Posted on 12/05/2003 3:26:16 PM PST by bondserv
New Record-Setting Living Fossil Flabbergasts Scientists 12/05/2003
A remarkably-detailed fossil ostracode, a type of crustacean, has been announced in the Dec. 5 issue of Science1 that is blowing the socks off its discoverers. Erik Stokstad in a review of the discovery in the same issue2 explains its significance in the evolutionary picture of prehistory:
Over the past half-billion years [sic], evolution has dished up [sic] an almost endless variety of novelties: lungs, legs, eyes, wings, scales, feathers, fur. So when paleontologists find a creature that doesn’t change, they take note. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)Two things about this fossil are exceptional. (1) It has a “jaw-dropping” amount of detail, such that even small fragile parts and soft tissues were perfectly preserved. (2) It is indistinguishable from modern ostracodes:
What’s most amazing, ostracode experts say, is how eerily similar the soft-tissue anatomy is to that of modern relatives. “I was flabbergasted,” says Koen Martens, a zoologist at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.This fossil, found near Herefordshire, U.K., was found in Silurian deposits estimated to be 425 million years old. That means that its modern counterparts are living fossils, virtually unchanged for all that time:
Some ostracode specialists are stunned. “This is a demonstration of unbelievable stability,” says Tom Cronin of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Whereas ostracodes diversified [sic] into some 33,000 living and extinct species, “these guys have just been plodding along totally unfazed.”This fossil, named Colymbosathon, is also upsetting those who look for evolution in the genes:
Finding a modern cylindroleberid in the Silurian clashes with molecular data, which suggest that the group and related families originated relatively recently, says evolutionary biologist Todd Oakley of the University of California, Santa Barbara. There’s no conflict for zoologist Anne Cohen, a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, who thinks Colymbosathon actually belongs to a long-extinct family. In any case, the new fossil indicates that a basic ostracode body plan was already present in the Silurian. It could also help [sic] sort out evolutionary relationships of fossil ostracodes.David Horne (Queen Mary College, London) predicts more “long-lost evolutionary blueprints” [sic] may emerge from these deposits. “The probability that they will find similarly preserved representatives of other ostracode lineages, and of other arthropods, is both high and extremely exciting.”
This is just one more of many remarkable, astounding, flabbergasting examples of living fossils. “Unbelievable stability” is not a prediction of Darwinism. The Darwinian world is supposed to be a fluid world, filled with diversification, radiation, and innovation. During the imaginary 425 million years, the continents moved all over the world, animals crawled onto the land and became geckos and crocodiles and birds and caribou. Mountains rose and valleys sank, and glaciers repeatedly advanced and retreated over much of the planet. Some animals moved back into the oceans and became whales, porpoises, manatees and sea lions in just a small fraction of this much time, and humans emerged from grunting chimpanzees, invented language and abstract thought, and conquered space. Is it reasonable to assume that in this slow whirlwind of continuous dynamical change, these ostracodes just reproduced themselves over and over millions of times without any change whatsoever?
Darwinists are caught in a crossfire of antagonistic evidence. Only a well-armored Darwinist could be excited about incoming bombshells like this. Only by wearing Kevlar-lined lead helmets around their brains can they keep the bullets from penetrating and the insides from exploding.
What has that to do with the price of tea in china? I thought your were maintaining that there is a natural barrier between cross-species fertilizations? Answer the question. Are lions and tigers of the same species, or not?
Apparently, you have not finished reading the articles I cited. While mules are, indeed, sterile, jennies are not. Are you also maintaining that horses and donkeys are, in fact, of the same species?
Indeed. As long as you have the patience to wait several billion years for the results to come in.
Incredible as it may seem, science does not take it's marching orders, or evaluate it's progress, based on the perceptions of disaffected adherents of marginal theories who can't come to grips with inductive reasoning. I have no doubt that unless paleontologists come up with a skeleton for every species that ever drew air on the planet, that creationists will be singing the song of the gaps to anyone foolish enough to hang around and listen until the final trump sounds.
As to the story changing--we've already talked about that--of course the story changes with new data--that's how science is set up to work, but the kernel of the story of evolution has remained unmoved for long enough to make it an unquestioningly acceptable story to tell in science class.
No, you wouldn't. By your lights, they are separately created species. If they are separately created species, there is no more particular reason to think that a lion and tiger might mate, and produce any sort of offspring, than to think that a turnip and turtle-dove could mate, and produce any kind of offspring.
I'm not in the least bit sly. I argue with all the subletly of bull in a china shop.
So...families are really species? And species are really hybreds? Can I quote this one to the school board?
Look at any fossil. They are all transitional. Some have larger gaps between their nearest relatives than others.
Like This? Thanks I was wondering about that?! How do you copy and paste pictures?Much better, thanks! (Also don't forget to put a <p> tag after the quoted part in itals.)
To insert an image, use something like this: <img src="http://www.atomicjetpacks.com/pix/hairlesschimp.jpg" width=348 height=500>. You can get the width & height for a picture by right-clicking it & choosing Properties.
One of the ways I got good at html coding was by freeping. :-)
Horses and jackasses--mate one way, you get mules, mate another way, you get jennies. West Atlantic Herring gulls--mate east to west, you get viable offpring, mate west to east, you don't. Dogs and cats--mate them, and you get occasional live offpring. Chihuahuas and Great Danes--genetically, they are one species--so you should be able to mate them, and produce viable offspring, right?
I gotta say I'd like to see that too! :-)
The part where you changed your tune from "species can't interbreed" to "families can't interbreed".
Is your new tune that families were independently created, but species were not? How is it, then, that most interfamily matings are void of offspring, if speciation is really just hybredization by another name?
Chihuahua's and Great Danes - variations of the same form?
The don't breed, they just occasionally produce offspring--live, but not viable.
You HAVE heard that the Taco Bell dog actually DID get a Great Dane bitch pregant!
Yeah........ The vet said the St. Bernard probably put him up to it...............
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