Posted on 10/15/2005 3:44:16 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A paleontologist testified in the Dover school board trial about how fossils connect species.
The ancestor of the whale and its first cousin the hippopotamus walked the Earth for 40 million years, munching on plants, before dying out in the ice ages.
Known as the anthracotheres, it became extinct 50 to 60 million years ago, but not before its evolutionary tree diverged — the whale forging into the oceans, the hippopotamus to the African swamps.
Kevin Padian, a University of California-Berkeley paleontologist, told the story of the whale’s journey, along with the travels of its closest living relative, in U.S. Middle District Court Friday to illustrate how the fossil record connects us to our past.
In the First Amendment lawsuit over Dover Area High School’s intelligent design policy, Padian was the plaintiffs’ final science expert to testify. The defense will begin to present its side Monday.
Padian’s testimony was essentially a response to intelligent-design proponents’ claims that paleontology does not account for missing links and the fossil record belies evolutionary theory.
“The problem is that there are no clear transitional fossils linking land mammals to whales,” the pro-intelligent-design textbook “Of Pandas and People” states.
“How many intermediates do you need to suggest relationships?” Padian wondered.
He pointed to numerous transitional fossils as he traced the lineage of the whale to its early ancestors, a group of cloven-hoofed mammals of a group named cetartiodactyla, illustrating the gradual changes of features along the way.
“We think the transitions are pretty good,” he said.
One of Padian’s concerns with intelligent design — the idea that life’s complexities demand an intelligent designer — is that it shuts down the search for answers, he said. “It worries me that students would be told that you can’t get from A to B with natural causes,” he said.
One of the complaints of 11 parents suing the school district is that, after Dover biology students are told about intelligent design, they are referred to “Pandas,” which is housed in the high school library.
While the connection between the whale and hippopotamus is recent, Padian said some of the fossils linking whales to land-dwelling mammals go back to the Civil War but were ignored by the authors of “Pandas.”
The curator of Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology and author of the “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” also testified to the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.
“Pandas” states, “Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agent, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.”
But Padian, at times affectionately, showed numerous pictures and diagrams of different reptiles evolving from ones possessing scales to ones possessing feathers.
Of a fossil of an archaeopteryx found in the 1860s, Padian said, “Now this is a beautiful critter.”
He also criticized the book’s assertions on homology — the study of similar characteristics of living organisms used to explain their relationships to other organisms.
As he cross-examined Padian, Dover’s attorney Robert Muise brought up one of science’s most ardent evolutionists in raising questions about the fossil record.
Muise asked Padian about the late Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, the idea that rather than Darwin’s characterization of evolution as slow and gradual change, it may be better described as taking place in fits and starts.
Gould offered the idea as an explanation for the patterns found in the fossil record, which shows abrupt appearances of new species, followed by long stagnant periods with little change.
While “Pandas” argues that intelligent-design proponents consider punctuated equilibrium unprovable, Padian said Gould offered the theory as an explanation to gaps in the fossil record.
“Is natural selection responsible for punctuated equilibrium?” Muise asked at one point.
“That’s a great question,” Padian said. While it may raise questions about the mechanism of evolution, he answered, it doesn’t contradict the idea of common descent.
Since you have so thoroughly checked, please provide a link ...
Well, yeah you state that. But, given that it is tied to the immune system in recent times after being talked down as vestigial for years because science had no earthly clue what the appendix did, the story has hardly changed much - has it. You still don't fully understand it, yet you still pontificate as though you do. Gee, I'm sure that supports one of our two positions (mine) ... It is needed by the body else it wouldn't have any function whatsoever. And yes there are lymph nodes in there - for a reason. Just because you don't know the extent of the damage done by unplugging something doesn't mean it is useless - especially in light of what is there. And saying one can live "quite healthily witout it" is like saying a double amputee can live quite healthily without both legs.. that doesn't mean they aren't needed. First rule in science among Evos, if you don't know what the heck you're talking about, say it forcefully as though it is an established truth.. Next.
ok. That means 5.5 x 50 = 275 feet of snow. It was found 250 feet down. Thanks for disproving your point and making a mockery of whatever creo site you pasted from.
There is less evidence for your statement than there exists for evolutionary theory. I guess you pick and choose what to believe, not based on the evidence but on emotion.
I did no such thing. I may be in possession of facts you don't like due to my familiarity with the Glacier Girl story; but, I followed that story from day one till the day she took her maiden flight and have archived images on cd of her rebuild through her first takeoff. I also have some short movie clips of her first flights. Just because you don't have original thinking capacity of your own and have to cut and paste evolutionist propaganda from Evo sites doesn't mean I do or need to do so.
You posted no scientific evidence for you position, I posted scientific evidence to show you the creo garbage you posted was a lie.
No, I referenced details of the story. I've argued it before with the numbers given by USGS and echoed just about everywhere else on the web about a year ago. So, I don't care what you say you've posted or what you say it amounts to. I want to know where you or your source get 7 foot snowfall averages when USGS and Greenland's own websites published 5 1/2 feet. Looks like some revisionism to me.
The real truth is that the hundreds of annual rings are still "hundreds" of annual rings. And that the "annual" doesn't mean "annual". Whatever you want to try and make the issue here, you can't escape that fact. Squirm away and handwring as you may, you're stuck.
Um, might point out that maybe your memory is faulty. I think this is what you read and just remember it the way you want to remember it.
"What is most interesting about this story, at least for the purposes of this discussion, is the depth at which the planes were found (as well as the speed which the glacier moved). It took only 46 years to bury the planes in over 260 feet (~80 meters) of ice and move then some 3 miles from their original location. This translates into a little over 5 ½ feet (~1.7 meters) of ice or around 17 feet (~5 meters) of compact snow per year and about 100 meters of movement per year."
No link, no credibility. We have already seen how you won't provide proper links. Remeber your post where I asked for a link and you pasted from some creo site but linked to the Lost Squadron Museum site?
Since "annual rings" have no bearing on the item you brought up (Glacier Girl) I have no idea what you are talking about.
It's one of the creo's lame arguments. A is not true because B does not equal C.
Hope you notice and follow
There is more evidence that you guys are lying about the appendix or ignorant outright of it's function than that you know the first thing what you're talking about. And yet, you know about as much about anything to do with evolution to the extent it actually has anything at all to do with it. Pick a subject. It isn't that your "observations" give evolution creedence, it's that your spin on them tries to. Whether it's so or not is a matter of opinion, not science. And when it's that elastic, Elmer fudd could be evidence for evolution. I'm sure you'll be trotting him out last though, just before you scream to the world, "You can't do this. You can't kill the theory, Our greatest proof is about to be unveiled.. 'You say you don't wike it. But I know you're a wire. Cause when we kiss.. ewwwww fiwer.'" See! You gotta believe us. We're smart. We're not bossy and nasty and we actually wear pink bunny slippers in chat rooms.. And see, we admitted we were wrong about polystrata fossils, coal formation, rapid canyon formation, the Grand canyon specifically, bleeding, .... but, you know we're right about all this other stuff (till someone blows the bs with another St. Helens) .. Damn them.. Damn them all to ... um.. what?
And my ace beat Havoc's joker.
Fact or supposition? Are you giving out a hypothesis as fact? hmmmm.
Well expert. Put up or shut up. Give us your link.
You are losing it. You are confused, dazed, bonkers and are mixing up the facts.
I already conceded you 5 1/2 feet. 5.5 x 48 = ...... hmmmmm about 250 .... close enough anyway.
Uh, what is its function ... tic toc tic toc ....
If I pasted from a crevo website, you should be able to show what I pasted and what website I pasted it from. So far you're just flapping about hoping someone believes you. And so far, you aren't addressing the problem at hand. Annual rings aren't "annual" regardless of whatever nonsense it is you think you're making a stink over, it would seem to be a sideshow distraction to get everyone's eyes off the ball. Annual rings ain't annual. You guys need them to be for your great age of the world arguments. Bam, vanished. Oops, sorry, that was supposed to be "evidence" for something... right. But that was till a minute ago. The truth now.. well, uh, you're working on it.. right.. LOL And, no, I don't remember pasting you some creo site and linked to Lost squadron's site. I linked lost squadron's site because the history of their work is listed there. Guess I gave you too much credit for thinking you might be able to figure out something so simple... rofl. So while you accuse me of linking to some creo site, you then accuse me of failing to. Which is it sparky, or is another personality gonna come out of you and argue with the other two? "He posted a creo link. No he didn't. Yes he did. Will you two shut up. You're both wrong.. umm you're both right? Um. Bap. What was that for. I don't know you started it." Ah the goings on in the mind of an evo.
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