Posted on 03/09/2006 2:46:21 PM PST by new yorker 77
It has the face of a rat and the tail of a skinny squirrel — and scientists say this creature discovered living in central Laos is pretty special: It's a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years.
The long-whiskered rodent made international headlines last spring when biologists declared they'd discovered a brand new species, nicknamed the Laotian rock rat.
It turns out the little guy isn't new after all, but a rare kind of survivor: a member of a family until now known only from fossils.
Nor is it a rat. This species, called Diatomyidae, looks more like small squirrels or tree shrews, said paleontologist Mary Dawson of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Dawson, with colleagues in France and China, report the creature's new identity in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
The resemblance is "absolutely striking," Dawson said. As soon as her team spotted reports about the rodent's discovery, "we thought, 'My goodness, this is not a new family. We've known it from the fossil record.'"
They set out to prove that through meticulous comparisons between the bones of today's specimens and fossils found in China and elsewhere in Asia.
To reappear after 11 million years is more exciting than if the rodent really had been a new species, said George Schaller, a naturalist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which unveiled the creature's existence last year. Indeed, such reappearances are so rare that paleontologists dub them "the Lazarus effect."
"It shows you it's well worth looking around in this world, still, to see what's out there," Schaller said.
The nocturnal rodent lives in Laotian forests largely unexplored by outsiders, because of the geographic remoteness and history of political turmoil.
Schaller calls the area "an absolute wonderland," because biologists who have ventured in have found unique animals, like a type of wild ox called the saola, barking deer, and never-before-seen bats. Dawson describes it as a prehistoric zoo, teeming with information about past and present biodiversity.
All the attention to the ancient rodent will be "wonderful for conservation," Schaller said. "This way, Laos will be proud of that region for all these new animals, which will help conservation in that some of the forests, I hope, will be preserved."
Locals call the rodent kha-nyou. Scientists haven't yet a bagged a breathing one, only the bodies of those recently caught by hunters or for sale at meat markets, where researchers with the New York-based conservation society first spotted the creature.
Now the challenge is to trap some live ones, and calculate how many still exist to tell whether the species is endangered, Dawson said.
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It appears to be a vestigial organ in antievos. It exists, but apparently has no function.
Some dates are assigned based on what fossils are found. See Index Fossils.
USGS Examples of Index Fossils used to date rocks
"I've provided you with lots of links on dating methods on prior threads -- did you not bother to read them? "
I usually don't read your posts. I almost ignored this one when I saw it was you. If you ever learn to be concise and to the point, I might give you a few moments consideration.
I thought PH had asked yall to be nice.
That's not very nice.
It appears we do have issues.
Actually, it was very nice. You just didn't understand it. You must be used to that, surely?
Actually, it was very nice. You just didn't understand it. You must be used to that, surely?
DON'T CALL ME SHIRLEY!!!!
This study says they retrieve some of them by smell. Makes sense to me.
Squirrels bury nuts for winter food and relocate the nuts by smell. Squirrels find only a portion of the nuts they bury and are important in planting many species of nut trees. A single squirrel can bury several thousand pecans over the course of 3 months.
I've seen squirrels team with cardinals to drive off blue jays. Intelligence there too.
Rodents are generally pretty smart.
When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?
The so-called evidence for design is, so far, strictly subjective. No one's been able to come up with an algorithm for detecting designed as opposed to evolved things.
IMO, the evidence is against design. Remember recently on another thread I brought up the recurrent laryngeal nerve. This nerve controls the vocal cords, yet it travels from the brain stem down into the chest, around the aorta, and back up the throat. In a giraffe it's 15 feet longer than it would be had a competent engineer designed it!
If you try to avoid this conclusion by saying that the hypothesized designer doesn't think like we do, it just makes detecting design even harder, because we don't really know what to look for. If you claim that the design serves some unknown purpose, you need to explain why the superior nerve goes directly from the brain to the throat without the detour. (and find the so-far hidden purpose)
There's also a non sequitur here. Just because some animals show intelligence, therefore there is some sort of external intelligence?!
Is the assumed personal value of not having a *cough* Judgemental G-d that high? Or the pride of selfishness -- without a G-d to feel inferior too, why a proud man or woman, proud of intellect or power can have full run of that pride!
Res ipsa loquitur
Whatever you say, Laverne.
The evolutionists have no concept of time. They simply lengthen it more and more in hopes of accomodating the science that speculates how long it would take for a fin to turn into a leg or jell-o into a brain. Shadows and illusions.
Anything which assists in survival makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint too, so you're not helping your case here.
I've seen squirrels team with cardinals to drive off blue jays. Intelligence there too.
No one denies that squirrels have a degree of intelligence, but this doesn't help your "design" presumption either.
When intelligence and design are all around us, how the heck does any sensible intelligent person deny its role in creation?
By the fact that a) there is zero positive evidence for the involvement of "intelligent design" in the history of life on Earth, despite several thousand years of searching for it, and b) there is abundant, indeed overwhelming evidence, for the involvement of evolutionary processes in the history of life on Earth.
Furthermore, "intelligent design" has the additional "is it turtles all the way down?" problem from a philosophical standpoint. At some point, you have to admit the existence of an intelligence which was *not* originated by the crafting of some prior intelligence. This torpedoes your entire line of argument, which is based on the presumption that intelligence is "too complex" to arise via a non-design process, *and* it shatters your presumption that no non-design process can possibly produce intelligence.
Is the assumed personal value of not having a *cough* Judgemental G-d that high? Or the pride of selfishness -- without a G-d to feel inferior too, why a proud man or woman, proud of intellect or power can have full run of that pride!
This has nothing to do with the conclusions drawn from the evidence, actually. The irony is that although it's the "ID" folks who draw their conclusions based on their personal feelings about God, they're the ones under the mistaken impression that a) they're the ones being most rational, and b) it must the *other* folks who are so fixated on the idea of God that they couldn't possibly arrive at a conclusion based on the merits of the evidence without "actually" being blinded emotional reactions to God...
Sorry, but while the *majority* of American evolutionists actually are *Christians* (and what does *that* do to your silly presumptions about evolutionists "running from God", eh?), the fact remains that almost all "evolutionists" arrive at their conclusion without much concern about God either way -- the Christian ones just follow the evidence wherever it leads to find out how God arranged things to work, and the non-theistic ones don't see why myths about a non-existent deity should make any difference when evaluating the evidence. Either way, they're not anywhere near as hung up on being driven by thoughts of God as you presume they are, nor as much as you yourself and the other anti-evolutionists are.
Thanks for sharing complete and utter bull***t with us. This is such tired old nonsense that I'm just going to recycle a post I made earlier:
It hasn't happened within recorded history, so that keeps making the earth older and older to fit these theories.If you'd actually like to learn something for a change, instead of parroting creationist disinformation (unlikely, I know, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt), see: The Age of the Earth FAQsThis is a blatant falsehood. The age of the Earth hasn't been revised appreciably in more than half a century, and back when it *was* being revised, it was revised due to discoveries in physics which allowed the age to be more accurately measured, and in no way due to any considerations from or for biology or in order to accomodate any aspect of evolutionary biology. Even from the time of Darwin, evolutionary biology has worked to fit the theory to the facts (including the best estimates of the age of the Earth at the time), and not vice versa.
Please try to learn something about science before you make any more false claims about it.
In the 1700's many lines of evidence led to widespread doubt about the Bible's 6000-year chronology for the age of the Earth. By the mid 1850's estimates of millions of years were suggested, and the Earth has been known to be on the order of a billion or more years old since at least 1911. Calculations of the age of the Earth were converging on the true age as long ago as the 1920's -- for example: 4.0 billion years (Russell, 1921), 3.4 billion years (Rutherford 1929); 4.6 billion years (Meyer 1937); and 3 to 4 billion years (Starik 1937). The number hasn't changed appreciably since the 1940's, when it converged to 4.5 +/- 0.1 billion years due to advances in analytical equipment (thanks to the Manhattan project).
Shadows and illusions.
No, that appears to be *your* department.
Indeed, I can agree that you do.
OK, just how does a land based animal reappear after 4,015,000,000 days without being seen by someone?
Actually that's not so. Those who study evolution and a lot of other scientists (such as archaeologists) are dependent on the physical sciences for the inventions which permit radiometric dating. We have to take their inventions and use them within the appropriate limits; we don't just make this stuff up ourselves!
So, while bashing evolutionists for what they do, you also have to bash those who invented and run the dating tools we use.
(Personally, I think you just don't like the results some of us come up with.)
Some dates are assigned based on what fossils are found. See Index Fossils.
*Identification* of a strata can be done by index fossils. *Assigning dates* to it is done by other methods.
["I've provided you with lots of links on dating methods on prior threads -- did you not bother to read them? "]
I usually don't read your posts. I almost ignored this one when I saw it was you.
"A closed mind gathers no thought".
If you ever learn to be concise and to the point,
I am. It's just that complex issues require more than a bumper-sticker worth of exposition if you want to actually understand them correctly.
I might give you a few moments consideration.
Need I point out just how little of value can actually be learned in "a few moments" of attention? But thanks for the confession, it helps me better understand why your posts are the way they are.
Easy.
Second, its a pretty tough place to look, so not many scientists will have looked there (when was the last time you were there?).
Third, the critter may be pretty shy, and hard to find. Some of them are just like that--its a survival mechanism (you know, survival of the...).
Finally, jungles are absolutely lousy places to make and to discover fossils.
I imagine they were seen by "someone", he just didn't happen to be a biologist who realized what he was seeing.
(Click image for more)
Evening OT; bet you knew that all along, didn't you?
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