Posted on 05/11/2006 6:57:25 AM PDT by VadeRetro
IQALUIT, Nunavut - Northern hunters, scientists and people with vivid imaginations have discussed the possibility for years.
But Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, was the first to suspect it had actually happened when he proposed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter might be half polar bear, half grizzly.
Territorial officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid - possibly the first documented in the wild.
"We've known it's possible, but actually most of us never thought it would happen," said Ian Stirling, a polar bear biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton.
Polar bears and grizzlies have been successfully paired in zoos before - Stirling could not speculate why - and their offspring are fertile.
Breeding seasons for the two species overlap, though polar bear gets started slightly earlier.
For YECs it's mostly how you refuse to see the evidence.
That was really bad!!!!
MIX-N-MATCH animal PING!
Have a good day.
All legal hunting and fishing activities are "sports". Some hunt and fish for recreation and meat, some hunt and fish for "TROPHIES". I own firearms and at this point in my life, have little interest in hunting sports, but I don't deny others. It does ruffle me a little when I see photo's of trophy-hunting kills, but if it's legal, I can just choose not to be one.
Over $50,000, in fact.
I dated a woman who was half Cajun half Cherokee for a while, and I survived. That was WILD!
Indeed they don't.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC371_1.html
- The reports of the soft tissue, though remarkable, have been sensationalized further. The tissues were not soft and pliable originally. The tissues were rehydrated in the process of removing the surrounding mineral components of the bone (Schweitzer et al. 2005). Moreover, it is unknown whether the soft tissues are original tissues. Fossil flexible tissues and nucleated cells have been found before in which the original material was not preserved (Stokstad 2005).
- The age of fossils is not determined by how well they are preserved, because preservation depends far more on factors other than age. The age of this particular bone was determined from the age of the rocks it was found in, namely, the Hell Creek Formation. This formation has been reliably dated by several independent methods (Dalrymple 2000).
- DNA has never been recovered from any dinosaurs nor from anything as old as them, and researchers do not expect to find DNA from these soft tissues (though they can still hope). DNA has been recovered, however, from samples much more than 10,000 years old (Poinar et al. 1998), even more than 300,000 years old (Stokstad 2003; Willerslev et al. 2003). If dinosaur fossils were as young as creationists claim, finding soft tissues in them would not be news, and recovering DNA from them should be easy enough that it would have been done by now.
There is absolutely NO reason to NOT accept that other hybrids are out there - just as your posted article states.
I am nowhere claiming that no other hybrids will be found. I am claiming that the variable degrees of genetic relationship to be found in nature form a continuous spectrum, the very opposite of your claim. There are no distinct created kinds. That's what I'm saying. There's a full spectrum of relatedness which is just what you expect if the tree of life is a real tree of common descent.
I don't know any YECs who don't argue principally by bludgeoning with their own pig-ignorance. You are no exception.
I dated a woman who was half Cajun half Cherokee for a while, and I survived. That was WILD!
The rest of the time she was asleep.
"Does that mean that they're not different species, but rather different "races" of the same species?"
It is certainly a very strong indication, but not conclusive.
For example, while EXTREMELY rare, donkey and horses and zebras can have fertile offspring (mules, et al are overwhelmingly infertile) --- and each species has pretty distict chromosomes.
SEE! Evolition works.
"half Cajun half Cherokee"
Being half French and half Cherokee, I bet she surrendered to fire water pretty easily.
"I don't know any YECs who don't argue principally by bludgeoning with their own pig-ignorance."
Apt description.
They know neither the Bible they claim to love, nor the science they hate.
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