Mokele

Not offhand, but I've seen a few online. Google Tyrannosaurus protien and you should find some. It's inside a femur, so it basically looks like a typical rex femur, cut in half, with yellow rubbery stuff inside. Given their affinities with birds, would a fight between theropod dinosaurs still be a cockfight? Mokele

Sorry to disappoint, but I don't actually know. I know Amphiumas (a nearly-legless, eel-like amphibian of the southern US) have the largest erythrocytes, but not who has the largest *cell* period. Various egg-laying species might, possibly including the ostrich, and I've heard the tail neuron of a whale mentioed before in this context, but nothing definite. Mokele

Oh, definitely, I'd love it! They've been one of my driving passions since childhood. You could say I simply never grew out of dinosaurs. So far as I know, DNA can't survive very long on account of it's fragility. But if we did find something, then I can't see why not. Mokele

Yes, that's them, thanks! So if ID is right, I can build a perpetual motion machine? ---------------------- Ok, shinbits, let's see how well ID can answer a simple question: Why do whales have rear leg bones? Or how about why horses have remanants of additional toes? In both of the above cases, mutant animals have been found which reverted (partially) to the primitive state: whales with stumpy but external rear legs, horses with 3 toes (though they don't reach the ground). Or how about why boas retain internal, skeletal vestiges of their back legs? Evolution provides a simple, logical, and testable explanation for these, while all ID can do is unscientificly say "god did it" and offer no testable hypotheses. Yes, evolution is testable. Let's hear about one such test. It's now thought by all biologists that birds evolved from dinosaurs. And we have copious fossil evidence. But can we test it? Yes! Some years ago, and ingenious embryologist devised a way to do so. He noticed that birds lack tissues over their beaks during the key embryological stage at which teeth develop. He figured that maybe the reason modern birds lack teeth is that some trigger located on the epithelium would cause tooth growth, and if he grafted tissue of a mouse onto the jays of an embryonic chick, it's grow teeth. He tested his hypothesis (you know, what *real* science does), and found several teeth, all of which were conical and suspiciously similar to the teeth of theropod dinosaurs. ID has yet to generate a single testable hypothesis, and is therefore psuedoscience. Mokele

Well, first, the Rex fossil wasn't frozen, but fossilized in the normal manner. It's just that the mineralization was totally external and didn't reach the inner layer. Also, there was no DNA, just collagen, iirc, which is a protien. It's the same stuff in skin, but it's not actual skin. As for mammoths, there's already talk of trying it, but I think funding is a real issue. As for dinos, I doubt it will be possible to clone them without a time machine (which makes cloning them a moot point). There's no source of DNA, and while crocs and birds are relatives/descendants of dinosaurs, there have been way too many changes since then. You'd still have a whole lot of code missing, with no way of filling it in. As a science weblog I read says often, you might as well buy a lot of steel wool and try to knit a Lambourgini. Ice age megafauna like mammoths and ground sloths, though, aren't totally out of the question. Mokele

Wrong. ID is attacked because they're the only people intellectually dishonest enough to claim evolution doesn't occur. Frankly, we're hostile because we're sick of you. We've refuted everything you've said, I can bet we've refuted in other posts everything you *will* say. Wake up and smell the evidence, kid. Go to your university library and check out a journal called Evolution. You'll get all the evidence you can stand in any one issue, with ample data analysis. See, *REAL* science is conducted in peer-review journals. In those, you can find things like, say, direct observations of speciation (more common than you think). Oh, yes, I've noticed how he completely ignored every substantial answer he was given. No, scientific would be actually researching to see if these flaws are real, rather than just figments of the Discovery Institute's imagination. You'd find that none of them are. There *are* unanswered questions in evolution, but these are obscure and only discussed in technical journals. Most deal with things like the imporance of non-disjunction as a speciation mechanism, or the long-term consequences of Mullerian mimicry. Furthermore, that we don't know these answers does *not* mean that evolution is flawed or wrong, only that our understanding is incomplete. Any new theory *must* account for new data, and so anything replacing evolution would simply be "evolution 2.0", as it would have to account for all existing data which supports evolution. I repeat: google "Fossil whales" There you will find a dozen transitional species, such as Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, and others I can't recall. Also, look up "fossil horses". There's another dozen, easy. Do your own damn research, kid. No, it doesn't. Dembski's filter is hogwash, and "arguments from design" have been around since darwin first published in 1859. They failed then, have continually failed since, and fail now. How about crystals? They look complex and nifty, surely they're designed? Wrong. See how stupid your arguement is? Bullshit. Search this site for "Transitional forms" and you'll find a post I made to someone else about this, listing over 40 just between fish and humans. Go find it, or can't you be bothered to actually educate yourself? BUllshit. Pull your head out of your ass and look at the evidence, kid. Except the garbage about it being a forgery is just that, garbage. But creationists are too stupid to know a fossil when they see one, so you wouldn't know, would you, kid? Notice that *science* eventually detected both fakes. They may have been fakes, but they *were* caught, and stand as examples of the self-correcting nature of science. ---------- Go read a damn book, kid. You just might learn something. Mokele

Oh, and the other two: Lungfish are simply a highly-modified example of a trait that occurs throughout bony fish. Most such fish have swimbladders, which are used to adjust bouyancy (sp). *Numerous* lineages of fish who live in lakes, ponds, or other environments that can dry or become anoxic for other reasons have developed the ability to breathe using their swim bladder. They cannot leave the water, but they can come to the surface to get air, should the oxygen content of the water drop too low. This includes musskippers, garfish, catfish, and numerous other genera. Some fish, including lungfish, mudskippers, walking catfsih, and others, have developed the ability to move over land, presumably to escape dessication as the seasonal ponds they inahbit dry up. This is actually the basis from Romer's original idea, that the first land vertebrates did the same. Now, however, it's considered more likely that the first tetrapods were simply moving ashore to hunt to insects that had already colonized the land. Lungfish are unique in being so modified that they can no longer breathe water; their gills are strictly for nitrogenous waste excretion, and they will drown if held under. They has been a very sucessful lineage, and, like sharks and frogs, have therefore not faced any pressures to modify their form. Evolution does not proceed at a constant rate, but rather in spurts and jumps, usually caused by environmental changes. Since their niche has been stable, they have not faced any pressure to evolve since the late Carboniferous, when they arose (lungfish, not tetrapods). Aside from that, they're not terribly fun animals, and don't move much except to bite you. Dullest thing I've ever worked with. Yes, it wouldn't matter. Except that ID does *NOT* show logic, nor evidence. There isn't a single scrap of empirical evidence to back up ID. "Irreducible complexity" is a logical fallacy (and has been disproven every time and example has been brought up), and they haven't produced any other arguements that haven't been used by creationists before and refuted 1000 times over. Go to talk.origins and read their FAQ. Ask anything you like, the answer will be in there somewhere. Mokele

This does not belong in this section. The Big Bang is physics, and totally unrelated to evolution.

They evolved from a common ancestor. Open a book, you might learn something. Your transparently obvious deception won't work here. If we show you *anything*, you will say, "yes, but what's between that and what you showed me?", and will continually do so to the point of absurbity. Google "Fossil whales". That should silence your baseless objections. Mokele

IIRC, and this definitely isn't my field (monkeys are just python food to me), the pattern of hair we have is neotenic, and we lost our hair via neoteny, which is the process by which juvenile traits are retained into adulthood. This process also accounts for numerous other aspects of our physiology. In many respects, we look an awful lot like an embryonic chimp. Mokele

Ok, we need to move this thread to Psuedoscience, where all such blather belongs.

IIRC, it has to do with thermal insulation. Fur is, basically, an insulator, and for quadrupeds, it can insulate against the sun beating down on their backs. When humans stood upright, however, less of their body was exposed to the sun, and the parts that weren't (most of the body) could actually benefit from losing the hair, which would allow evaporative cooling to occur thanks to sweat. Mokele

Not entirely, one can use an area but still preserve it by managing the use (hunting permits being an excellent example). If unmanaged, yes, bad things happen, but with proper management, some degree of use can coexist with preservation. Mokele

To just name two, there's in-utero environment (such as nutrients or toxins the mother gets) and maternal resource provisioning (for instance, female birds will give eggs produced from a mating with a desirable male extra testosterone and more yolk, resulting in stronger, healthier babies). Mokele

No, they could be different, see the other thread you made for why.

Think of it like this: We know how a jet airliner works. We know how a Ferrari works. But just because we understand the parts does *not* mean we can put a jet engine on a Ferrari without extreme difficultly. The key is in the *interactions* of the parts. Same thing here. We know *some* of the genetics involved (not all), but it's those innumerable interactions that make things so complicated. Mokele

Wait, what? Did I miss something here? And Nevermore, Pangloss is definitely *not* a Bush toady. He's just sick of this tragedy being exploited for political gain. Frankly, I agree with him. I grew up in NO, spent the first decade of my life there, and before this, was considering working extra hard to find an eventual professorship there. I've been hearing about this *exact* scenario ("The city is below sea level, and if the levees break due to flood or hurricane, we're doomed") since I can remember, in the early eighties. It's probably been known before then. The whole thing is a collosal screw-up, but the blame rests on human nature, logistics, and just plain chance, with *some* resting on Bush, but not all by a long shot. The city I loved most has just been drowned. Show some f---ing respect and don't warp it into another political tool. Mokele

My GF belongs in the kitchen. But that's because the CDC and WHO have repeatedly issued warnings about my cooking, and my microwave oven was once declared a Superfund site. (In all seriousness, it just worked out that I hate cooking and suck at it, and she loves it and does it just for it's own sake, mostly to feed reptiles though.) Mokele

I propose we test drugs on creationists. They're very similar to humans, but lack all higher brain functions, including the ability to feel pain. I kick them just to watch them cry. Mokele

Crap, I wish I had cable! If anyone can find online video clips of this after it airs, could you either link them here or PM me so I can download them? Mokele

Actually, that's most of what's happening there. The Ice cores can be used in paleoclimatology, reconstructing the history of the earth's climate. There's also a weird under-ice lake there which has been totally isolated for millions of years we're investigating. Considering that last time Antarctica melted, the result was a *gradual* rise in sea-level and world-wide tropical or temperate temperatures (and a vast abundance of giant reptiles), sure! Shit, there were alligators in alaska then. If we were only so lucky nowadays. Mokele

Unfortunately, I don't know, and I'm not sure if anyone else really knows either. So far as I know, the mechanisms for speciation (evolutionary and genetic) are a hot and very contentious topic at the moment. Numerous mechanisms can produce speciation, such as genetic drift, sexual selection, natural selection, etc, but all rely on differing environments (habitat or microhabitat) to produce phenotypic change. Causing speciation without phenotypic change and with sympatic group is a tall order, even if we'd be doing it artificially. To the best of my knowledge, the only such cases are in plants via polyploidy. Essentially, plants often produce gametes with the full diploid number of chromosomes. If those gametes meet a conspecific haploid gamete, you get a sterile plant (since the chromosomes cannot segregate properly), which is where seedless plants come from. If two erroneously-produced diploid gametes meet, you get a plant that's basically the same (often bigger and stronger) but cannot reproduce with the main population because it'd produce gamtes with the diploid set, which would meet haploid ones from the main population. We've seen speciation via polyploidy in plants a *lot*, but I'm unsure about animals. I've heard a few things regarding some unusual salamanders and lizards, but nothing's certain yet, and those individuals are actually noted for being asexual, capable of reproducing without males (some of them even are all-female species). As for what'd happen to a mammal, who knows? Trisomy 21 produces Down's syndrome, so clearly we can't just add chromosomes all over, but there might still be a way. So basically, if this is for a sci-fi novel or game or somesuch, just make something up, because it'll probably be decades before we can actually give a potential method with any certainty. Mokele

Basically, snakes and lizards have two paired penises, called hemipenes, which are usually inverted and stored in the tail. They aren't actually limbs (since all lizards have them too), but their homology with the naughty bits of other species is debatable, as they might be a case of convergent evolution. For a quick buck, bet a friend that some snakes have limbs. You'll win, since, while none have external limbs, boas and pythons retain vestiges of the pelvis, femur and toes within their body wall, evidenced by a small pair of claws ("spurs") at the cloaca, one on each side. I've had it for 6 or so years, give or take, but it's sort of grown in gradually over that time. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to braid well, and I'm too tall to make a good dwarf. Mokele

Only if the environment is the same. If it's not, then natural selection can become the prime agent for increasing differences, or at least a big factor. In some cases, it can also alter breeding behavior or mechanisms enough to cause reproductive isolation, if the differences in environment require differences in breeding (amphibians would be prone to this sort of speciation, for example). Mokele

Both are inferior and horribly flawed, on account of not focusing on reptiles.