The jaw of Teinolophos trusleri catches the ear bones in the act of separating from the jaw.
Posted on 02/11/2005 6:49:09 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Triple bone structure arose independently in platypus and humans.
Listen up: mammals seem to have evolved the delicate bone structure of the middle ear at least twice. The surprising discovery comes from a fossil, found off the southern coast of Australia, that belongs to an ancestor of the platypus.
Modern mammals are unique among vertebrates for possessing three tiny bones in the middle ear. The malleus, incus and stapes (commonly known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup) work as part of a chain that transmits sound towards the skull. Birds and reptiles have only one bone to perform this function.
Because the mammalian arrangement is so complex, scientists believed that the set-up had evolved on just a single occasion, in an ancestor that gave rise to placental animals (including humans), marsupials and monotremes (such as the duck-billed platypus).
All this changed when James Hopson, a vertebrate palaeontologist at University of Chicago, Illinois, took a trip to Australia. There he met a team of researchers including Thomas Rich of Museum Victoria in Melbourne.
The jaw of Teinolophos trusleri catches the ear bones in the act of separating from the jaw.
Rich and his colleagues had recently unearthed a fossil of Teinolophos trusleri, an ancestor of modern monotremes that lived 115 million years ago. "He said he had some new Teinolophos specimens and when he showed them to me I almost fell off my chair," says Hopson, an author of the study, published this week inScience [Rich T. H., et al. Science 307, 910 - 914 (2005)].
Hammer time
Palaeontologists believe that the middle-ear bones of modern mammals once belonged to the jawbone and later separated to adopt their present location. This is supported by the fact that the middle ear's bones associate with the jaw in the early development of modern mammalian embryos.
What makes theTeinolophos specimen surprising is a large groove in its adult jawbone, which indicates that the smaller bones had not yet detached.
Teinolophos lived after monotremes split from the placental and marsupial mammalian groups. Its jawbone structure, along with its place in the evolutionary tree, hints that a common ancestor to all these mammals lacked the special three-bone ear structure.
This means that natural selection must have driven the same rearrangement in independent groups, after the monotreme split. "Some embryologists had the idea that it might be convergent but nobody really believed this," says palaeontologist Thomas Martin of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany. "I was quite shocked when I heard that such a complex morphological transformation happened twice."
The discovery will compel many experts to rethink their appreciation of mammals' common evolutionary heritage. "Until now it was considered to be one of the most important shared derived characteristics of modern mammals," says Martin.
Now we have the defective fetus theory of evolution comingled with the convergent evolution idea.
What ever happened to the old paleontological saw that in evolution Form always preceeds Function?
If asphalt highways were the only way, you'd have a point, but the fellow I posted earlier doesn't need highways, and he wouldn't know what to do with one if you showed it to him anyway...
True, but when your upright example leaves Dallas and arrives in Detroit on his own volition and without "help", you'd have a point.
Hardly, I was in a rush last night and that was the easiest list to format I found. But come on now, it's not a stretch to safely assume that a list of typical lifespans of animals would pretty much line up with the longest lifespan one. I doubt you are going to find something like rabbits generally outlive elephants but one lucky elephant just happened to live very long.
Secondly, I said nothing about bipedalism and age, only that H. sapiens may have back problems, because our average age has increased, allowing onset of arthritic conditions, calcification of the spinal column and other assorted osteo diseases.
We no, Back problems apparently plagued mankind throughout history when the average lifespan wasn't as long as today.
http://www.kerkhoffchiropractic.com/pages/history_chiropractic.html#TIMELINE
Hell, I never had a back twinge before I was 50. Now I have problems of varying degrees on a regular basis.
Well as the Baby Boomers like to say, "50 is the new 30". Which there is some truth to it. With our easier lifestyle today, back problems generally happen later in life, But if you were living in ancient Rome where the average lifespan was about 35 people probably suffered back problems in their 20s.
If I was a wild animal, I would be dead and eaten a long time ago if I had back problems.
Not necessarily, An elephant for instance, even if it had back problems still wouldn't have to worry about being eaten by a lion.
Plus what about domesticated animals kept as pets & in Zoos that live into their old age?
Do you think a tortoise's shell helps stabilize his spinal column. I think it might.
I would think carrying your house on your back all your life would actually be a burden on the spinal cord.
I guess like with the vitamin C gene deficiency where God loves dogs but hates sailors, God must love turtles and hate manual laborers.
Several of your longer lived guys are water creatures - extra support for a spinal column - and fish don't count. You guys were discussing bipedal vs. quadrapeds.
Lastly you left out a huge number of the smaller quadrapeds, most that don't live very long.
And many larger quadrapeds that live longer.
But old is old, The billion heartbeat rule is in effect. I'm sure 2 year old shrews, 10 year old wolves, 50 year old elephants, 100 year old tortoises all suffer similar age related maladies. So if their spine/back was as bad as ours they would suffer back problems like us in what's old age to them.
So my point. The fact that we live longer causes many more medical problems. Is it not possible that back problems are among these?
I don't discount what you are saying, But wouldn't an Intelligent Designer know this would happen and do a better job?
Especially if that IDer is the Christian God and Genesis is suppose to be literally true, If a back can't go 60 years in today's easy world, How did it hold up for the 900+ years in the harsh ancient world where according to Genesis people like Adam lived that long?
Hey, you are good! Are you sure your name is not Rudyard Kipling? ;^)
When Earth's last picture is painted And the tubes are twisted and dried When the oldest colors have faded And the youngest critic has died We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it Lie down for an aeon or two 'Till the Master of all good workmen Shall put us to work anew And those that were good shall be happy They'll sit in a golden chair They'll splash at a ten league canvas With brushes of comet's hair They'll find real saints to draw from Magdalene, Peter, and Paul They'll work for an age at a sitting And never be tired at all. And only the Master shall praise us. And only the Master shall blame. And no one will work for the money. No one will work for the fame. But each for the joy of the working, And each, in his separate star, Will draw the thing as he sees it. For the God of things as they are!
Allow me to analyze the ways in which the above constitutes "lying with truth," and I'm ignoring a lot of falsehoods just in doing that.
The overall story is that Darwin had practically no fossil evidence in 1859 to cite in defense of his theory. So people who disliked the idea their ancestors were apes and that Genesis isn't a science text mocked "Where are the missing links?"
As some of us know, Darwin stuck to his guns, confident that the intermediate forms must have lived. He allowed that the fossil record is not so perfect that we should find them all, but they must have lived and more than those known in his day must be out there.
So in the 146 years since, we have found tons of them. Inescapable connections between apes and humans. Inescapable connections between land animals and whales, not to mention inescapable connections between anthracotheres and the "too young to be descended from Pakicetus" hippos. Imagine lawyering on such a dumb-dumbism! Faith in things unseen is obviously a bad influence on more people than just Al-Qaeda. It's really amazing, the kind of crap that some lying a-holes will pretend to be the "refutation" of Darwin, when you think about it.
Especially the kind of holes who are ashamed to defend Young Earth Idiocy directly, but expend all their energy trying to make the world safe for same, trying to sabotage evolution from a publicly postured position which supposedly accepts evolution as reality.
After all, someone who allegedly accepts that God or whomever used evolution would supposedly accept that hippos could have descended from Pakicetus (or something pretty close to it on the tree of life). Such a person would not be grasping at even the most fraudulent straws to avoid such a conclusion from fossil evidence.
It is the lyingest of liars who won't even admit who they are. Such are the lowest of scum, compared to whom being a billions-of-generations-removed descendant of pond scum is no disgrace at all.
Anyway, with all that as background, we have yet another unexpected result in science and the Luddite party that wishes it was still 1858 is making what it can of it.
Maybe evolution is all a house of cards and this is the thread that unravels it. Can't prove it isn't so, but none of the other unexpected results up to now were. It's far easier to believe that the lying, lawyerly a-holes are wrong again. The last 146 years have said that's the way to bet.
Do you want to explain why God saw fit to create the noble & dignified platypus?
I mean, if you are an anti-evolutionist, then you believe species are a magical, inseparable thing (magical as in: no species could ever evolve into another species). So why don't you think phyla are magical as well? I mean, if God created mammals and avians to be Different Things, why would He have created a mammal with certain avian features?
Job 38
1. Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
2. "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
3. Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4. "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6. On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone--
7. while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
8. "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,
9. when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10. when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place,
11. when I said, `This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?
12. "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place,
13. that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?
14. The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment.
15. The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken.
16. "Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17. Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death ?
18. Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.
No Ma'am. But I'd like to think I wouldn't cower before them (you can never KNOW yourself until you face a situation and actually have to make a decision, such as whether to piss your pants in fear or not).
...
Anyway, so the apparent absurdity of our world today is actually evidence for design, rather than evolution, because there is an order, just one we can't see?
In other words: when the world makes sense, it's because God designed it that way. When the world doesn't make sense, it's because God designed it that way.
But doesn't that passage also suggest the possibility of evolution? I mean, who are you to tell God that He can't bring about human life by letting evolution do its thing? How dare you demand that God conform to your literalist interpretation of the Bible. You are not greater than God. You can't tell him what to do*, or what He did. John Derbyshire (of NRO) says it best:
All that kind of thinking trivializes God. It belongs to the category of thinking that A.N. Whitehead called "misplaced concreteness." It shows a dismal poverty of imagination -- reducing the divine to science fiction (or in the case of the "Left Behind" books, to a combination of sci-fi and spy thriller). The ID-ers' God is a sort of scientist himself, sticking his finger in to make things work when natural laws -- His laws! -- can't do the job. Well, if that's your God, I wish you joy of him. My God is much vaster and stranger than that. Are we the children of God, or the children of Wrath? I think about that a lot; but I am certain, at any rate, that we are not the children of some celestial lab technician..
.
* see Niels Bohr, in response to Einstein:
Einstein: God does not play dice with the universeBohr: Quit telling God what to do
Talk about lawyering and lying!! The subject is a fossil that upsets the sequence of events and you go on into Ad Hominem.
Then you bring up the whale, remember, back then you were the champion of the mesonychus, but you seem to have changed your tune. It is still a problem. Compare these images.
The first image hides the difficulties exhibited by the second. Camels, pigs, and cud chewers split off above the whale/hippo split. Now put the antracotheres and paki in their respective chains, they should be kissing cousins. Are they?
And as I pointed out, when you get to pick and choose what is important you can achieve whatever you want.
From your link.
Teeth are not as reliable as people thought."
...
"Our study is the most complete to date, including lots of different taxa and a lot of new characteristics,
"lying with truth,"
Hilarious!!
Stop dropping "h"
What's to explain. Do you wish to explain why British TV gave us Dr. Who? ..why US tv markets brought us the dopey, and useless "Gilligan's island"? Our own choices in what we like or pursue are as arbitrary as the next. How is it that God's decisions on what he creates become subject to your criticisms. Who are you to question him on his choices or me on mine when I create something. That I create something is enough. Why is really none of your business unless I decide you need to know or I care to tell you. That's not to be harsh; but, somehow common sense is the first thing you throw out the door and beg credulity on.. As for what I believe or not, please don't put words in my mouth in building strawmen. If you want to use the term "magical", that isn't in the realm of science is it. And for that matter, not much in the article is in the realm of science. I'd have to reread; but, the science ended when they stopped noting what they found and started rationalizing and stating factually what it meant as though they had any clue. They don't. And that's the point. It's a belief system and a religion. This is not science.
Yes, I'm talking about things that are fundamentally unscientific.
the science ended when they stopped noting what they found and started rationalizing and stating factually what it meant as though they had any clue. They don't. And that's the point. It's a belief system and a religion. This is not science.
I disagree. Scientists have a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that we evolved (for instance, the way the genome is structured). It's not a "belief system" because skepticism plays a big role in science. Scientists do not accept evolution uncritically. They accept it because the evidence supports it.
Precisely my point. Conjecture also is not science. It may lead to science eventually; but, it is not science.
I disagree. Scientists have a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that we evolved (for instance, the way the genome is structured). It's not a "belief system" because skepticism plays a big role in science. Scientists do not accept evolution uncritically. They accept it because the evidence supports it.
Undoubtedly you do disagree; because you've been taught that all this evidence exists. Where? I've read the same stuff as have many many others who flat don't see it. The reason we don't see it is because Evolution is propped up by stories not unlike the one that is the topic of this thread. There is no real science in it .. they state they found something then immediately shape it into a story and make factual sounding conclusions unsupported by the evidence. Then you say the evidence supports it. The evidence may support something; but, it doesn't by any stretch support evolution.
It is a belief system. And the reason it is boils down to the fact of what I and many others have said. There is in point of fact no direct evidence for evolution in the sense you intend to sell it. I understand there is a form of evolution that is supportable - that is not, however, anything to do with the larger theory. But the semantics and bait & switch games played with terminology help muddle the argument. Strictly speaking, to eliminate said confusion, it would be proper to reterm the types for sake of clarity - something I'm sure wouldn't upset you if you had any science to offer. Since you don't, I'm sure you'd see it as absurd.. right.
Your crowd doesn't accept evolution based on evidence. They accept it because they can't get published if they don't. They can't get jobs in their field if they don't. They can't get grants if they don't. They can't Graduate if they don't. Etc. See a picture emerging. There is a built in community hierarchy that has seen to it that the theory is maintained, fraudulent as it is. And absent that, it wouldn't be in the books because it doesn't stand up. That's why there is such a screaching going on in the community now that truth and accuracy are being required.
I don't begrudge you your beliefs. But it isn't science and there is no evidence for it. If you want to promelgate your belief system, you're welcome to; but, not on the public dole and to the exclusion of all else.
There are none so blind, as those who refuse to see. The evidence is in fact overwhelming. That you choose to disregard it does not make it unscientific.
I understand there is a form of evolution that is supportable - that is not, however, anything to do with the larger theory.
Micro-evolution has nothing to do whatsoever with the larger theory? Micro-evolution is the basis for the larger kind.
One tree has more resolution, but both images show the same branching pattern.
Camels, pigs, and cud chewers split off above the whale/hippo split. Now put the antracotheres and paki in their respective chains, they should be kissing cousins. Are they?
Let's check. Anthracobunodon, early coal beast.
Pakicetus.
Illustration by Carl Buell, and taken from http://www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Thewissen/whale_origins/whales/Pakicetid.html.
Paki is from about 50 million years ago. Coalbunodon is die zu Lebzeiten des Tieres vor ca. 47 bis 45 Millionen Jahren auf der Erde existierten. One is livelier than the other and less transparent. I'm not sure if either one is much of a kisser. Otherwise, though, smoochie smoochie!
[Begin Gypsy mode]
GoogleTM now thinks they're under a denial-of-service attack. They are being chewed in search after relentless search by someone driven to come back with something, anything.
In a few hours, a cascade of blue text will inform us that A-bunodon and Paki had different earbones and molars. Thus, while hippos
may have sprung from this critter
and whales
from this one,
the two fossil critters could not have had a common ancestor recent to their own times. They aren't the same thing.
[End Gypsy Mode]
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