Chimera
Not just a kick ass metal band but can disprove Evolution, according to Der Commissar:
Evolution is falsifiable. My friend Michael the Thumper has wearied of my ritual invocation of Precambrian rabbits, as a test that would falsify evolution. Here are six more:
true chimera (centaurs, mermaids), combinations from different lineages. An Intelligent Designer could put a human torso on a horse. Why not? Sure would have been awesome cavalry in the old days. But the process of evolution doesn’t permit a “mix-and-match” approach. Maybe a centaur seems silly, but there are billions of non-silly combinations that MIGHT have occurred. None have. Find one and you have falsified evolution. (Any commenter stupid enough to suggest that convergent evolution is the same thing, “bats are mammals with wings,” wins today’s booby prize.)
He lists more. I think he should remove this one from his list. Enter the platypus: One of only four mammals that lays eggs. It has a bill and webbed feet that are similar to those on ducks. Poisonous ankle spurs (in males). Adults are toothless (mammals have teeth). Its ears are in its jaws. Extra bones in the shoulder. And the males testicles are internal.
Seems to be a bit of mixing and matching to me. However, it seems possible that mixing and matching could be brought on by evolving. But I’m no scientist.
August 27th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Good one. I’m heading Down Under to organize platypi into anti-ID demonstrations.
In no time, I’ll have them all chanting, “What, you call THIS intelligent?” and wearing t-shirts that say “MY intelligent designer was drunk at the time.”
August 27th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
And they have just ONE orifice for #1 and #2.
August 27th, 2005 at 11:02 pm
Evolution? Never heard of it.
August 28th, 2005 at 12:43 am
The platypus evolved from primitive mammals that still had a lot of reptilian features, so it can be placed in the tree. It’s not like it has pieces of birds, insects, mammals, and sponges.
Neither does a Centaur. But the difference is that mammals and reptiles are main branches, one that evolved off the other. Humans and horses (while “minor” branches) are widely separated within the mammal branch. (Clumsily worded, but it’s the best I can do.)
More here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/platypus.html
Including reference to fossil platypi with vestigial teeth.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:09 am
It does have pieces of birds (bill, webbed feet, only one exit hole for digestion, etc.) And if there were a chimera of another sort, there’d be a reason why it came into being. I’d say features that are useful can evolve across species independently. Since it’s about evolution and all.
August 28th, 2005 at 11:08 am
I was in a presentation at work the other day, and the presenter said something like, “Today we’re going to discuss the evolution of such-and-such product of ours,” and I said, “Evolution? I thought we used Intelligent Design here.”
I crack me up.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
Deja vu…
August 31st, 2005 at 1:14 pm
First off, some reptiles and mammals have webbed feet (sea turtles and otters). AFAIK, all mammals including humans have webbed feet at some stage of prenatal development. Sometimes humans are born with webbed feet – the gene that causes the skin to pull back to the third knuckle didn’t get turned on at the right time or fully. So it’s no big trick for evolution to switch that gene off in the platypus.
Is one excretory hole a trait of birds or a trait birds and reptiles share?
Egg-laying is a reptilian trait, although some reptiles carry the eggs inside their bodies until hatching. (Rattlesnakes, e.g.) So there’s no surprise in seeing that carry over to the most primitive mammals.
Turtles are reptiles, and they have beaks. http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/Apr2003/1050350289.Ev.r.html
So did some of the dicynodonts – a reptilian lineage that is often described as “mammal-like”. Obviously not all dicynodonts were beaked, since the name itself means “two dog teeth.” Or did they have a pair of fangs sticking out from their beaks?
Where the three traits (milk glands, hair, and warmblooded) that identify mammals started is uncertain, since warmbloodedness does not leave a direct fossil record, hair rarely left fossil traces, and soft tissue like milk glands is even less likely to show up in fossils. Paleontologists are now leaning towards thinking that the ‘raptors were feathery warm-blooded dinosaurs. It’s not impossible that some the dicynodonts were hairy, warm-blooded, and secreted milk. That would make the platypus their least changed descendant, while marsupials evolved more, and placental mammals even more.
August 31st, 2005 at 1:17 pm
So, is classifying animals a largely pointless excercise with all these exceptions?