ping!
I screwed up on the title. Could someone change it to the proper title? Thank you—GGG
Title:
Skippy surprises scientists
I get so excited thinking about the day when we will be able to understand the staggering complexity of what God has done, able to see a million intricacies that we cannot now imagine.
In the beginning was the Word...
I believe one of the layers of meaning of “Word” in this context will be that of information. An unimaginable amount of information that all works perfectly together, a “matrix” of reality.
MM
I thought you were talking about “Skippy” Algore.
From the USA Today article on the web:
"Great chunks of the genome are virtually identical..." eh? What Carl leaves out is that this is generally the case! And he leaves out the statements that quantify the actual distance--separation 150 million years ago. That's not exactly a first cousin, now is it?And they've found the Aussie icon has more in common with humans than scientists had thought. The kangaroo last shared a common ancestor with humans 150 million years ago.
"We've been surprised at how similar the genomes are," said Jenny Graves, director of the government-backed research effort. "Great chunks of the genome are virtually identical." ...
The scientists also discovered 14 previously unknown genes in the kangaroo and suspect the same ones are also in humans, Graves said.
Scientists have already untangled the DNA of around two dozen mammals, including mice and chimps, which are closer to humans on the evolutionary timeline. But Graves said it's the kangaroo's distance from people that make its genetic map helpful in understanding how humans evolved.
By lining up the genomes of different species, scientists can spot genes they never knew existed and figure out what DNA features have stayed the same or changed over time. Elements that have remained the same are usually important, Graves said [emphasis added].
Is there no limit to the obfuscation and misrepresentation that we can expect from creation "science?"
The deconstruction has begun. My cousin the ‘roo is distant; not a kissing (yech!) cousin.
I always knew peanut butter was too complex to have formed naturally!
Captain obvious may be in order here.
Two eyes
Two ears
Same internal organs in roughly the same place
Same number of limbs
Fur
Live birth
Nursing young
There are a whole lot of similarities between kangaroos and humans. Why wouldn’t much of the DNA be similar?
Duh!
For those who wish to get in touch with their “inner kangaroo” large belly packs are available on the internet at quite reasonable prices for quite unreasonable people.
That humans have kangaroos as ancestors is demonstrated by the popularity of Pogo sticks and high jump sporting events.
However, true jumping ability was never developed as early “man-garoos” tended to jump off really high places and those that survived developed the strong legs seen in ambulance chasing lawyers.
Here’s one of Jenny Grave’s (the lead researcher in the article) other notable findings:
“There are two models for the Y chromosome,” she said. “The model we were all brought up with was the Y as a macho little thing because if you have a Y you’re male and that’s it. But it turns out that’s only because the Y chromosome has the SRY gene on it. The other theory is that the Y is a selfish sort of entity and it grabs genes from other parts of the genome that are handy in males.
“But our work on comparative mapping says that the Y is merely a wimp, a relic of the X chromosome. It started off being identical to the X but over millions of years it has been losing genes and there are hardly any left. This, of course, makes men very anxious.”
Creationist misunderstanding doesn’t surprise.
“The first thing I want to do is show you what’s being done in sequencing genomes, and how the sequenced animals are related to each other. Genomes of a number of different placental mammal species have been sequenced, including the human genome, which has been sequenced to a very great depth (ie multiple times). We also have the sequences for chimps, mice, rats, dogs, cats, and even the elephants are now lined up for sequencing. But these animals are actually all rather closely related. They shared a common ancestor only 100 million years ago, and that isn’t enough time for the genome to have changed sufficiently for us to get the maximal information out of it. If we go to the other extreme and look at animals very distantly related – that is birds, frogs and even fish – they share a common ancestor with mammals 300 or 400 million years ago and that’s too far because now the sequence is so different it’s actually hard to line up.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if there were some animals in the middle? Well, that’s exactly where Australian animals are. Marsupials and monotremes last shared a common ancestor with humans about 200 million years ago, so they’re exactly in the right spot to give us maximal information that we need to make these comparisons...”
Jenny Graves, Ph.D.
3 May 2006
http://www.science.org.au/sats2006/graves.htm
No wonder I feel so hoppy!