What to say if somebody says to me..."How did the kangaroos and koalas get to Australia? "

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LittleSoldier said:
Yes, this explains why I was such a poor softball player. In fact, in the league I belonged to at USC (formed of people who worked in the accounting and computer support offices) we came in dead last and we only won the one game we won because the other team was short a player so we sent over our worst player to fill in (fortunately it wasn’t me).

I received a trophy for “Most Injured Player.”

Now it all becomes clear. Hmmmm…
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How many times were you asked - “you gotta hole in that mitt?” 😃

Man, if I only I could have told those guys - “I didn’t miss it, it was just quantum mechanics at work.”
 
LittleSoldier said:
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Evolutionary Theory

Now, on to biology and development of the modern platypus:

Please read the following and then check the link. The article is from National Geographic and makes for some interesting reading.

"The duck-billed mammal has a genetic affinity with both reptiles and birds, according to a new study. The platypus genome has long been an important goal for biologists seeking to understand the origins of mammal evolution. The study, appearing in today’s edition of the journal Nature, gives scientists a new window into the genetic architecture of the earliest mammals.

‘The platypus genome, like the animal itself, is an amazing amalgam of reptile-like and mammal-like features,’ said project co-leader Jennifer Graves, of the Australian National University in Canberra. The analysis confirms that the platypus was the earliest offshoot of the mammalian family tree, Graves noted. The group of animals called monotremes—which includes the platypus and the closely related echidna—is thought to have split from other mammals at least 166 million years ago. That early divergence means platypus genes carry information from a transitional point on the evolutionary time line leading from reptiles to mammals, said project leader Wesley Warren of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080507-platypus.html

The following article is well-written and a pleasure to read. I highly recommend it. Here is the gist of the article:

“The fascinating mix of features in the platypus genome provides many clues to the function and evolution of all mammalian genomes,” says Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., director of the The Genome Center at Washington University and the paper’s senior author. "By comparing the platypus genome to other mammalian genomes, we’ll be able to study genes that have been conserved throughout evolution.

"The platypus represents the earliest offshoot of the mammalian lineage some 166 million years ago from primitive ancestors that had features of both mammals and reptiles. “What is unique about the platypus is that it has retained a large overlap between two very different classifications, while later mammals lost the features of reptiles,” says Wes Warren, Ph.D., an assistant professor of genetics, who led the project.

"Far from being a joke, the platypus is a strong piece of evidence for the theory of evolution (not that it really needed additional ones) and, scientifically speaking, a rich source of insight into the evolution of mammals from reptile-birds (birds are considered a group of reptiles, in particular, part of the same line of descent as dinosaurs).

"Biologists already knew quite a bit about this strange creature, for instance that it produces milk (like any mammal) though it doesn’t have nipples (unlike any other mammal). This suggested that the ability to produce milk evolved before specialized anatomical structures to deliver it, or – less likely – that the platypus lost the nipples sometimes after its divergence from the rest of the mammalian lineage. Molecular biology now confirms that platypuses have genes that produce casein proteins, an essential element of true milk, which means that milk production evolved about 166 million years ago, after the mammal-sauropsid split (living sauropsids include snakes, lizards, crocodiles, turtles and of course birds; extinct ones comprise plesiosaurs and pterosaurs).

"The platypus genome project has confirmed what evolutionary biologists had surmised from the morphological and physiological features of the platypus: the animal’s biology is a bridge (a “missing link,” if you will) between reptiles and mammals, with genetic features found in each group (again, including birds, which are really flying reptiles). Moreover, some of the features of the platypus are not the result of common ancestry with the reptiles, but of another well known evolutionary phenomenon: convergence. For instance, male platypuses have a spur that can deliver a venom powerful enough to kill a dog. A chemical analysis of the venom reveals that it is made of a “cocktail” of various peptides (short proteins), similar to the venom of snakes. Except that the platypus did not inherit its venom-making ability from reptiles, it evolved it independently, as the molecular studies clearly show.

science20.com/rationally_speaking/the_platypus_evolution_and_why_piattelli_palmarini_is_wrong

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are you sure reptiles and mammals and birds did not evolve from the platypus - twinc
 
twinc said:
are you sure reptiles and mammals and birds did not evolve from the platypus - twinc
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If mammals evolved from the platypus, we now have the different problem of how the mammals got off Australia!
 
Spirithound said:
If mammals evolved from the platypus, we now have the different problem of how the mammals got off Australia!
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yes of course and why not - lets have all the way out,weird and wacky alternatives and not the reasonable original - twinc
 
twinc said:
yes of course and why not - lets have all the way out,weird and wacky alternatives and not the reasonable original - twinc
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The reasonable original being that God put the platypus on earth as a joke so He could laugh at us scratching our heads and looking dumb?

I think that’s the best explanation of all! 🙂
 
LittleSoldier said:
The reasonable original being that God put the platypus on earth as a joke so He could laugh at us scratching our heads and looking dumb?

I think that’s the best explanation of all! 🙂
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imho it seems God will allow anyone to scratch their heads and look dump if they wish - of course there is no need to - twinc
 
LittleSoldier said:
The reasonable original being that God put the platypus on earth as a joke so He could laugh at us scratching our heads and looking dumb?

I think that’s the best explanation of all! 🙂
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That assumes that laughing at people is a Godly attribute; I for one do NOT want to go there.
 
if only all this were true but it seems no fossils have ever been found to show that platypuses evolved from reptiles. Only a few platypus fossils have been discovered but they show that this animal has not changed.It seems the only ancestors it ever had were other platypuses.Perhaps God created the platypus the way it is to show us how ridiculous it is to believe in evolution [Weird and Wonderful] imho and as I read it - twinc
 
twinc said:
if only all this were true but it seems no fossils have ever been found to show that platypuses evolved from reptiles. Only a few platypus fossils have been discovered but they show that this animal has not changed.It seems the only ancestors it ever had were other platypuses.Perhaps God created the platypus the way it is to show us how ridiculous it is to believe in evolution [Weird and Wonderful] imho and as I read it - twinc
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just because no fossils have been found doesn’t mean that the platypus never had any other ancestor types. It only means that no fossils have been found… yet.
 
vsedriver said:
just because no fossils have been found doesn’t mean that the platypus never had any other ancestor types. It only means that no fossils have been found… yet.
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a better definition than yet would be ever and/or never since such “patchwork” animals and plants,called mosaics,have no logical place on the evolutionary tree - animal types are only observed going out of existence[extinctions],never coming into existence.There is no direct evidence that any major group of animals or plants arose from any other major group[A Closer Look at the Evidence] - twinc
 
twinc said:
“patchwork” animals and plants,called mosaics,have no logical place on the evolutionary tree - animal types are only observed going out of existence[extinctions],never coming into existence - twinc
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Nonsequiutur. The lack of human observation of species formation is an artifact of human perception, because species can go extinct in a handful of generations, theoretically in one; while thousands of generations are required for a recognizable new species to form. And our ephemeral human life prevents our observation of thousands of generations.

Our inability to see species formation no more disproves it than our inability to see microbes with unaided eyes disproves them.

God bless and ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
Nonsequiutur. The lack of human observation of species formation is an artifact of human perception, because species can go extinct in a handful of generations, theoretically in one; while thousands of generations are required for a recognizable new species to form. And our ephemeral human life presents our observation of thousands of generations.

.
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Then it is not empirical science and should be noted as such.
 
buffalo said:
Then it is not empirical science and should be noted as such.
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Good point. Any theory of “how life began” has to end up being non-science, because empirical observation is impossible.

Now if everybody could just see that, we could all get back to working off our Purgatory!🙂

ICXC NIKA
 
twinc said:
if only all this were true but it seems no fossils have ever been found to show that platypuses evolved from reptiles. Only a few platypus fossils have been discovered but they show that this animal has not changed.It seems the only ancestors it ever had were other platypuses.Perhaps God created the platypus the way it is to show us how ridiculous it is to believe in evolution [Weird and Wonderful] imho and as I read it - twinc
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Did you read the articles I provided links to?

Why is it ridiculous to believe in evolution (and here I am referring to theistic theories of evolution that meet Church criteria)? If the Church, formed by God Himself, states that it is OK to believe in theistic theories of evolution that meet Church criteria, why is it ridiculous to believe in those theories?
 
GEddie said:
That assumes that laughing at people is a Godly attribute; I for one do NOT want to go there.
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Geez, lighten up! It was a joke! God gave us a sense of humor. And He called what He created good. Personally I have no doubt that God has a sense of humor, too. :rolleyes:
 
twinc said:
are you sure reptiles and mammals and birds did not evolve from the platypus - twinc
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Um, perhaps you don’t quite understand. The platypus is a mammal. How could it evolve into something it already was?
 
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