Puijila darwini may have looked like this.
From the critter's own homepage, http://nature.ca/puijila/index_e.cfm
Posted on 04/22/2009 12:11:57 PM PDT by steve-b
Scientists say they've found a "missing link" in the early evolution of seals and walruses — the skeleton of a web-footed, otter-like creature that was evolving away from a life on land.
Those feet and other anatomical features show an early step on the way to developing flippers and other adaptations for a life in the sea, the scientists said.
One expert called it "a fantastic discovery" that fills a crucial gap in the fossil record....
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
YECers in 3....2....1....
Could this be Janet Napolitanos ancestors?
I’m sure it was on the Ark ;-)
It was an otter, otters hunt in the water, thus, proof that there where dinosaurs on the ark about 4000 years ago during a world wide flood because otters float and the ark was supposed to float- oh, and they are witches.
Piltdown otter.
The 23 million-year-old creature was not a direct ancestor of today's seals, sea lions and walruses, a group known collectively as pinnipeds. It's from a different branch.
Well, that was too easy. The main trunk and branches of the evolutionary tree are constantly missing. Rather than take this fact at face value and admitting the obvious - that there _is_ no main trunk and connecting branches - we get endless excuses and a war against the evidence as it stands.
And what's with putting this under the Constitution/Conservatism topic, except in the sense that evolutionism directly contradicts the premise of human rights based on a Creator God who grants those rights. Evolution's creed is might-makes-right and there is no moral order or transcendant purpose of life, the complete antithesis of conservatism and the rule of law.
New version of seal is evolving all over again.
Some of these scientists have such a narrow view, they are always looking for missing links and commonalities in DNA.
Maybe a seal evolved from a wolf like animal. Maybe a walrus evolved from a saber tooth. Instead of both seal and walrus coming from a common ancestor.
Ask GodGunsGuts (and Spam); that’s his standard set of tags for his creationist blitherings.
Yep, the inundation has begun....
Puijila darwini may have looked like this.
From the critter's own homepage, http://nature.ca/puijila/index_e.cfm
I don't know if we should go that far... I mean, do they weigh as much as a duck?
“Piltdown otter.”
Yep. Piltdown Man’s Best Friend. Dogs hadn’t morphed into canines from Peppered Moths yet, you see. Lucy told me all about it.
I'm pretty sure I'm gonna hafta come and see ya, just before I run out of grant money.
Think you'll be able to hook me up?
GGG ping
Paleobotanic fossils indicate this location during the Miocene had a cool, coastal temperate environment, similar to present-day New Jersey. Given that freshwater lakes would freeze in the winter, it is likely that Puijila would travel over land to the sea for food. The transition from freshwater to saltwater in semi-aquatic mammals has been hypothesized for some time, first by Charles Darwin, who wrote in On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection, "A strictly terrestrial animal, by occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or lakes, might at last be converted in an animal so thoroughly aquatic as to brace the open ocean."
"The find suggests that pinnipeds went through a freshwater phase in their evolution. It also provides us with a glimpse of what pinnipeds looked like before they had flippers," says Natalia Rybczynski, leader of the field expedition.
This proto-seal was named after Darwin! Let the fur fly!
Paleo-Breakthrough (Seal Evolution) from an Arctic Fossil (Video)
1. Evolution is not inconsistent with a belief in God. So any beliefs you have regarding God as the source of human rights is irrelevant to a discussion of how the physical universe came about so long as the original source is God.
2. Creationism is inconsistent with a belief in God. It assumes a God who created a world about 6,000 years ago that appears to thousands of well-trained scientists to be on the order of billions of years old. It also assumes that God would create beings with the ability to explore and measure the world about them, but almost always come to horribly incorrect conclusions.
3. At some point in the not too distant past slavery was considered a normal part of civilization. We now properly recognize slavery as an abomination. We had to go through a learning process to discover this truth that God knew from the beginning. My point being that the fact that we now agree with God that slavery is an abomination required a process for us as mortal and imperfect humans to go through in order to finally "get it". This process was evolutionary in that random countries rejected and then re-accepted slavery over and over again over the millenia. The Bible was invoked in favor of, and in opposition to, slavery again and again. We only finally "got it" when we looked around and found out that those nations that rejected slavery thrived while those that continued to tolerate slavery languished. God doesn't need to evolve his thinking, but unfortunately we do. If God seems to be teaching us about human rights via an evolutionary method, why is it completely unacceptable to consider that our physical bodies were generated in a similar fashion?
"Evolution's creed is might-makes-right"
Evolutions "creed" (if a scientific theory can be said to have a 'creed') is that those organisms survive which are best adapted to their environs. Humans thrived because they had developed personality traits which encouraged a prudent combination of both competitiveness and cooperation. Those species which depend on mere might are not doing so well ... we have killed and/or eaten most of them.
"and there is no moral order or transcendant purpose of life, the complete antithesis of conservatism and the rule of law."
Nihilism is indeed opposed to conservatism and the rule of law. Happily most people who believe that evolutionary theory is the current best description of how we got here are not nihilists.
There are a wide variety of ethical theories. The vast majority of them posit that there are indeed moral values. The vast majority of ethical theories assume there is no God. So there are a large number of ethical theories that support the existence of moral values without the need for a God.
I personally believe in God. But I also recognize that true nihilists are few and far between, most likely because true nihilists have been selected out of the gene pool.
The notion that science somehow contributes to moral progress is overstated. Both theists like myself and atheists that I have read agree that moral knowledge (what the world _ought_ to be) cannot be obtained from science (what the world _is_). Moral knowledge presupposes a Purpose to the universe and life in it, and is not obtained by observation of facts alone. Science can tell us the most efficient way to obtain some end; but it cannot tell us whether that end is good or bad.
Ultimately objective morality (as opposed to personal opinions) only exists if there is a God who is interested in us and has a purpose for us. And this leads to my concern over your conception of God. The Bible teaches that God created the world without blemish, a perfect paradise without pain and suffering, without death or disease or disfigurement. Moreover, it promises a return to this state of perfection in the end, as death is done away with and there is no more suffering or pain.
This is totally inconsistent with the evolutionary viewpoint. Theists who believe in evolution say that God thus used death and suffering to 'create' and that therefore there is no problem with million of years of pain and suffering in God's eyes. We have evidence of cancer and suffering with broken limbs, tumors and disease, in the fossil record. If this is a record of what was happening before mankind ever sinned, instead of a record of events during Noah's Flood, then God is a hellish demon and no wise and benevolent shepherd as described in the Bible, as atheist David Hull pointed out in the classic article God of the Galapagos. You can say that evolution is 'not inconsistent with God' but it is very inconsistent with the view of God that the vast majority of theists hold, and that the Bible teaches.
In claiming that the creationary viewpoint is somehow incompatible with theism, you are ignoring the fact that theism has traditionally been overwhelmingly creationist. I cannot find even a single Christian prior to the 18th century who even gives an opinion that the earth is greater than thousands of years old, for example. This despite the fact that the creation/evolution battle has been going on from ancient times.
Creationists today have consistently won public debates on the subject and we consistently face opponents who rely on emotions, philosophical arguments and censorship and oppression to sustain the dominance of evolutionism. I grew up a theistic evolutionist. I became an old-earth creationist and then a biblical creationist at Michigan State because I found the Bible was a far better fit for the scientific data then the evolutionary model. I encourage you to study both sides yourself and reach your own conclusion. There are thousands of scientists today who believe as I do, that the world is clearly young and created as such, and we welcome open and honest debate on the subject.
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