Posted on 08/11/2015 8:08:43 AM PDT by Thistooshallpass9
Because nothing else in history could have possibly eaten that fruit except the dodo. Only the dodo.
Makes perfect sense.
No, the article says that the "Tambalacoque and the dodo bird would had to have come into existence at the same time in order for the Tambalacoque to survive."
Why couldn't the Dodo have come into existence first? The implication is that the Dodo was likewise dependent upon the Tambalacoque.
The author is grasping at straws to make it sound as preposterous as possible that the Dodo and the Tambalacoque came into existence separately, at different times, and without any particular dependence upon one another - and that they only gradually developed this (one-sided) relationship.
Any further objections?
Regards,
In its own little pocket of fertilizer, too.
I have a simpler explanation. 300 Million years ago the seeds did not have a hard outer shell and there were few animals to eat their seeds so the tree needed no defense mechanism. As animals evolved, more began eating the seeds so the tree evolved a defense mechanism and through natural selection evolved a relationship with the Dodo to propagate.
Occams razor.....
Maybe...but how do the tree know its seeds aren’t germinating? Takes inventory and sez, hmmm I had all these seeds but I ain’t seeing any saplings? Wonder what happened.
Never mind even being aware of second party seed dispersion some distance away.
Then there is that trivial thing of identifying the cause of failure as being covering material strength failure and calculating the appropriate increase in thickness sufficient for needs of seeds.
What’s the mechanism that determines the amount and type of material needed. Long way between a very modest thin and soft seed covering and the shell of a walnut or Brazil nut.
You see where this is heading?
;>)
“Two errors, #1 the tree can live with any other creature whose digestive tract thins the shells, (the example of the American Turkey is given in this very article!)”
Theoretically, but given the tree has a limited range on an isolated island, you’d need to find actual examples of another creature who could fill that role who also lived in the same narrow range that the tree was found in. We can’t just assume that there actually was any other such creature who could have filled the role before the dodo came along.
“error #2 the assumption that the early trees had thick shells”
Yes, that is a legitimate weakness in their argument.
bmp
I thought this was going to be a Global Warming story.
Too big, to fly
Dodo ugly, so Dodo must die.
Most likely.
Records say Dodos tasted really good and were easy to catch becuase they were so stupid. If we could bring them back that would be great—BUT—The bird to bring back would be the Passenger Pidgeon—The last one died in the 1920s and we have some on ice for DNA. They too tasted good. Bring em back. Raise them on farms and we could feast on them. They say Wooly Mamoths taste good too. But, if we brought them back we might be able to domesticate them to do work in Siberia and Alaska. Eskamos could ride around on them.
That's funny on so many levels.
Pilgrims?
The writers of this article aren’t interested in explanation, they are busy providing rationalizations for opposition to the theory of evolution. Appeals to authority, straw men and flat out misrepresentation are all commonly used.
Natural selection?
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