New Member
💻 Oldtimer
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_...7_millionyearold_primate_sheds_light_on_.html
Haha. Evolution ftw.
Haha. Evolution ftw.
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/darwinius_masillae.phpThis is an important new fossil, a 47 million year old primate nicknamed Ida. She's a female juvenile who was probably caught in a toxic gas cloud from a volcanic lake, and her body settled into the soft sediments of the lake, where she was buried undisturbed.
What's so cool about it?
Age. It's 47 million years old. That's interestingly old it puts us deep into the primate family tree.
Preservation. This is an awesome fossil: it's almost perfectly complete, with all the bones in place, preserved in its death posture. There is a halo of darkly stained material around it; this is a remnant of the flesh and fur that rotted in place, and allows us to see a rough outline of the body and make estimates of muscle size. Furthermore, the guts and stomach contents are preserved. Ida's last meal was fruit and leaves, in case you wanted to know.
Life stage. Ida is a young juvenile, estimate to be right on the transition from requiring parental care to independent living. That means she has a mix of baby teeth and adult teeth she's a two-fer, giving us information about both.
Phylogeny. A cladistic analysis of the fossil revealed another interesting point. There are two broad groups of primates: the strepsirrhines, which includes the lemurs and lorises, and the haplorhines, which includes monkeys and apes and us, of course. Ida's anatomy places her in the haplorhines with us, but at the same time she's primitive. This is an animal caught shortly after a major branch point in primate evolutionary history.
She's beautiful and interesting and important, but I do have to take exception to the surprisingly frantic news coverage I'm seeing. She's being called the "missing link in human evolution", which is annoying. The whole "missing link" category is a bit of journalistic trumpery: almost every fossil could be called a link, and it feeds the simplistic notion that there could be a single definitive bridge between ancient and modern species. There isn't: there is the slow shift of whole populations which can branch and diverge. It's also inappropriate to tag this discovery to human evolution. She's 47 million years old; she's also a missing link in chimp evolution, or rhesus monkey evolution. She's got wider significance than just her relationship to our narrow line.
People have been using remarkable hyperbole when discussing Darwinius. She's going to affect paleontology "like an asteroid falling down to earth"; she's the "Mona Lisa" of fossils; she answers all of Darwin's questions about transitional fossils; she's "something that the world has never seen before"; "a revolutionary scientific find that will change everything". Well, OK. I was impressed enough that I immediately made Ida my desktop wallpaper, so I'm not trying to diminish the importance of the find. But let's not forget that there are lots of transitional forms found all the time. She's unique as a representative of a new species, but she isn't at all unique as a representative of the complex history of life on earth.
When Laelaps says, "I have the feeling that this fossil, while spectacular, is being oversold," I think he's being spectacularly understated. Wilkins also knocks down the whole "missing link" label. The hype is bad news, not because Ida is unimportant, but because it detracts from the larger body of the fossil record I doubt that the media will be able to muster as much excitement from whatever new fossil gets published in Nature or Science next week, no matter how significant it may be.
Go ahead and be excited by this find, I know I am. Just remember to be excited tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because this is perfectly normal science, and it will go on.
We meet again, Strawman.Fish do not become people. Lizards do not become dogs.
Humans are primates.Relevant point I was about to make was already covered in that blog. This is not a bridge between mankind and animals, but a bridge between animals and primates.
Nobody is claiming that either of them do nor is that how evolution works.I still beleive that macro evolution does not exist. Fish do not become people. Lizards do not become dogs.
From Wikipedia:Similarly, this creature was a lemure before it was an ape, an acceptable small leap, but I firmly disagree with the idea that macro evolution happens, and I'll need to see something more impressive than primate digits on a lemur to agree with it.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinius_masillae#Type_specimenThe fossil is placed within the primate family tree along with other fossil primates. Ida was originally thought to be a primitive lemur, but comparative tests revealed her to have anthropoid features. This indicates that she is a transitional fossil between primitive primates and the human lineage. Two of the key anatomical features found in lemurs are not present in the fossil: a grooming claw on the foot and a fused row of teeth, a toothcomb, in the bottom jaw. Instead, she has a short face with forward facing eyes like humans as opposed to the long face of a lemur, nails instead of claws, and teeth similar to those of monkeys. The fossil's hands have five fingers and exhibit human-like opposable thumbs. These would have provided a "precision grip" which, for Ida, was useful for climbing and gathering fruit. Ida also had flexible arms and relatively short limbs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiktaalikFind me a fish with legs and lungs, and while your at it, make sure you prove that there was a breeding colony of them and they decided the beach was nicer than the water.
I have a few problems with what you just said.Every time I point out a flaw in Evolution its ignored, like you are trying explain to religous person that his or her god does not exist. Science is like the new roman catholic church, it is their brand of truth, or you are publically humiliated. Look at the debate over man's invlovement in global climate change (don't forget, can't call it global warming because that doesn't happen anymore with three years in a row of declining temps), if you came out against it at any time in the last few years people would throw hissy fits, call you a heretic and burn you on a cross.
I'm not saying that evolution is impossible because god made everything, that has never been my position. I am saying that Natural Selection is true and observable, micro evolution is true and observable, but full on changes of order and family are so impossible on so many levels it boggles my mind that people can accept that it does happen. My problem has always been adapation of the new animal to its old breeding population? How the hell can that happen when its base DNA is so different from the parent creatures due to mutation? Surely most animals would be unviable, need a better example? What happens when you mix a horse with a donkey? Now those two animals are relatively close in habitat, diet, and probably body chemistry. How can you say the same of a fish that suddenly has genes for legs and lungs, and it tries to mate with something from its own clutch of eggs to populate an entirely new race of animal. I just don't see it possible on the common sense level. Sure some things are no brainers. I fully can beleive that dogs are related to wolves, foxes, etc. I have a hard time believing, however, that at some point they were related to mice. Even birds and dinosaurs can stretch this. I just don't see amphibians coming from fish. I believe that when amphibians were completely waterborne, they were chemically and fundimentally different from fish.
and i will ****in' cut anyone who has anything to say to this argument.I have a few problems with what you just said.
1) You imply you are open-minded. The definition of open-minded is being able to hold ideas you don't agree with in your head until sufficient evidence is presented for you to be willing to accept them. MC offered you decent evidence, evidence you claimed you needed to accept evolution, but you seem to have ignored it. You certainly didn't offer a claim of why those intermediate fossils didn't fit your criteria.
2) You don't seem to grasp evolution according to what you posted previously. You keep putting evolution in perspective of animal being born that has different DNA sufficiently enough to be considered a new species. That is not the way it works. Imagine that there are many isolated populations of animals of species X (meaning the different populations are isolated so that they cannot interbred, ie on different land masses). Say one of those populations undergoes microevolution over long periods of time (in reality, they all undergo these changes). The entire population's gene pool starts changing until the point where it is considered a new species Y. This is because they have developed lots of tiny genetic changes that make them unable to breed with species X.
A horse and a donkey can breed, but they produce an infertile offspring. One of the requirements for a species to be considered a species is that is must be able to procreate. Hence, horses and donkeys are of different species.
3) I understand that it is hard to believe that animals as different as birds and dinosaurs are distantly related. I don't see it much relation either. However, this is science we're talking about and sometimes, it can blow your mind. That's what so awesome about it. For example, according to quantum mechanics, electrons can travel through space by tunneling through. Meaning, they can disappear from one spot and appear at another even though there is something blocking their path. That blows my mind, and the evidence is hard to understand. But that doesn't mean the evidence is wrong, just that I don't understand it. You can call it faith, but I call it ignorance.
No one questions quantum mechanics because they can't understand it, so why does everyone question evolution? The only reason that makes sense is that they believe contradicts their spiritual and religious dogma. Natural selection doesn't say how life began, only how life is so diverse. Is it impossible to believe that a god created the first few lifeforms and everything evolved from that? Science offers nothing to contradict that belief.
Thats an easy one. Evolution takes time. Lots of it. Yet the transitional forms are nowhere to be found. What happened to them in the past that they went missing. We find fosils of Specias X and its evolved state specias Y. But evolving on a micro scale would mean that hundreds of years have passed. So where the hell are the transition forms betwean X and Y. Thats the main problem in evolution.No one questions quantum mechanics because they can't understand it, so why does everyone question evolution?
I'm not sure you understand it, but to be honest, I don't understand as well as I feel like I should. That is what I was trying to say in my previous post. You feel like you understand it, but we really don't because neither of us have studied it at all. All the experts that devote their lives to scientific research of evolution seem to agree that evolution is the only reasonable explanation for the diverse life out there. Do you really think they are all in cahoots making lies up to screw with the general public? Or do you think you understand it better than they?Thats an easy one. Evolution takes time. Lots of it. Yet the transitional forms are nowhere to be found. What happened to them in the past that they went missing. We find fosils of Specias X and its evolved state specias Y. But evolving on a micro scale would mean that hundreds of years have passed. So where the hell are the transition forms betwean X and Y. Thats the main problem in evolution.
The only logical explanation i can find is that they dont exist. That some external source caused an evolutionary sprout that changed species X into specias Y within no more than 2 generations. And im sure im not the only person with that asumption. But logic allso dictates that doing such an evolutionary jump is not possible without gene manipulation. Meaning impossible unless some (excuse the expression) aliens decided to fiddle with genes of animals on this planet.
Thats the problem with evolution. No matter how hard we look we just cant seem to find defenite transition forms, when there should be lots of them unless the change happened so rapidly that specias X literally gave birth to species Y.
As you said we dont understand quantum mechanics. But evolutionary changes we understand far more. Thats why the problem i mentioned arises.
I certainly did. Those do not appear to be fish to me, rather they appear to be Amphibians well adapted to water. In addition, I have several other problems listed above. I did not decide to go against main stream science without ammunition. If it is reasonable and observable it is true, if it is supported and reasonable but not observable it is a theory. Theory is not truth, theory is a well thought out and supported hypothesis. When you start subsitituting fact with theory, you are running on faith rather than science.1) You imply you are open-minded. The definition of open-minded is being able to hold ideas you don't agree with in your head until sufficient evidence is presented for you to be willing to accept them. MC offered you decent evidence, evidence you claimed you needed to accept evolution, but you seem to have ignored it. You certainly didn't offer a claim of why those intermediate fossils didn't fit your criteria.
I reject the idea that evolution happens as stated, I assert that you cannot have genentic drift which changes the fundamental makeup of the creature. I have an understanding of evolution and its theories. Because I disagree, does not mean I do not understand. In fact, it is absolutely imperative that I understand the basic arguments FOR evolution to disagree with them, or I would just be talking out of my ass.2) You don't seem to grasp evolution according to what you posted previously. You keep putting evolution in perspective of animal being born that has different DNA sufficiently enough to be considered a new species. That is not the way it works. Imagine that there are many isolated populations of animals of species X (meaning the different populations are isolated so that they cannot interbred, ie on different land masses). Say one of those populations undergoes microevolution over long periods of time (in reality, they all undergo these changes). The entire population's gene pool starts changing until the point where it is considered a new species Y. This is because they have developed lots of tiny genetic changes that make them unable to breed with species X.
If you read my post, you'll see that I actually said I could see how dinosaurs became birds. The bird hipped dinos appear to have all the earmarks of birds. Warm blood, lay eggs, many have been found to have feathers, that all lines up. They took to the air at some point in the distant past, that too is acceptable. I reject the idea that protozoa could become multicelled organisms, that fish can become true amphibians, that fish can become lizards, and that at some point, lizards became mammals. I see long range change within a type of animal as completely possible, I do not see changing of types as possible at all, there are too many holes for that sort of thinking to become plausible, much less definate.3) I understand that it is hard to believe that animals as different as birds and dinosaurs are distantly related. I don't see it much relation either. However, this is science we're talking about and sometimes, it can blow your mind. That's what so awesome about it. For example, according to quantum mechanics, electrons can travel through space by tunneling through. Meaning, they can disappear from one spot and appear at another even though there is something blocking their path. That blows my mind, and the evidence is hard to understand. But that doesn't mean the evidence is wrong, just that I don't understand it. You can call it faith, but I call it ignorance.