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.
Then again, this is short attention span theater for you guys, isn't it..
I assume the irony here is unintentional given the yokels-sitting-on-cracker-barrels dialogue between you and Running Wolf on this thread.
I have to give Havoc some credit. He, so far, has NEVER once made a factual statement about evolution and has NEVER once sourced his false claims about evolution.
I, one of many, am not amazed that you do not understand.
God did it. Since it could not possibly have happened, it must be a miracle by the ID'er. No sense going into a scientific explanation. That should be good enough for you.
You just made that up (or maybe got it off some creo website. Your statement is totally false and UNINTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED to mislead.
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson
I. I walk down the street.
There's a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost.....I am helpless;
it isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
II. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place;
but it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in....it's a habit.
Let me credit Running Wolf's special consistency, then. He's never made a scientific argument, or a logical one, or understood one of either type.
Wolf
Most people would have gone around the hole the first time before falling in multiple times.
I really question the mentality of someone that is scared to walk down the street again because he will fall in the hole again. Sounds like he has an addiction to falling in holes and can't be tempted unless he walds down a different street.
Havoc, good posts. My hat 's off to you....especially your patience.
My hat is off to Havoc too, csense.
Wolf
How cool is that :)
sounds more cool to Wolf!
You have now given Wolf new ideas for metaphors.
Wolf
Wolf
Said concept was propounded by your own side. However much you dislike it, it's your doing, not mine. However you try to define your way around it, it comes from your side. So, spare me the handwringing. As for what "you told me". I've dealt with it in other conversation here - lest one imagine It must be directed solely at you. This is a group conversation.
As with my noted sarcasm of comparisons, you don't seem to get the concept of humor unless it's yours and directed in an insulting manner at someone apparently. Get over your bias and be open minded.. isn't that what you guys always insist is needed on our side lol.
Would they really? Is that why your side discards theory after theory of evolution and sticks with the concept after it is been disproven by yourselves in more forms than you can count. When you get out of the hole the next time around, perhaps you can lecture others on how you quit falling into the same hole.. ;)
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