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.
Interestingly the site you gave a link to is in Peru, which just happens to be the same place the description of the use of dust and clear layers is found in in one of your previous posts (#454). It said nothing about the dates coming from the lengths but from layers. In that same post of yours it mentions that the dating takes into consideration the average temperature of the area and the affect that temperature would have.
They were amateurs. They weren't scientists. They know not what they did.
do trees growing within a degree or two latitude of the equator have growth rings? If yes, why? If yes, do they appear different (less distinct?) than the rings of trees in the temperate latitudes?
Don't know for sure. My guess is that all trees have growth rings, but changes in climate in an area produce distinctive patterns, with good and poor growing seasons, allowing recent trees to be matched up with older trees thereby establishing a long sequence. If you have the same climate all the time, it may be more difficult to link modern trees with dead trees.
You might be able to get some additional information from one of the dendrochronology websites.
(Sorry for the delay in getting back to you--been on the road.)
rats... I was hoping you'd be able to slap me with an in-depth dissertation.
I'll see what I can root up. I'll ring ya if I find anything pithy.
*d'oh*
wet and dry seasons -> yearly cycle of growth and relative dormancy -> annual growth ring patterns
well, now... I feel sheepish.
I'll see what I can root up. I'll ring ya if I find anything pithy.
OK, I'll leaf you alone for a while to do research (if the internet doesn't work, try the branch library). Careful you're not barking up the wrong tree though.
you post that and - wooden ya know it? - a serendipitously timed and themed article is brought to my attention
are you pining for a demi-mille Prime?
well, if it comes to that, please make sure you pay the hitman handsomely, with a bonus for speed and cleanliness.
When I clicked on his seminars:
Not Found
The requested URL /Downloads/Seminar/mp3/index.jsp was not found on this server.
From what I have seen about how Mr. Hovind lies ...
If there was any there there, Mr. Hovind would have it docuemented from the salvage crew, not just posting heresay.
I see three, maybe four rings in over 20 feet. That would average about 5.5 years per ring * 48 years equals about 250 feet. Thanks.
1.3% error. Pretty darn good! Thanks.
That shows how little you know about ice.
500
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