Posted on 02/20/2003 2:30:45 PM PST by Junior
IT STARTED with a biologist sitting on a grassy river bank in York, eating a sandwich. It ended in the discovery of a “scruffy little weed with no distinguishing features” that is the first new species to have been naturally created in Britain for more than 50 years.
The discovery of the York groundsel shows that species are created as well as made extinct, and that Charles Darwin was right and the Creationists are wrong. But the fragile existence of the species could soon be ended by the weedkillers of York City Council’s gardeners.
Richard Abbott, a plant evolutionary biologist from St Andrews University, has discovered “evolution in action” after noticing the lone, strange-looking and uncatalogued plant in wasteland next to the York railway station car park in 1979. He did not realise its significance and paid little attention. But in 1991 he returned to York, ate his sandwich and noticed that the plant had spread.
Yesterday, Dr Abbott published extensive research proving with DNA analysis that it is the first new species to have evolved naturally in Britain in the past 50 years.
“I’ve been a plant evolutionary biologist all my life, but you don’t think you’ll come across the origin of a new species in your lifetime. We’ve caught the species as it has originated — it is very satisfying,” he told the Times. “At a time in Earth’s history when animal and plant species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, the discovery of the origin of a new plant species in Britain calls for a celebration.”
The creation of new species can takes thousands of years, making it too slow for science to detect. But the York groundsel is a natural hybrid between the common groundsel and the Oxford ragwort, which was introduced to Britain from Sicily 300 years ago. Hybrids are normally sterile, and cannot breed and die out.
But Dr Abbott’s research, published in the journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, shows that the York Groundsel is a genetic mutant that can breed, but not with any other species, including its parent species. It thus fits the scientific definition of a separate species.
“It is a very rare event — it is only known to have happened five times in the last hundred years” Dr Abbott said. It has happened twice before in the UK — the Spartina anglica was discovered in Southampton 100 years ago, and the Welsh groundsel, discovered in 1948.
The weed sets seed three months after germinating and has little yellow flowers. The species, which came into existance about 30 years ago, has been called Senecio eboracensis, after Eboracum, the Roman name for York. According to the research, it has now spread to spread to several sites around York, but only ever as a weed on disturbed ground.
However, more than 90 per cent of species that have lived subsequently become extinct, and its future is by no means certain.
“It is important for it to build up its numbers rapidly, or it could get rubbed out — which would be sad. The biggest threat to the new species is the weedkillers from the council,” Dr Abbott said.
However, he does not plan to start a planting programme to ensure his discovery lives on. “The next few years will be critical as to whether it becomes an established part of the British flora or a temporary curiosity. But we will let nature take its course,” he said.
Oops. Didn't notice this the first time. Sorry.
Were mules also a new species that proved evolution?
And how do you determine which words come from men and which from God? And can anybody play that game or just you?
No individual creature, while it lives, is identifiable as a member of a transitional species. Similarly, assuming you have kids, you aren't running around thinking of yourself as "ancestor," although in due course that is how you may get classified. Because of the inter-relatedness of all life, which forms the familiar tree pattern, you can use that model, look at a tree, and ask yourself which of the twig-ends is a "transitional," or an intermediate part of a larger branch. Probably they all are, and if you re-visit that tree in 5 or 10 years, those twig-ends are now seen to be intermediate segments of branches that have grown larger.
But that is exactly what the article posits: a new species.
We all know that if all life on Earth today evolved from one celled beings, and, as it is argued that much time and many generation are needed to accomidate this metamorphasis, all forms must have been in some stage of transition, with partially developed structures. Where are they? 
Remove evolution. Now, how would you explain that whales and dolphins are more like horses and kangaroos than they are like sharks and carps?
He said essentially that on the last page of The Origin of Species.
You don't need fossils to see that. There are living creatures that have intermediate structures. There are even living creatures that have a useful part of the bacterial flagellum -- minus the actual "whip".
In fact, I defy you to name a single biological structure that does not have a living embodiment of a partial or simpler structure. Eyes, ears, arms, legs, you name it. Even sex has a host of interesting variations among living beings. There is DNA transfer among single-celled creatures, and there are organisms that spend part of their lives as single celled entities and part of their lives as part of a larger organism.
I remember a long-ago science fiction convention, and Joe Haldeman was fielding a lot of questions about the "grandfather paradox" in time travel. All the questions started out: "Okay, you get in a time machine, you go back and kill your grandfather ..." So Haldeman said that the only solution was to get into a time machine and go into the future and kill your grandchildren --in self-defense!
and I listened to so much of this . . . demagoguery (( link )) - - -
that now, with my democratic views, I can no longer stand it,'' Itar-Tass news agency
Hi everyone . . .
I am f.Christian - - -
a falling down recovering evolutionist // liberal // globalist - - -
not any more since . . . FR saved me (( link )) === now I hate the stuff // lies ! !
Every mammal on Earth. Show me some mammals with an undeveloped and evolving structure that will turn it into another, different, mammal. Show me the multitude of fossils with partial structures that are necessary to indicate that such an evolution happened.
Remember, you are claiming that all creatures on Earth today came from single cell organisms. Look at a single cell organism then look at the poliferation of different animals on Earth. For a single cell organism to get to a Zebra, it had to go through a hell of a lot of transitional structures. Virtually every fossil dug up should contain one of more of these structures. Where are they?
Where did I say anything about "undeveloped and evolving structure that will turn it into another..."
Where did I say anything about a "multitude of fossils with partial structures ..."
Where did I claim that "all creatures on Earth today came from single cell organisms..."
All of my statements were in regard to currently living organisms. Kindly limit your response to the content of my post. As a matter of fact, not a single word or thought in your post is in any way responsive to my post.
Actually, one of many possible processes. I was unaware that a hybrid could be both self fertile and infertile with both parents. Another trick in Ma Nature's bag.
It indicates at least two things: that we don't know everything, and that new bits of learning always seem to diminish the list of impossible and improbable things.
The only way to put the question honestly is to ask if there is a wide range of functionality for any given anatomical feature. Consider wings. If you start by assuming that wings are adapted for flight, you might ask if there is a range of competence among creatures with wings. Are there, for example, creatures with wings that can just barely fly, perhaps just for short distances? Are there creatures that have wings but cannot fly at all?
By asking the question in this way you can get some indication of whether an "undeveloped" structure can be useful, or whether it is detrimental.
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