Posted on 12/03/2003 4:53:26 PM PST by Pharmboy
LONDON (Reuters) - Fossils discovered in Ethiopia's highlands are a missing piece in the puzzle of how African mammals evolved, a team of international scientists said on Wednesday.
Little is known about what happened to mammals between 24 million to 32 million years ago, when Africa and Arabia were still joined together in a single continent.
But the remains of ancestors of modern-day elephants and other animals, unearthed by the team of U.S. and Ethiopian scientists 27 million years on, provide some answers.
"We show that some of these very primitive forms continue to live through the missing years, and then during that period as well, some new forms evolved -- these would be the ancestors of modern elephants," said Dr John Kappelman, who headed the team.
The find included several types of proboscideans, distant relatives of elephants, and fossils from the arsinoithere, a rhinoceros-like creature that had two huge bony horns on its snout and was about 7 feet high at the shoulder.
"It continues to amaze me that we don't have more from this interval of time. We are talking about an enormous continent," said Kappelman, who is based at the University of Texas at Austin.
Scientists had thought arsinoithere had disappeared much earlier but the discovery showed it managed to survive through the missing years. The fossils from the new species found in Ethiopia are the largest, and at 27 million years old, the youngest discovered so far.
"If this animal was still alive today it would be the central attraction at the zoo," Tab Rasmussen, a paleontologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri who worked on the project, said in a statement.
Many of the major fossil finds in Ethiopia are from the Rift Valley. But Kappelman and colleagues in the United States and at Ethiopia's National Science Foundation (news - web sites) and Addis Ababa University concentrated on a different area in the northwestern part of the country.
Using high-resolution satellite images to scour a remote area where others had not looked before, his team found the remains in sedimentary rocks about 6,600 feet above sea level.
LOL. I know you won't accept this as evidence, but withing science, the older a theory, the easier it is to find consensus about its status. Such, I believe, is not the case among theologians in dealing with the historical assertions of various religions.
I am aware that truth isn't decided by vote or by consensus, but "objectivity" has little practical meaning outside its implication of consensus.
There are always factions at the cutting edge of any scientific theory, but try and find any substantive division among scientists about theories and findings that are more that 20 years old. Try and find the scientific equivalent of Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Adventists.
One of the least convincing performances I've seen.
So, if other observers do not exist (even though you can see, smell or hear them), everything is simply a figment of your imagination and the point is moot -- the universe is whatever YOU think it is (which has greater theological implications than the theory of evolution even approaches).
Basically, you either have to accept the reality of other observers, or conclude that reality is simply a figment of your imagination and that your time might be better spent doing something other than conjuring such a complicated fantasy.
Divine revelation.
As mentioned earlier, evidence needs to be of a character that allows more than one person to perceive it. Otherwise, it's completely irrelevant.
Your point earlier that I can't prove the existence of anyone else is true. However, unless we agree on the premise that we all exist, all discussions are completely irrelevant.
And that premise is taken on faith and a desire for relevancy. Which means the ability of others to perceive and verify the empirical evidence you rely on is also based on faith. How, at root, is naturalism not based on faith?
An interesting observation. Naturalists do assume that natural laws nev3r change, but they most definitely don't believe they never change. In fact the day to day practice of science continually puts this assumption to the test.
That is the fundamental difference between science and religion. Nature continously challenges us to put it to the test. Religion commands us not to put it to the test.
This is the clearest and cleanest distinction that can be made, whether a belief system can be put to the test.
I thought it was a hoax to convince you that somewhere there was someone who was, ah ... man enough for you.
You are correct. However the major proponents of intelligent design, including ALL of its best known proponents (Behe, et. al.), repeatedly assure us that intelligent design is completely devoid of religious implications.
so what's your point?
Are all of these people liars?
I thought intelligent design was one of several competing scientific theories, in which case it is entirely appropriate for a science test book to present the consensus view. There are thousands of scientific theories presented in textbooks as the current view, contrasting them with older views. Intelligent design was the dominant scientific consensus in 1805, the date of the movie "Master and Commander", but it hasn't been the dominant view for the past 140 years.
There are always factions at the cutting edge of any scientific theory, but try and find any substantive division among scientists about theories and findings that are more that 20 years old.
Issac Newton's theory of motion was the consensus for about 200 years, yet the consenus now is that the basis of his theory was 180 degrees dead wrong. Why consider any current theory any more "objective" than the one it replaced? Science has lots of consensus for short periods of time, theology has little consensus, but each group is generally consistent for long periods of time, especially when compared to science. I find I must object to the use of the word "objective" in connection with both camps. Nonetheless, the truth is out there. Pray for wisdom.
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