Evolution? How?

Good post Fman. I'm splitting one sentence

"You are, of course, able to believe whatever you wish,"

THEY DEMAND THAT RIGHT.

"but you have to be able to sustain the historical facts that pertain to your beliefs."

THE CRETINISTS THINK THIS OPTIONAL, BECAUSE AS ROS SAID

"Argments that start with an assumption of omnipotence (magic), like all religious arguments, are unassailable with physics."

Steve, It's not only "physics." They include most things scientific.

So did the platypus evolve from a VERY ancient mammal which was a common ancestor of modern animals? Because platypii type creatures in the Triassic is pretty far back in mammal evolution (I thought mammals first appeared in Jurassic)



What happened to the South American platypii then? I don't understand how the breaking of the continents isolated the playtpii only to Australia when apparently they were in Patagonia.

I think this is a pretty interesting topic since platypii ar pretty bizarre creatures. I'm just trying to understand their evolution as it stands.

One article on the subject here. http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:13670058&refid=ink_tptd_mag&skeyword=&teaser=

Tons of resources on the platypus. http://www.rentcomputers.com/rgbiblio.html

Platypus - evolution and conservation. http://www.austmus.gov.au/factsheets/platypus.htm

proto mammals actually appeared in the later Permian with Terapsid reptiles.They split into a group that was ancestral to early mammals which first fossils apearin Triassic sediments of Europe.

Remember when the continents split and Gondwanaland broke up , the steropodon, which were found in both australia and Patagonia provided totally different climate conditions as the continents split apart. Presumably the environmnet of the Patagonian area was unsuitable for platypii , so they died off there, but not before they left fossils that were of equivalent age to those found in the lightning ridge fauna. The steropodon was a much larger duckbill so maybe it became prey to the growing populations of early dinosaurs . I dont really have a clue why they went extinct in one area but evolved into a smaller version in the other. Id guess that, when Australia broke off, it was stuck with the fauna it had .
Ci's Australian Museum site has a bunch of the information better than my failing recall. Steropodon was the fossil that was found opalized, very cool necklace it would make for a lady. Kinda creepy though

Speaking about opalized steropodon, we find mineralized wood all the time. That's all part of our "evolution."

ever try tumbling or making cabachons? Is the mineralized wood opal or agate/chalcedony? Ive een some firey opals from the Nevada finds but not a lot.

Mesquite. That was an excellent animation of the split of Gondwana and the rapid movement of the Indian Subcontinent.
The gold and mineral provinces of the Karoo in Africa and Minas Gerais in Brazil, line up and this is an excellent teACHING TOOL.Im gonna see if I cant get a version to allow me to use the laptop projector.

What is presented at 10 frames a second is the resukt of about 30 years work by thousands of researchers and field grunts. Its amazing , as I look at the almost obvious fits of continents and margins, how much deep insight and hard work it took to determine accurately.

Takes about 1.5 minutes to load on my high speed, so I guess those on dial up , it may take 5 or 6?

mesquite, That is an amazing piece of work. I tried it first at 5fps then at 10fps. The book I read on "ANTARCTICA" by Lonely Planet explains the history of Antarctica and the movement of the tectonic plates, but your graphic shows it much better. I couldn't understand how India fitted into the picture, but with the graphic, it's easier to see. Thanks.

Farmerman, yes I knew the graphics were impressive and I was hoping you could confirm the accuracy of what was depicted. I also thought it interesting the way Madagasgar dropped from India on the way up. I recall seeing a documentary about some of Madagasgar's isolated species.

The site does have a standalone file that can be downloaded to run on the laptop. It works the same as the flash version. As long as the laptop has enough processing power it should do fine. It is a little sluggish on my old Pentium 200.

oh yeh, its accurate. A lot of whats known has been done by reconstruction of paleomagnetics on Indias volcanics.

Some areas that Ive worked were on the West Coast of Africa and the Eastern areas of Brazil. The mineralization of each continent fit together like a glove
Ive sent a request to the compilers for a documented version that has some text in with the movie. Theres a lot of detail that Id like the kids to learn while using this as a study guide

minerals zones
metamorphic provinces
where deep ocean sediments were piled up (like the Himalayas and Andes

Its a real keeper

I haven't read all 19 odd pages but this one requires some attention but will keep it short

Before the Disc Theory, there was the Laplacian Theory (LPT) on the formation of the solar system. The LPT was overthrown due to unknown mechanisms that it "used" in providing planetary formation, so the world adopted DT, which is fine. Until now. Before the Voyager 2 flybys (so for approximately 10 years to date), a professor mathematician at monash university (Prentice) was predicting the composition of the moons on our outer planets (all of them) past the asteroid belt. these predictions included also the number of moons that the probe Voyager 2 will find. Prentice did not use DT (for whatever reasons), rather he invoked LPT, but modified it and called it MLPT (modern lapacian theory). through this theory, he hypothesized 5 more moons around jupiter and a select few on saturn, uranus etc. now counting moons is fine, but he also predicted the composition of the moons - that of Io, Ganymede, and others around Saturn. They came out to be 3-14% error margins (which is fantastic in the eyes of the astrophysicists - esp. considering DT predicts that these moons don't even exist let alone their compositions.)

Here's the interesting bit. After V2 flybys and Prentice's predictions were seen to be accurate, he put in numerous papers to Nature, SCIAM, New Sci etc. But they were ALL rejected. Why? Because MLPT requires* a young universe. The mechanism is one known as Supersonic Turbulance, a plasma-like "fluid" that "held" the solar system together while the sun was forming, and that the Solar System was created in a matter of minutes/hours (compared to millions of years) - and due to high pressure and enourmous heat energy in a vacuum the whole "system" would cool down very very quickly.

So here is the question - if we really ARE so scientifically objective, why don't the wider community adopt MLPT, and discard DT? - Considering this current paradigm (DT) can't even explain the formation of planets let alone the moons that orbit this planet (Earth) and the other moons around the other planets? It can't be because MLPT supports creationism and dejects evolution, can it??

I'll leave that open, and let the facts/history speak for themselves.

Your opinion is fair. But 'supreme unknowable things'? What if i told you: "you can know this unknowable being". Would you be interested?

wrong.

wow. that's actually kind of amusing.

ok, since i'm making a call that you're legitimate.

our blind faith rests wholly on Jesus Christ. c.f. "The Passion of the Christ" by Mel Gibson. that's what the blind faith is. most of us don't see the sin that Jesus endured when we read (for those who actually do/have read) the Bible -- and in watching Gibson's film, we truly understood what it meant for God to save the world - it's a horrific film but it hammers home the point (not independent from the Bible mind you) that your sin, my sin, my parent's sin etc. etc. is a serious thing and punishable by death (oh no! preaching judgement!...)

that begs some questions however, such as "what is sin", "how do we sin", "is sin really punishable by death?", "God really takes sin seriously as to kill himself?", "God loves us so much as to endure ALL THAT???"
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

etc.

wrong.

phew, finally got to the end:

Vol seems to have disappeared since the last few pages -- good work guys!

Anyway, if he decides to come back, here are some pointers that look Evolutionists in the face with a big black sticker that say: "Death to this Paradigm... soon".

1. Cambrian Explosion.
2. Genes. Give 1 example of one gene ADDING itself to ANOTHER gene. Result: zero.
3. Earth was COLDER 2000000000000 (insert zeros) MYO.
Evolution requires Earth to be HOTTER.
4. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
5. Irreducible Complexities.
6. Geological strata.
7. No carbon (or any other element) can date rocks past 1MYO let alone
six BYO or whatever it is.
8. Mutations are all bad, as observed through current emperical sciences (you guys would operate on cancer cells would you not?)
9. All too convenient ad hocs (see MLPT above) esp. so for astronomy
10. Scopes Trial (makes me laugh).

All in all, i actually do admire that evolution has lasted this long...