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.
I would imagine Dr. Dino is too busy avoiding prosecution to be posting here.
Well, ya gotta have something to do between subpeonas.
I didn't interpret Genesis. And there is nothing there to interpret. If you want to argue that there is, you're arguing something that isn't there in the language. Been over that ground many times. And the language isn't your only problem, sir. Go look at the order of events. Plants can't live millions of years in darkness. God seperated the waters and the land, filled the land with plants, made the sunlight for day time and the moon for night,.. etc.
There is a precise order to the creation story of Genesis and it's there for an obvious reason. Evolution turns it around and says every detail is precisely backwards of what God's word says. And that is a simple matter of being able to read, sir. Interpretation doesn't come into it. Being able to raise kids is something heathens can do. Do you suppose heathens are thusly qualified to be an elder in your church? And as for calling someone a pedophile, I think I referred to the fact of the press accounts of pedophiles being busted in a prominant sect that calls itself Christian. Other sects let practicing homosexuals teach from the pulpit. So, it begs the question - are you a christian, or just using the term for your own ends. When you imply that your belief in evolution is somehow a measure of whether it's an acceptable christian belief, we have a right to review that. The two belief systems are in direct contention with one another. Given the choice between you being right and the Bible being right, I'll stick with the Bible. Science and the Bible are at least compatible and uncontradictory.
As for whether I'm a gentleman or not, I did'nt accuse you of anything. I noted there is a difference between what is christian and what pretends to be. You asked a general question, I gave a general answer. And there was nothing ungentlemanly about it. To the extent there was, do you suppose Christ was a gentleman and overturned the moneychanger's tables by neatly picking everything up, placing it on the floor, picking up the tables carefully and rolling them over.. I thought as Christians we're supposed to follow and emulate Christ and tell the truth. I'm not real sure how you do that and not point out outright lies.. If that's ungentlemanly to you, I'd recommend you might want to figure out what it is you do believe and whether it comes from Christ or your own wisdom. Calling God's word a lie and supplanting it with another belief system isn't exactly the act of a christian, much less a minister.
Nobody denies you the right to believe what you will; but, if you are a minister, you should go reread what christ said about following two masters. You're following evolution as a belief system and trying to fit Christ in where he doesn't disagree with your other system. When it and Christ disagree, you decide His word must be wrong - thus you keep to one and hate the other. Your response is likewise expected. As a minister, this is something you should not have to be told. How is it that I'm not one and yet know this? If the minister, ministers not and the laity knows better, what has become of the church.
Really? LOL. I thought you were just being spiteful over being corrected and having to live with conviction. A whole host of words leap to mind for you, I'm sure, betrayal, hypocrisy, irony.. Is it the job of an elder to preach to the church that God's word is in error? Do tell.
That's why you've never seen them together.
Nonsense. You don't understand the Bible.
You are in error, not God.
I understand it quite well. I'm sure you'll explain to us how some gap theory fits in or some nonsense about how day combined with the definitive article somehow can be translated as millions of years when there is no basis for it. Or perhaps you try to state it based on the notion that "a day is unto a thousand years and a thousand years unto a day" with God. Problem is, you have a definitive limit in taking that literally - moreover, it is speaking of God's experience of time, not ours. It's akin to saying man, felt like I was at work for a week today. It isn't saying days are thousands of years, it's marking the difference in how God looks at it.
And you're an elder!? I know the theories above because they were all hacks meant to try and reconcile (beggingly so) evolution and scripture. They can't be reconciled. And there is no reason to reconcile them. Evolution isn't science. It is a belief system. And Day, in Genisis, meands "Day". The plants were created in a day, the next day the sun was created and gave them light so they wouldn't die, On a prior day, the waters were seperated above and below the sky. On a later day, the bugs were created to polinate the plants so they could exist over time. stretch those into ages or millions of years and everything dies. Plants wilt and die in darkness. Without plants the animals and bugs don't eat, etc. The story as is makes sense on it's face. As soon as you start tampering, we have to explain your tampering, not the story. Sounds like you need to go back to sunday school and start over.
Gen 2:4 defines "yom" meaning indefinite period of time for Gen 1.
The Sun was created on the fourth day. The previous three days' lengths are indeterminate. If you understood the Hebrew you would know this interpretation is correct.
The waters passage you believe in is wrong, too. I could explain the whole thing to you, as I have worked on it for over 15 years from the Hebrew. But I won't, because you are obviously rooted in apostasy and blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, by attributing to God something that is not His.
I hope you will repent and come to believe the true Gospel of Jesus Christ which says that faith in Jesus alone through the Grace of God Almighty imputes you with righteousness.
It is a gift of unmerited favor. If you continue to put Genesis into the Gospel and mix the Old Covenant sacrificial system with the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you have departed from the Way Jesus wants you to follow. May God have mercy on your soul.
If you don't mind me asking, just where is above the sky anyway?
Uh, no. I've read the arguments on this pro and con. Yom, when combined with the definite article "the" for us, is a definite standard 24 hour day. You can search through scripture and find that holds true in scripture as well as in the language. But, I'm used to watching language be abused and misconstrued - even lied about by people who present themselves as knowing something. What propaganda rag did you get your version of the story from. People seem to get the idea that because a word can mean something in the right circumstance that they can just plug that in any old place they like - even though they know that isn't the way it works even in their own language. Somehow the rules stop applying so they can warp time, space and common sense in order to stretch the truth.
I'll repent from having listened to this nonsense; but, I've already come to the light of the truth. And you don't talk like a Christian, much less an elder.
Know what a canopy is?
The sky is a canopy?
Are you trying to play games or get a question answered. You asked where "above the sky" is. That would be a place called a canopy in reference to the seperation of the waters above the sky and beneath it. Where do you suppose the canopies are on other planets? Not exactly an uncommon thing..
s-Gen 2:4 defines "yom" meaning indefinite period of time for Gen 1.
h-Uh, no. I've read the arguments on this pro and con. Yom, when combined with the definite article "the" for us, is a definite standard 24 hour day. You can search through scripture and find that holds true in scripture as well as in the language.
Interesting that in all the series starting with "yom axad " or "yom shni"there is no definite article. If there was it would be "yom haxad" or "yom hasheni" So, you just substantiated the fact that you are wrong.
Also, there is no rule in Hebrew that substaniates your assertion or the commentators that adhere to it. You will find that it is a circular argument. They want the rule to apply so there will be a 24 hr day, but it doesn't always hold. In any event, there is no definite article and Gen 2:4 clearly shows that the days of creation should be taken as indefinite periods of time.
In any event, there is no definite article in front of the day one, day two, day three etc. passages. Don't you think it is time you gave up childish notions of God and started worshipping the real Lord God Almighty?
Christians must stand up for truth, not distortions of God's word. Christians must stop the movement to corrupt science teaching in our schools, so that our children will get the blessings of our Creator endowed to us in America.
WRONG!
Hillary Clinton is a venomous mammel!
No, wait, she's more of a reptile...
So, you believe the earth is flat?
That's an insult to our cold-blooded, three-chambered-hearted friends.
Not OK. OK? And I notice you did not even attempt to address the evidence I presented showing that there are many cases of "multiple evolution events"- any one of which would be "troubling" and improbable.
I was a science teacher for 13 years. You are a writer of Western Fiction. Where do you come off claiming I don't care about science? Is it just because I won't make your leaps of naturalist faith?
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