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.
Yes. He's the cheerleader. Everytime radioman trips over his own feet, RW tells him how great he is.
Of course you omitted the rest of the paragraph where they talk about how they don't rely entirely on the ring data but use other benchmarking information in the ice to determine the age at levels. But then who wants to know the facts ...
Reading comprehension not your strong suit, eh. I provided a source link, so I didn't omit anything. Besides, If you understood the singular point I was arguing, you wouldn't have resonded with such dribble as you've done here...but then, what else is new...
I have to give you credit for providing the link. But you took a quote out of context in order to try to prove a point. The continuing sentences in that paragraph show that your singular point has no basis.
I'll stop right there since if you don't understand the original analogy, there is absolutely no hope you'll ever understand mine.
Then you quite obviously don't understand my point. Again, what else is new.
Since you obviously do not understand what an anaolgy is, I will post the definition ...
Analogy: The comparison of two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one.
Your point is to try to make a case that cannot be made by using selective quotes to misrepresent the position of the author you are citing.
Good lord, why did I even come here today. Someone please pass me some aspirin...
My point was that "annual rings," is indeed used as a descriptor for ice cores, contrary to what some other people seem to believe, or claim.
That said, the quote I supplied supports that...but if your'e comfortable with head in the sand, then stay there for all I care...
What is necessary for the IDists to ignore is the non-directionality of evolution. There is an almost palpable need from creationists to see some direction from the less complex to the most complex, generally thought by the creationists to be humans even though genome comparisons show otherwise. So far the largest genome sequenced has been the human genome, however when the number of genes is compared, both the rat and the mouse have ~30000 (similar to human numbers). If gene density is considered, humans have one of the lowest at 1 per 100,000 bases, where Drosophila melanogaster has 1 per 9000 bases.
Taken from here
Additional info: Animal Size Genome Database
This need for directionality blinds them to changes in phenotype through a simple change in genotype, or even a loss in size of genome. It is not necessary for an increase in (and here I'm going to use a term I do not like using because IDists have a tendency to reify it) information for nontrivial morphological changes to take place. Both change and reduction of information can produce change in feature and or function.
As soon as costs for retaining a feature, or the function of a feature, become higher than the benefits, the organisms with that feature\function will start dying out, leaving those with a reduced feature\function to procreate. It's simple math.
With the possible increases, decreases and changes in the genome through time it would be pretty tough to determine the direction of change for irreducible simplicity unless the genome retained vestigial genes that could be compared to an organism with a similar but active gene.
I recall reading somewhere that a yeast had the biggest genome. I could have it wrong.
"Thanks for all the fish" placemark
Actually I misspoke. I had forgotten about the chimpanzee genome just sequenced which has more base pairs than the human genome.
The number of base pairs is what I was using as an indicator of genome size. I could have used the number of chromosomes, or the number of genes, or the number of genes per 100,000 base pairs.
Yeast has 12 million base pairs, 6300 genes and 1 gene per 2000 base pairs (50 genes/100,000bp)
hrmn...
a cylindrical transverse or diametrical core of a tree would be... a core OF RINGS
whereas
a cylindrical perpendicular core of layers would be... a core OF LAYERS
Let's see if you can comprehend an analogy:
Just as some folks incorrectly call the ice layers in ice-core samples "rings", some idiots call an AR15 an "assault rifle" and an M-16 an "assault weapon"
they are incorrect.
Do you understand?
Commonality of incorrect or sloppy verbiage does not equate to that use being correct.
do you understand THAT?
There is an almost palpable need from creationists to see some direction from the less complex to the most complex, generally thought by the creationists to be humans even though genome comparisons show otherwise
I think you may be onto something with this. I hadn't considered it before, but now that you explicitly state it, it binds together a large set of disparate debate trends displayed by the opposition which I had heretofore found puzzling.
almost time...
quatrocentennial prime
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