To: Alter Kaker
I can't believe you're making me argue that peanuts are not meat. My suggestion: go get a peanut plant. . . . but they're grocers, not botanists, and they're wrong.
I cannot believe that you think that botanical definitions are the only way to define things. A botanical definition is only one way to define things. Many times it is not the most practical. Grocers are not wrong when they call peanuts nuts or tomatoes vegetables. Taxonomy and other classifications are artificial constructs, made by man to help order things. They can mean different things in different contexts just as easily as a mile is different in the water than on the land or a pint in the UK rather than the US. And yes, nutritionally, peanuts, nuts and legumes are in the meat category. Perhaps you'd like to take it up with the USDA.
Wrong. Equus stenonis was not modern (modern horses are Equus caballus), but an earlier species. [ . . .]it was not a modern horse by any stretch of the imagination.
Not the last word, but wikipedia ("evolution of horses entry") disagrees with you. The fact is, all of those fossils that are put in the evolutionary chain are not necessrily related to the modern horse. You cannot scientifically say, "a is older than b, a has some resemblance to b, therefore b came from a". In any event, modern horses may well have been around 50,000 years ago. The existence of similar looking but different species tells us nothing of what might have been around that simply has not been found yet.
133 posted on
09/20/2006 3:14:31 PM PDT by
sittnick
(There is no salvation in politics.)
To: sittnick
I cannot believe that you think that botanical definitions are the only way to define things.They're not. But from an evolutionary standpoint they are. You look at similar structures in similar plants, and peanuts are very clearly legumes. I don't care about what they do in your stomach, I care what they do for the plant.
Taxonomy and other classifications are artificial constructs, made by man to help order things.
To a certain extent yes, they're artificial in that they're made up. But that doesn't mean they aren't real or meaningful.
Not the last word, but wikipedia ("evolution of horses entry") disagrees with you.
Can you read? The article you cite indicates that Equus stenonis was the first "'true' horse" in the sense that it was the first member of the genus Equus. However there have been several distinct species between Equus stenonis and Equus caballus. Your own, not-very-comprehensive article explains this, listing Equus ferus as an intermediary. In fact, Equus stenonis is likely the ancestor of all extant horse, zebra and donkey species. Since few of them can cross-reproduce succesfully or easily (newsflash: Mules aren't fertile) it seems likely that modern horses and Equus stenonis would have been reproductively isolated had they been alive at the same time. Modern horses -- Equus caballus -- only came into existence within the last 3000 years.
169 posted on
09/21/2006 5:54:28 AM PDT by
Alter Kaker
("Whatever tears one sheds, in the end one always blows one's nose." - Heine)
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