Ear-splitting discovery rocks mammal identity [Evolution, platypus]

news@nature.com ^ | 10 February 2005 | Roxanne Khamsi

[PatrickHenry]

It's not every day we get a platypus thread these days.

[PatrickHenry]

EvolutionPing

A pro-evolution science list with over 230 names. See list's description at my homepage. FReepmail to be added/dropped.

[Squawk 8888]

The existence of the platypus is proof that if evolution doesn't existt then God has a wicked sense of humour.

[EagleUSA]

Both the platypus and the giraffe were designed by a committe of LIBERALS....

[narby]

This wouldn't be one of those "transition species" would it?

Nah! Couldn't be.

[evets]

Adult males have a pointed spur located just above the heel of each hind leg,
which can be used to inject poison produced by a gland in the thigh.

http://rainforest-australia.com/platypus_poison.htm
(weird)

[SeamusVA]

But they look so cute and nice...

[Red Badger]

God has a wicked sense of humour!

[VadeRetro]

It does complicate things. Here's a seemingly ancestral monotreme which lived long (80 million years or so) after Hadrocodium, a supposedly basal modern mammal, only the later monotreme has a more primitive ear arrangement than the earlier Hadro.

It will be lawyered to death, much like the continued existence of monkeys and fish, and Archaeopteryx who could fly being older than the Chinese feathered dinos which could not.

[Poser]

I had to stop to look at a platypus thread. You never know what you will find of FR.

[aruanan]

All this changed when James Hopson, a vertebrate palaeontologist at University of Chicago, Illinois, took a trip to Australia.

I've met Jim a few times. He's great to talk to. His wife worked in my department.

[Mr. Jazzy]

"...Both the platypus and the giraffe were designed by a committee of LIBERALS...."


Not true!

If they HAD been designed by liberals, then they would NEVER have survived, ...


...And it would have been George Bush's fault!

(Grin)

[PatrickHenry]

It does complicate things.

Yes, it does. But we go where the facts lead us.

[dangus]

How bizarre is it that of an entire subclass of mammals, the two surviving representatives (platypi and Echidnae) are so bizarre?

[pabianice]

Birds and reptiles have only one bone to perform this function.

Liberals, too.

[Elpasser]

Evolved twice? Give me a break. Do people really not understand that evolution involves random mutations and then the death of all non-mutated individuals and their offspring?

The fact is that intelligent people believe in evolution because they believe that intelligent people believe in evolution. (Think about that one for a moment).

We each have a brain to think for ourselves. Most people, for example, aren't aware that after nearly 50 years of intensive efforts, science abandoned laboratory efforts in the late 90's to create the simplest precursors to a living organism. Yet they continue to cling to the notion that such a process occurred by itself over billions of years.

Let's say you gathered all the parts of a watch -- crystal, springs, gears, hands, etc. (which is far less complex than the simplest organism) -- and threw them at your wrist. Do you think they would EVER assemble themselves into a functioning watch? Or how many times would you have to throw your shoelaces at your shoes before they laced themselves up?

THINK for yourself !! Evolutionists have a viewpoint that is as tenacious as a religion.

[PatrickHenry]

By the way ... I seem to recall a certain poster who used to frequently cite the platypus as an example of a "specially-created" creature, because -- he claimed -- it had no ancestral line. The platypus was his alleged "proof" that evolution was bogus. I wonder what he'd say about all this?

[VadeRetro]

Blue Boy would of course demand proof that the supposed "ancestor" was not "just a variation of a modern platypus" or perhaps "just some extinct thing." In either event he would ask, "Where are the transitionals?"

The Real Science is so simple, anyone can do it.

[Grut]

For a single example, a birth defect in which some part of the fetus fails to develop fully can't be ruled out.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

"When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging over and over again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical; it's happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists — evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction."

~Simon Conway Morris (New Scientist Nov 2002)