Evidence for Evolution

[Rían]

re: article - what I found fascinating is that there were so many unscientific value judgements in it ...

I only got to read about 5 paragraphs - busy busy holiday weekend! Will read more later.

[GreyMouser]

color me skeptical... count me out?

I wonder if they tried it on children ?- adults may have their minds set by culture, but children's minds are more open. They actually have more neural connections than adults; as we grow older our conections die off.

[GreyMouser]

New York Dolls- Dance Like a Monkey

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/art...px?fileID=1668

Catch the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

[brownjenkins]

classic

[Spock]

[Nurvingiel]

That is awesome.

[captain carrot]

http://www.devilducky.com/media/45786/

thanks to the great annual frozen constipated frozen-butted one for this link, btw.

[Nurvingiel]

The Simpsons is a beautiful thing.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Yep.

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by captain carrot

http://www.devilducky.com/media/45786/

thanks to the great annual frozen constipated frozen-butted one for this link, btw.

People won't actually know who the "great annual frozen constipated frozen-butted one" is 'round these here parts, y'know?

[Insidious Rex]

Yesterday's T. Rex is today's chicken

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

The discovery of traces of flesh in a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone ties the King of the Dinosaurs to modern-day species and, scientists say, heralds a "milestone" shift in paleontology.

"Based on the small sample we've recovered, chickens may be the closest relatives (to T. rex)," says geneticist John Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, co-leader of a team reporting the discovery of faint traces of chicken-like bone lining preserved inside a dinosaur drumstick.

In studies reported in the journal Science, Asara and colleagues conclude that seven traces of proteins detected in purified T. rex bone most closely match those reported in chickens, followed by frogs and newts.

The astonishing find of barely detectable tissue from a creature tens of millions of years old, along with similar traces the team found in a mastodon bone at least 160,000 years old, upends the conventional view of fossils and may shift paleontologists' focus from bone hunting to biochemistry, say experts.

Until now, scientists thought fossilization replaced every last bit of living tissue with inert mineral.

"I'd call it a milestone," says paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, who was not part of the studies. "Dinosaurs will enter the field of molecular biology and really slingshot paleontology into the modern world."

In the two studies, led by Asara and Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, the team unearthed a T. rex buried underneath 60 feet of cliffside rock in Hell Creek, Mont.

Keeping the dinosaur entombed in sandstone to prevent contamination, the scientists extracted a few grams of material from its thick thighbone, and forwarded the bone powder to Asara's lab. There it was ground down to about a billionth of a gram of material, suitable for inspection with a high-tech mass spectrometer generally used to precisely diagnose cancer genes inside tumors.

The team suspects the dry sandstone, combined with the thickness of the T. rex bone, allowed some faint measure of preservation, only about 1% of the purified sample's collagen, the ribbonlike tissue found in ligaments, tendons and bone lining inside the thighbone.

The protein traces are a far cry from the Jurassic Park vision of genes leading to a re-created dinosaur, Larsson notes. He voiced some caution about the results until independent researchers have ruled out the possibility of contamination in the bone samples.

"It wasn't terribly long ago we thought there was no preservation whatsoever in fossils," says paleontologist Thomas Holtz of the University of Maryland in College Park. "We have a lot more to learn about fossilization."

"Finding any soft tissues in dinosaur bones greatly surprised us," says Schweitzer, who led a 2005 study that found still-elastic blood vessel remains in a dinosaur bone. Her team plans to embark on a worldwide exploration of dinosaur sites in the next year, looking for more fossil bones to examine.

So… We have GENETIC EVIDENCE that the greatest dinosaur of them all is related to…. A chicken! My that’s quite a discovery wouldn’t you say? So much for “dinosaurs didn’t evolve� eh?

So I wonder if you fried the drum sticks and got say 500 pounds of mash potatoes would it taste just like…

[Rían]

Don't humans share DNA with bananas?

[Insidious Rex]

But bananas dont seem to be our closest living cousin... And we arent 68 million year old fossils...

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Don't humans share DNA with bananas?

Do we really, because I would be surprised to find we share DNA with something from a different kingdom. Then again, I've been surprised before.

Go on, surprise me.

IRex, that was an awesome article!

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

So… We have GENETIC EVIDENCE that the greatest dinosaur of them all is related to…. A chicken! My that’s quite a discovery wouldn’t you say? So much for “dinosaurs didn’t evolve� eh?

So I wonder if you fried the drum sticks and got say 500 pounds of mash potatoes would it taste just like…

You know, that explains why our pet rooster was such a vicious little bastard.

*BoP has not so fond memories of being chased around the sheep house by the little *****

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

So… We have GENETIC EVIDENCE that the greatest dinosaur of them all is related to…. A chicken! My that’s quite a discovery wouldn’t you say? So much for “dinosaurs didn’t evolve� eh?

Well, we've known for a long time that dinosaurs are related to birds. The only new thing here is that apparently the T Rex is a little bit more related to chickens than any other bird species. And the dinosaurs didn't necessarily evolve themselves. They might have died out while their relatives evolved into birds.

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Don't humans share DNA with bananas?

We share DNA with all living organisms.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

So… We have GENETIC EVIDENCE that the greatest dinosaur of them all is related to…. A chicken!

The chicken should be proud .



Here's a piece of evidence for evolution:

Genesis 1:24- And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.


According to modern evolutionary theory, the shifting of the environment creates the kinds of animals. "The land" produces living creatures according to their kinds.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

So… We have GENETIC EVIDENCE that the greatest dinosaur of them all is related to…. A chicken! My that’s quite a discovery wouldn’t you say? So much for “dinosaurs didn’t evolve� eh?

Well, darn, I had always pictured ol' T-rex more like a turkey-person...

Very convenient picture

I always thought chickens knew more then they let on, it's in their eyes...

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

We share DNA with all living organisms.

Yes, but the banana thing has such a ring to it!

Re the article and IRex's comment - yes, common ancestry is certainly one interpretation that can be made from the data, and I'm sure many intelligent scientists will make that leap.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Here's a piece of evidence for evolution:

Genesis 1:24- And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.


According to modern evolutionary theory, the shifting of the environment creates the kinds of animals. "The land" produces living creatures according to their kinds.

That is SO AWESOME.