Fossil-hunters working in the dusty Utah desert have caught a dinosaur in the act of going vegetarian.
Big deal! Here's a PICTURE of a Carnivore going vegetarian!!!!
Posted on 05/04/2005 12:32:23 PM PDT by MeanWestTexan
Caught in the act of evolution, the odd-looking, feathered dinosaur was becoming more vegetarian, moving away from its meat-eating ancestors.
It had the built-for-speed legs of meat-eaters, but was developing the bigger belly of plant-eaters. It had already lost the serrated teeth needed for tearing flesh. Those were replaced with the smaller, duller vegetarian variety.
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...
Color me skeptical on this one General.
Well, that setttles that then.
Or the find of the century:
OK.
Ideas About Fossil Horses Undergo Evolution In ThinkingLoads of demonstrably transitional forms in a well studied line with lots of fossilized remains. The simple fact is that a 8 hand proto-horse is a transitional between a 6 hand proto-horse and a 10 hand proto-horse.GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be, says a University of Florida researcher whose findings show that the evolution of horses had more twists and turns than previously thought.
University of Florida paleontologist Bruce MacFadden momentarily turns his attention away from a prehistoric horse skeleton on Tuesday, March 15, that is on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. Conventional notions about how horses evolved are now outmoded, said MacFadden, who describes these changes in an article in the March 18 Science magazine. Horses did not uniformly get progressively larger over time, nor did they make a smooth transition from nibbling on shrubs to eating grass on the open plain, he said. (University of Florida/Kristen Bartlett).
According to conventional notions, horses simply became bigger over time and switched from being diminutive shrub nibblers to the statuesque, grass-eating masters of the open plains, said Bruce MacFadden, a UF paleontologist whose article appears in this week’s issue of the journal Science. But the new horse sense is that the equine mammals are adaptable critters whose size, diet and range depended on geography and climate, he said.
“The old ideas about how horses evolved made for a fairly simple and tidy story,” said MacFadden, whose 1992 book “Fossil Horses” is considered the definitive work on the subject. “But many of the concepts about horse evolution that came into being during the 20th century are now outmoded, giving way to an understanding of the fossil horse sequence that is much more complex.”
Because horses have been around a long time, learning about their evolution provides unusual insight into the patterns of evolution in general, said MacFadden, who works at UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History. “Horses are a very good example because there is a long, continuous fossil sequence of horses extending 55 million years in North America, providing the tangible evidence to trace individual steps or changes in evolution over a prolonged period of time,” he said.
MacFadden said horses are credited with shaping human history more than any other domesticated animal. However, it behooves us to be cautious when accepting other beliefs about the popular animals, he said.
Children often learn in social studies classes how the Spaniards brought horses to the New World in the 1500s, eventually producing vast herds of wild horses on the prairies and helping to create America’s legendary cowboys, MacFadden said. But the fossil record shows horses actually originated in North America at least 55 million years ago and roamed the continent before becoming extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, he said.
Scientists once universally thought the more primitive horses, which lived from about 55 million to 20 million years ago, were primarily leaf-eating browsers, only becoming grass eaters as the prairie grasslands began to spread rapidly across North America during the Miocene Epoch about 20 million years ago, MacFadden said.
The reality is not so clear cut, MacFadden said. Actually, during times of transition, some groups of horses actually became mixed feeders, eating both grasses and leafy material, he said.
MacFadden analyzed the chemistry of fossilized teeth to determine horse diets. Animals incorporate into their skeletons and teeth the carbon content of the plants they eat, he said, and grasses photosynthesize carbon differently than do leaves, shrubs or trees.
John Flynn, Frick Curator of fossil mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, said MacFadden’s findings are important because the history of horses has been one of the mainstays of evolutionary studies, biology textbooks and museum exhibits since the 1800s. “Bruce MacFadden’s Science ‘Perspective’ on horse evolution elegantly summarizes the latest information on their fossil record, and the knowledge that continues to arise from a wide variety of analyses of both new discoveries and existing fossils,” Flynn said. “And there’s no one better than Dr. MacFadden to provide this synthesis, since Bruce has long been a world leader in understanding horses, past and present.”
Although modern horses are primarily grazers, they will feed on fruits and leaves when grass is in short supply, MacFadden said. “Horses are highly adaptable,” he said. “They can exploit different food resources when they have to and are able to withstand a wide range of climates. They live in the tropics. They extend all the way up to the Arctic.”
Just as the scientific knowledge about whether horses were browsers or grazers has changed, so have ideas about the evolution of body size, he said.
The preconceived notion that the horse was once as small as a dog but progressively grew to its present stature now can be proven to be incorrect, MacFadden said.
About 20 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch, horses diversified in size rather than just becoming larger, MacFadden said. While some grew larger, others became smaller or remained the same size, he said.
MacFadden, who was able to estimate the body size of various species of fossil horses by measuring their teeth because they are proportional to the rest of the body, said the old idea was based on the research of 19th-century paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Cope’s Law states that within any group of animals there is a tendency for the descendants of a species to grow increasingly larger.
“But there are so many exceptions where you go from small to large and back to small again that you have to ask how many exceptions to the rule you can accept before the central concept is no longer correct, he said.
What scientists learn about fossil horses has implications for understanding other animals because they are one of the classic textbook examples of evolution, MacFadden said. Descriptions of evolution in college textbooks often show family trees depicting the lineage of the horse, he said.
I guess the simple things aren't that simple.
The fossil record shows creatures morphology changing over time.
Any other examples?
The only creatures whos morphology does'nt change are "optimized" for environments that don't change (e.g. sharks, 'crocs).
So species stasis in the fossil record supports evolutionary theory too? It's logically possible that stasis in the fossil record indicates stasis in species.
It is not baseless speculation, it is based on the fossil record and the well established theory of evolution.
There's no doubt in my mind that the theory is well established, at least.
Your namesake did'nt like dishonesty.
True.
Willfull ignorence is dishonesty.
I did the research. See above.
Except some have feathers and some don't, and one doesn't have a head. Holes in the evidence trail are holes in the history, you know! </cretin-mode>
Not exactly, but it does retain primitive reptilian features like the cloaca, and egg-laying. So yes, it provides clues to what early mammals were like, although it's a far-removed lineal descendant of them. It retains some features that we know reptiles have and which we lost.
Archaeopteryx may or may not be on the direct line of modern birds, but it certainly provides clues to the transition of dinosaurs to birds at any rate. IOW, if it's offline, a "great uncle" rather than a grandfather, it's not all that far off.
What you're ignoring: Again and again we see this convergence when we trace dissimilar lines back in the fossil record. They grow similar until you can't tell one from the other anymore, until you have a specimen you don't know what bin to lump it in. It's always a tree, a real tree of descent. Evolution predicts that; creation doesn't. It's always there.
Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.
Moving further up the taxonomic hierarchy, the condylarths and primitive carnivores (creodonts, miacids) are very similar to each other in morphology (Fig. 9, 10), and some taxa have had their assignments to these orders changed. The Miacids in turn are very similar to the earliest representatives of the Families Canidae (dogs) and Mustelidae (weasels), both of Superfamily Arctoidea, and the Family Viverridae (civets) of the Superfamily Aeluroidea. As Romer (1966) states in Vertebrate Paleontology (p. 232), "Were we living at the beginning of the Oligocene, we should probably consider all these small carnivores as members of a single family." This statement also illustrates the point that the erection of a higher taxon is done in retrospect, after sufficient divergence has occurred to give particular traits significance.What would once have been a single family has become several families and even superfamilies. Even as these groups merge together back in the fossil record, the branch they are on (carnivores) merges with the ancestors of modern ungulates.
But you've probably seen that before and just "forgot," right?Figure 10. Comparison of skulls of the early ungulates (condylarths) and carnivores. (A) The condylarth Phenacodus possessed large canines as well as cheek teeth partially adapted for herbivory. (B) The carnivore-like condylarth Mesonyx. The early Eocene creodonts (C) Oxyaena and (D) Sinopa were primitive carnivores apparently unrelated to any modern forms. (E) The Eocene Vulpavus is a representative of the miacids which probably was ancestral to all living carnivore groups. (From Vertebrate Paleontology by Alfred Sherwood Romer published by The University of Chicago Press, copyright © 1945, 1966 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This material may be used and shared with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.)
I didn't make such claims, only rebutting your claims that Russia was against evolution. They were for it, as your links pointed out.
You'd think there'd be some PICTURES, ay??
Isn't that EvoDude?
It's a OBVIOUS clue the the Peers of the journal are evolving!
Kent is a liar; therefore all crevo's are liars....
Two Evo's agreeing.
Whoda thunk!
Nice dodge. You avoided the questions in typical bankrupt frevo style. Your inaccurate tale is 1)a personal attack that violates FR rules and 2) in bad posting style for bringing an innacurate allegation from an old thread. You never apologized for your mistake, did you? I won't hold my breath.
You noticed??
Romans 5:12-21
12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--
13. for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.
14. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
15. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
16. Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
17. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
19. For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21. so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I see. Is there anything that you can't explain? Because I have a lot of unanswered questions.
I had a nagging suspesion.
It's an illusion.
Life, if it existed, would violate the Second Law.
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