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Ancestor of All Placental Mammals Revealed
sciencehabit writes "The ancestor of all placental mammals—the diverse lineage that includes almost all species of mammals living today, including humans—was a tiny, furry-tailed creature that evolved shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared, a new study suggests. The hypothetical creature, not found in the fossil record but inferred from it, probably was a tree-climbing, insect-eating mammal that weighed between 6 and 245 grams—somewhere between a small shrew and a mid-sized rat. It was furry, had a long tail, gave birth to a single young, and had a complex brain with a large lobe for interpreting smells and a corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The period following the dinosaur die-offs could be considered a 'big bang' of mammalian diversification, with species representing as many as 10 major groups of placentals appearing within a 200,000-year interval."
If it's not in The Bible, it's a cruel hoax designed to lure you into the pit of eternal hellfire!
What about the common ancestor that links RMS with mammals? Have they found that yet?
A *POSSIBLE* ancestor that a study suggests *MIGHT* be what they thing. Maybe. Possibly.
In other words, the headline is, as usual, misleading.
"We have no actual evidence or fossils, but because we desperately want the fossil record to agree with our (non)religious belief system, this is the creature that we want to find.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
Articles about evolution are always like that. They are also always devoid of any predictions, like a true theory should be able to make, like the theory of relativity could make and we could later prove as technology got better (even if it took 50+ years in some cases).
You hit upon all the words that point to the main issue I had with the article and every article like it that still can send a tingle up the leg of every God-hating, atheist on this site and that is the fact that they can't confirm any of these studies. They always have to include some non-committed phrasing because they have to continue to guess (and have *faith* they are right). They are no further closer to knowing how life evolved now as they were 100 years ago. Scientists in particular feel that just because they can trace common DNA snippets and show that fossil records of different ages means evolution must be real and that there are certain species that came into existence in a serial manner with others rather than all of them appearing in parallel. The only problem with that methodology is that I can prove it doesn't prove anything in particular. Case in point: I can give 100 people the same 1 frame from the same movie that none of them (or I) have seen before and ask them to tell me the plot and I'll get 100 different answers because they are working with a small snippet of the entire set of information but yet I'm basically asking them to give me the other 99.9999999% of the movie. It's not going to happen and I shouldn't expect to be so arrogant as to pick one of their answers and unilaterally deem it correct because all the other answers I got were just as correct. Since I hadn't seen the movie either OR was there to see it made then how would I know what the correct answer is? And of course, the entire sequencing and aging of the fossil record is based on a dating scheme that we all presume is reliable and consistent. But how do you measure your measuring stick to ensure it is accurate and always has been for as long as you need it to be (multiple millennium)? Or do you just become arrogant again and assume it's always been accurate because you get the values you wanted to see rather than what know you should get?
I'm tired of the constant same level of information that doesn't tell us anything about when our ancestors supposedly acquired the required attributes at the right time and explain why we are the way we are or otherwise we would be dead. When are scientists going to explain that? I assume they 1) can't and 2) don't want to because they know they can't and if they attempted to their theory would fall apart. But of course they will dismiss any competing theory as hogwash because any competing theory requires faith, a faith in God that is, rather than a faith in Man.
Then more people would question evolution, without being called stupid, an idiot, insane, a Bible thumper, etc. by those who they disagree with. People would realize we aren't just animals like all the other animals and that human life, above all else, is sacred. And that maybe we do actually possess the ability to choose right from wrong, possess a moral compass,and have free will, rather than falling back on the excuse that we're mere animals and therefore can't control the things we want to be able to get away with saying we can't control when it is convenient to use that excuse and all because we didn't evolve from animals.
And now because I mentioned God in response to an article about evolution I'll be modded down and the person who says "this will bring out the bible thumpers" will be modded up, because that's the bigoted world we live in. I'm not supposed to be questioning the liberal way of thinking. I'm not as smart as they are so I have to be told everything rather than think for myself because thinking for myself makes me look to God for answers and that's wrong. I have to look to government and Man for all the answers because they know best. All the issues I raised are all related whether you like it or not.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address