Coragyps

BAT kind? What are you talking about, Oolon? They're fowls of the air!

Duvenoy

Welcome back Oolon! We missed ya, bro!

A truly odd-ball Elapid is the Rinkhal's Spitting Cobra ((Hemachatus heamachatus). These are some very strange serpents. They have heavly keeled scales, the only Elapid, to my knowledge, to have them, they can spit venom a considerable distance, and when really upset, they will play dead like a paniced 'possum. Wonderful animals, except for the one that put a tiny spash of juice in my right eye last year. It also bears live offspring, rather than lay eggs -- ovo-viviperous. It is the only species in the genera.

I've also 'snake sat' for a pair of D. polylepis Black Mambas for several weeks, until the owner could get set up for them (as if I was!). These have fangs so far forward in the mouth that they are almost directly under the nostrils. I am happy to report that Dendroaspis does not spit.

So, how many 'kinds'? Oh, you might well say, "Well certainly; two! What a stupid question."

Be not so sudden. Where does one draw the 'kind' line? These snakes differ wildly, but both are Elapids. Should not all Elapids be of a single 'kind'? Should not all Pitvipers be of one also? Or all Viperids, of which Pitvipers are a part? Or must we go to my first example of the Retic, Fea's and the Lep and say, "Snakey Kind!"

And here is my objection to 'kinds'. No two people draw the line in the same place. Or, they'll draw one, and as soon as you come up with something that might not fit, they'll re-draw it.

Friends, that ain't science, and I ain't all that sure it's good religion, either. Seems I recall the Bible saying something to the effect that you ought to be honest.

Oz has some of the world's truly wonderful Elapids. Wish I could go there and observe them.

doov

Doubting Didymus

I reckon that I've worked out ed's odd posting habits. Since we've switched to Vbulletin, He's been a number of months behind. I strongly suspect that whats going on is, he's pressing the button that takes you directly to the first unread post, and replying only to that single post. He's not coming to the end of this thread, and so he won't be seeing the replies we are making till maybe june.

It's a bit like one of those long distance airmail chess matches that goes for years.

On another note, I wonder if this thread isn't the longest running continually active thread ever? If it isn't, it will be soon.

And welcome back, oolon colluphid. I can pronounce your name, even if some can't.

Jack the Bodiless

I think Ed's problem is worse than that. He recently claimed that Richard Carrier (born in 1969) is 21 years old.

lpetrich

And even worse, that being a historian who specializes in the Roman Empire somehow disqualifies one from having any expertise in the New Testament.

Even though the New Testament had been written in the Roman Empire!

Ed

Yes, to cause microevolution.

Quote:

oc: I’m still waiting, Ed. What’s your take on the kind = genus problem? And please: how did you alight on the idea a kind is a genus? Because ‘baraminologists’ such as Kurt Wise think it’s near-enough the Linnaean level of family. Does your wildlife biology experience lead you to think he’s wrong? And why? Cheers, DT

I said it was both, depending on the organism and as we learn more about genetic relationships between organisms, we can do better at determining which is a "kind".

GunnerJ

Ah, now the horrors I have wrought with the "First Cause Does Not Prove God" thread come back to haunt me... I have to moderate this thread now.

This is shocking evidence for karma.

-GunnerJ (formerly Rimstalker)

Doubting Didymus

Oho! You havent heard the whole of it yet!

You may have noticed that ed, in his wisdom, is replying to posts one at a time, in the order of the first unread post. This means he is approximately three months behind the rest of us.

What does this mean for you? well, obviously you won't be able to fulfill your moderating duties properly without first reading the entire thread.

Enjoy!

(Don't worry, I read the whole thing, and nothing bad happened to me. I'm still perfectly sane. Sane as a slipper. Sane as a salmon. Sane as a march hare.)

Ed

There is no fossil that shows a transition of all characteristics required for the change from facultative bipedalism and obligate bipedalism. Such as the movement of the foramen magnum from the anterior of the skull to the base of the skull.

Quote:

jtb: Whales and land mammals? Nope, no unbridged gap there either. Mammals and reptiles? Nope. Reptiles and birds? Nope. Amphibians and fish? Nope. This is a pattern I'm already familiar with on the GRD "Ed thread". A bald assertion with no basis in fact: in common parlance, a "lie". If you had even bothered to ATTEMPT to identify a SPECIFIC gap... but no, that would be terribly dangerous, and you know it. Those evilutionists might have that gap plugged. Safer to resort to a vague, unspecific, and above all portable lie. "There is a gap between A and E in the fossil record, and no fossil C between them, but I'm not saying where. This gap exists wherever I want it to exist, and I reserve the right to pretend at any time that any specified example of such a gap is NOT the one I was referring to".

I already provided the gaps in my posts to Oolon earlier in this thread.

Jack the Bodiless

Ahem:



The australopithecines are basically bipedal chimpanzees. They are the "fossil C" between apes and humans. A quasi-bipedal proto-australopithecine would obviously be a "fossil D", a lesser intermediary stage.
This thread is more than a year old and currently has 30 pages.

But, if you actually knew of MAJOR unbridged gaps in the fossil record, you would mention them here, right? (...and, no, there isn't such a gap between humans and apes).

You know that you dare not take that risk. Any specific MAJOR gap might be filled by now.

If creationism were true, this would not be a problem for you. There would be NO transitional forms. In fact, the existence of even ONE transitional form disproves creationism!