Slashdot Mirror
Dinosaur Forces Rethink Of Flight's Evolution
gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that a small dinosaur with a long, slender snout and wing-like limbs is forcing a rethink on bird evolution." From the article: "The 90 million-year-old reptile, called Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, belongs to the same sickle-clawed group of dinosaurs as Velociraptor and feathered dinosaurs from China. It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice. One theory suggests the lineage of dinosaurs the new animal belonged to, the dromaeosaurs, originated in the Cretaceous Period (144 to 65 million years ago). But this discovery suggests their lineage can be traced further back in time, to the Jurassic (206 to 144 million years ago), experts say."
Dinosaurs rumored to have had superior grammar skills when compared to slashdot editors!
Monstar L
"small dinosaur with a long, slender snout and wing-like limbs"
... who said pigs couldn't fly?
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Does this mean that the chicken in the freezer is even older than the package says? ;-)
Geek Hillbilly
And /me already thought they've finally found that dude from Dragonheart 2.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Don't we already have two different types of powered flights? Birds, and Insects?
geek page at KY speaks
This might explain why emus are only found in Australia, which became separated from Gondwana.
End transmission.
Since this comes up in every slashdot story on dinosaurs, no, Jurassic Park is not possible -
Fossilization occurs when carbon atoms are exchanged for silicon. There is a very high energy barrier to this chemical event - so it happens extremely slowly, over millions of years.
Nucleic acids, the building blocks of DNA, spontaneously decay (even in the absence of bacteria or degrading agents). The spontaneous decay of DNA is very slow by most standards - if kept under the proper conditions a DNA molecule can last for millennia. However, this spontaneous decay is a great deal faster than the exchange of carbon and silicon, especially when you consider that the carbon and silicon must exchange over the surface area of the sample (for example a bone several inches thick fossilizes very slowly from the outside in,) while the DNA is decaying continuously in the marrow. So, for a fossil millions of years old, even if you managed to recover something that looked like a nucleic acid base, it would be decayed to the point that the information content is completely gone.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
We just need to accept that they aren't "terrible lizards" but "terror birds," and change the name from dinosaurs to dinoaves. The name has already been changed from 'dragons', so I think we can manage this.
Which came first, the chicken or the dromeaosaur?
And flight has three other instances, if you don't count flying squirrels and gliding snakes: both major kinds of bats, and the monotreme ptero"saurs" - they were warm-blooded furry and laid eggs. That is a monotreme, like the spiny echidna and duck-bill platypus.
birds, bats, insects, spaghetti monsters....yup!
Any ideas what THIS dinosaur is?
You have got to see the size of this thing, possibly hundreds of feet long, and it might have wings as well, or fins and was a sea creature. They dont know how to classify it.
See: http://www.farshores.org/a05verte.htm
It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.
As I recall, powered flight has evolved independantly a number of times.
Insects
Birds
Pterosaurs
Bats
and if I not mistaken, fruit bats evolved flight separately to insect-eating "true" bats. That's at least four if not five times.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
I guess it really is chicken of the sea.
Yeah, but that's just what He wants you to think.
There are some enlightened among us who know the truth, that He created all of it with His Noodly Appendage
make a few throw away prototypes before marketing the real thing. Fooey to all those 'evolutionists' and their 'science', I say!
It's just God messing with our heads.
Didn't you read that bit in the bible? In Genesis? In that footnote 4 or 5 pages in?
"And the Lord brought forth the remains of many, many varied animals and plants, different to what existed on the newly-fashioned earth. And lo, He crafted a fossil record that suggested they did indeed exist far in the past, and planted it so that men of Science, with their need to understand with Hard Facts and Reason and Logic, would have something to explain the Creation with. For the Lord looks after all His children, even those of little Faith."
It's all in there people. You just have to read and interpret it a little bit.
And change a few words here and there. And possibly fragment and rearrage sections. But it's all in there.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
They count as flight de-evolution! (and possibly chickens...)
As previously discussed the statement of 'tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice' is a ridiculous assertion given the different flying mechanisms used by various creatures: including animals which merely glide through to insects which rapidly move their wings to fly. From the article: 'The authors say the discovery Rahonavis and Buitreraptor have long and wing-like forelimbs could imply that flight evolved twice, once in birds and once among this group of Gondwanan dromaeosaurs.' I guess since I have long reasonably thin arms I will be flying one day too? Come on this article had no real substance, only hype and even then it was wrong. This article was mere storytelling not the real science that might be asserted.
Nice try, god boy.
Either that, or evidence that the theory of evolution is falling apart at the seams.
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. Traits that are similar to each other are known to have evolved many times during biological evolution. Like powered flight.
...buritoraptor.
Insects, much much earlier, gliding flight in reptiles, gliding flight in mammals, powered flight in birds, powered flight in reptiles, powered flight in mammals.
..or perhaps just further evidence that ID/creationists couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Precisely. Everyone knows the Flying Spaghetti Monster put these fossils there to test the faith of Pastafarians.
In mammals and reptiles
Passive flight
a. Gliding
b. Parachuting;
Soaring
Powered flight
Bugs
The first animals to take to the air under control.
Carboniferous
The only flying creatures that evolved flapping flight without sacrificing limbs to form the wings.
Parachuting can evolve in animals with rather low metabolic rates.
It does not require the high metabolic rate of birds and bats, which have powered flight.
Late Permian reptile Coelurosauravus
Bones jointed for folding
No gliding lepidosaur is known from the fossil record after the Triassic, so the living lizard Draco which also uses elongated ribs to support an airfoil, must represent yet another independent evolution of gliding
Flamebait? Sheesh.
He provided a link to the back story, it had a smiley...who are you people?
Its not like he farted in church or anything.
This is slashdot, the home of stupid in-jokes, and I expect a better reception.
Oh boy, now you asked for it.
Behold the wrath of many 15 year old, anti-establishment, unlaid parrot-kids going apeshit for the free karma fest you've just initiated.
Dinosaur forces rethink of flight's evolution. So now the dinosaur's are fighting evolution too! And they're even being forceful about it! Now that the fundies have convinced the dinosaurs that evolution is false and to take up arms against us how can we possibly win!
hey! just because it's some crackpot website with nothing but mosquito's and motion blur dos'nt mean they should not get a mention!.
That article is horrible, and the posting is also not so good. Here's a link to the press release from the Field Museum in Chicago, where one of the co-authors of the Nature article works:s _sinovenator.htm
o ct13,0,1942769.story?coll=ny-leadhealthnews-headli nes
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/museum_info/press/pres
And here's a link to a non-subscription site that's carrying the Chicago Tribune's article, which a lot of outlets seem to be carrying because it compares the dinosaur to Sesame Street's Big Bird:
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/chi-0510130118
Both articles said that buitreraptor probably could not fly.
Evolution is nothing but a theory, just as is gravity. Theory means "not true". The real basis for flight is God's divine will expressed through specific cases where He suspends Intelligent Falling. Flight is one of the most clear examples that proves Intelligent Falling, and that the "theory" of gravity is just bunk foisted on us by a bunch of scientists who want to destroy God.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
What you've said implies that it's not impossible, just really, really difficult, and extremely unlikely, but you haven't made the case that it's "not possible".
They've found fossils with traces of blood, skin, flesh and feathers.
In terms of half-life, there's got to be some "dino-dna" around somewhere right now. At least, given a large enough mass of extant dinosaur remains.
The real question is just how much raw dino-mass it will take before any usable DNA can be expected to be found. Perhaps it would take many times more mass than that of every dinosaur that ever lived, but perhaps it's small enough that it's probable that in some museum somewhere is a realistically findable and usable strand of DNA.
I most certainly do not know the answer to that, but I'm not convinced you do either, and I suspect are just promoting as fact something that is more a belief on your part without any serious calculation to back it up.
...is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
So the burning question is... did this thing miss?
The movie also used DNA from insects tapped in amber. ...or is the capital A in Amber because they found bugs in some girl named Amber? ;)
Proponents of evolution sometimes forget that it is a theory and that other explanations are possible. They also dismiss the fact that evolution may only be a part of the big picture. Why could a great designer not design evolution itself?
I don't claim that it is impossible that evolution is the actual explanation for how life came to be. However, scientists do not have all the answers yet. A widely debated example is how the eyeball evolved. Some try to explain that given a million years this is possible. Then you have the eye socket and brain plumbing that go along with sight.
One argument against evolution that I have is you don't see all these half developed fossils being dug up. For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
I haven't seen this mentioned before but here is my theory for interest's sake: the living creatures of this earth may have been "put here" by some higher being or via the design of some higher being. Creatures are given the ability to adapt to their environment which makes perfect sense. If the creatures are expected to live on their own and make Earth their home for thousands or millions of years and the planet changes as it gets older, the ability to adapt makes good sense. In what ways can they adapt? Lots of ways, as programmed in our DNA. Parts of us which are no longer useful become dormant but in the future - let's say we all blow ourselves up and are back to the stone age - those things could come back. For example, hair all over our body. The possibilities are all preprogrammed and not just accidental.
One thing I can say with certainty is to keep an open mind. Evolutionary fanatics clinging to this one theory need to realize how history repeats itself. Our beliefs can and have been turned on their head surprisingly in the past. The world is round.
That guy's dead. And before that he was a paraplegic.
Hmm, I was sure we had debunked this whole "evolution" fad thoroughly already? I mean, why would God make all those creationists say that evolution is wrong if evolution actually is correct? That just wouldn't happen. Wake up, people!
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
When did the dinosaurs develop a military, and what happened the first time they thought about the evolution of flight?
I'll field this one guys...
Proponents of evolution believe in evolution because it is extremely well supported by evidence. Until some other scientific theory (as in testable, falsifiable, non-philosophy) comes around and supplants it, I don't see this changing.
The fossil record is full of bizarre creatures of practically every shape and size.
Transitional fossils happen to be more rare than other fossils. For every creature partway between species, there lived millions of creatures with a relatively stable gene pool. If you visit a junkyard, do you expect to see tons of prototypes mixed in with the regular cars? Note that this analogy is not intended to illustrate the process of evolution (as cars have intelligent designers), but the relative numbers of stable and transitional entities.
As for the eye, it's a perfect example of something that could have evolved. Did you know that the light receptors in the retina are behind the nerves that carry the message to the brain? The hole in the retina through which that nerve bundle passes creates a blind spot in human vision (and the vision of other mammals). Why would an intelligent designer build such a poorly-conceived device? Note that there is a species of cephalopod (cuttlefish I think) that has eyes built with the nerves/photoreceptors reversed, so it's obvious that eyes built this way function.
One massive problem with the theory of birds evolving from dinosaurs is the date for birds keeps going backward and very early feathered reptiles have been found. The solution seems obvious. Birds, Mammals and dinosaurs evolved at roughly the same time. The mammals of the time were more reptile like but so were the birds. If birds came from dinosaurs birds should have evolved at the end of the Cretaceous not at the begining of the Triassic as the earliest bird accestors seem to show up. The similarities appear to be more from a common ancestor and parallel development.
a distant relation of bigfootsuitus, in my erstwhile opinion...
Man, grab a gun and shoot yourself in the face. Please.
He has a point. Superman DIDN'T evolve on this planet. Why's he modded funny?
shut up, you stupid faggot
Over 99% of Biologists agree that evolution is fact.
Secondly, they eye didn't suddenly evolve fully formed. you can read lots of links here if you are inclined: http://www.origins.tv/darwin/eyes.htm
About your comment about all the different limbs, have you ever noticed how all mammals are on the lowest level very similar? We all have 4 limbs, two eyes, etc? This was determined in our evolution over a billion years ago. The limbs mammals have evolved from fins/flippers. The four limb combination came around before we ever stepped on land. It has stayed this way as it is the minimum practical number of limbs you can get by with. Extra limbs waste a lot of energy and is only practical for insects. I heard a (fit) human can outrun any animal if given enough time. They may be faster but only using two legs is a lot more efficient.
About evolutionists being wrong at the end of your comment, the only way we could be wrong is if false evidence was planted by these aliens/god. There are millions of bones and fossils that all point to evolution. Sometimes fossils are found that change the exact timeframe, or introduce new extinct species but they all agree in their age and locations with evolution.
Please supply some references to academic literature that support the statement "transitional fossils happen to be more rare than other fossils". It sounds like you are describing "punctuated equilibrium" which has replaced Darwin's original theory of random mutation and natural selection occurring gradually through geologic time.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
The article has two geographic errors: first, it was found in Rio Negro province, not Neuquén.
Also, the article is misleading when saying "found in Central Argentina" Neuquén and Río Negro are provinces in Patagonia, which is South enough to be considered Southern Argentina.
The only "controversy" on the subject of the evolution of the eye is that which creationists have attempted to manufacture. Do you have specific problems with any of the published research on this subject since 1994? If not, then what is the problem, exactly?
Or perhaps what you mean by "controversy" is that scientists are still researching the specifics of the mechanisms by which the eye might have evolved, and thus we have multiple papers on the subject? If so, I think you are mischaracterizing as "controversy" what scientists would call "discussion".Why on earth would you expect this? Perhaps you just have strange expectations.
And last I checked, the arthropod phylum even today offers a wide variation among its members in number of legs. If you are interested in the evolutionary paths that lead to a specific number of limbs, perhaps the phylogeny of the arthropods would be a good place to start looking?So let us say someone comes in and says that we should, with certainty, keep an open mind about the idea that maybe the earth is flat after all. "Round earth" fanatics clinging to the theory that the earth is sort of roundish need to realize how history repeats itself; our beliefs can and have been turned on their head surprisingly in the past. Yes, of course all available, non-discredited data and theory we have with which to explain the world around us suggests the earth is a slightly lumpy sphere. But maybe we've just fundamentally misunderstood things about the shape of the earth; there could be possibilities we haven't considered yet.
Do we bother to give this person the time of day?
Or do we just say, screw that, we're going to stay with the round earth theory-- as well as the theory of evolution-- because it explains all the data we have, and no competing theories for that data exist.
Saying "maybe your theory is wrong" is effectively meaningless to someone working in the field of science unless you can immediately answer the question "then what is right?". Theories aren't overturned by "I don't like that theory, give me another". They're overturned only by alternate theories. And no, half a post on slashdot about how maybe space is a looping 3-manifold, and the space photos showing a round earth are an elaborate optical illusion, and we can figure out the details of why this is some other time, don't mean you have an alternate theory. If you cannot form your ideas in terms of falsifiable, rigorously defined models with predictive power, you do not have anything scientists can do anything with.
P.S.: If IHBT then my hat goes off to you.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The world is round.
Historical evidence shows that most people have known the world is round for thousands of years. That everyone thought it was 'flat' until Columbus is a combination of promotion by himself and the Spanish royal family who sponsored him and the Roman Catholic church. In fact the route taken by Columbus was not the most obvious one. Its more like the route that would be taken by someone who *knows* there's a large landmass in the north Atlantic and wants to go under it to go around to the far east. Northern Europeans had been sailing the north Atlantic all the way to Canada for hundreds of years by then.
Proponents of evolution sometimes forget that it is a theory and that other explanations are possible. They also dismiss the fact that evolution may only be a part of the big picture. Why could a great designer not design evolution itself?
Ic oudl support this idea. It doesn't deny facts, doesn't try to confuse legitimate science with religious rationalization. God designed evolution and set it on it's course.
I don't claim that it is impossible that evolution is the actual explanation for how life came to be. However, scientists do not have all the answers yet. A widely debated example is how the eyeball evolved. Some try to explain that given a million years this is possible. Then you have the eye socket and brain plumbing that go along with sight.
Mostly tangetial. Not too hard to postulate how it came about. We may never know for sure but it certainyl isn't impossible.
One argument against evolution that I have is you don't see all these half developed fossils being dug up. For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
Now your getting stupid. Evolution doesn't work the way you think. I suggest actualyl learning about it.
I haven't seen this mentioned before but here is my theory for interest's sake: the living creatures of this earth may have been "put here" by some higher being or via the design of some higher being. Creatures are given the ability to adapt to their environment which makes perfect sense. If the creatures are expected to live on their own and make Earth their home for thousands or millions of years and the planet changes as it gets older, the ability to adapt makes good sense. In what ways can they adapt? Lots of ways, as programmed in our DNA. Parts of us which are no longer useful become dormant but in the future - let's say we all blow ourselves up and are back to the stone age - those things could come back. For example, hair all over our body. The possibilities are all preprogrammed and not just accidental.
This is now completely orthoganal to discussing anythign intelligent. Your just a pot head with a stupid idea at this point.
One thing I can say with certainty is to keep an open mind. Evolutionary fanatics clinging to this one theory need to realize how history repeats itself. Our beliefs can and have been turned on their head surprisingly in the past. The world is round.
Shameless rationalization. Evolution will change as new information get acrued. ID/creationism may as well however ID/creationism are meaningless religious ideas that are at best vague, at worse idiotic. Sometimes what is commonly believed is false, however you need soem framework to work with. Evolution is exstremely well supported. As much as gravity, thermo dynamics, ect... So to say it's all bunk and that a politically motivated religious idea is a credible alternative is stupid to put it bluntly.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
One more thing in jurassic park was the fact that, they were only producing (if i may use tht word) male dinosaurs, so that they could have a control over it. However, as is found out, they inherit a property from another species (thing it was some frog), whose blood might have been used as a filler, and which had a property that, reproduction was still possible,and hence the dinosaurs eventually started laying eggs on their own.
It's as simple as this: As soon as a mutation proves to be useful, other mutations, that weren't usable before now might acutally support the usage of the new mutation (for instance with the advent of the eye mutations that color the skin like the ground prove to be a good idea). Soon those strands of livings that have both mutations gain an advantage above the animals which have only have. This might happen several times, and the evolution seems to go faster (which in fact it doesn't, just the multiplication of effects due to the interaction of mutations does).
With that comes an exploration of ecological niches that were barren for the livings before because the new mutation shifts the balances. So you not only get acceleration, you also get radiation. The new strand of livings moves into new niches and diversifies itself to adapt to those niches. After some time the balances are back, and the movement stops, and evolution seems to slow down, mutations do assemble further within the genome of the livings, but none of the mutations is disruptive enough to strike the balance and shift the weights.
The evolution of the eye for instance has happened in a very short time (guesses are about 2 mio years) about 440 mio years ago. You don't find any eyes in fossils older than 445 mio years, but they are abundant in fossils from 435 mio years ago. Because even small improvements in the eye prove to be so successful, you don't find many species yet which have something you could call an 'incomplete eye'. But they are still there, mostly in environments where eyesight is not that important. For instance there are animals which just have light sensitive cells on the skin, some water snails have small pits where those light sensitive cells are concentrated, which allows a sense of direction, some tube worms have deeper pits which allow already for spotting of movement. And then you have all those animals where those pits are closed with a cellular structure, that is transparent and acts as an optical lens: insects, cancers, arachnidae, cuttle fish, cordatae and vertebratae.
Why would a creature without wings 'think' it could survive better with wings and push itselfs to grow some very complex attributes to its body?
The matter is, how flight works a.k.a. avionics is very complex. Ok, the human thought it could fly and now it can. But only by study and intelligence together. Other creatures (or should I say "evolutures"?) didn't had the intelligence nor the chance to study. So how would they know what to grow to be able to fly?
Another thing with fossiles is the carbon dating method. It is based on assumptions. Science based on assumptions is unstable science. Since it is proven that penguins living for ca. 30 years are dated 3500+ years with the same kind of carbon dating they use on fossils. Other examples besides the penguins are being available where it is clear carbon dating is not accurate, least to say not usable enough to use over and over again to proove something.
There are thousands of places on earth wich (for evolutionists) contain mysterious combinations of fossils, footprints of creatures from different era's (for the evolutionists) etc.
There are people out there wich scientificaly can proove evolution much more wrong than evolutionists can proove the bible wrong. Science and the bible do go along with each other folks. Do your homework......
- Unomi -
"That wasn't flying! That was... falling with style!"
Occams Razor
Great point. How come we never see "nature's" mess-ups. No entropy. If we evolved into this stable state then how come there is NO evidence to support it. I mean we should have half-human looking things, not short people(erm hobbits apparently, children in non-scientific literature). We should have one eyed humans, no eyed humans, humans with a more primitive skeletal system(not something that looks likebad posture). Humans with radically different genetic makeup, I mean 5% difference from an ape, and 2% from different humans?! If we evoled from apes then why don't we see this, why aren't there human apes out there just waiting for the chance to evolve? If evolution is the process of improvement over time then why don't we see it! Then if every creature evolved on it's own then why the need for reproduction? How much genetic information is newly created in one generation and passed to the next.
One final point is if we came from the sea, or goo of whatever then how come we cannot breath underwater, 75%+ of the earth is covered in water why can't we survive in it? There are too many unaswered questions in evolution and nobody is willing to ask them because:
(a)Scientists lose their funding(So they'll fight tooth and nail to keep it).
(b)The Government is no longer our god, we realise we have a true God. Therefore anything our government supports that goes against our God we wouldn't stand for(abortion, euthanasia, cloning).
(c)We can justify having a socialist system that treats humans as nothing more than smart animals, hence we are a 'Human Resource'. So again let's clone a man to harvest x, y, x parts.
(d)We couldn't teach children that they are 15 million year old sea scum and must become a useful 'Human Resource'. So those who are "useless feeders" are exterminated (so the sick, old, etc).
Apparently I wasn't quick enough to beat all the "HAHA t3h Xianz r teh dum!!11" posts. So I'll say in response: FUCK OFF. Just because there is vocal minority of complete dumbasses who claim to be of my religion doesn't mean I am one of them. It also means that you cannot lump me in with them. I love the stupidity of people who say "well there are many types of Hindus and many types of Buddhists" and then lash out at Christianity because they unfortunately live in a country with asshats like Pat Robertson whose stated goal is to mobilize the most ideologically fuckheaded conservative "Christians" in the attempt to disenfranchise the rest of the voting population.
So, to recap: just because there are people who do things you don't like does not give you license to do the same things back to them.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
I'm a consumer whore!
It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.
Powered flight evolved many times. Insects got there first. Bats evolved it separately from birds. Humans managed it last of all.
Long thin snout?
Very thin limbs?
Trying to fly?
Any chance its color is purple?
Does anyone know of a graphical chart of the known evolutionary lineage?
I've always wanted a book that linked all the know ancestors of related species together.
Please respond if you know of such a book or website.
Thanks.
Snakes will fly... if you put them on a plane! See!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
How many people in this topic are going to make the points that powered flight has already evolved several times. I see sombody posting "Actually, powered flight evolved a number of times, birds, bats and insects" and then 2 comments down i see somebody else saying the exactly same thing in a way to make out that nobody has brought up this point before and they should win a nobel prize for slashdoting. READ THE COMMENTS BEFORE YOU POST THE MOST OBVIOUS THING POSSIBLE.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
The BBC science team needs some education, first, it is more like B-B.S.. For example, from today they write:
t m
"Shenzhou VI, which has two astronauts on board, is in a low enough orbit to be affected by the Earth's gravitational pull."
Now, I shouldn't need to explain to anyone what is wrong with that statement, but it is so assinine, inane, and crazy that they shouldn't be called "science" writers. This is just a **typical** example of inaccuracy in the publication. The BBC is not what it was, but it is just a bunch of pseudo-scientific charlatans foisting stupidity on many people who will just trust it without thinking.
The full story is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4340102.s
China's spacecraft orbit 'slips'
China's successful space launch
In pictures
China's Shenzhou VI spacecraft is not orbiting exactly as planned and will have to be restored to its original trajectory, state-run media say.
The "orbit maintenance operation" would take place early on Friday morning, said official news agency Xinhua.
Gravity has drawn Shenzhou VI too close to Earth, the agency said.
Shenzhou VI, which has two astronauts on board, is in a low enough orbit to be affected by the Earth's gravitational pull.
It spent a second day in orbit on Thursday, making it China's longest manned space flight.
Xinhua quoted experts as saying the procedure to fix the craft's orbit would be a "normal technical operation".
Nonetheless, the agency said, experts were urging all scientific and technological staff to be "cautious".
One argument against evolution that I have is you don't see all these half developed fossils being dug up. For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
;)
Well, you know what - organisms just don't develop that way. Evolution isn't about randomly growing an extra arm on your side and waiting for it to evolve into something useful. No, evolution always builds on something that is already a functional part of a functional entity. So when the basic tetrapod (four-legged) 'model' evolved, it got fine-tuned during the evolution of the basal tetrapod's descendants: the legs of an elephant are different from those of a newt. Evolution also does not plan anything ahead. It only happens here and now. The direction is decided by current conditions, which create a certain kind of selective pressure.
To finish with a funny fact: some early tetrapods like Ichthyostega actually had seven or eight digits on their feet!
Theories aren't overturned by "I don't like that theory, give me another". They're overturned only by alternate theories.
theories can be overturned in two ways: By theories that describe the (experimental) data better, or by (new) data that contradicts the theory.
Great point. How come we never see "nature's" mess-ups. No entropy. If we evolved into this stable state then how come there is NO evidence to support it. I mean we should have half-human looking things, not short people(erm hobbits apparently, children in non-scientific literature). We should have one eyed humans, no eyed humans, humans with a more primitive skeletal system(not something that looks likebad posture). Humans with radically different genetic makeup, I mean 5% difference from an ape, and 2% from different humans?!
Google "congenital abnormalites". Oh heck, I'll do it for you.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
..we all know it happened since a dinosaur fell down from the tree, but was distracted in the critical moment, and failed to hit the ground.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
The "things" that later became arms/legs evolved long ago, back when our ancestors were still living in the sea.
Want to see more than four arms/legs? Look at a squid. Heck, even spiders have six or eight legs. One "leg"? Now, if something had only one leg, it wouldn't look like a leg, more like a tail of some kind. Like a snake.
The combinations you are looking for are here. Some of them aren't even dead yet, you just fail to see them because you are only looking at things very close to us in evolution.
Do some research is it. There are many examples of proto-eyes as well as many other body parts and as long as all other theories rely on magic i'll stick with the only scientifically tested one thanks.
It has all the classic signs of fakeness (being in distant land, politically difficult surroundings, area largely unknown to Westerners, and primarily discussed on paranormal-specific websites)
Plus the images - both of them - were photoshopped. the backbones in the first are obviously superimposed onto what I suspect is an ancient ruined building, and in the second the different lighting on the bones and the dodgy edges where they've been pasted in are very evident.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
There are still a surprising number of people who are born with genetic defects: no arms, one arm, stumps etc... I guess God still hasn't worked out all the kinks in our genetic code. But wait, I thought God was infalliable!? So much for that!
> It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved
> twice.
At least three times: birds, bats, and bugs.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Knowing that things have branched more than once for a given trait isn't just interesting for paleontologists, either. For example, the group of flat worms that include modern tapeworms has evolved parasitism several different times over its history. Knowing that it didn't just happen once lets us find close living relations of tapeworms that aren't parasitic -- so we can develop treatments for tapeworms much more easily, because a lab doesn't need to deal with test worms that are paired with host animals. Viola, better medicines against tapeworms.
It's intuitive to think flight is somehow special because it places extreme physiological demands on the animals that use it, but it's just like any other evolutionary trait. Life is fertile, time is deep. That dinosaurs would maybe develop the trait twice isn't astonishing at all. They were around for a long time, and they maybe had some basic traits (bones with the potential for bird-like light internal structure or something) that made it more likely.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
why, just because we know so little about bird origins and so much about pterosaurs, do we keep forgetting to mention them as flyers?
sheesh...
you'd think a creature with a 20 foot wingspan wouldn't be forgotten about so easily when talking about flyers.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Viola, better medicines against tapeworms.
Unless you usually greet your conclusions with a stringed instrument, I think the word you were looking for is "voila". If, however, you *do* happen to regularly punctuate your sentences orchestrally, then I duly apologise.
"The mayflies are an order (Ephemeroptera meaning "but for a day wing") of insects that grow up in fresh water, and live very briefly as adults, as little as a few hours but more typically a day or two. About 2,500 species in 23 families are known. Other names for these insects include dayfly, shadfly, fishfly, and Canadian soldier."
From Wikipedia.
- passion
Actually, the Greeks (esp. Pythagoras) figured out the world was round. It was only the Christian-based Europeans who rejected science for faith-based assumptions of how the physical world works (sound familiar?).
Is it just me or did anyone else misread the title with "forces" as a noun and "rethink" as a verb?
For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff.
In high school, a friend of mine was born with only one small, withered arm. Three arms in a person would be difficult from a genetic standpoint, because we develop two arms due to the initial symmetrical division of the body during development. You could have three of lots of organs, but it sure would be difficult to get all the plumbing right and have a surviving person come out of that development.
On the other hand (no pun intended) polydactylism, having one or more extra fingers or toes, is probably the most common abnormality found at birth. The tendency to have offspring with polydactylism is possibly genetic in some instances.
Syndactylism, having no fingers or toes, can also be due to a genetic mutation.
Somewhere in the world, a science teacher just became depressed and doesn't know why.
"The 90 million-year-old reptile, called Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, belongs to the same sickle-clawed group of dinosaurs..."
Whether or not you subscribe to the whole "dinosaurs became birds" theory, there is no question that dinosaurs != reptiles!This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is a tribute.
That's how I misread the title. Pretty scary, isn't it? Time for some coffee :-)
Those who are interested should check out the truly bizarre fauna of the Burgess shale, presented in Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life," which provide examples of the enormous diversity of animals following the Cambrian explosion. Some pictures of reconstructions are at http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/bshale/galle ry.html.
Five eyes and vacuum hose mouth parts... Evolutionary tinkering sounds like reasonable explanation to me.
I've seen a horse fly!
Wow, big surprise. The theory of evolution found incomplete and lacking. Hard to imagine...
We had enough movie plots with the velociraptor. And now we have a vulture dinosaur? Please stop! :(
"And the Lord, being infinite and all-powerful, set in motion an entire universe, starting with an amusing variety of quarks. After many billions of years, life appeared on many of the planetary bodies in this universe. After many millions more, some of these life forms were capable of intelligent thought, and the Lord was pleased. And the Lord did send Soothing Allegories to placate the literal-minded beings who wanted to believe that It had done all this recently (and possibly involving a turtle or magic tree somehow), while leaving the rest to figure out what had ACTUALLY happened."
Freedom: "I won't!"
The Toronto Star had an article the other day that puts another twist on the bird - dinosaur evolutionary path.
From the article :
A new study out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is attempting to stick a fork in the popular paleontological theory -- explored at a major Royal Ontario Museum exhibition this past summer -- that modern birds represent "living" dinosaurs in our midst.
Cello there neighbour!
I remember reading somewhere where a scientist postulated that there might be the remains of dinosaur or even earlier earth-based lifeforms in space, yes in orbit around the earth. When a large scale meteor hits the earth with enough force there will be ejecta which is sent into orbit around the earth or even further. After all we have rocks from Mars on our planet!
So the next Jurassic Park series could include a plot where a moon based research team finds chucks of frozen dehydrated dinosaurs with intact DNA - so maybe we could have the next Jurassic Park situated safely on the Moon but when the experiment goes not as planned, due to chaotic influences, the moon based is ravaged and extraterrestial lawyers in spacesuits are gobbled up like popcorn.
On a more serious note this maybe how life spreads through a solar system. There are probably forms of bacteria or even self replicating pieces of protiens that get transport to other planets via catastrophic collisions and survive the trip.
There's no evidence that Europeans had made it any further than Greenland.
Ever think that if there really were an alien invasion that /. would /. itself with everyone wanting to welcome them?
Why would you think such things?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
didn't evolve on this planet
So if flight evolves separately on another planet it doesn't count?
Typical terracentric rubbish!
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
From http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/18/ 4/684
"These results have implications for the understanding of bat evolution, for example, flight in bats may have arisen only once within the Chiroptera (see also Allard, McNiff, and Miyamoto 1996 ). "
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
that would be powered flight evolved 3 times...they forgot bats...this is also for only vertibrates...insects evolved flight also...who know how many times.
nothing but mosquito's and motion blur
mosquito's what and motion blur?
What is dos'nt a contraction of? DOS works but not NT?
Hi scott7477.... I'm your new foe, (or you're my new freak....). Sorry if I've done something to offend... Anyway, I've added you to my friends list (this was the only contact conduit I could find...)
One argument against evolution that I have is you don't see all these half developed fossils being dug up. For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
Someone needs to hang out at the farm more: Animals born with unusual numbers of limbs are not that rare.
The fact that creationist use their own ignorance as proof of their inane drivel is why people don't buy into their crap.
You can't take the sky from me...
I read the article title as "Dinosaur Feces... (blah blah blah)." Dinosaur Feces. Flying. Two things that would be very bad together.
For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
Now your getting stupid. Evolution doesn't work the way you think. I suggest actualyl learning about it.
You guys need to read fark.
You can't take the sky from me...
As a grade school violist, I should really be kicking myself now. Happily I just don't have the energy...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Yeah I had a look at some of these articles too. I am no scientist. But I find great difficulty in accepting that something as organised and complex as life could have occurred by random mutations which eventually arrived at what we are now. Lets take the example of the eye. The surviving mutants must have started at some point (minus the eye) and then according to the evolution theory slowly mutated to get an eye. Why would "natural selection" allow this random attempt to evolve into something it has no idea of, allow to carry on? I mean the "eye" would have been of little use until it had fully mutated! Why would this mutation survive?
The reason the evolution theory is never accepted by the creationists is because of the sheer impossibility. The best explanation of the sheer chance involved I ever saw was by Michael Cremo. Check the link here http://www.mcremo.com/writing.html. Personally, I am convinced.
Or do we just say, screw that, we're going to stay with the round earth theory-- as well as the theory of evolution-- because it explains all the data we have, and no competing theories for that data exist.
You are assuming that there is no perfect knowledge. A crude example would be of someone desiring to know who his father is. He could ask his mum, he could DNA tests, he could ask his "dad" too. But at the end of the day, they could be lying, the tests could be faulty etc...
There are three known ways of accepting knowledge. By our senses, logic and from authorities. All three have to be utilised. Danger is there in all three. Just because you can see it, doesnt mean ultra violet doesnt exist. By our own logic and senses, the understanding we could get is limited and takes a long time. It is quicker and easier to accept knowledge from an authority. However the correct authority needs to be chosen. You had no issues accepting knowledge from your parents and teachers when you were a little kid did you?
Scientists and philosophists/religionists are both trying to explain reality. They go about it in different ways. Personally I feel more comfortable with the philosophy that can explain things as is, rather than scientitists competing each other egoistically to promote their own theories for fame, wealth and knowledge. I've got nothing against the scientists. I just dont think they are always right. Especially with the evolution and big bang theories.
01: NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS THE DINOSAURS WENT EXTINCT BECAUSE
02: THEY TENDED TO WRITE ALL OF THEIR CODE IN CAPSLOCK
03: BEGAN ALL OF THEIR LINES WITH LINE NUMBERS
04: AND USED CRAZY INDENTATION CONVENTIONS IN COMPILING THE CODE.
The reason the evolution theory is never accepted by the creationists is because of the sheer impossibility. The best explanation of the sheer chance involved I ever saw was by Michael Cremo. Check the link here http://www.mcremo.com/writing.html. Personally, I am convinced.
The "impossibility" and "sheer chance" thing flogged by creationist is based on a drastic misunderstanding of evolutionary theory; the version of evolutionary theory such statistical arguments are invariably based on is one which no one in the scientific community has ever advocated. In other words, it is a straw man. The link you offer, based on ancient and extremely deceptive analyses by Fred Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, is no exception.
If you wish to sling links, here is a simple attempt to explain the problem with the "chance" argument, here is a more in-depth one which addresses Mr. Hoyle specifically. The short version is, the thing which Hoyle and Wickramasinghe debunk is not evolution. The thing which all those silly improbable-looking numbers in Mr. Cremo's link are derived from is not actual evolutionary theory. It's just a straw man.
Perhaps you should make an effort to actually understand these things yourself instead of blindly accepting the authority of creationists.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff.
No, I'd expect to find that in an Intelligent Designer's scrap heap. Evolution is not a designer, it doesn't "fine tune" stuff, it just goes with what works, with things occasionally getting mixed up through mutation or gene mixing (sex!) along the way.
And we do occasionally see critters with odd numbers of arms or misshapen limbs. These are usually because of teratogenic rather than mutagenic effects. (Ie, that particular individual's embryonic development was messed up by environmental factors, such as chemicals that mimic hormones, physical damage, etc. See 1960s thalidomide babies as an example.) This has nothing to do with evolution, acquired traits are not inherited (retroviruses aside).
The world is round.
As every educated or observant person for thousands of years has known, including to a reasonable approximation the diameter, since at least the time of Erastothenes about 200 BC. Everyone thought Columbus was an idiot not because they believed the world flat, but because they knew the westward oceanic route to China was far too long for the ships of the day. What they didn't know was that there was a continent in the middle of all that ocean -- although Columbus may have suspected that from Norse history and stories from Grand Banks fishermen.
-- Alastair
Richard Dawkins' book "Climbing Mount Improbable" has an excellent section on how various animal eyes have evolved from basic light-sensitive spots, including diagrams.
Heck, pit vipers have evolved eyes twice -- the typical vertebrate eye inherited from their reptile ancestors, and the infrared-sensitive pits (like the visible light eyepits of some invertebrates) they use to track prey in the dark.
-- Alastair
See L'Anse aux Meadows, the remains of an 11th century Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada. Lots of Norse technology found there, including a Viking-style forge.
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
All educated people, and especially sailors, in Columbus' day already knew the Earth was round. (if it wasn't, sailors wouldn't have been able to use celestial navigation). I've never heard the claim that Columbus, Spain, and the Church promoted the theory of it being flat - I've always thought it was invented by Washington Irving in his book about Columbus written in the 1800s.
and anybody with a firm grasp of human communication should realize that the "popular" (philosophically MISTAKEN) notion of "begging the question" is actually more useful than the technical one.
because in most cases, a situation really makes a person sit back for a second and think: "Wow, this really RAISES an interesting question." or, the even better use is in response to somebody who tries using a contradictory excuse or a contradictory alibi. "Well...now that begs the question of how you could actually [XYZ]." the word BEGS packs more punch than "raises." it has an effective, even sarcastic ring to it, that 'raises' lacks.
i can't think of an equally punchy way to say that something has raised the question. so you see, the Wrong Usage seems to fit the purposes of communication like a glove.
on the other hand, "begging the question" seems pretty cumbersome to describe the commonplace circular argument. (circularly, it's cumbersome because nobody uses it that way....) most people prefer to call that sort of thing "idiotic" or "circular", when they recognize it. "he's begging the question!" is done. stick a fork in it.
for a while i had a problem with people using "ironically" to mean "strangely/surprisingly/unexpectedly." personally i think it's much better used with its "correct" meaning. but that meaning has been completely taken over by the word "sarcasm." (which has negative connotations, which I don't like.) i'm starting to accept it, though.
so. Masses 1. Philosophy zero.
you've been APPROPRIATED.
"wrong" should say right. or correct.
" 'Correct' meaning is done. stick a fork in it."
so zilly of me.
#5 real man - Bryan Allen & Gossamer Albatross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross
I agree with the point you are making, but you have the definition/use of theories all wrong.
A Theory must be falsifiable. Period. If it is not falsifiable, it is not a theory. A theory that has been falsified is wrong, even if no theory replaces it.
So what does falsifiable mean? It means that "If we were to find that X is true, this theory is false". This means that any assertion, that no matter what cannot be called into question, is not falsifiable, and therefore not a theory, but a mere assertion.
Now the theory of Evolution is a large tree with many branches, and those many branches have many leaves. At first branches were lopped off by being falsified, but still the tree stood. New branches were added. Today, science argues mostly about small leaves on the tree. And these leaf-theories do get falsified fairly regularly.
Like Autumn, however, a lot of leaves can fall of the tree without changing the basic structure that makes up the theory tree. THis is why, even accepting that Eyes are inexplicable today (which I do not accept) does no more than focus the fight on leaves on a small branch on one limb of the tree.
If, however, one could somehow prove that eEyes are in fact inxplicable, that fact would, by the rules of science, cast some doubt on branches closer to the trunk. This just hasn't happened.
Well, duh! Of course you were trolled. (I just found the parent post in meta-mod, and spotted your very well-reasoned rebuttal.)
At least you were polite. Sometimes it's hard to forget that these people have been deluded all their life, lied to by preachers and parents alike, and have been taught that separating fact from myth is heresy. So it's not totally their fault they walk around spouting this nonsense. The unfortunate part comes when they pass this misinformation on to their offspring, in a viral meme fashion.
It's interesting to consider religions in this context. For them to flourish as they do, they must provide some benefit to the "hosts" or else they would have evolved out of existence (quakers, Amish, and other fringe cults appear to be showing these sorts of losses already.) Historically, religious tenets (such as "don't eat meat from cloven-hoofed animals") offered real-world tangible benefits (avoidance of trychinosis) so it's easier to see how they would have survived back then. But why now? Why do they continue to thrive?
John