rosborne979 wrote:real life wrote:McGentrix wrote:real life wrote:Let's look at the family dog, will your dog (or any other) EVER give birth to something that is NOT a dog?
Is a Chihuahua a Great Dane? Quite a difference there. How would you go about explaining those differences, they are both dogs, right?
Yup. Both are dogs.
Just as Yao Ming and the actors who played 'Munchkins' in the Wizard of Oz are all humans.
Same species, lots of variation within it.
How does that prove evolution?
None the less, a wolf will never give birth to a chihuahua, and yet we know that all dogs evolved from wolves.
That pretty much trashes the logic of your "one thing will never give birth to another thing" argument, regardless of whether we're talking about species or breeds.
Right, a wolf will birth not a chihuahua.
Now, bears and dogs have very similar morphology. I am sure everyone would agree that a bear is not a dog and a dog is not a bear, right?
Now, how about a hyena? Very dog like, but a different species then dog. Evolution suggests that these species may have had a common ancestor. Remember that evolution doesn't try to tell you you dogs evolved from bears, but that both had a common ancestor.
Evolutionary Roots and the Miacids
Most of what truly happened during the evolution of bears will remain forever shrouded in the mists of the distant past .....
From what we do know, however, we have been able to piece together that approximately 30 to 40 million years ago during the Oligocene period, a family of small, tree-climbing carnivorous mammals came into being.
(Not ID, just from something else most likely.)
These animals, now referred to as miacids, had developed special canine teeth which enabled them to pierce and tear the flesh of their prey. Additionally, the miacids had developed sharp-edged carnassial teeth (i.e., the last premolar in the upper jaw) and the first molar in the lower jaw. This development allowed the miacids to easily shear meat from a carcass into easily eaten smaller chunks of meat.
From an evolutionary perspective, these two developments led to the miacids becoming the precursor to all seven present carnivore families. Today, of the approximately 4500 mammals known to exist, 231 are classed as carnivores. All would become successful groups of predators. Included in the carnivore families are the following:
the Canidae (dog) family - 35 species including the fox, wolf, coyote and jackal;
the Procyonidae (raccoon) family - 16 species including the ringtail, kinkajou and raccoon;
the Mustelidae (weasel) family - 67 species including badger, otter and skunk;
the Viverridae (mongoose) family - 66 species including mongoose, genet and meercat;
the Hyaenidae (hyena) family - 4 species including spotted hyena, striped hyena, brown hyena and aardwolf;
the Felidae (cat) family - 35 species including leopard, cheetah and mountain lion;
and
the Ursidae (bear) family - eight species including the brown bear, the American black bear, the polar bear, the giant panda bear, the Asiatic black bear, the spectacled bear, the sloth bear and the sun bear.
