Dinosaur Evolution Comes Into Focus 52
nickynicky9doors writes: "National Geographic has an article celebrating the work of dinosaur hunter Paul Sereno and his colleagues. New Thinking On Dino Evolution provides an overview of the recent discoveries and the conclusions and questions that follow the discoveries. One of the lines of inquiry asks how the breakup of the SuperContenient Pangaea impacted the evolution of the dinosaurs."
Re:Easily explained (Score:3, Funny)
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Teacher: The Earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago. There were no such things as dinosaurs.
Me: Then where do all these bones come from?
Teacher: God put them there.
Me: Why? To tempt people into not believing in the bible? Isn't that Satan's job?
Teacher: Ummm....
Me: Cause if God is all loving, and wants us all in heaven, why would he tempt people into not believing in his word? And if he's all knowing, doesn't he already know who would believe in dinosaurs and who wouldn't?
Teacher:
Some Other Kid: Maybe the 6 days are really like 6 billion years, and all the dinosaurs and stuff happened during like the 3rd and 4th day, which was really billions of years?
Teacher: No, that's not how it is at all. Let's move onto something else...
(Still waiting for Jerry Fallwell or Pat Robertson to blame dinosaurs on gays and minorities...)
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Maybe the maistream creationists would balk at this notion, but certainly not me! It would be terribly egotistical to say that we are the only sentient beings God has created (assuming you believe in a creation). If God has all power, then He certainly can create more than one life supporting earth! May I ask why you think this is the case?
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It's narrowmindedness like this that makes the world a dark and dreary place. However it is god to know that there are those who still search for answers without blindly accepting the majority view.
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Baby cockroaches, ringworms and fruit flies? How the heck do you find and catch baby fruit flies? What did he keep them in? Did he have an inventory? How did he know he got everything? Hey, why did water dwelling creatures get a pass? I mean a flood doesn't affect them much. Why didn't the massive tidal forces cause Mount Ararat to be submerged?
So many questions.... I hope you can help.
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2) And still he almost completely rules the world. Or so the preachers say.
3) The Tower of Babel barely explains the different languages (and their similarities and differences), but it does not explain different cultures. Oh and about that genetic drift - you mean mankind changed? As in evolved?
4) The Ark was tiny compared to modern ships.
That would be (ca.) 450 feet (150 m) long, 75' (25 m) wide, and 45' (15 m) high.5)Genesis 7;14 They [Noah's family], and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
Sorry dude, the book says he had all the birds on board. (Isn't the internet wonderful? God must have created it.) Let's ignore that the Bible doesn't mention all the different animals that exist - how did they get where they are now? Did Noah drop them off? Why doesn't that get mentioned either?
Re:Easily explained (Score:2)
Of course mankind has changed. I'm not a carbon copy of my parents. Nobody argues that species don't change and evolve. The argument is whether or not they change into other species. The argument is over whether or not an aligator, a canary, AIDS and people all have a common ancestor.
Secondly, about different cultures... what needs to be explained? It is common sense and observable fact that cultures change. It doesn't need an explaination in the Bible, and it doesn't have anything to do with the evolution (or not) of species.
-- 4) The Ark was tiny compared to modern ships.
Modern cruise ships and supertankers are in the neighborhood of 1000 feet (~300 m) long. Modern aircraft carriers are on the order of 600 feet long. So 450 feet long is smaller than the world's largest modern ships, but hardly tiny.
"every bird of every sort" is referring to the fact that every type of bird was represented, not that every bird on the face of the earth was in the boat. Read verse 3 and you'll see that. Why ignore the fact that the Bible doesn't mention all the different animals that exist? It never attempts to list them all, what's the point? Noah was instructed to take seven pairs of each type of clean animals, 2 pairs of each type of unclean animals, and 7 pairs of each type of bird. And why do you question how animals got to where they are now? Don't you think they walked, swam or flew?
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How about Satan/Lucifer? Revelation talks about a war in heaven... Just because God won does not mean it was a landslide.
And if all humans are decendants of Adam and Eve, why are they so different
Let's see there is the curse of Cain (a skin of blackness) and the tower of babel to give us different languages and of course thousands of years in various parts of the earth to give us culture. Sounds pretty easy to me.
how did he fill all kinds of animal existing (and those who once existed but have since been exterminated by man) into that little ark? And why is there no mention of say kangooroos in Noahs tale or the dozens of distinct finches Darwin described?
Good questions! The Ark was big by defenition so I don't think it is too far fetched to believe that he fit all the animals on the ark. Keep in mind he only needed to worry about air breathing animals (insects, mammals, reptiles, etc.) It probably took a long time, but I recall something in Genesis that mentioned God's help in getting all the little crawlies to cooperate. As for Darwin's finches, who is to say that they didn't get on the ark with Noah? There is no proof either way and you are left with faith (for or against) which is the basis for any religion anyway.
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2) What about plants? They don't like being submerged several thousand feet below water, even if it isn't salt water. Which brings us to fish - there are salt water fish and sweet water fish.
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To quote Gen 6:19-20 "19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive."
So 'every living thing' would encompass just about every animal/plant/fish etc...
Which of Noah's daughters-in-law was black?
Gen 10:6-20 details the lineage of Ham. We see that his descendants populated what is now Egypt, the Middle East and Africa. While there is no biblical account of Ham or any of his descendants receiving a curse like Cain, it seems likely that they indeed did.
What about Asians?
Again, there is no biblical account of every race or creed of mankind. Suffice it to say that skin color, eye shape and any other physical attribute of men can be said to be influenced by environment. The science behind that is pretty evidencial (especially for skin color.) However, we don't know for sure since there were no records kept and there is not a person alive today that can act a witness to the changes. Who knows, but the childred and grand children of Noah had all the genetic diversity to support the entire spectra of human races.
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The science behind that is pretty evidencial (especially for skin color.) However, we don't know for sure since there were no records kept and there is not a person alive today that can act a witness to the changes.
Well, science is based on "evidencial" evidence, so I'm not sure what you are saying here. However, in response to your comment about no records being kept, I point you towards your friendly neighborhood anthropologist or archaeologist; either will be able to give you some rather good unwritten records of the progress of human culture, and how almost all of it predates anything in the Bible.
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I have spoken with a few anthropologists on this subject two years ago. One fellow from the University of Arizona was very complementary of the bible and its record of human history. As for predating things in the bible, where do you get this idea?
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"
Can't you feel the lurve? Thanks for showing your racist colors, you bigoted little worm.
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Now kindly FOAD.
Actually... (Score:1)
elementary for my first single formally
educated years...
However, the only change to you story would be a
simple s/God/SATAN/g
Thank God^H^H^Hgoodness my parents yanked me out after the first frightful nun-slapping incident...
Time is an Illusion... (Score:1, Interesting)
Ever think that you simply don't understand how time works? Einstein proved it's relative; I feel certain it's not even linear. I think you'd make a lot more sense claiming the earth was created yesterday and everything in the past is just memories. When you say the earth was created 6,000 years ago, you're playing by science's rules, which prove the earth to be a lot older than that (but of course can't prove it wasn't created. In fact, I think the Big Bang theory is the most creationist postulaion ever to come from science, because you have to ask: who lit the fuse?).
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> If you throw out the ludicrous *theory* of evolution...
Here's betting that you don't know what the word "theory" means to a scientist.
> This Creator also "fast-forwarded" the geologic timescale to make it appear as if the universe was many years older.
No, I had a beer with him last week, and he told me that the geology was correct and it was the Bible that was faked. He had originally toyed with the idea of faking the geology just to have a joke at scientists' expense, but decided faking the book would make for a much better prank.
Questions: (Score:2, Interesting)
I beleive that geographic isolation (punctuated equilibrium) differentiated species after a long (the longer the better) period of mutation. Are there any biology/ecology people out there who can correct me?
The article repeatedly discusses the amazing radiation, yet they wonder how it occurred as they ask about how the supercontinent broke up?
"In a 1999 report in the journal Science, Sereno said: 'I think there was some kind of a tenuous land bridge [linking Europe and Africa] for several million years' after initial breakup of Pangaea. 'That land mass prevented the evolution, in isolation, of a unique southern dinosaur fauna.'"
Is it absolutely crazt to think that with the same pressures, and starting from the same genetic base, the two continents would develop similar dinosaurs?
Does the article explain this that badly (I assume) or are these scientists just dumb?
Re:Questions: (Score:1)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but punctuated equilibrium is an aspect of evolution that posits that evolution occurs in accelerated spurts rather than continually and gradually. Geographic isolation would seem to tend to slow evolution rather than encourage it, as evolution depends on competition for its impetus.
Is it absolutely crazt to think that with the same pressures, and starting from the same genetic base, the two continents would develop similar dinosaurs?
Er yes, it is pretty crazy, unless you're being very loose with your definition of similar. The two continents would likely have very different climates, which would affect the developing dinosaurs directly, as well as providing completely different vegetation and even bacteria surrounding the two different groups of dinosaurs.
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The problem I have with this is that the bacteria and vegetation are the same, all coming from the bacteria and vegetation on pangaea. Also, the climate didn't differe very much, because of the slow rate of movement of the continents. The exact timing (couple dozen million years) of when there was a land bridge shouldn't matter that much.
Anyways, I don't think the article explains it well, because it makes very little sense.
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So each subcontinent of Pangaea wouldn't be "the same." The different climates would already have created some differentiation.
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This is all completely hypothetical, but let's say you have Pangea, starting to break apart. At this time they have pretty much the same animals wandering around. Now, when they finally do become seperated and start drifting apart, one of the new continents begins to see average temperatures a few degrees lower than on the others. These few degrees perhaps has a negative effect on the incubation periods of several key predators eggs, resulting in a mini-mass extinction of certain predators on the "colder" new land mass.
With a bunch of predators gone, there is suddenly a gap, which predators who were previously lower on the food chain can exploit. Or perhaps prey start dominating the landscape for a while, growing tremendously in size. The process just continues to domino effect from there on.
The point being that there are so many factors that could send evolution branching in so many different ways, it's very unlikely that dinosaurs would have continued to evolve in much the same way on seperated landmasses. Hence the idea that the breakup took a very long time, and the possibilities of "land bridges".
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I beleive that geographic isolation (punctuated equilibrium) differentiated species after a long (the longer the better) period of mutation. Are there any biology/ecology people out there who can correct me?
I believe that traditional evolutionary theories point toward the idea that isolated populations develop more rapidly. The example of Drawin's finches, usualy widely in high school textbooks, illustrates (among other things) that the isolated populations evolved more rapidly than their continental ancestors/contemporaries.
The selection pressures from living on small islands with limited food resources, a single (helpful) trait among an isolated finch population would most likely to be expressed. If these finches with a new trait were still on the mainland, the presence of so many other "unaltered" finches would eventaully "dilute" that genetic variation, because there is no selection pressure on the mainland for that trait, individuals with and without the modification survive.
However, on an island, there is a natural selection pressure for said trait to have an advantage over "unaltered" finches. These finches would not survive, leaving the new birds to multiply.
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Any evolution that occurs would be on such a large timescale that it seems as though a landbridge for a couple million years wouldn't matter.
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As much as I revel in correcting others, (When being corrected I tend toward covering my ears and yelling: "I can't hear you!"), the material requires something more than my amateur handling. Try the following: Jeffrey H. Schwartz "Sudden origins: fossils, genes, and the emergence of species" New York Wiley 1999
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this sounds too much like an anime title.