Or maybe Calvinosaurus...
Posted on 07/03/2006 12:32:51 PM PDT by Al Simmons
In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, one human character tells another that a Tyrannosaurus rex can't see them if they don't move, even though the beast is right in front of them. Now, a scientist reports that T. rex had some of the best vision in animal history. This sensory prowess strengthens arguments for T. rex's role as predator instead of scavenger.
Scientists had some evidence from measurements of T. rex skulls that the animal could see well. Recently, Kent A. Stevens of the University of Oregon in Eugene went further.
He used facial models of seven types of dinosaurs to reconstruct their binocular range, the area viewed simultaneously by both eyes. The wider an animal's binocular range, the better its depth perception and capacity to distinguish objectseven those that are motionless or camouflaged.
T. rex had a binocular range of 55, which is wider than that of modern hawks, Stevens reports in the summer Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Moreover, over the millennia, T. rex evolved features that improved its vision: Its snout grew lower and narrower, cheek grooves cleared its sight lines, and its eyeballs enlarged. ...
Stevens also considered visual acuity and limiting far pointthe greatest distance at which objects remain distinct. For these vision tests, he took the known optics of reptiles and birds, ranging from the poor-sighted crocodile to the exceptional eagle, and adjusted them to see how they would perform inside an eye as large as that of T. rex. "With the size of its eyeballs, it couldn't help but have excellent vision," Stevens says.
He found that T. rex might have had visual acuity as much as 13 times that of people. By comparison, an eagle's acuity is 3.6 times that of a person.
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T. rex might also have had a limiting far point of 6 kilometers, compared with the human far point of 1.6 km. These are best-case estimates, Stevens says, but even toward the cautious end of the scale, T. rex still displays better vision than what's needed for scavenging.
The vision argument takes the scavenger-versus-predator debate in a new direction. The debate had focused on whether T. rex's legs and teeth made it better suited for either lifestyle.
Stevens notes that visual ranges in hunting birds and snapping turtles typically are 20 wider than those in grain-eating birds and herbivorous turtles.
In modern animals, predators have better binocular vision than scavengers do, agrees Thomas R. Holtz Jr. of the University of Maryland at College Park. Binocular vision "almost certainly was a predatory adaptation," he says.
But a scavenging T. rex could have inherited its vision from predatory ancestors, says Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont. "It isn't a characteristic that was likely to hinder the scavenging abilities of T. rex and therefore wasn't selected out of the population," Horner says.
Stevens says the unconvincing scene in Jurassic Park inspired him to examine T. rex's vision because, with its "very sophisticated visual apparatus," the dinosaur couldn't possibly miss people so close by. Sight aside, says Stevens, "if you're sweating in fear 1 inch from the nostrils of the T. rex, it would figure out you were there anyway."
Stevens, K.A. 2006. Binocular vision in theropod dinosaurs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26(June):321-330.
Or maybe Calvinosaurus...
Acts 17:26-2726. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
27. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.Romans 5:12-21
12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--
13. for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.
14. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
15. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
16. Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
17. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
19. For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21. so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
|
Acts 17:24-26
24. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. Was LUKE wrong about this? |
Slowly, she begins to disrobe, her sensous hair slithering out of the top, draping her upper body with teasing tresses.....
It's not a cuss word place holder??
tctacgtatcgata I could use one of those for my car. Then, when someone cuts me off, I reach in and grab a cuss. Saves having to come up with new ones every time.
Well, I believe the Blue Whale actually has pretty small eyes for its body....not too much to see down there...
I can't believe this thread is still going...thanks for helping to make this the most replied to thread I've ever posted....
Ah, Elsie you are back...the way you continued on with the thought made me laugh...perhaps you have enticed the posters to read further, expecting some sort of torrid article...
As you say, the requirement to consider all the permutations and combinations does not model reality, because each generation starts with the same "hand."
Let's say you have a poker hand, and you need a flush to improve it. Here's all the possible ways your hand can change, one card at a time.
00: HHHCH need a flush.
01: SHHCH
02: DHHCH
03: CHHCH
04: HSHCH
05: HDHCH
06: HCHCH
07: HHSCH
08: HHDCH
09: HHCCH
10: HHHSH
11: HHHDH
12: HHHHH The winner.
13: HHHCS
14: HHHCD
15: HHHCC
All possible changes are explored in 15 cases (3*5, not 3^5). Evolution "looks" for the small change that will confer a reproductive advantage. A complete reshuffle would most likely give you a busted flush or a dead critter.
Once a benefit is found, that sequence becomes the standard hand from which the next improvement may be found.
How did your bacteria experiment obtain 20 million unique DNA sequences using your above 3*N math (and an "N" of 1953)?
Welcome to Intelligent Design.
Your hand didn't change itself; you changed it.
I didn't say multiple site changes can't occur. I said evolution doesn't typically require multiple simultaneous changes.
Your mathematical model is based on shuffling the entire deck for each generation. Evolution accumulates small changes. Each viable generation will have few changes from the previous.
It does not require astronomical odds to explore all possible changes, one at a time.
Not very intelligently. Every possible change occured. Using this strategy, there is no chance of failing to find the answer.
That's generally the case when you inject intelligence, such as insuring that only 1 card is discarded/replaced...knowing that your desired result will be found after enough single events.
But that does **NOT** mean that "Every possible change occured."
For your poker hand of 5 cards, each with one of 4 different suits, you would have 5^4 possible changes/combinations. Intelligently, you could limit such changes to 5*3 (or less - perhaps down to 4), but an unthinking, unbiased, random system would have no such option.
That's incorrect, mathematically (this point is not arguable). Math doesn't care if you make your changes one at a time or billions at a time; the probabilities for achieving a desired sequence are the same.
To wit: fliping one coin at a time or flipping a billion coins at a time will have the same mathematical probabilities for achieving a specific 1 trillion length sequence of heads/tails.
However, what can change the above math is external bias.
You are still stuck on permutations and combinations. The original statement was that every possible point mutation occurred. That means one change per variation. Demanding that every permutation of a long string be tested is absurd. That does not model the actual process.
Evolution is about the accumulation of small changes; not winning Lotto.
The goal is to get for one winning hand to a marginally better hand. The hand is not dealt from scratch for each generation. Improvement is marginal and cumulative.
How did your bacteria experiment obtain 20 million unique DNA sequences from 3*1953 variations?
Try reading what I say. I never ruled out the accumulation of changes. I merely said that evolution works on small changes at a time.
There is nothing wrong with your math. You have the correct number of possible permutations.
The problem is with your model of what is happening. The hand is not reshuffled for each generation.
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