Originally posted by Clearskies
reply to post by VIKINGANT
feathered dinosaur!
[edit on 19-2-2008 by Clearskies]
Dinosaurs did have feathers... Lots of them did.
Also, gravity is a theory. So go jump off a tall building without a parachute...
But here is some facts on Evolution..
www.livescience.com...
www.livescience.com...
www.livescience.com...
www.livescience.com...
www.livescience.com...
www.livescience.com...
Also, the counter argument, Intelligent Design, is based on nothing but the Bible.
Here some stuff on that.
www.livescience.com...
..has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics,
for example.
Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where
legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where
antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures,
which natural selection can then test for possible uses.
Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits
can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA,
and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this
is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry,
developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it
might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that
the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its
way toward becoming a new species.
Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are
constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis
of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating
mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces
beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose
existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be
difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species
Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed
outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of
course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.
Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments,
researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and
found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico
and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain
environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different
environment.
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous
fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth
of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from
the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that
transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas, " by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various
mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and
modern humans.