Freethought & Rationalism Archive

tgamble · 08-12-2002, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Camaban:
<strong>and many types of insects except for their size.
</strong>

But does size matter?

The Lone Ranger · 08-12-2002, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jimmy Higgins:

Well, if it is a rhino, the way they can find one is by lighting a fire. We all know that rhinos are the self-appointed fire marshals of the jungle.

If a Coke bottle drops from the sky while they're on one of their dinosaur hunts, will they think it's a gift from God?

Cheers,

Michael

CRDbulldog · 08-12-2002, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus:
<strong>
[snip]
Also, like camaban, I am a little confused as to why they think a living dinosaur would disprove evolution. How long have crocodiles been around relatively unchanged, after all?</strong>

I sure do hate doing this, defending YEC's -- go figure -- but I think you are missing an important point in analyzing data. Finding a living dinosaur COULD well be a BIG problem for Darwinian theory. It could shake my belief in it at least (and I am probably one of the stronger Darwinians). Suppose, they found a Stegosaurus looking exactly the way we expect them to look. The data we have now says that they died out 130 mya. We would have a problem explaining (1) How the animal got to Africa without leaving a fossil record of such an event, (2) Why it is that we have missed signs of its ancestors dating back 130 million years, (3) What's the reason for the prolonged period of stasis, especially since the environment has changed so dramatically many times since then. My thoughts would gravitate to some rather wild possibilities -- (a) there is a secret scientific organization dedicated to reproducing a real live Jurassic Park, or (b) we have made a serious mistake(s) in our interpretation of the data on dinosaurs. I would consider each to be about equally likely.

OTOH suppose they found a small never-before-seen (not even in the fossil record) species of dinosaur. That would not be nearly so much of a problem. It would be entirely possible (but again unlikely) for a small isolated branch to remain in some hidden corner of the world until now.

Having said all that let me stress that I do not lose any sleep wondering whether or not I am going to have to radically change my belief on dinosaur evolution.

lpetrich · 08-12-2002, 07:52 PM

One important test to apply to such a find would be to take a blood or tissue sample and sequence some of the genes, especially those often used in constructing family trees.

Like all the other dinosaurs, stegosaurs have this branching order relative to birds, crocodilians, lizards, and snakes:

((lizards snakes) (crocodilians (stegosaur birds)))

Which can be directly tested by doing comparisons of genes.

Also, the stegosaur's branch length could be used to tell if time travelers had brought some stegosaurs into the future.

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08-12-2002, 07:52 PM	#44
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	One important test to apply to such a find would be to take a blood or tissue sample and sequence some of the genes, especially those often used in constructing family trees. Like all the other dinosaurs, stegosaurs have this branching order relative to birds, crocodilians, lizards, and snakes: ((lizards snakes) (crocodilians (stegosaur birds))) Which can be directly tested by doing comparisons of genes. Also, the stegosaur's branch length could be used to tell if time travelers had brought some stegosaurs into the future.

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