Günter Bechly

Günter Bechly is a German paleo-entomologist who specializes in the fossil history and systematics of insects (esp. dragonflies), the most diverse group of animals. He served as curator for amber and fossil insects in the department of paleontology at the State Museum of Natural History (SMNS) in Stuttgart, Germany. He is also a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Dr. Bechly earned his Ph.D. in geosciences from Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen, Germany.

Archives

Fossil Friday: Hemichordate Body Plan and Lifecycle Goes Back to the Cambrian Explosion

_{Günter Bechly
April 12, 2024}

This Fossil Friday we will discuss the abrupt origin of yet another animal phylum during the famous Cambrian Explosion.

Fossil Friday: New Study Confirms “Feathered Dinosaurs” Were Secondarily Flightless Birds

_{Günter Bechly
April 5, 2024}

Darwinists may have to say goodbye to some cherished assumed transitional forms and the evolutionary just-so stories built upon them.

Fossil Friday: New Dating of Pleistocene Fossils Rewrites the Story of Human Evolution

_{Günter Bechly
March 29, 2024}

The most recent data on human fossils and their dating do not really support an evolutionary narrative from ape-like ancestors to modern humans.

Fossil Friday: Stone Huts, Homo habilis, and Gutsick Gibbon

_{Günter Bechly
March 22, 2024}

A PhD student of biological anthropology named Erika runs one of the more popular anti-creationist YouTube channels under her pseudonym Gutsick Gibbon.

Fossil Friday: Hagfish and Lampreys Overturn Scenarios of Vertebrate Phylogeny and Evolution

_{Günter Bechly
March 15, 2024}

Their fossil record as well as their incongruent pattern of anatomical similarities is better explained by intelligent design.

Fossil Friday: Direct Fossil Ancestors of Living Species?

_{Günter Bechly
March 8, 2024}

Willi Hennig, the founder of phylogenetic systematics (cladistics), recognized that finding and demonstrating direct ancestors would be a very hard task.

Fossil Friday: Piltdown Lizard Was Too Good to Check

_{Günter Bechly
March 1, 2024}

It was considered to be “one of the oldest fossil reptiles and one of the very few skeletal specimens with evidence of soft tissue preservation.”

Fossil Friday: The Big Bang of Tertiary Birds and a Phylogenetic Mess

_{Günter Bechly
February 23, 2024}

There was an abrupt origin, a burst of biological creativity, which is best explained by an infusion of new information from an intelligent agent.

Fossil Friday: The Vindhyan Controversy and Debunking Alleged Ediacaran and Cambrian Fossils

_{Günter Bechly
February 16, 2024}

The fancy speculations about the evolution of multicellular life and early animals turned out to be just smoke and mirrors.

Fossil Friday: Chronospecies, a Sinking Ship

_{Günter Bechly
February 9, 2024}

The concept of chronospecies in paleontology was introduced by George (1956) for the naming of successive species in a single evolving lineage.

How the Caterpillar Got Its Legs…Or Not

_{Günter Bechly
February 7, 2024}

Almost 400 years after its discovery, the process of metamorphosis is still a thorny conundrum for evolutionary biologists. But there are other aspects of the humble caterpillar that elude a satisfactory Darwinian explanation, like the origin of caterpillar prolegs. On this ID The Future, paleo-entemologist Dr. Gunter Bechly returns to share insights with us from another article in his popular Fossil Friday series.

Fossil Friday: New Evidence for the Human Nature of Neanderthals

_{Günter Bechly
February 2, 2024}

What is at stake is not just some esoteric species problem in the ivory tower, but the very question of human nature and human uniqueness.

Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origin of Insectivore Mammals

_{Günter Bechly
January 26, 2024}

We can conclude that Eulipotyphla appeared abruptly in the Paleocene about 66-61.7 million years ago.

Fossil Friday: New Research Questions the Human Nature of Homo habilis

_{Günter Bechly
January 19, 2024}

A consensus is scientifically worthless when it is driven by worldview bias and peer pressure rather than by an unbiased inference to the best explanation.

Fossil Friday: Update on Cambrian Bryozoans

_{Günter Bechly
January 12, 2024}

The authors emphasize that “the origin of the bryozoans remains a mystery” but explicitly confirm the reality of the Cambrian Explosion.

Fossil Friday: New Evidence Against Dinosaur Ancestry of Birds

_{Günter Bechly
January 5, 2024}

Few hypotheses in evolutionary biology have become as popular among lay people as the postulated ancestry of birds from bipedal dinosaurs.

No. 3 Story of 2023: Textbook Wisdom on Origin of Multicellular Life Turns Out to Be Wrong

_{Günter Bechly
December 30, 2023}

Incidentally, a few days ago I received a message from my paleobiologist colleague Dr. Ken Towe, a retired senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution.

Fossil Friday: Fossil Bird Tracks Expand the Temporal Paradox

_{Günter Bechly
December 29, 2023}

The origin of birds involves a severe problem for Darwinists, which paleo-ornithologist Alan Feduccia has called a temporal paradox.

Fossil Friday: Is the Four-Legged Snake Tetrapodophis a Missing Link or Not?

_{Günter Bechly
December 22, 2023}

There should have existed transitional forms, which exhibit at least some typical features of basal snake anatomy.

Fossil Friday: Scansoriopterygidae, Bizarre Bird-Like Dinosaurs, Illustrate Darwinist Trickery

_{Günter Bechly
December 15, 2023}

Common descent is assumed and the evidence interpreted accordingly, rather than common descent being deduced from the evidence.