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Scientists Find Missing Link in Bird Evolution
BlueCup writes "Dozens of fossils of an ancient loon-like creature that some say is the missing link in bird evolution have been discovered in northwest China. The remains of 40 of the nearly modern amphibious birds, so well-preserved that some even have their feathers, were found in Gansu province, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Previously only a single leg of the creature, known as Gansus yumenensis, had been found."
No you fools, now there are two missing links (previously we wanted to find C between A and B, now we want to find D between A and C, and E between C and B) Of course this all really goes to show that you can never completely verify evolution no matter how much evidence you collect (just like any scientific theory), which is fine since you can be certain of the truth of something even if there is a remote possibility of later disproof. The public's obsession with "missing links" just goes to show that they don't understand knowledge very well.
Philosophy.
Whatever the faults of the Chinese regime may be, being beholden to christian fundamentalist interests is not one of them.
The funny part is that those who oppose the idea of intelligent design will inevitably be more dogmatic, closed minded, faithful, trusting, less willing to do research, less willing to have an intelligent conversation, etc... than 99 percent of people who do accept the idea of creation. (Silly grammer to make the point)
When pro-creation (anti-evolution) individuals make statements like "put a bunch of car parts in your garage and leave it for a year, then see if it's evolved into a Honda", I tend to doubt your assertions. For my own experience, creationists like to THINK they're being logical, but then accuse evolutionists of being "closed minded" when they point out the ridiculous logical flaws and mistaken assumptions in ID or creationism.
Also, the article forgot to mention anything about how they know these birds actually are evolutionary ancestors of modern birds, only that "they just are".
It's a short, summary article in a non-technical journal. If you want a more technical explanation I'm sure you can find one from a source targeted at that level of discussion. But don't assume that the researchers are making it up, just because a five paragraph summary fails to go into detailed technical explanations.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Indeed. It's amazing how closely the fundies arguments resemble Zeno's paradox.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Kind of like religion?
Where does the article mention carbon dating? What is the relevance of your statement? Can you provide a scientific reference to your statement regarding potassium-argon dating?
I'm not that knowledgable about evolution but I do know that many keep saying that there really is no such thing as the "missing link" and people that keep refering to such an elusive idea do not fully understand. Why then, does slashdot, supposedly with a fairly intelligent readership, seem to keep posting articles with headlines containing "missing link" so often? Why keep talking about it like it has been found (again and again) if it really doesn't even need to exist in the first place? Sorry, I'm confused.
Meh.
As you probably don't know, given the woeful understanding of science shown by creationist, no real scienctist uses carbon-14 for objects that old. So please shut the fuck up instead of displaying your ignorance to the world.
Is it just me or does anyone else find that there's an unusually large number of unique fossils coming from China? Maybe it's because, like products manufactured for Walmart, they're mostly cheap crap http://www.paleodirect.com/fakechinesefossils1.htm
This isn't the missing link, it's a missing link. The fossil record is imperfect, and that makes every new fossil discovery a previously 'missing link' that connects a pair of things together in an evolutionary chain. This doesn't indicate a problem with Darwin's theory, just the tendency for journalists to sensationalize things in hopes that people will actually pay attention to less-than-earth-shattering discoveries. Unfortunately, scientists play the same game, as it helps give their work higher profile at the expense of distorting its actual value.
If anyone has told you that the "enigma of bird evolution" is already "solved" they would be wrong. The biggest problem with that statement is that there is no single enigma that needs solving. We know a lot about bird evolution, and this new discovery gives us a bit more information. But there is no single fact that awaits discovery that will allow us to say 'there, that's solved it, time to move on to cold fusion'. Most of the debate over evolution arises from this reduction of complex ideas to overly simple terms.
yp.
The article throws out a date of 110 million years. It should be noted that carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years and should be fully decayed in ancient fossils. However small quantities of C-14 that has not fully decayed are still found in ancient fossils.
Where is it stated that Carbon-14 dating was used to derive the age of the fossil? The article makes no mention of it; presumably a different dating technique was used that does not have the same limitations as Carbon-14 dating. It would appear that your commentary is a non-sequitur.
Often evolutionists choose the dating technique that fits the picture they have in their minds. For example, 200 year old lava flows have been dated to be 3 billion years old by the potassium-argon dating method.
This is another example of creationists distorting facts
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Um ... they found an old duck ... and we still have ducks today ... and ... um ... can somebody please help me out figure out why the story title says "Scientists Find Missing Link in Bird Evolution". Thanks.
Just like ducks today are here ... to scourge us! Really, I think the fossilized ducks died and sank. There is no evolutionary link stated in the story even though they use the term. Very interesting. I'm baffled.
No - exactly like religion, and they have a book of eye witness accounts to back up their answers.
Eyewitness accounts -- or unsubstantiated claims of eyewitness accounts -- cannot be objectively evaluated. Empirical observations can be objectively evaluated. There is a key difference.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Uncommon Descent, even after their failure in basic statistics this morning, kind of outdid themselves with that post.
The entire complaint there is that the find was called "the missing link". Except... who called it "the missing link"? Well... Fox News.
Fox News manages to disprove evolution sheerly by how they chose to word their headline? Wow. Who would have seen it coming?
This is really the most fascinating thing about the "Intelligent Design" movement. The most extreme and fundamental flaw with "Intelligent Design" creationists is that they simply don't produce anything; year after year while evolutionary biology moves ahead and makes interesting new discoveries, intelligent design creationists keep repeating the exact same mantras over and over, year in and year out, barely stopping even to revise them in the face of refutations. While science goes out and does research, intelligent design creationists sit around and do nothing, because they either already know all the answers or don't care what the answers are.
You'd think intelligent design creationists would be kind of embarrassed of this, and try not to call attention to this. But no. In fact, they take it as a point of pride. Every time evolutionary biologists learn something new, intelligent design creationists-- in particular those at Dembski's uncommon descent blog-- jump on it and claim victory. "Ah ha!" they said. "Evolutionary theory now knows something it didn't before! Why didn't it know that before? This shows how flawed evolution is, that they keep discovering new things!". IDCers see evolution's willingness to learn and constant progress as a sign of weakness, flipfloppery and intellectual bankruptcy. The IDCers themselves, meanwhile, are safe from any such allegations, as each year they remain exactly as ignorant as they were before.
So are you trying to say that eyewitness accounts cannot be scientific, or are you trying to say that eyewitness accounts cannot be true?
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
How about eyewitness statements not being reliable, especially when the eyewitness wasn't around to actually see the event and only wrote based on "revelations".
Those are some rather large leaps in deduction--I was unaware materialist atheists believed in a completely deterministic universe. Surely materialism doesn't leave out the possibility of the brain being extremely complex, no? Furthermore, human rationality has never been completely fool-proof. Humans employ many "unsafe" methods in their everday reasoning. I suggest a few introductory philosophy and maybe some logic classes--you haven't just yet defeated materialism (which you put as one in the same with atheism).
So are you trying to say that eyewitness accounts cannot be scientific, or are you trying to say that eyewitness accounts cannot be true?
I am saying that eyewitness accounts cannot be scientific, nor can they be considered as reliable as empirical observations that can be reproduced by any individual.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Now pretend for a second that you have a fresh mind and no dogmatism. You come to /. and read this wonderful debate on evolution, creationism, etc. and what do you find? Insults, hatred, LOTS of dogmatism, all the usual stuff. People arguing for the sake of it. People whose goal is not even any more to WIN the argument (which is wrong already) but just to throw dirt on the "opponent". Just like Windows vs Linux, left vs right, etc.
The PP is right, people who take part in these arguments are only looking for a fight and you can see just as many idiots on one side as you can on the other. Or do you really think that e.g. "evolutionists" are holy and Always Right(tm) while ID'ers are the devil? That wouldn't make you any better than them.
Finally, I cannot help wondering why ID'ers forget that their God might just have created evolution as a means by which his will is done, and evolutioners forget that there is much we do not know. Evolution might be a mechanism set in place by the aliens when the mothership left Erath, for all we now.
Global warming is a cube.
It should be noted that carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years and should be fully decayed in ancient fossils.
No, C-14 should be decayed to 1/2 in fossils 5730 years old, 1/4 in fossils 11,460 years old, 1/8 in fossils 17,190 years old, etc.
In case you didn't notice, that sequence works to infinity, and C-14 never is "fully decayed".
That said, it is only reliable up to about 60,000 years (10 times the age of the "Christian" universe) due to our ability to measure it.
Maybe if we were all blessed with a bias for the written word over empirical evidence we wouldn't need additional dating methods.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages; all alike.
C'mon people, get it right. There is no such thing as a 'missing link'. What we have here are previously unknown Transitional Fossils (you know - the kind that the Creationists keep insisting don't exist). Let's try to use the correct terminology. Furthermore, the subject line indicates that there is only one missing link, and we've found it (yay!). Truth is that there are countless missing Transitional Fossils, and no - it's has nothing to do with the loud yammering of Ignorant Bible-Bashers. The truth is the the conditions for fossilization are pretty strict. As a result, the fossil record is a lot more sparse than we would like.
You're using a strawman fallacy... trying to troll perhaps?
It always strikes me as peculiar when people refer to "atheism" as though it were a unified philosophy. Dividing people into "theists" and "atheists" in itself is silly, since it is obvious that opinions vary greatly in the "theists" camp, even within the same sub-groups. What kind of uniformity or cohesiveness do you expect when you group people by entities they do not believe in?
What I find more disturbing in general is that in spite of all the scientific progress humanity has made, the view that humans are practically irrelevant in the scope of the universe is challenged infinitely more than the view that we should all follow a martyred faith healer.
see a Text Widget
Evolution might be a mechanism set in place by the aliens when the mothership left Earth, for all we now.
I don't think any respectable scientist has denied that this is a possibility, in the strictest sense of the word. Maybe earth was seeded by aliens and evolution took its course from there. Maybe we didn't evolve from lower life forms, but instead were placed here overnight (over-7-nights?) by some higher being. Maybe we just popped into existence a millisecond ago with all of our memories pre-installed.
But if you look at the historical data, evolution is the most likely answer. My biggest beef with ID isn't that it's wrong (it may not be), but that it masquerades as science. The ID movement is more interested in falsifying evolution than in building a case as to why ID is a better theory (or a "theory" at all).
Last post!
Whis is why evolutionary theory has been changed to correspond with new information. But you should know that the basics haven't changed (complex things have simpler ancestors, etc).
I love how creationists use this as a BAD thing. "Look at those wiley evolutionists... every time they find something new that doesn't fit, they up and change their theory!!!"
As if that wasn't exactly how science is supposed to work.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Evolution is not a hypothesis. It's a scientific theory, lending it huge validity and overwhelming acceptance in the scientific community. Questioning it as an untrained layman makes you come across as a perpetual motion/zero point energy type of crackpot. Also, religious viewpoints in general tend to be openly mocked here, which is nice.