order because it introduced a new subject. Bryant proceeded to revise his amendment to describe the Columbian Mammoth as created on the Sixth Day with the beasts of the field," according to The Daily Beast.
Sen. Mike Fair jumped into the fray on the side of Bryant, placing an objection on the bill. Fair has previously gone on record as saying To teach that natural selection is the answer to origins is wrong," and has blocked South Carolina from adopting newer education standards on the teaching of evolution.
According to The State, McConnell said that she thinks that South Carolina should have a state fossil because:
1. One of the first discoveries of a vertebrae fossil in North America was on an S.C. plantation when slaves dug up wooly mammoth teeth from a swamp in 1725.
2. All but seven states have an official state fossil.
3. Fossils tell us about our past.
Not only does that change the way scientists thought Earth was like soon after it formed 4.5 billion years ago, but gives them reason to theorize that life itself is more plentiful throughout the universe, because it seemed to start up so quickly. Researchers examined tiny grains of the mineral zircon from Australia’s Jack Hills and chemically dated them to when the Earth was barely 400 million years old. Inside one of the about 160 grains they found what they call a “chemo-fossil” or a certain mix of carbon isotopes, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Think of it as “the gooey remains of biotic life or anything more complicated,” said Mark Harrison, a coauthor of the study and a geochemistry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. There are different types of carbon, with different weights. This carbon residue had a higher percentage of the lighter type of carbon, which is what scientists usually find in remnants of life, the same as if your finger decayed, Harrison said. There are rare cases where this particular carbon signature would not be from life, but they are exceedingly unusual and only in certain situations.
Harrison theorizes that the carbon is from a colony of tiny organisms of some unknown type. Life existing 300 million years earlier than science thought is the most logical and simplest explanation, but “this is not smoking gun evidence,” Harrison said. The common thinking of early volcanic Earth is that it was too molten and there was not enough liquid water for life to take hold that early, but there is no physical evidence for this theory, he said. What the zircon shows is “the Earth by 4.1, 4.2 billion years ago was basically behaving like it is today,” he said.
Fossils suggest start of life earlier than thought - Taipei Times
300 million years earlier for life to pop up than previously thought...
Fossils suggest start of life earlier than thought
Wed, Oct 21, 2015 - Scientists have found fossil-like hints that some kind of life existed on Earth 4.1 billion years ago — when the planet was a mere volcanic toddler. That is 300 million years earlier for life to pop up than previously thought.
Not only does that change the way scientists thought Earth was like soon after it formed 4.5 billion years ago, but gives them reason to theorize that life itself is more plentiful throughout the universe, because it seemed to start up so quickly. Researchers examined tiny grains of the mineral zircon from Australia’s Jack Hills and chemically dated them to when the Earth was barely 400 million years old. Inside one of the about 160 grains they found what they call a “chemo-fossil” or a certain mix of carbon isotopes, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Think of it as “the gooey remains of biotic life or anything more complicated,” said Mark Harrison, a coauthor of the study and a geochemistry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. There are different types of carbon, with different weights. This carbon residue had a higher percentage of the lighter type of carbon, which is what scientists usually find in remnants of life, the same as if your finger decayed, Harrison said. There are rare cases where this particular carbon signature would not be from life, but they are exceedingly unusual and only in certain situations.
Harrison theorizes that the carbon is from a colony of tiny organisms of some unknown type. Life existing 300 million years earlier than science thought is the most logical and simplest explanation, but “this is not smoking gun evidence,” Harrison said. The common thinking of early volcanic Earth is that it was too molten and there was not enough liquid water for life to take hold that early, but there is no physical evidence for this theory, he said. What the zircon shows is “the Earth by 4.1, 4.2 billion years ago was basically behaving like it is today,” he said.
Fossils suggest start of life earlier than thought - Taipei Times
