[Stultis]

No offense, friend, but genomics has proven that Darwin didn’t know his gluteous maximus from Page 8.

What do you have in mind? Because Darwin's central ideas were natural selection and common descent. And genomics (the sequencing and study of genomes) has certainly provided massive new evidence confirming common descent.

Absent common descent, for instance, nothing about the study described in this article would make any sense, and the result wouldn't even have been possible.

BTW, fossil virsus have also been found in the same positions in the DNA of humans and apes. And, as in the present study, they fit the necessary patterns of common descent (e.g. if present in humans and gorillas, must also be present in chimps; if present in orangutans and humans, must also be present in gorillas and chimps; etc).

Given that the particular place in the genome into which a virsus inserts itself is random, and that genomes are absurdly (haystack versus needle) massive compared to viruses, how do you explain, apart from common descent, how different species end up with the same fossil viruses in the same places in their DNA?

[BenKenobi]

So when you go through the fossil record and find avian influenza infecting men, that means that men evolved from birds?

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal  & archive  Archaeologica  Archaeology  Archaeology Channel  BAR  Bronze Age Forum  Discover  Dogpile  Eurekalert  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	Thanks Stultis, didn't see this (or get pinged to it), found it in your "in forums" list. Definitely pingworthy. A newly uncovered "viral fossil" buried deep in the genome of the zebra finch indicates that the hepatitis B family of viruses -- known as hepadnaviruses -- originated at least 19 million years ago. Together with recent findings on other viruses, the work suggests that all viruses may be much older than thought. No one knows exactly where or when viruses originated. They don't leave fossils, so scientists have begun scouring the DNA of various organisms, looking for evidence of ancient infections. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
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