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Did Land-Dwellers Emerge 65 Million Years Earlier Than Was Thought?
ananyo writes "A controversial paper published in Nature argues that enigmatic fossils regarded as ancient sea creatures were actually land-dwelling lichen. If true, that would suggest life on land began 65 million years earlier than researchers now estimate. The nature of fossils from the Ediacaran period, some 635 million–542 million years ago, has been fiercely debated by palaeontologists. But where others envisage Ediacaran sea beds crawling with archaic animals, Gregory Retallack, a geologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, sees these sites in southern Australia as dry, terrestrial landscapes dotted with lichens. He proposes that rock in the Ediacara Member in South Australia — where palaeontologist Reginald Sprigg first discovered Ediacaran fossils in 1947 — represents ancient soils, and presents new geological data. Among other lines of evidence, Retallack argues that the rock's red colour and weathering pattern indicate that the deposits were formed in terrestrial — not marine — environments (abstract). Others strongly disagree."
Evolution proven to be wrong. Why do people still believe in such a bogus theory?
... all the wrong answers.
Conventional wisdom has it that complex life evolved in the sea and then crawled up onto land but NPR reports that a provocative new study published in Nature suggests that the earliest large life forms may have appeared on land long before the oceans filled with creatures that swam and crawled and burrowed in the mud. Paleontologists have found fossil evidence for a scattering of animals called Ediacarans that predate the Cambrian explosion about 530 million years ago when complex life suddenly burst forth and filled the seas with a panoply of life forms. Many scientists have assumed Ediacarans were predecessors of jellyfish, worms and other invertebrates but palaeontologist Greg Retallack has been building the case that Ediacarans weren't in fact animals, but actually more like fungi or lichens and that Ediacarans weren't even living in the sea, as everyone has assumed. "What I'm saying for the Ediacaran is that the big [life] forms were on land and life was actually quite a bit simpler in the ocean," says Retallack adding that his new theory lends credence to the idea that life actually evolved on land and then moved into the sea. Paul Knauth at Arizona State University has been pondering this same possibility. "I don't have any problem with early evolution being primarily on land," says Knauth. "I think you can make a pretty good argument for that, and that it came into the sea later. It's kind of a radical idea, but the fact is we don't know." Knauth says it could help explain why the Cambrian explosion appears to be so rapid. It's possible these many life forms gradually evolved on the land and then made a quick dash to the sea. "That means that the Earth was not a barren land surface until about 500 million years ago, as a lot of people have speculated."
Ponca City, We Love You
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
Look I understand this is a news aggregator not an originator, but its still a website it should be a little ahead of the MSM. Whats the deal with the apparent pattern of posting whatever they talked about on NPR's all things considered the previous day?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
People are slowing down here.
... so the answer must be "no". Thanks for clearing that up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
yes I remember that event, it was a Tuesday.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
a video about mermaids http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgzRv4_HJIY
actually quite interesting and somewhat believable....
The point is.... seek and ye shall find...
So what do you want to believe..... today?
I know Jabberjaw dates back to 1976.I didn't read the article, but are they implying there was marine life even before that?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Remember this next time a creationist or global warming denier claims that scientists can't get published if they don't adhere to the party line.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In Texas, the Lone Star State, they do not teach statistics like that.
In fact, they do not teach statistics until you reach the university level.
The assessment by the other paleontologists quoted suggests that the evidence is currently weak.
And why is red soil color being used as evidence? Don't they analyze the soil to see what specifically makes it red, and use that as the metric? There are multiple causes of soil and rock redness. Perhaps the author merely tried to simplify the writing and excluded causes. But that makes it a bit misleading, implying that visual inspection is sufficient observation.
Table-ized A.I.
Look closely; those are simply the footprints of Martian elephants. Silly earthlings, dontcha know a piece of Mars broke off and drifted to Earth?
Table-ized A.I.
it puts everything that following the same basket as 'did aliens build the pyramid'. What's more if you want to ask questions you've got ask slashotdot for that.
Are you asking or telling, you seem confused.
Nature must not have much to publish if they waist time with pointless articles like this. I might be dumber for reading it.
Looks to be, 'back to the alien poop' origin.
XD
Oh dear.
Was the alien poop 'black' or 'white' ?
XD
By no means a dumb idea, but not especially likely. The Ediacarian/Vendian faunas don't seem closely related to the mainstream faunas of arthropods, echinoderms,brachiopods,vertebrates,etc that appeared a few tens of millions of years later although there are a few tenuous proposed relationships. In all likelihood, the Ediacarians were not ancestoral to the conventional forms. So sure, they could have lived on land (or, one supposes, freshwater lakes) while the conventional forms were evolving in the seas.
On the other hand, it's a little difficult to explain why the ediacarians seem to disappear shortly after the conventional critters arrive on the scene. ... Unless one assumes that the often mobile, and sometimes toothy, conventional critters ate the presumably more or less sessile Ediacarians -- which is only possible if both types lived in the same medium
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Obviously the Martians crashed into the water, and the space vehicles have since been destroyed by time and weather and such. Simply put, Martians were once real, but they have since ceased to exist.