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Tracing the whale’s trail [Evolution trial, daily thread for 15 Oct]
York Daily Record [Penna] ^ | 15 October 2005 | LAURI LEBO

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.


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: biology; crevolist; dover; evolution; evolutiontheory; fantasy; farfetched; ridiculous; scienceeducation; sillynonsense; talltale; theoryofevolution; whaletail
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To: Havoc
Your dating methodologies tend to be propped up by these annual rings and by "annual" sedimentation propositions and the like.

You still haven't shown how the methods are in error. Give an example and show how it is wrong. Of course you will have to source your example ...

301 posted on 10/16/2005 12:32:51 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: WildTurkey
You just go around saying that Side A is incorrect because some creo site says so.

Well, you keep saying that, you haven't established it. I pointed out that Glacier Girl had hundreds of "annual" rings twixt her and the surface.. funny that - after only 48 years. And oddly enough, without knowing the knitpicky details of the actual snowfall amounts for those 48 years, you'd be in the same position with Glacier Girl as you are with any other find of an Unknown origin in time. Pretend for ten minutes that you don't have snowfall data for the past 48 years - cause you don't have that for pretty much anywhere on the planet past 100 or so years back. If your model don't hold up with knowns, how then can you argue it holds up with unknowns. So, for now, you don't know how much snowfall there was for those 48 years. Now we make Glacier Girl an unknown in time. Now explain the hundreds of "annual rings" between the surface and Glacier Girl. Cause on that basis, She is now flying recon over the plate fleets of the 1700s or worse.

302 posted on 10/16/2005 12:34:39 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: RunningWolf
I don't know.. looks like you understand him quite well.

Oh, I understand him quite well. No doubt about that. But what I posted is that no one can understand what he is trying to say.

303 posted on 10/16/2005 12:34:43 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: Havoc
Well, you keep saying that, you haven't established it. I pointed out that Glacier Girl had hundreds of "annual" rings twixt her and the surface.. funny that - after only 48 years.

Point me to the source where they counted the "annual rings" ...

304 posted on 10/16/2005 12:35:50 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: Havoc
Now explain the hundreds of "annual rings" between the surface and Glacier Girl. Cause on that basis,

OK. Please give me the analysis that determined the number of rings and how many years they calculated based on those rings. How many years did they calculate?

305 posted on 10/16/2005 12:38:24 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: RunningWolf

I did, didn't I. It was fun. Can I do it again? Hmmm? Can I lol.


306 posted on 10/16/2005 12:38:36 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: WildTurkey; Havoc

"Point me to the source where they counted the "annual rings" ..."

My bad. You NEVER give links or sources. You just get things off the creo sites, put it out as fact.


307 posted on 10/16/2005 12:40:54 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: WildTurkey
Well I understand him and what he is trying to say, and I understand you and what you are trying to say too.

Wolf

308 posted on 10/16/2005 12:41:09 AM PDT by RunningWolf (tag line limbo)
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To: Havoc
I did, didn't I. It was fun. Can I do it again? Hmmm? Can I lol.

You sound just like the little kid your mother is yelling at to turn off the computer.

309 posted on 10/16/2005 12:41:55 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: RunningWolf
Well I understand him and what he is trying to say, and I understand you and what you are trying to say too. Wolf

OK. Maybe you can get him to provide me the source for his "hundreds of annual rings" over the Glacier Girl ...

310 posted on 10/16/2005 12:43:06 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: Havoc
Now explain the hundreds of "annual rings" between the surface and Glacier Girl. Cause on that basis,

Most likely, there were not hundreds of "annual rings" and you got that bit off of some creo web site. I am going now. When I return tomorrow, I expect you to source the counting and analysis for the rings above the Glacier Girl so that I may properly address any 'errors' you may attribute to the analysis.

311 posted on 10/16/2005 12:45:55 AM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: WildTurkey
Most likely, there were not hundreds of "annual rings"

Well, given that I know of no web based citations, you can confirm it through the GG website I provided earlier. The people there have gone on record stating "hundreds". They have no reason to lie and no reason to hide from it either. And since nothing but a scientific journal would otherwise be good enough for you objectivists (lol), just get it from the horses mouth.. kinda hard to argue with them.. though I'm sure you'll find an excuse.

312 posted on 10/16/2005 1:08:28 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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buried-alive---buried-alive---PLACEMARKER


313 posted on 10/16/2005 1:08:48 AM PDT by jennyp (WHAT I'M READING NOW: Art of Unix Programming by Raymond)
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To: Havoc
Well yeah,, ya can.

But would you agree that it is this cult of evo that is the thing, Not the people seduced by it.

But the people, they have so much invested of themselves in it, But Why??

Wolf
314 posted on 10/16/2005 1:09:15 AM PDT by RunningWolf (tag line limbo)
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To: WildTurkey
Wolf; I have predicted you will play at least two more cards from this play book, maybe now later than sooner, but they will still be thrown down.

I hope you don't play the other cards, they are much worse than the Soros card you played. You are better than that.

Wolf
315 posted on 10/16/2005 1:16:25 AM PDT by RunningWolf (tag line limbo)
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To: WildTurkey

I'm gonna laugh myself silly here. It's in your own bloody hitpiece. But because you mortimers don't bother listening to the people you choose to demonize, apparently, you cheated yourself of a cite in advance of having to ask me for it. Kent Hovind cites the GG people directly in one of his videos.
I'm looking for the further details now; but, it's in one of his 7 part series. Which begs a point...

I don't agree with Dr. Matthew Rainbow; but, I've listened to the man and find him brilliant. Wrong; but, brilliant. I wondered on seeing him if he wasn't the model for Dr. Brundle in the modern retelling of "the Fly". I listened to him in a three hour debate. I wonder how many of you have ever bothered to listen to what Kent Hovind has to say. I mean I know ya'll are good at demonizing guys like that whome you detest for whatever reason. But how many of you bothered to check the cites for your hitpieces before repeating them by copy/paste? In this instance, you'd have had a citation in advance of asking for one if you had bothered to do so. I didn't have a web based cite and found it from within your own hitpiece. That's sad. You'd literally know what you needed to know from me if you'd had one clue what you were protesting with your own hitpiece to begin with. The fact that you don't know on one count tells me you don't on the other. Hmm, what to file this under - acting like directed spoonfed cultists, intellectual honesty... hmm bwahahahahahah.


316 posted on 10/16/2005 1:44:31 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: Havoc
The people there have gone on record stating "hundreds".
Since you don't know of any web based citations, perhaps you can tell us where you got this information? Or is that too much to ask?
317 posted on 10/16/2005 1:44:48 AM PDT by anguish (while science catches up.... mysticism!)
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To: RunningWolf

Yep, and that's my point. I mean, there are a number of ways to illustrate things both for the people present and for the lurkers. The humor is for me a little tonight, I had a bad night and I'm trying hard not to let it get away cause I know it can. But some of this stuff is just plain silly.

Using the absurd to illustrate the absurd is useful. Kinda have to draw them into some of this, have to also shame them a bit - to the extent that were possible, Kinda have to show them you don't hate them, which I don't. But you also have to establish that people expect there to be standards. And "trust me" is only a standard for charlatans and cults. It most certainly has no place in science. This whole charade of "we don't deal in proofs" but "this is what the evidence shows" (proofs).. They know exactly what they're doing. It's like these religions where they tell you that you can think long enough to make up your mind that the clergy is right and you have to listen to them period but after that you're anathema if you dare question the clergy... lol. Sad and sick. Check your brain at the door and don't listen to anyone we tell you is a quack - you might learn something.. rofl.


318 posted on 10/16/2005 1:51:03 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: anguish

I think I may have mentioned earlier that I take interest in aircraft since having been raised in them. I also have an interest in aircraft archeology and air restoration projects.
I collect stories, histories of rebuild projects as detailed as i can find and often with as many photos as possible. I especially love the old warbirds and like talking about them with others and about circumstances of a given find - like the B29 find in Alaska for one. A complicated mess that turned into a disaster. Heartbreaking in a sense because it was such a botched waste of an attempt to bring her out.. There's a lot of stuff you learn that ends up having use when you might least expect it. And it's one of those things lol. My current database of rebuilds is rather substantial; but, it's also just one of many hobbies/interests. There's no end to what interests me.


319 posted on 10/16/2005 2:10:09 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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To: anguish

I like the quotes on your profile btw lol.


320 posted on 10/16/2005 2:16:29 AM PDT by Havoc (King George and President George. Coincidence?)
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