Slashdot Mirror
Earliest Primate Placed With Dinosaurs
Quirk writes "National Geographic has a piece suggesting the earliest primates were contemporaries of dinosaurs. The article is an endorsement for the evolutionary dating system using molecular-clock studies. The earliest primates according to the current fossil record suggests a common ancestor about 55 million years ago after the great dinosaur die-off. Relying on biology and mathematics the new study suggests a small, nocturnal creature of the tropical forests was the earliest primate. The research viewed fewer differences in genetic codes as an indicator that the more recently two species parted evolutionary company, and, math equations were used to flesh out the tree and to predict when and for how long species may have lived. So, really, a Rachel Welch lookalike in a skimpy fur bikini may have actually fled a rampaging T-Rex."
The mammal-like reptiles had a skull structure very much like modern mammals and lived not only with the dinosaurs, but hundreds of millions of years before them. These creatures are considered the ancestors of all modern mammals and they would probably have had a facial structure similar to modern mammals given that they had a ridge of bone above the eye sockets where the jaw muscles from their jaw --similar in shape and function to a mammalian jaw, as opposed to a reptilian jaw-- connected to the skull.
It sounds like the technique they used was Mitochondrial DNA Concordance
Mitochondrial DNA is different from nuclear DNA. With the help of mathematics, can be used to determine degrees of relatedness between species, and when two species diverged from their common ancestor. My Human Evolution professor explained this technique in class just yesterday. It was used as evidence that Neanderthals contributed no DNA to the Homo Sapien gene pool.
Incidentally, talkorgins.org is a great site for this kinda stuff.
Okay, read this the whole way, please?
Ever read the book of Genesis in the Bible? It's the first one, the one that says God created the animals, all the animals at the same time. Then He created people who lived at the same time as the dinosaurs and the apes and so forth. Why is this so hard for people to accept? Even if they don't want to believe in God, why is it so far-fetched that people and dinosaurs lived together? Think about this: dragons, sea monsters are in legends and literature world-wide. Hmmm...these could be some of the dinosaurs. We still have "dinosaurs" on the earth: duckbilled platypus, komodo dragon, fringed lizards. How could they have been so large? Read on through Genesis and find the Flood, also in worldwide accounts. Prior to the flood, there existed a cloud layer over a tropical environment. Large plants for large plant-eating animals. Flood wipes out all vegetation and nearly all animals and people except for Noah, his family and 2 of every creature of the air, water, land in a boat. Wait, what about those huge animals? No problem, he took baby dinosaurs which took less space and food. The flood caused tremendous shifting of the earth's land mass causing it to divide and separate. Volcanoes erupted. Then after forty days of rain, the water began to seep into the earth causing great erosions resulting in canyons, a very Grand Canyon even. After the flood, the waters receded, the atmosphere cooled rapidly, an ice age could have occured, the world's environment changed. Large animals no longer had large plant food or other large animals to eat. Process of elimination left us with small dinosaurs.
THINK ABOUT IT>