New Living Fossil Discovered in India

pyr0 writes "A new species of frog has been discovered in Southern India. This species dates back 130 million years ago, when portions of the supercontinent Gondwana broke away, and was long thought to have been extinct. Its closest relatives are known as 'Sooglossids' and are only found 3000km away on Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. The cool thing about this species? It's purple, and has what looks like a snout!"

Comments

Utter nonsense

[keesh]

Clearly, God put it there to test our faith.

Re:Utter nonsense

[Tyreth]

Huh? To test your faith in evolution - seeing as this animal remained near unchanged for 130 million years? I don't understand.

Purple

[BrookHarty]

Wow, when they said a little purple frog with a tiny head and snout, they where NOT kidding. Funny looking little frog.

Now I'm wondering what kind of Croak it makes.

And they tested its DNA, and said it was a different breed of frogs, amazing.

Re:Purple

[BrookHarty]

Hence, Barneys ancestors revealed!

Re:Purple

[ForestGrump]

budweiser

Moley

[jkcity]

it kinda looks like a purple mole, I want one as a pet.

I Feal Froggy

[lostindenver]

I Feal Froggy, If i lick it will i see purple frogs?

Hmmmm

[floydman]

New Living Fossil Discovered in India!!

Praying Doesn't Help!!!

Very intersting /. day today.... i cant wait to know what else is comming up.

Re: Hmmmm

[Black Parrot]

New Living Fossil Discovered in India!!

Praying Doesn't Help!!!

Very intersting /. day today.... i cant wait to know what else is comming up.

Arnold elected governor of California!

Windows vulnerabilities fixed faster!

Rush does dope!

US taxpayers pay $1.75 to support each gallon of gasoline sold in Iraq!

It seems we've all been teleported to Bizarro World. I want to see the results of a study about praying to purple frogs...

Another Link

[pyr0]

I came across another link since submitting the story. This one actually gives the name of this new species: Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis

The real question....

[crapulent]

But does it run linux?

Does...

[Trikenstein]

licking it give you hella buzz?

good thing they didn't find it in the U.S.

[BigChigger]

else they would have declared it was deformed because of pollution and started sueing the crap out of everybody.

BC

Colors

[Strange Ranger]

If a 130 million year old species of frog is so darn purple... wonder what other colors were around back then. Maybe a purple dinosaur isn't so far off. We always assume they were greenish. Hmmmm..

It would be interesting if they could find a 'purple' gene in that frog, and then look for the same gene elsewhere.. see what else might have been purple.

Re:Colors

[driftingwalrus]

Small problem, most fossils are old enough that there is simply no DNA left to extract and test. Finding DNA in a 2,000 year old body is extraordinarily hard, let alone after millions of years.

Re:Colors

[Cunk]

Maybe it WAS greenish 130 millions years ago and it only "recently" turned purple.

Sentence Structure

[Lafe]

"Researchers say the small-headed critter belongs to a new family of frogs thought to have disappeared millions of years ago."

That sentence cracks me up. It's so new it disappeared millions of years ago! I know what they meant, but still...

Hypno....

[Trikenstein]

Toad

Re:Had to say it....

[Tisephone]

Overlords, buddy.

Purple frogs

[Uplore]

Purple frogs? Sounds like a character from a Dr Suess book to me.

clearly

[geekoid]

its moch frog.

so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

so they're trying to tell me that this frog has been pretty much the same for all these millions of years, and meanwhile the earth has undergone all sorts of climate changes and most other species have radically evolved.

is it just me or do things like this make old-earth, macro-evolution theories harder to swallow? of course, i'm not sure how much an ugly purple thing like that helps out the intelligent-design theorists either. when are people gonna start to admit that we just really don't know much about how we (and that frog) got here.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[justaguy516]

Well, evolution is stochastic, and there is a probability that a species in its original condition will not need to respond to changes in the environment and can still survive. The fact that it occurs so infrequently (so few species of living fossils), helps out the theory. It helps to admit that we don't know, only if that leads to an open mind in looking for the solution. Otherwise, we should just stick with the best theory we have till someone comes up with one that is better. And evolution does have an answer for a lot of evolutionary riddles.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

good point about the rarity of these "living fossils."

though i'm not so sure how i feel about "sticking with the best theory..." i suppose it depends on what you mean by that, but i got pretty fed up with the evolutionary dogma shoved down my throat in the public school system when i was growing up. so many things presented to me were obviously based on the assumptions of philosophical materialism (read: atheism). but worst of all, there was never another theory presented. i think that's poor policy. i'm definitely in favor of keeping the strongest theory in the mix, but not at the exclusion of competing ones.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

well, gosh, you've convinced me. those theories aren't hard to swallow, and macro-evolution and the age of the earth have been scientifically verified.

thank you for that stunning display of wit, logic, and evidence. how humble of you to post such brilliance anonymously!

now, don't hold back anymore! with this information, we could put the whole debate and all of its angles to rest. then we'll all go watch the World Series together in perfect harmony. beers all around! hurrah!

(when i'm sarcastic, you'll know! :)

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Quelain]

There is no competing scientific theory.

If you're talking some religious bullshit, then where is your evidence for it? (There isn't any.)

Talking about 'strongest theory in the mix' is rather dishonest when the 'strength' of your favoured "theory" is nonexistent. Do you even know the definition of the word theory in science?

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Lars Arvestad]

I don't know what the linked-to story says, but the authors of the Nature paper says nothing like that. What they found was the when reconstructing an evolutionary tree based on molecular data, the new species had a lineages distinct from most other frogs and that its closest living relative is found on the Seychelles.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Mr. Slippery]

so they're trying to tell me that this frog has been pretty much the same for all these millions of years, and meanwhile the earth has undergone all sorts of climate changes and most other species have radically evolved. is it just me or do things like this make old-earth, macro-evolution theories harder to swallow?

It's just you, because you don't seem to understand evolution.

First: species don't evolve much. If a group of organisms belong to a species changes a great deal, they're not the same species anymore.

Second: there are many extant species that have changed very little over millions of years, that are either the same species, or a very closely related species, to organisms that lived millions of years ago. Roaches, horseshoe crabs, ginkgo trees, the famous coelacanth, wacky microorganisms like the Archaea...they found very workable solutions to the problem of staying alive in their environments. Not much need to change.

Third: while there have been large climate changes, they affect where different types of climates are found - not what types of climate exist. There have been swamps, deserts, oceans, polar regions, and jungles for millions of years - a critter that found a way to live in a swamp a million years ago has a pretty good shot a being able to live in a swap today.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Copid]

Your comment about "the whole debate" is very telling. The fact is, there is no real debate among biologists. There's a lot of debate among lay people in the US, but that's no surprise. If quantum mechanics were as politically polarizing as evolution, we'd all be laughing at the half of the population of uneducated non-physicists who "don't believe" in quantum mechanics. For some reason, biology seems easy enough to everybody that even people with no more than a high school education feel qualified to laugh at scientists who devote years to studying this stuff. The fact is, the question was settled a long time ago among the experts. Their task now is not to prove that the theory makes sense (they have), but to convince people who don't want to spend the time actually studying the theories.

For some reason, this has proved a lot more difficult than it has with other things people don't understand (relativity, quantum mechanics, most of astronomy, geology, etc.). As far as I can tell, the only people who get as much flak from a bunch of know-nothings who never studied their subject beyond the high school level are economists. Let me give you and everybody else out here a hint: If you disagree with an entire branch of science, and you're only taken one or two classes in that field, you probably don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you have some uncommon insight that nobody else has had, but I doubt it.

If you want evidence, rather than waiting for it to fall in your lap on Slashdot, try http://www.talkorigins.org. Use the search engine to search for answers to your questions. These people typically actually have a background in the stuff they write about, and can correct common misconceptions like the idea that a species not changing much is evidence against common descent. They'll even answer questions in the talk.origins newsgroup.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Copid]

Before people jump on me for mentioning economists, I'd like to clarify: Economists aren't natural scientists like the other people I mentioned. However, economists do deal with empirical data and come to conclusions that those unfamiliar with their field often disagree with--something very important when forming public policy, be it educational standards or economic policy.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[pyr0]

AMEN!! Just to add a point here, the same thing does happen to geology. Evolutionary theory is strongly linked to geology and the concept of the age of the Earth. Without the old Earth, evolution simply doesn't work. Numerous extremely carefully thought out and executed studies have shown over and over and over that the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old, yet you have common religious zealots refuting this, either through naming special cases where it doesn't always work (that can almost always be explained by a normal process that the creationists ignore), or by refuting the technique itself. It's sad that there are still people around that think like this.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

ever heard of Michael Behe? how about William Dembski? look 'em up before you start blabbing on about there being no scientific contention with traditional evolutionary theory. ...but then again, you seem like you've made up your mind and can't take any opposition. so never mind about doing the research, go live in your happy little world and don't bother questioning the reality you've been taught.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

From what you've posted to this story, I'd be willing to wager that you slept through whatever your school tried to teach you about evolution. ok. how much? "Ah, there's that new creationist party line. When the evidence doesn't support your views, deny the validity of supporting views with evidence!" there's nothing new about philosophy and debates over the sum and substance of reality. in fact, those debates have been around a hellufa lot longer than the traditional evolutionary theories. as far as creationists using such arguments against evolution goes, they've done it from the start! if you'd pull your head out of your ass you'd see that the creationists finally started to get the hint this last decade and began to suplement those philosophical arguments for ...scientific ones! after all, it's become pretty evident that most diehard evolutionists don't give a rat's ass about philosophy and can't think outside the box (the material world). might as well try and speak their language... What competing [theories] were those then? Raelism? Last Thursdayism? and if you can't think of a major category of theories that compete with materialistic evolution, then clearly we don't share a common definition of "compete" and there's no use in arguing the point.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

why is it that everyone assumes that anyone who questions traditional evolutionary theory is either A. an idiot or B. a religious zealot or C. both?

i've spent more than my fair share of time on talkorigins.org and trueorigins.org and a bazillion other evolution, young-earth creation, old-earth creation, intelligent design, and whatnot websites. i've read plenty of books, been in plenty of debates, watched plenty of debates, and so on and so forth.

if don't you think there aren't both very smart people and very strong arguments on both sides, then frankly, you are either A. an idiot or B. ignorant or C. both!

and to save you the trouble of guessing, i am not an idiot. so according to popular (mis)conceptions, i am clearly a religious zealot to be so knowledgeable and yet still not willing to accept that evolution is a proven theory/fact/whatever-the-hell-term-you-like!

i suggest you folks take your 1920's stereotypes, unfounded assumptions, and miscellaneous pigeonholes and shove 'em.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

actually, wait a minute. i take that back...

i *am* an idiot!

"All mankind is stupid, devoid of knowledge..."
-Jeremiah 51:17a (NASB)

heh. make of that whatever you will! but know that philosophers and scientists can be friends. you just can't be afraid to open your mind. trust me, it won't hurt ...much. :)

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

> > is it just me or do things like this make > > old-earth, macro-evolution theories harder > > to swallow?" > > It's just you. drat. that's not good news. thanks for the heads up though! > (Though I can't help but pause in passing to > wonder why you suppose a frog many millions of > years old makes it harder to believe in an old > earth...)" i wonder why you wonder... don't pause long though, i doubt it's worth your time. > > of course, i'm not sure how much an ugly > > purple thing like that helps out the > > intelligent-design theorists either." > > Nothing's going to help those losers, except the > clueless fundamentalists who buy their books. ah, the insult. ever the friend of Anonymous Cowards and fools! "break out the ad hominems, boys! there's a dissenter in the ranks!" > > when are people gonna start to admit that > > we just really don't know much about how we > > (and that frog) got here." > > Never considered looking at evidence to figure > that kind of thing out? but that sounds like it'd take time and effort! it's so much easier to just say, "you're wrong, you ugly, bed-wetting moron!" of course, that wouldn't be nice.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

sigh. don't you just love it when you've got something totally witty and obnoxious to say but end up blowing the delivery and looking like a complete idiot?

i sure do!

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Quelain]

Yes, I have heard of them, but a couple of cranks who write books doesn't make a scientific theory.

What research have they done? Where can I find their papers? How many biologists support their position?

Yes, I have made up my mind. 150 years of finding evidence and doing research is a fairly serious questioning of reality IMO. The fact is that this mountain of evidence and research points to evolution.

*You* are kidding yourself if you think you're being open minded by accepting the creationist dogma. You wouldn't happen to be a fundamentalist Christian would you? If so, why aren't you questioning the "reality" (fairy tale) *they* have been shoving down your throat?

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

so you've heard those names, that's nice. can you tell me what they do for a living? have you read anything by them (either their books or papers)? do you typically write off people that challenge your beliefs as cranks when you know next to nothing about them?

oh, and congrats on the 150 years of successful research. you must be tired after all that. and even if i misunderstood and other people did all of that, your study and grasp of all that material is also worthy of congratulations!

seriously, don't throw authority arguments at me. i grew up with a bossy older sister. i don't take to authorities easily. stand on their shoulders if you like, but don't expect me to think you're any taller for it.

i don't accept anyone's dogma. never have. never will. i may agree with various people on various things, but not without weighing them out for myself. does that mean i'm never wrong? hell no. like anyone, i make mistakes all the time. but at least they're my mistakes.

if you'd use that thing on your shoulders more carefully, you might realize that being open minded has essentially nothing to do with what a person accepts as true or false. it is being willing to question what is put before you and seriously consider alternative possibilities.

oh, and i also don't take labels willingly. "ooh are you one of 'them'? *they* are such @#$! you have no credibility if you agree with anything *they* say..." sheesh, get a clue! that's the kinda shit that causes wars, hate crimes, and genocide.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[young-earth]

Indeed it is far from the only such species found. Consider the coelacanth, known for a time as the "lungfish". This blighter is still used as an index fossil for 70-140 million years old. Yet you can go catch one if you're good at really deep fishing off the coast of Africa.

Ummm .... yep that's right, it's still an index fossil. Find a rock with coelacanth bones in it, and you'll have "proven" that the rock is 70-140 million years old. Even if your neighbor is chowing down on a fresh-fried identical specimen.

Let's see your evidence for abiogenesis. Are you going to cite Miller-Urey????

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Bowling Moses]

I've read articles by Behe and Dembski and was not favorably impressed. Behe and Dembski are not taken seriously by the scientific community for that matter either. For example, read Nature's review of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" (Nature 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228, available pay-only from them, but freely available here). Another review that is available online is from the National Center for Science Education--the premier science education body in the USA. Naturally, both it and Nature (and, well, science in general) are firmly in the evolutionists' camp. You've probably heard it before, but why not give talkorigins a try? They have their own pages on Behe and Dembski as well.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Quelain]

Yes, I have read some of what they are passing off as science, and I can tell why they are wrong. You are just assuming that I know nothing about them or their views.

Yes, of course I was referring to the peer reviewed work done by thousands of scientists since Darwin published the Origin of Species.

This is not an argument from authority, I am not saying Darwin or Gould said such and such which agrees with my position. I'm saying that there is a mountain of evidence supporting evolution, and no evidence at all to support the ideas of Dembski and co. If you have some evidence which supports their position, you had better get on the phone to them real quick, because they have come up with nothing so far. They will be thrilled to hear from you.

There is the danger that you can be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

If someone can come up with an explanation which explains all the evidence better that the ToE, then I'm all for it. That's having an open mind.

Believing in something the face of contrary evidence is gullibility, not open-mindedness.

To get back to my original statement, can you tell me where I can find an alternative theory to evolution, which is well supported by the evidence collected by thousands of biologists, botanists, geologists, paleontologists and so on?

I enquired about your religious persuasion only because it seems that it is *only* fundamentalist religions that have a problem with evolution. I only asked because you are accusing me of unquestioning belief. How's that thing about motes and beams go again?

If you were honestly questioning evolution, and not just trying to hype up the scientific popularity of your creationsist viewpoint, I'd be happy to direct you to some critiques of Dembski and Behe's work.Why aren't you questioning what the creationists are telling you?

Re: so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Black Parrot]

> Let's see your evidence for abiogenesis.

We know that the universe was once inhospitable to biological life, and we know that at least one corner of it now teems with biological life.

Ergo, life had a non-biological beginning at some point.

Notice that even creationists believe this: the only point in dispute is the mechanism.

> Are you going to cite Miller-Urey????

No, U-M is simply a demonstration that complex biological molecules can arise from simpler precursors. Since then we've even discovered that amino acids arise in deep space.

No one claims to know how abiogenesis happened, but there are some plausible ideas out there. A recent one (which I have only skimmed) can be found here.

And, as we must apparently remind you an infinite number of times, evolution and abiogenesis are separate topics. Evolution would happen even if your god created the original life forms, if he happened to use imperfect replicators in his design. (And since existing life forms do use imperfect replicators, you should be able to work out the implications on your own.)

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Copid]

I don't want to probe too deeply into what appears to be a sensitive area for you, but the bottom line is this: If you think that the fact that there are species on Earth that haven't changed in a long time somehow presents a problem for evolutionary theory, you're clearly not as knowledgable about the topic as you're leading us to believe. There is obviously a gap in your understanding somewhere. Here is where I think you've gone wrong:

i've read plenty of books, been in plenty of debates, watched plenty of debates, and so on and so forth.

If you're reading the standard popular press type of books on evolution, you may be getting the impression that there's a lot more contention about the subject than there really is. The problem is that the people who can't get their work published in mainstream journals tend to prefer to write books and work with a more easily impressed audience. Hence the surprising ratio of pro-evolution to andi-evolution texts at Barnes and Noble. The same holds true for th Internet. I assure you that a quick look through journals that deal with biology will present you with a very different ratio.

Finally, live debates are about the worst place to look for good science. Lots of good scientists are terrible debaters and vice versa. Written format debates tend to be a little bit better, but only if they're refereed somehow (a rarity, although the talk.origins newsgroup appears to be making some progress in that area).

Perhaps this is just my 1920's stereotyping talking, but my guess is that you've never taken a college-level biology course, and if you have, it was no more than an intro class. A couple of semesters in real, major-track biology courses will teach you far more than reading evolution editorials online or popularized versions of papers that were rejected or never submitted to real scientific journals.

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

"I don't want to probe too deeply into what appears to be a sensitive area for you"

sensitive? no. excitable? yes. :)

"...you're clearly not as knowledgable about the topic as you're leading us to believe."

hmm. i think it'd be more accurate to say i'm clearly not as knowledgeable about the implications of such a discovery as i'd like to believe.

your point about books and internet versus biology journals is very interesting. definitely something that could be worth thinking about and looking into. though i must wonder just why it is anti-evolutionists (and related) types can't often (ever?) get published in those journals. no one is unbiased. objective editors are likely as much a myth as objective journalists.

as for the debates, i'm inclined to agree, though there is certainly something to be said for the ability to communicate well.

and yes, you've guessed quite well, i've not taken college-level biology. i was a comp sci major. indeed, i'd be a fool to claim i was "studied" in the natural sciences. if you haven't noticed from the tenor and topic of my responses, i'm not interested in debating the scientific details. i'm sure to be in over my head on those. my interests even in high school always lend themselves far more to philosophy and its cohorts. indeed, it is my lifelong interests therein that have driven my skepticism of evolution. well, that and the dogmatic way it was taught to me in high school. anytime i sense opposition voices being oppressed i get antsy. if nothing else, i think the evolutionists who fight to keep alternative teachings out of schools do a disservice to their cause. if they have truth, why be afraid to have it questioned?

anyway, thanks for the solid, thoughtful response. definitely an improvement on the "evolution is a fact, you're an idiot if you question it" usual fare. :)

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Copid]

hmm. i think it'd be more accurate to say i'm clearly not as knowledgeable about the implications of such a discovery as i'd like to believe.

Perhaps, but the root of that problem seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the evoutionary process. The idea that all species must evolve as if it's some law of physics is simply false. Populations that are not subject to selective pressures that favor changes will not change (much) over time. Some species of shark are classic examples of this. The general design of the classic "shark" shape has been the same for many millions of years. There are a number of interesting variations on it, but the general shape we see in the better known species is pretty darned solid. Why should selective pressures favor any changes at all when the current design works so well?

your point about books and internet versus biology journals is very interesting. definitely something that could be worth thinking about and looking into.

As a solid case, you referenced Dr. Michael Behe. He is a biochemist who has published his work. He is also a popular author who has published a number of works criticizing the theory evolution. For kicks, try to find any of his arguments on irrideducible complexity published in any refereed journals. You'll find that his published works outside the popular press have nothing to do with his anti-evolution stance. Dr. Behe has not produced a shred of new information worth publishing in that area. What he has done is taken the old information and put out his own analysis to a more credulous audience. It's a very different world when you have to justify every sentence to a bunch of folks who know as much as you do and whose job it is to find any possible weakness in your work.

though i must wonder just why it is anti-evolutionists (and related) types can't often (ever?) get published in those journals. no one is unbiased. objective editors are likely as much a myth as objective journalists.

There is a lively discussion on this going on on talk.origins right now. There have been similar debates in the past. By and large, the anti-evolution crowd doesn't submit anti-evolution work for publication. There aren't a lot of known cases where it has been submitted and rejected. People of the anti-evolution bent often do get published, though (see Dr. Behe)--just not their claims against evolution. Now here's where I start to get a bit talky...

The idea of bias in the scientific community is brought up all the time. Nothing wins you kook points faster than claiming a vast scientific conspiracy to keep you down. Of course, everybody has their biases, but science thrives on new ideas. You don't win Nobel Prizes for rehashing old ideas for a pat on the back. You're more likely to win one by tearing down old ideas and replacing them with new ones. The anti-evolution crowd has had 150 years to pull this off to no avail. Surely not every journal is that biased.

History is full of examples of people with new theories getting laughed at. Anti-evolution advocates love to bring this up when they're faced with overwhelming support for evolution. What they forget is that almost every one of those stories ends with the scientific establishment coming to its senses, correcting its mistake, and the theory changing. Those stories never end with, "And so he began publishing books for the uneducated masses, started a grassroots movement among people who hadn't studied the subject, and got it taught in public schools without being reviewed by the scientific community." Try to find an example of that one. It can't be done, but that's what's happening with so called "intelligent design" theory and other nonsense. Going around the goalie and the goal is not the same as scoring a goal. Skirting the scientifc dialogue does not make you a winner in this debate.

and yes, you've guessed quite well, i've not taken college-level biology. i was a comp sci

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

woah. you've got a lot of free time on your hands! wanna share some with me? :)

but i'll harp on a few points...

first, widespread bias != vast conspiracy. one is inevitable and the other is improbable. when you equate anti-evolutionist claims of bias in the scientific community with conspiracy, you misrepresent them. it's a illogical, inflammatory tactic, and one i've heard plenty of on both sides.

still, you've piqued my interest about the journal publishing subject even further with the statement that anti-evolutionists don't submit work on that topic. fascinating, if true!

my "harder to swallow" comment was not an accusation of trickery, but a claim of non-intuitiveness that came from me not using my brain well (as i've already admitted, so give it up already.)

as for dogmatic teaching of evolution in high schools, i speak largely of the fact that the debate (popular, not elite, though it may be) was stifled, and arrogantly so. further, in later years, i discovered that a number of examples and illustrations ("icons" as Jonathan Wells says) used to teach me were misleading or outright false. where was your peer review on those? i don't care how right you might be, when a teacher and textbooks teach like that, human (or at least my) instinct is to be skeptical of the subject. it's basic psychology.

other points:
i never said anything about "equal time." the dominant theories definitely deserve the most attention.

don't fool yourself. most evolutionists have there own ideologies and agendas. just like me and you. you're pretending to be unbiased again.

radioactive decay rates and constancy of the speed of light do not negate philo-theological questions on the nature and origin of the universe. see mature-creation or "apparent age" theories for intriguing ideas (which i'll admit, i tend to favor) on that. remember, philosophy and friends (ontology, epistomology, theology, etc.) necessarily underly and trump science.

by far the most complained about "dogmatic assumption" of evolutionists is--in my experience--philosophical materialism.

you continually portray anti-evolutionists as those uneducated in the subject (among other over-broad or unsubstantiated characterizations) that's going back to the stereotypes. i may not be well-educated therein, but i have friends who are and still see plenty of room for debate. your chances of convincing me otherwise in this forum are not good. though you are free to try, be aware that debating credentials and qualifications (authority) is often fruitless. if possible, stick to debating issues and ideas, not people.

you mark Behe as an anti-evolutionist. i believe this is only partly true. in my understanding, he is anti-abiogenesis, and holds to old-earth, aided-evolution.

ok, i really need to get to work. if you've got some more good feedback for me, i'd love to hear it, but i'm not sure i can spend more time responding.

if nothing else, thanks for turning me on to the issue of journal publications. :)

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[Copid]

woah. you've got a lot of free time on your hands! wanna share some with me? :)

If only it were so. There are some things I regard as important, though. Attacks on good science on the basis of limited knowledge are one of the things I consider important, if for no other reason than they tend to muddy the water for people who may not know much about the subject at hand. Stuff like this perpetuates the myth that science has "agreed to disagree" on this subject when the reality is, consensus was reached long ago. Even though we're well off topic, I'm not averse to using Slashdot as a message board on random stuff. Burn karma, burn! ;-)

first, widespread bias != vast conspiracy. one is inevitable and the other is improbable. when you equate anti-evolutionist claims of bias in the scientific community with conspiracy, you misrepresent them. it's a illogical, inflammatory tactic, and one i've heard plenty of on both sides.

I suggest that you look into this more deeply. The major players I've seen in this game seem to prefer claiming that they don't bother submitting for publication because they anticipate widespread bias. What is illogical and inflammatory is blaming bias in a community of reviewers who usually go out of their way to be fair to opposing ideas. Bias may explain certain slants in the number of articles published in the past century, but it hardly explains the complete dearth of such articles for over a century. What is being claimed is nothing short of conspiracy proportions. People who credulously accept the claims of widespread bias as an explanation rather than asking questions like, "How many articles have you submitted? To whom did you submit them? What, exactly, was the reply?" don't help the cause at all. When you're rejected for publication, you get substantive responses back. Where are they? How did the biased reviewers hide their bias? Surely if the bias were as obvious as it would have to be for a slant of this magnitude, some would be apparent in the rejection letters?

I agree that every person has biases and those biases color everything he or she does, including review submissions to scholarly journals. However, that's why submissions go to several reviewers. That's why every effort is made to make the process transparent. It is largely the case that the people who complain the loudest about bias and distortion in scholarly journals are the people who have spent the least time attempting to get published or working as a reviewer. No process is perfect, but to say that the process is so fatally flawed that no serious alternative theories have been published for the past hundred years or more is appealing to conspiracy level behavior. Rather than choose to believe that the system that works so well for every other aspect of academia is that flawed, I tend to believe that if you can't get anything of significance published in a century or more, your ideas likely don't amount to a hill of beans.

still, you've piqued my interest about the journal publishing subject even further with the statement that anti-evolutionists don't submit work on that topic. fascinating, if true!

I strongly recommend popping over to talk.origins and joining that discussion (be sure to lurk for a while). There are several people who act as reviewers for major journals and quite a few whose livelihoods depend on getting published. The discussion has been very enlightening to lurkers like me. Better yet, email your favorite anti-evolution scientist and ask for his or her record on publication. What articles have been submitted in and out of that field? How many have been published? What were the responses, specifically? You may be very surprised at the responses.

my "harder to swallow" comment was not an accusation of trickery, but a claim of non-intuitiveness that came from me not using my brain well (as i've already admitted, so give it up already.)

You seem to wa

Re:so the frog's not evolving much, eh?

[nadabu14]

"You can't go criticizing a theory without fully understanding what you're saying and expect not to be called on it."

uh... i *was* called on it. repeatedly. even by you. it was the repetition that irked me.

"....Miller-Urey or peppered moths. If you're hearing that those examples are useless, you're not hearing the whole story"

i've heard this defense before. i'm not convinced. they just need to use better examples or at least acknowledge those are just "possibilities" and "teaching illustrations." of course, things like Haeckel's (sp?) drawings have got to go entirely. i saw those in high school.

"touchy-feely 'intelligent design' camp among others, but they all appeal to things outside the realm of science"

touchy-feely? uh. ok. anyway, here we start to come to the heart of the issue...

"Science is necessarily materialistic. This is, of course, at the expense of supernatural possibilities. However, science simply falls apart when you attempt to use it to test theories that are not materialistic. Intelligent design "theory" fails on this point."

and here we hit it smack on the nose. many modern scientists seem to believe that the assumption of materialism is necessary to science. without it, they say, the results are meaningless or can be interpreted to mean anything. materialism provides them with a uniformity and consistency from which to operate.

what fascinates me is that it used to be faith in an unchanging God who established and maintains order in the universe that provide assurance of uniformity and consistency for many scientists. to them, science was not necessarily materialistic, but rather, it was merely *focused* upon the material world.

given such a foundation, i (and intelligent design proponents) see no problem with deriving conclusions *from* the material world that pointed to something beyond it.

and how i wish i had more time for this diversion, to go into stuff like information theory, the nature of intelligence, agency and determinism, explanations for rationality and awareness in a material universe, and so much more. sigh. fun stuff to wrestle with. (and a bit more up my ally :)

basically, my point is that i don't believe philosophical materialism is the only valid foundation for useful and meaningful science.

i'm also thoroughly unconvinced that we are unable to logically and/or scientifically identify signs of intelligent behavior/design with confidence.

however, judging by the content and length of your responses so far, i don't anticipate that we can reach consensus on that in a time frame available to me. so that will have to wait for another day.

adieu.

living fossils are scary...

[0x12d3]

Just in time for Halloween. "Night of the living fossils"

who found who?

[bobba22]

If this frog has seen the continents split, dinosaurs come and go, the rise of the mammals and the evolution of mankind, are we really so arrogant to think that *we* have discovered *it*? I think that the frogs have deemed it time to contact their childish co-planetiods and impart their age-old wisdom to us. It is clear they are intellectually our superior as they have finally given up their game of hide and seek the clear victors. I find it a disgrace that my fellow /.ers are wanting them as pets and generally ridiculing them. We must take them seriously and listen to what they have to say! If they croak, we must follow.

Re:who found who?

[reptilian biotech]

wow. If i had moderator access today, I would mod this up. kudos man.

The abstract and Nature link

[Lars Arvestad]

With so many confused comments in this thread, I think it is appropriate to link to the actual Nature paper. I think this abstract page is readable by everyone, sorry if you need a subscription. In that case, I offer the abstract

About 96% of the more than 4,800 living anuran species belong to the Neobatrachia or advanced frogs. Because of the extremely poor representation of these animals in the Mesozoic fossil record, hypotheses on their early evolution have to rely largely on extant taxa. Here we report the discovery of a burrowing frog from India that is noticeably distinct from known taxa in all anuran families. Phylogenetic analyses of 2.8 kilobases of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA unambiguously designate this frog as the sister taxon of Sooglossidae, a family exclusively occurring on two granitic islands of the Seychelles archipelago. Furthermore, molecular clock analyses uncover the branch leading to both taxa as an ancient split in the crown-group Neobatrachia. Our discovery discloses a lineage that may have been more diverse on Indo-Madagascar in the Cretaceous period, but now only comprises four species on the Seychelles and a sole survivor in India. Because of its very distinct morphology and an inferred origin that is earlier than several neobatrachian families, we recognize this frog as a new family.

Re: frogs? no, I don't think so!

[Black Parrot]

> words "purple" and "seven-centimeter long", when in one sentence, usually mean it should be filtered by the antispam filter.

7cm isn't big enough to be obscene.

30 seconds google

[Bowling Moses]

Wikipedia

talkorigins (one of many)

geology.about.com

Depending on how recent the source and who you talk to, Coelacanth is a name belonging to either a genus or a family, not just one species. There are ~125 species identified from fossils alone, which are used as index fossils; this is not a problem since they are morphologically distinct from each other and the modern coelacanth species.

Abiogenesis has moved on in the 50 years since Miller-Urey. Might I suggest reading a recent article: "On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells," it can be found here, just click journals, then Vol 358, January, then pg 59, freely available in .pdf or .svg format. I'd give the link there directly, but the Royal Society doesn't do that for some reason. Anyway, the article and the references contained therein might get one up to speed. A more tractable account of modern abiogenesis research is available on talkorigins' own website as well.

Re:30 seconds google

[young-earth]

I brought up Miller-Urey because that discredited experiment is still taught so widely that many folks here cite it as proof, since it's what they were taught was proof of evolution. It's nice to talk with someone who is beyond that.

That article at the Royal Society (at least from its abstract, the article is not freely available for a couple of years it looks like) makes the classic error that all of the prebiotic auto-replication theories do. The talkorigins summary is also a very good summary of an amazingly bad theory.

The key point that is never addressed in any papers I'm aware of is that in order to get to an accurately reproducing cell where natural selection could take over and exert an effect on reproduction, the fidelity of reproduction has to exceed any stochastic process by so many orders of magnitude. The fidelity cannot be absolute of course, or no mutations could occur. Yet simple probstat will show you that any non-deterministic reaction or process will tend toward the mean, toward increasing entropy. Until the RNA stage, there is no possible high-fidelity reproduction mechanism. And in the early earth (by current theories) there was not a superabuncdance of O2, hence there was not a strong ozone layer, and there was a lot of hard UV around. That alone would tend to break up any long chain molecules, if the temperature and other reactants didn't get in the way.

Yet the authors of this and other papers blithely talk about natural selection occuring in what amounts to small soap bubbles. How absurd - there is no equal fractionation of the reagents in the bubble when it buds, there is no accurate reproduction involved. Split a soap bubble up and you don't get inherited characteristics in the offspring, you get whatever happens to be around in that part of the bubble. There can no more be natural selection in that process than the easter bunny can be found in a mosque.

It's the height of folly to assume such a process as the papers you cite occurs. Yet to defend evolution, abiogenesis has fallen to this. Sad.

Re:30 seconds google

[Bowling Moses]

" I brought up Miller-Urey because that discredited experiment is still taught so widely that many folks here cite it as proof, since it's what they were taught was proof of evolution. It's nice to talk with someone who is beyond that."

Miller-Urey is in textbooks, but it is not used as "proof" of evolution and never has been. Neither have I ever seen anyone here attempt to use it as "proof" of evolution. The experiment shows that it is possible for a very simple system resembling conditions found on a prebiotic earth to generate relatively complex molecules. This is how it has been treated in all of my old undergrad biology and biochemistry textbooks and I challenge you to find a recent textbook that does treat the Miller-Urey experiment as "proof" of evolution.

"That article at the Royal Society (at least from its abstract, the article is not freely available for a couple of years it looks like)"

I don't think my university has a site license, but I may be wrong. Try this link--it is to a .pdf of the article directly--warning it is fairly large.

"The key point that is never addressed in any papers I'm aware of is that in order to get to an accurately reproducing cell where natural selection could take over and exert an effect on reproduction..."

This is due to a misunderstanding on your part. Natural selection could act on something as simple as an imperfect self-replicating system that is subject to some environmental pressure to provide something for selection. A cell is not explicitly required.

"Yet simple probstat will show you that any non-deterministic reaction or process will tend toward the mean, toward increasing entropy."

Except that physics and chemistry are not random, they are deterministic. If I spark a mix of hydrogen and oxygen, we all know that we'll get water. A good work on self-ordering chemistry that is also topical to the issue of the orgin of life is "The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution" by Stuart A. Kauffman. Second, entropy can of course be overcome by adding additional energy to the system; this is how a freezer works.

"Until the RNA stage, there is no possible high-fidelity reproduction mechanism."

This is not true. Google "Cairns-Smith" or "Kauffman" with "self-replication" or read the talkorigins page I linked in my previous post and some of the references therein.

"And in the early earth (by current theories) there was not a superabuncdance of O2, hence there was not a strong ozone layer, and there was a lot of hard UV around. That alone would tend to break up any long chain molecules, if the temperature and other reactants didn't get in the way."

High levels of molecular oxygen in an atmosphere is thought to be indicative of life, and as such would not be present in any quantity on a prebiotic earth. Geologic evidence supports the notion that the earth started off with a reducing or at least non-oxidizing atmosphere, as the first evidence of an oxidizing atmosphere (such as iron oxide deposits) occur in rock no younger than about 2.5 billion years old. However, ozone is not the only compound that can block UV. For example, water is a good UV blocker, and the abstract of the paper I linked makes it clear that the author's view is that life arose in or around hydothermal vents, which is to say underwater (the first ocean is believed to have condensed ~4.4Gya). From the abstract: "The universal ancestor we infer was not a free-living cell, but rather was confined to the naturally chemiosmotic, FeS compartments within which the synthesis of its constituents occured. The first free-living cells are suggested to have been eubacterial and archaebacterial chemoautotrophs that emerged more than 3.8 Gyr ago from the inorganic confines." Which is to say that the authors vie

Re:30 seconds google

[young-earth]

That second link just gives

The requested document is freely available only to registered users with an online subscription to Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences

So I guess you are somewhere that gets past that.

Miller-Urey is used as proof, it was so taught to me at a high-prestige institution in an advanced (i.e., majors only, past pre-meds) organic chemistry seminar course.

Natural selection as in providing descent with modifications, a key part of progressive evolution, is only going to occur with fidelity in reproduction. Otherwise the traits for success will be lost in succeeding generations.

Indeed physics and chemistry are deterministic - they go where the Gibb's free energy dictate they go. Which is why polypeptides don't spontaneously form. Stochastic processes run toward releasing the most energy. Aside from chlorophyll, where does adding sunlight produce anything but decay? A freezer is an intelligently designed mechanism, of course it can direct heat flow in one direction against the energy and entropy gradients, that is not the point.

I have read far more on the topic than the abstract you mention, it's just typical of the work in the field (probably why you selected that one).

You seem to understand fundamentals of chemistry - work out the equilibrium constant of a moderate sized protein in an aqueous solution, given the energy of peptide bonds for a selection of amino acids. Figure it out to 150 or 200 proteins in the peptide. I could give you the answer but working it out yourself you may learn something significant.

Re:30 seconds google

[Bowling Moses]

Pity you couldn't get that article; it was really a fun read with a truly massive bibliography. If you were taught that the Miller-Urey experiment was proof of evolution, then your organic chemistry teacher was either wrong or you misunderstood. At any rate, this is the only example I have ever heard of. Still, the challenge remains: find me a textbook which claims that Miller-Urey is proof of evolution.

"Indeed physics and chemistry are deterministic - they go where the Gibb's free energy dictate they go. Which is why polypeptides don't spontaneously form."

So if you know this, then why make a comment you know to be false, ie chemistry being non-deterministic? Besides, polypeptides do spontaneously form under certain conditions. There is nothing special about an organism or the enzymes and ribozymes it uses to make this happen. It's all still the same chemistry. On a closely related note, I just found this really neat article by Stuart Kauffman (okay, it's just an editorial blurb in Nature on the actual article, Nature vol 382 pg 525-528 (1996) sadly not available online or I'd link it) on a 32-amino acid polypeptide that can autocatalyse its own synthesis by accelerating the condensation of 15- and 17-amino acid fragments in solution. I wonder what's been found in the six years since that was published?

"Aside from chlorophyll, where does adding sunlight produce anything but decay?"

There is nothing special or unique about chlorophyll. You add light or energy of some kind to a system, you (may) get some change. For light, you may get degradation of a compound if it has a photolabile group, you may get isomerization about a chemical bond, or fluorescence, or a change of phase, or drive some anabolic reaction. Photochemistry's a hopping field of study: just google "light polymerization" for one example that's especially topical. I myself had no idea that there was so much out there, commercial light polymerizers and all!

"I have read far more on the topic than the abstract you mention, it's just typical of the work in the field (probably why you selected that one)."

Yet you've also been trying to use a number of old creationist chestnuts which suggests either the abiogenesis material you've read is badly out of date or is written solely by creationists. Spend an afternoon on the talkorigins abiogenesis pages--what have you got to lose?

"You seem to understand fundamentals of chemistry - work out the equilibrium constant of a moderate sized protein in an aqueous solution, given the energy of peptide bonds for a selection of amino acids. Figure it out to 150 or 200 proteins in the peptide. I could give you the answer but working it out yourself you may learn something significant. "

Well, I would like to think that I haven't wasted the last decade I've spent studying biochemistry and chemistry. But far from informative and speaking of creationist chestnuts, I suspect what you're asking me to do is one of the classics. You want me to sit down and calculate the odds of a peptide forming--a specific length, a specific sequence, from a pool of amino acids, at random. In the abiogenesis link that I provided in my first post in this thread is ample description of why this argument is fallacious, right up at the top under the heading "Problems with the creationists' "it's so improbable" calculations."" You can't miss it--they even talk about the same 32-mer autocatalytic protein that I found just by googling around, and the page links to more examples of similar autocatalytic proteins! Wow. SunY looks really interesting.

Re: 30 seconds google

[Black Parrot]

> 30 seconds google

What makes you think an evolution denier would invest so much as 30 seconds looking for facts that might rattle his comfy beliefs?

If creationists were interested in facts, they wouldn't be creationists.

You should be careful with your definition..

[annisette]

of a donut, after reading your first sentence I thought of a frog with a pointy snout and a hole in the middle, but alas after looking at the photo I see you ment a jelly (er,frog gut)filled donut. It may not seen like a big deal to you but think of the frog, now discovered, cataloged, probably have a number painted on it,s back and won't be able to get away to pee with out spotlights every where and people thinking he/she has a hole in his/her middle. So Mr./Ms CBS staff do not take your responsibility to your viewers/readers lightly, a donut is not just a donut! You have a lot(more) to learn before (you can confidently) entering the relm of /.