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Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotron ca> wrote:
> Fun fact #2: We've all evolved from sea-dwelling animals who had to deal
> with sea water's osmotic pressure for millennia, so there's nothing
> really surprising about fun fact #1.
It's actually quite interesting to study what kinds of morphological and
biological similarities we still have compared to our amazingly distant
fish ancestors from hundreds of millions of years ago.
For example, all terrestrial tetrapods (which includes us) have the
same basic limb bone structure: One bone (upper arm) -> two bones (lower
arm) -> a bunch of small bones (wrist) -> a group of long thin bones
(palm/fingers).
(In some animals the limb's end may have changed so that eg. a toe has
grown into a hoof, but the basic structure is still discernible.)
This basic limb structure can be traced all the way back to the fish from
which all tetrapods evolved from. (Our fingers used to be the bones in
the pectoral fins of that fish.)
--
- Warp
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Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> The problem here is that there "are" now paid shills (lots and lots more
> of them than back when the people paying them thought science would
> vindicate their ideas, not disembowel them), like Cato, and those
> working for certain corporations/interests, who do both cherry pick
> their data, and lie, to promote the positions they are *paid* to.
There's a good reason why science does not rely on individual scientists
and individual experiments, but everything must be peer-reviewed and
tested again and again by numerous independent parties (preferably from
different countries and cultures) before such studies are even considered.
Creationists (as well as many other pseudoscientists) promote the notion
that the entire scientific community is in a huge conspiracy to endorse
certain views. Naturally they never go to specifics (because those could
be easily verified), but the way they talk it sounds like they think that
"science" consists of a secret core group of people who decide what the
current "scientific truth" is, and then everyone else just abides by their
rulings.
This is a physical impossibility. You just can't make the entire scientific
community believe in the same thing that's contrary to facts. Said
community consists of thousands and thousans of people from different
countries and cultures. Most of them do it because of personal interest
and passion, and nothing would be more rewarding then making a new
discovery or coming up with a valid objection to a claim. There's just no
way to control all the scientists of the entire world and make them keep
quiet about problems in current scientific theories and not publish those
objections.
For example, let's assume that there are indeed big problems with
radioactive dating methods. Why would, for example, scientists from
India or Japan keep quiet about them, and moreover perpetuate the alleged
lies? What possible motivation could there be (especially since there is
a lot more motivation to raise objections when they are found)?
--
- Warp
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On 26/08/2013 03:49 PM, Warp wrote:
> For example, all terrestrial tetrapods (which includes us) have the
> same basic limb bone structure: One bone (upper arm) -> two bones (lower
> arm) -> a bunch of small bones (wrist) -> a group of long thin bones
> (palm/fingers).
In a way, that's pretty amazing. But in a way, it would be far more
amazing if all these animals did *not* have the same bone structure -
that would imply a sudden change in skeletal design, which is quite
unlikely.
> (In some animals the limb's end may have changed so that eg. a toe has
> grown into a hoof, but the basic structure is still discernible.)
Take a dog, for example. The part of a dog's leg that *looks* like an
elbow is actually homologous to the human wrist joint. The *actual*
elbow is hidden inside the dog's body where you can't see it. And the
thing that looks like an angle is actually our finger joint. It's whacky
stuff...
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On 8/26/2013 9:50 AM, Warp wrote:
> This is a physical impossibility. You just can't make the entire scientific
> community believe in the same thing that's contrary to facts. Said
> community consists of thousands and thousans of people from different
> countries and cultures. Most of them do it because of personal interest
> and passion, and nothing would be more rewarding then making a new
> discovery or coming up with a valid objection to a claim. There's just no
> way to control all the scientists of the entire world and make them keep
> quiet about problems in current scientific theories and not publish those
> objections.
>
Of course, this is exactly what they often claim, that "their"
scientists, who never seem to actually, you know, do research, instead
of just comment on their misreading of everyone else's, are the ones
"speaking out" against the vast conspiracy that all the other ones (who
outnumber them like 100:1) are "in on".
They are, often, also believers in the "Main Stream Media", which is
just incompetent and unwilling to check their facts, but fans of "FOX",
which has actually admitted to paying people to make shit up, and only
put out biased news, according to what their companies CEO wants them to
say (which just happens, right now, to coincide heavily with the
pro-corporation, anti-regulation, small government, pseudo-libertarian,
"Tea Party"...), as well as the truly loony one, which is that energy
companies, which, just in the last few decades have a) sat in rooms to
fix oil prices, while claiming that its pure coincidence they all meet
together, not intentional price fixing, didn't so much as speak up
about, and probably just figured on waiting to see what happened, during
the Enron, "Gosh, we have an electricity shortage, so lets kill people
by shutting down their 'heating/air conditioning/who the fuck knows what
else', during rolling blackouts, and have shown, twice that they can't
prevent spills, or clean them up, or even stop their pipelines from
leaking. Oh, no, those people we are supposed to believe, but not the
"scientific community", which is somehow looking to make "big money" by
promoting alternatives, thanks to global warming.
Its never entirely clear how *all* of those people, never mind any but
perhaps a small fraction, are supposed to get money from doing this,
but.. hell, its how their side does things, so, I am guessing that at
least some of the idiots on the denialism side actually believe its not
happening, and that everyone else, just like them, pays people with
degrees to make shit up, and lie, to promote some sort of business
interests, what ever the hell those might be. Looks at in that sense,
presuming they truly believe someone, some place, is making money off
it, and that all the experts on their side are getting kickbacks, just
like they do for their "own" experts.. Its perfectly logical. Its should
also imho, be a sign that every damn one of them needs to be
investigated for ethics violations, and their paid shills, for some sort
of clear conflict of interest issues (not that you could, since they
would just admit they where paid to make shit up, so.. no conflict, then
accuse everyone else of doing the same thing).
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Am 26.08.2013 23:16, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
> On 26/08/2013 03:49 PM, Warp wrote:
>> For example, all terrestrial tetrapods (which includes us) have the
>> same basic limb bone structure: One bone (upper arm) -> two bones (lower
>> arm) -> a bunch of small bones (wrist) -> a group of long thin bones
>> (palm/fingers).
>
> In a way, that's pretty amazing. But in a way, it would be far more
> amazing if all these animals did *not* have the same bone structure -
> that would imply a sudden change in skeletal design, which is quite
> unlikely.
You mean, like the disconnection of the collarbone from the sternum in
felids, or the disconnection of the pelvis and complete disappearance of
hind limbs in cetaceans?
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On 27/08/2013 12:07 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 26.08.2013 23:16, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>> On 26/08/2013 03:49 PM, Warp wrote:
>>> For example, all terrestrial tetrapods (which includes us) have the
>>> same basic limb bone structure: One bone (upper arm) -> two bones (lower
>>> arm) -> a bunch of small bones (wrist) -> a group of long thin bones
>>> (palm/fingers).
>>
>> In a way, that's pretty amazing. But in a way, it would be far more
>> amazing if all these animals did *not* have the same bone structure -
>> that would imply a sudden change in skeletal design, which is quite
>> unlikely.
>
> You mean, like the disconnection of the collarbone from the sternum in
> felids, or the disconnection of the pelvis and complete disappearance of
> hind limbs in cetaceans?
I was thinking more like if there was one member of the frog family
which has five legs instead of the usual four, or something. THAT would
be weird...
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On 8/26/2013 4:07 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 26.08.2013 23:16, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>> On 26/08/2013 03:49 PM, Warp wrote:
>>> For example, all terrestrial tetrapods (which includes us) have the
>>> same basic limb bone structure: One bone (upper arm) -> two bones
>>> (lower
>>> arm) -> a bunch of small bones (wrist) -> a group of long thin bones
>>> (palm/fingers).
>>
>> In a way, that's pretty amazing. But in a way, it would be far more
>> amazing if all these animals did *not* have the same bone structure -
>> that would imply a sudden change in skeletal design, which is quite
>> unlikely.
>
> You mean, like the disconnection of the collarbone from the sternum in
> felids, or the disconnection of the pelvis and complete disappearance of
> hind limbs in cetaceans?
>
In most of those cases the genes are still there, or the bones "grow
together", such that they seem to have disappeared, but haven't, or they
are in fact there, in some limited form, but just not obvious on first
appearance. Deletion of entire sets of genes, for a limb, and their
replacement with something else, instead of just adjusting the size and
shape, doesn't happen much.
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On 8/27/2013 10:20 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 27/08/2013 12:07 AM, clipka wrote:
>> Am 26.08.2013 23:16, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>>> On 26/08/2013 03:49 PM, Warp wrote:
>>>> For example, all terrestrial tetrapods (which includes us) have the
>>>> same basic limb bone structure: One bone (upper arm) -> two bones
>>>> (lower
>>>> arm) -> a bunch of small bones (wrist) -> a group of long thin bones
>>>> (palm/fingers).
>>>
>>> In a way, that's pretty amazing. But in a way, it would be far more
>>> amazing if all these animals did *not* have the same bone structure -
>>> that would imply a sudden change in skeletal design, which is quite
>>> unlikely.
>>
>> You mean, like the disconnection of the collarbone from the sternum in
>> felids, or the disconnection of the pelvis and complete disappearance of
>> hind limbs in cetaceans?
>
> I was thinking more like if there was one member of the frog family
> which has five legs instead of the usual four, or something. THAT would
> be weird...
Yeah, well.. That isn't likely to happen, six maybe, since you have the
whole bi-lateral symmetry thing going on, but then, you would find that,
much like "missing" ones, the extras are either a) caused by
environmental toxins (common issue with frogs in fact), or b) a copying
on the genes needed to produce the limbs. Whether or not, without other
regulatory changes, you can get "functional" ones is another matter.
Now.. toes/fingers are a different oddity. Their genetics function like
this: Start growing the index finger, then add another, and another,
until you hit a stop number, *then* grow a thumb. This means you can get
one less, or one more, finger, or even several more, if the timing got
way off (and it will end up next to the "pinky" when it forms), but its
not going to be common, since you would have to nuke "all" of the
fingers for the process to be interrupted. The thumb on the other hand
is a separate process, but dependent on the first set being formed, so
you could, in principle, have it be knocked out all by itself, by, in
effect, having the genes just "skip over" the code for it. But, it isn't
formed in the same stage in the process as the rest of the fingers.
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Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> In most of those cases the genes are still there, or the bones "grow
> together", such that they seem to have disappeared, but haven't, or they
> are in fact there, in some limited form, but just not obvious on first
> appearance. Deletion of entire sets of genes, for a limb, and their
> replacement with something else, instead of just adjusting the size and
> shape, doesn't happen much.
Genes are, ultimately, rather inefficient at "optimizing" an organism
to adapt to new or changed environments. Parts that are no longer needed
can linger on for thousands, if not even millions of generations.
Structures that still have important functions, but are quite inefficient
at doing those functions (when there would be much better structures that
could do the same job a lot better), may be retained likewise for millions
of generations, for the simple reason that they were there to begin with,
and a complete replacement by slow modification would require changes with
so astronomically low probabilities of happening, that they just don't
happen. Sometimes the vestiges of old organs may happen to be adapted for
new functions, but they will almost invariably be very inefficient at
those functions (which makes sense; they didn't exist for those functions
to begin with, and thus it's no wonder they are not optimal for a
completely different task.)
Evolution is all about compromises. The genetic code is very slow to
change in the right way to do something efficiently. It's more like a
hack job than anything else (it's like there's a "if it works, don't fix
it" principle constantly going on), and remnants of obsolete parts will
linger on, just because genetics can't just get rid of them that easily.
There's no guiding process to drop those off, and thus they will be built
because the genes say they should. There's nothing stopping them, even
after those parts become useless. Thus you get things like blind eyes
that are physically unable to see (in many species that live their whole
lives in darkness) and thus serve no useful purpose whatsoever. But the
useless eyes are still there because the genes say so, even if part of
the resources used to build them have been turned off or allocated somewhere
else.
When you really start to study how genes work, you start seeing that
there is, in fact, no intelligent design behind it. No intelligent
designer, no matter how incompetent, would be so sloppy and so lazy.
A mindless process that's simply the by-product of natural laws is.
On the positive side, genes are a marvelous example of emergent behavior
in nature. Complexity arising from simple rules.
--
- Warp
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On 27-8-2013 23:09, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 8/27/2013 10:20 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> I was thinking more like if there was one member of the frog family
>> which has five legs instead of the usual four, or something. THAT would
>> be weird...
> Yeah, well.. That isn't likely to happen, six maybe, since you have the
> whole bi-lateral symmetry thing going on, but then, you would find that,
> much like "missing" ones, the extras are either a) caused by
> environmental toxins (common issue with frogs in fact), or b) a copying
> on the genes needed to produce the limbs. Whether or not, without other
> regulatory changes, you can get "functional" ones is another matter.
During evolution, Nature does it the other way round. During the
Devonian when lobe-finned bony fishes appeared and evolved into
amphibians, Nature experimented with different possibilities. There were
animals with 7 or more numbers of digits on their legs. Eventually, only
the animals with 5 digits made it. All the others became extinct.
Search for Acanthostega, Ventastega and Tiktaalik.
Thomas
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