Evolution's Missing Link

[veggieguy12]

The missing link has been exhibited, 20 years after it was discovered!
Finally we can bury God! (Well, anyone with a rational mind might.)

The 47-million year-old fossilized skeleton was kept secret and scrutinized for a couple years; now it's thought to be a transitional pre-lemur ape bridging the gap to those who are our own human predecessors.

Revealing the Link: Who is Ida?

Also, on a related note: Why are crazy-ass Christian fundamentalist preachers rearing their ugly heads in Seattle of all places? Is Seattle the new Orlando, perhaps?
It does harbor the mis-named Discovery Institute...

 

[Dameon]

Seattle's had problems with the crazy-ass Christian fundamentalist preachers for years and years. It's nothing new. You'll see them at Folklife, holding giant banners depicting Jesus bloody and tortured, and shouting at everybody. They've been there every year for the past four years that I know of, plus at other random events, and walking around the streets. Apparently, they were recently protesting gay people at the University district farmer's market, which isn't any gayer than any other farmer's market.

It doesn't matter how much evidence we turn up supporting evolution. Religious people aren't religious based on evidence. They always have the argument of "God put those fossils there when he created the world 6,000 years ago because he wanted to test our faith."

 

[Angela]

I just dont understand how there isnt more fossils, just one found so far. I guess populations musnt of been so huge as today. If we all died in someway today.. years and year later our bones would be found in mass quantity and in dense populations. There wouldnt be much of a doubt that we existed.

Actually when were talking about millions of years, not much would be left of us even if we all dropped over dead in piles right now. Fossils only form under relatively rare conditions, most of what's ever lived on this planet has left no remains. Bones last a long time in human terms but geologically not so much.

 

[Dameon]

You have to remember that not only were populations small, fossilization is a rare process. You have to die in exactly the right area in the right conditions for your bones to become fossils. We don't get fossils for every species that existed in the past.

 

[veggieguy12]

I just dont understand how there isnt more fossils, just one found so far. I guess populations musnt of been so huge as today. If we all died in someway today.. years and year later our bones would be found in mass quantity and in dense populations. There wouldnt be much of a doubt that we existed.

I dunno what the educated folks would say, but I'm guessing there weren't too many of these things running around back then. A few thousand, perhaps?
AND
Dude, it's 47 million years old.
The rest of the life from that epoch aren't fossils, they're petroleum.
And how easy do you think it is to find stuff buried 46.99 million years ago?

 

[Angela]

I dunno what the educated folks would say, but I'm guessing there weren't too many of these things running around back then. A few thousand, perhaps?
AND
Dude, it's 47 million years old.
The rest of the life from that epoch aren't fossils, they're petroleum.
And how easy do you think it is to find stuff buried 46.99 million years ago?

And the ones that aren't petroleum, well they got recycled back into the earth and are now magma that will maybe spew from a volcano someday. You gotta love plate tectonics!

 

[macks]

I dunno what the educated folks would say, but I'm guessing there weren't too many of these things running around back then. A few thousand, perhaps?

Depends on a lot of things and it's a hard thing to guess but I'd say way higher than that. On chances alone, for one of them to end up in the exact right place at the exact right time to be fossilized like that suggests there were probably a bunch of them running around. Or crawling, leaping, whatever those.. things did.

 

[Angela]

Depends on a lot of things and it's a hard thing to guess but I'd say way higher than that. On chances alone, for one of them to end up in the exact right place at the exact right time to be fossilized like that suggests there were probably a bunch of them running around. Or crawling, leaping, whatever those.. things did.

Yeah, I'm guessing way more than a few thousand. Were talking about something that was probably considered food by lots of other things at the time, so probably a lot more than a few thousand.

 

[soymilkshakes]

It doesn't matter how much evidence we turn up supporting evolution. Religious people aren't religious based on evidence. They always have the argument of "God put those fossils there when he created the world 6,000 years ago because he wanted to test our faith."

Hahah. Ever hear that Bill Hicks skit?

"Fundamentalist Christians say that God created fossils to test our faith. Does that bother anyone else, the idea that God might be fuckin' with our heads?.. 'Heh heh heh, we'll see who believes in me now.'"

It's true, though. If someone doesn't want to believe something, nothing will convince them otherwise. And religious folk don't tend to be the most rational.




"Know how I know Charles Darwin was wrong? If man descended from apes, why are there still apes?" -exceptionally intelligent man who picked me up hitchin'

 

[veggieguy12]

for one of them to end up in the exact right place at the exact right time to be fossilized like that suggests there were probably a bunch of them running around.

Don't you think there were all sort of rocks hitting this planet back 47 million years ago? What's the chances that things survived around meteor/asteroid impacts?

Yeah, I'm guessing way more than a few thousand. Were talking about something that was probably considered food by lots of other things at the time, so probably a lot more than a few thousand.

Well I really have no solid idea. I just know it was only one of many species that were in high competition for food sources, and avoiding predators. I guess we see the same logic justifying different ends of the quantity.
Low estimates are < 9 million humans in the Americas when Columbus arrived in 1492; so moving back a few million years, and lessening the diversity of species, and putting us amongst the food chain instead of atop it... could be many more or a lot less than 9 million.

"Know how I know Charles Darwin was wrong? If man descended from apes, why are there still apes?" -exceptionally intelligent man who picked me up hitchin'

What a mis-understanding of evolution; many species descended from preceding apes, our is only one (and way down the line). But that predecessor has changed so much that it doesn't exist.
And yeah, Bill Hicks was great. Now we have... who, Dane Cook? Talk about prehistoric.

 

[macks]

Well, low. Not quite sure what you're getting at though.. I was just saying there was probably a ton of them just due to probability, there's always the chance of freak incidents.

 

[veggieguy12]

Hey macks, I was responding to the idea that this one was in the "exact right place at the exact right time" - I figure there were space rocks colliding into the Earth with frequency, so it's not a perfect, lucky situation that this age-6 cat-ape creature was hit, rather that it was preserved intact and then found by us.
I wish my brother was a paleontologist instead of a brain surgeon, so I could get some expert advice here.