“Creationists will have a field day with this one,” writes one
blogger on the news. Bingo. Actually, that’s a bit of an
exaggeration, even if simply because scientists have known about
the appendix’s function for some time now. Creationists—whose
research was not clouded by evolutionary presuppositions—had an
easier time documenting the appendix’s importance, such as in a
paper from 1988. News to Note reported on determinations of the
appendix’s function as well, in October 2007 and June 2008. (We
touched on the topic two weeks ago when reporting on discoveries
of the spleen’s functions.) The latest news is of further
research by some of the same scientists who had previously cast
light on the appendix’s function. In a twist, those scientists
have used evolution-based approaches to show that the appendix
isn’t a vestigial by-product of evolution. Specifically, the
scientists examined existing beliefs about evolutionary
relationships to determine that the appendix “has been around
for at least 80 million years