Research on Intelligent Design

To put together scientific advances from the perspective of Intelligent Design.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Index 3 for Research on Intelligent Design

(Jan 3, 2006 – Feb 28, 2006)

1. The Elephant Variation, Tuesday, January 03, 2006
2. Common Patterns in the Ancient World, their Pyramids and gods. Wednesday, January 04, 2006
3. Three Rivers and Six Fingers Thrice, Friday, January 06, 2006
4. Incan Khipus Defy Computer Analysis. Saturday, January 07, 2006
5. The Intelligent Design of Nick Anderson's Cartoons. Sunday, January 08, 2006
6. The Dolphin Variation, Tuesday, January 10, 2006
7. Intelligent Design in 'Achilles', a Song by Atom (feat. Redeemed Thought). Wednesday, Jan 11, 2006
8. Mending Faulty Genes. Thursday, January 12, 2006
9. Back to Normal: Natural Reverse Mutations. Friday, January 13, 2006
10. A Hero For The Ages. Saturday, January 14, 2006
11. The Laupala Cricket Variation, Monday, January 16, 2006
12. Intelligent Design Discovered in Flies and in the Bees Flying Code. Wednesday, January 18, 2006
13. My last comments on the Laupala cricket variation, Wed, Jan 25, 2006
14. The Cichlid Variation, Thursday, January 26, 2006
15. The fingerprints of Shannon Melendi versus Colvin "Butch" Hinton III, her killer. Fri, Jan 27, 2006
16. The Maggot (Rhagoletis Fly) Variation, Fri, Jan 27, 2006
17. The New 27 Cave Bugs, Fri, Jan 27, 2006
18. More Images for The Discovery of New Organisms, Thur, Feb 2, 2006
19. Cave-Dwellers Known Since 1966, Fri, Feb 03, 2006
20. More Adaptive Comparisons of Cave Animals, Fri, Feb 03, 2006
21. The Adaptations of the Cave Fish, Friday, February 03, 2006
22. Humans Were Living Here Before the Classic Neanderthals, Tue, Feb 07, 2006
23. Today's News, 17 Pictures From Indonesia's New Organisms, Tue, Feb 07, 2006
24. The Evolutionist Racketeering: Compatible Ancestry sold as Common Descent
25. Intelligent Design for Progress (Teleological Blog)
26. Our Constitutional Intelligent Design (Teleological Blog)
27. Intelligent Design in Nature (Teleological Blog)
28. Bad Speculations and Bad Interpretations (Teleological Blog)
29. Variation and Genetic Compatibility vs. Darwinism (Teleological Blog)
30. Teleology in Biology (Teleological Blog)
31. Design in Biology (Teleological Blog)
32. The arrogance of Darwin’s physical and intellectual family tree (Teleological Blog)
33. E. O. Wilson and his “Darwinian Fairytales” (Teleological Blog)
34. By Design, Newsweek fails to tell the truth about Finches (Teleological Blog)
35. The Fraud of Evolution: Variation sold as Speciation (Teleological Blog)
36. From ‘Walking the Bible,’ “The Israelites in Egypt” (A PBS Special!) (Teleological Blog)
37. Songs of Salvation (Special for the 14th of February) (Teleological Blog)
38. Intelligent Design’s Prediction: Compatible Mates Interbreed Producing Fertile Offspring (Teleological Blog)
39. Eulogy to Henry Morris, his contribution to the study of Biological Variation, Tue. Feb. 28, 2006.
40. Previous Index # 2
41. Previous Index # 1

Eulogy to Henry Morris, his contribution to the study of Biological Variation


Henry Madison Morris (1918-2006)

With others, I also join my recognition to Henry Morris, specially in relation to his contribution to the study of Biological Variation.

Creationism’s Henry M. Morris, dead at 87; upheld Genesis flood. Feb 27, 2006, by Art Toalston. Baptist Press.

Dr. William A. Dembski wrote in memoriam:

>It’s with sadness I announce that Henry Morris died Saturday evening (2.25.06). Henry Morris was a great man, and all critics of Darwinian evolution are in his debt for maintaining pressure on this pseudoscience when so much of the Western world capitulated to it. As I wrote last year at this time (go here) in reference to a conversation with Michael Ruse about Henry Morris’s significance:
During our conversation, Ruse commented that for all his disagreements with the young earth creationists, and Henry Morris in particular, he did give them credit for, as he put it, “keeping this issue alive.” The “issue” here was the debate over biological evolution and, in particular, the possibility of design providing a viable alternative to existing materialistic accounts of evolution.

My own experience has abundantly confirmed Ruse’s remark. In traveling outside the United States, I’ve found that evolutionary theory goes largely unchallenged. In the United States, by contrast, there remains widespread skepticism toward evolution. And even though intelligent design has emerged as the most visible banner under which evolution is now being challenged, the challenge would not exist without the efforts of Henry Morris and young earth creationists.

I myself would not be a design theorist today without them. To be sure, I am not a young earth creationist nor do I support their efforts to harmonize science with a particular interpretation of Genesis. Nonetheless, it was their literature that first got me thinking about how improbable it is to generate biological complexity and how this problem might be approached scientifically.
>May the work of dismantling Darwinian materialism that Morris began come to completion soon.

To Dr. Dembski's remarks, Salvador Cordova responded:
I’d like to also pay tribute to Henry Morris for bravely keeping the issues alive. He was a fine professor of engineering at a very fine secular school of engineering, Virginia Tech.

He was a gentleman of most excellent character and courage. He fought the good fight against seemingly impossible odds. And today, in the most technlogcially advanced culture in history, over half the nation accepts that the universe and life were the products of intelligent design. Thank you Henry Morris.
While Jacktone wrote:
Yes, I thank God for Henry Morris. What a voice against false dogma. The church was catatonic in the face of so-called “science” until “The Genesis Flood”. Now the whole country is pondering the validity of Darwinism. Well done, Dr. Morris.
Now, let the man speak for himself! From his writings on Impact, we have selected the next ones:

The Vanishing Case for Evolution, by Henry Morris, Ph.D. [(Impact #156)]

Evolution - A House Divided (#194), by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

The Microwave of Evolution (#152), by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

Evolutionists and the Moth Myth (#176), by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

Let these works resound 'till the ends of the earth!

Friday, February 10, 2006

The Evolutionist Racketeering: Compatible Ancestry sold as Common Descent

Buyer Beware (caveat emptor)!

Evolution is selling the Compatible Ancestry between organisms as a fraudulent and Incompatible “Common Descent”.

This work is a continuation of “Calling Darwin’s Bluff” and of “The Fraud of Evolution: Variation sold as Speciation.”

To have all the human diversity living today, an initial human couple was sufficient, that’s compatible ancestry within self-perpetuating groups. The same can be said for all the varieties of finches, and for all the varieties of cichlids, dolphins, gulls, crayfishes, dogs (included the wild dogs: wolves, coyotes, jackals and dingoes), cavefishes, elephants, Gasterosteus, Laupala crickets (second post on them), Calidris, Rhagoletis, etc., etc.

However, evolution is fraudulently using such examples above mentioned as their evidence that new species are being originated all the time (speciation), when in reality what they are describing is just variation within compatible groups of organisms. Microchange is being oversold by evolution as a speculative macrochange. Microevolution is being presented as a “prove” for a speculative an non-existent macroevolution.

According to evolution, a lizard and a bird were originated by one or by a couple, of by what? Or by a non-existent common ancestor that looked like what (like that fraudulent bird sold by National Geographic with the “expert help” of German Dr. Hans Dieter Sues)? Or by a single and non-existent haploid dinosaur? Or rather, dinosaurs, lizards and birds were originated by a monstrous couple of what? Or a couple was not needed at all? Or all of them were originated by a non-existent “reptobirdopo”? And what about the never existent “protomonohomo”? Or all living beings were originated by random processes within speculated primordial soups of self digesting aminoacids? No? Rather then, of nucleic acids? Like in a self destroying RNA world? No? Instead, of greasy lipids? Lipids that by themselves are useful for nothing? Or "the low carb world" (smile)? And that is the undeniable evidence that evolution has? And I have not been able even to mention the findings of Jonathan Wells, as described in his last 'musical satire of evolution' hit "overwhelming evidence", by The Mutations (Tammy Heath, Cynthia Ziesman and Terry Thoelke)! (smile.)

If you enter evolution, as Darwin and his current pals see it, you are welcome to their worlds of nothingness, to their worlds of speculations, of absurd claims, of errors, of frauds and of a rampant intellectual racketeering!

The current definition for a false "common descent" is:

Common descent (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia):
"A group of organisms is said to have common descent if they have a common ancestor. In biology, the theory of universal common descent proposes that all organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool. A theory of universal common descent based on evolutionary principles was proposed by Charles Darwin in his book The Origin of Species (1859), and later in The Descent of Man (1871). This theory is now generally accepted by biologists, and the last universal common ancestor (LUCA or LUA). In 1859, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published. The views about common descent expressed therein vary between suggesting that there was a single "first creature" to allowing that there may have been more than one..."
Has this definition changed since Darwin wrote his book? No, not really.

Let’s now see the definition of “Common Descent” starting with the chief deceiver:

Darwin wrote that, according to him,
“how many facts indicated the common descent of species” [In" F. Darwin & A.C. Seward, eds, More letters of Charles Darwin. 2 vols., London, John Murray, 1903. [page 367] Letter 278. To Otto Zacharias. 1877. Vol. 1. Ch 5.]
However, the contrary comment related to this preposterous statement of Darwin (today repeated as "fact" and ad nauseam by his materialistic followers) was done by Thomas H. Huxley (appeared as a footnote in the same reference as the above quotation, with my emphasis in bold and brackets):
"The facts to which reference is here made were, without doubt, eminently fitted to attract the attention of a [materialistic] philosophical thinker; but until the relations of the existing with the extinct species and of the species of the different geographical areas, with one another were determined with some exactness, they afforded but an unsafe foundation for speculation" [From Darwiniana, Essays by Thomas H. Huxley, London, 1893; pages 274-5.]
Darwin’s “Facts”, even according to his “bulldog” Thomas H. Huxley are “an unsafe foundation for speculation”! and are useful only “to attract the attention of a [materialistic] philosophical thinker”, and what kind of a materialistic “philosophical thinker”? "Thinkers" like Richard Dawkins, those “fulfilled atheists”, and the others that are agnostics, superficial, vain, vainglorious, "agnolites", etc…

Then, Darwin followed his rhetorical game of self-deception when he wrote [In: Francis Darwin ed., The foundations of the Origin of Species: Two essays written in 1842 and 1844 by Charles Darwin. Cambridge, 1909. [from Darwin’s 1844 Essay]:
“…we are not justified in prima facie rejecting a theory of the common descent of allied organisms from the difficulty of imagining the transitional stages… This want [LACK] of evidence of the past existence of almost infinitely numerous intermediate forms, is, I conceive, much the weightiest difficulty on the theory of common descent; but I must think that this is due to ignorance necessarily resulting from the imperfection of all geological records... the frequent and almost general presence of organs and parts, called by naturalists abortive or rudimentary… were shown to be simply explicable on our theory of common descent.”
My comment is that the lack of fossil record still the same as when Darwin wrote simply because there are no "transitionals", while the lack of eyes in the cavefish is adaptation! That’s the shutting down of unnecessary organs within a very specific environment! That has nothing to do with those Darwinian speculations!And Darwin again:
"Why do we wish to reject the theory of common descent? Before concluding it will be well to show, although this has incidentally appeared, how far the theory of common descent can legitimately be extended*... No doubt the more remote two species are from each other, the weaker the arguments become in favour of their common descent"
The footnote written by Darwin's son is the next: * This corresponds to a paragraph in the Origin, Ed. I. p. 483, vi. p. 662, where it is assumed that animals have descended "from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number." In the Origin, however, the author goes on, Ed. I. p. 484, vi. p. 663: "Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype"

The fact is that in his full draft or "essay" of 1844 for his book the Origin, Darwin used the words "common descent" at least eleven times, while in the final version of his book he used that words not even one time! [Also, those words doesn't appear in his human 'evolution' speculations in "Descent of Man"]

Talk about Charles Darwin's rhetorics (link to a RealPlayer Video), self-contradictions and hypocrisy!

Another example of that, can be seen by the way Darwin wrote the end of the first edition of his Origins:
"probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed...
The whole history of the world, as at present known, although of a length quite incomprehensible by us, will hereafter be recognised as a mere fragment of time, compared with the ages which have elapsed since the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created...
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled... There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one" [Darwin, On the origin of species. London, John Murray, 1859. Chap. XIV. Conclusion]
Who is the One that "first breathed" life? Who is the One that "created"? Who is the One that "originally breathed" life?

In the foundations of the Origin of species Part II we read that
:"In the 2nd edition "by the Creator" is introduced after "originally breathed."
The expression "originally breathed" was left in all his editions while the other ones: "first breathed", "was created", and "by the Creator" were removed in Darwin's later editions of Origins (all those terms were deemed by Darwin, "the Pentateuchal terms").

Dawin responded in the Athenaeum:
“Your reviewer [Dr. Carpenter]sneers with justice at my use of the 'Pentateuchal terms,' 'of one primordial form into which life was first breathed': in a purely scientific work I ought perhaps not to have used such terms; but they well serve to confess that our ignorance is as profound on the origin of life as on the origin of force or matter. Your reviewer [Dr. Carpenter] thinks that the weakness of my theory is demonstrated because existing Foraminifera are identical with those which lived at a very remote epoch” [Darwin, 'The Doctrine of Heterogeny and Modification of Species', Athenaeum. Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, no. 1852, 25 April 1863, pp. 554-55.]
We can see here that even Darwin did not considered his book of Origin as a "purely scientific" one. So, the same hypocrisy of Darwin can be seen time after time by comparing his letters with his books. Next, in a fragment barely preserved, Darwin freely expresses himself with Hooker, his intimate friend; here, Darwin uses more "freedom of speech" by declaring, about the same Athenaeum 1863's incident:
"...Many thanks for Athenaeum, received this morning, and to be returned to-morrow morning. Who would have ever thought of the old stupid Athenaeum taking to Oken-like transcendental philosophy written in Owenian style!* ...It will be some time before we see "slime, protoplasm, etc.," generating a new animal.† But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation,* by which I really meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter. [C. Darwin to J.D. Hooker. March 29, 186.3 F. Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1905. Vol. 2. Ch. 4. p. 202]"
So, the evil Darwin left "the Pentateuchal terms" in his Origin because he "truckled to public opinion" and secretly he lived "regretting" having left that words in the Origin! Originally, what he really meant was expressed by himself: "I really meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process..." So, leaving those Pentateuchal words in his Origin, for Darwin was "mere rubbish"! Also we can see that Darwin referred himself to the journal Athenaeum, to which he just wrote, as a "stupid" journal!

The notes of Darwin's son for this fragment are numerous and longer than the preserved paragraph itself!

One notable fragment from that notes is the next one, written by Darwin's critic, Dr. Carpenter: * (from the above quotation) - "...my conviction that the present state of scientific evidence, instead of sanctioning the idea that the descendants of the primitive type or types of Foraminifera can ever rise to any higher grade, justifies the anti-Darwinian influence, that however widely they diverge from each other and from their originals, they still remain Foraminifera."

For the rest of Darwin's notes for that revealing fragment, go to the original link, but, enough is here to say that in such notes we see a Darwin speculating about "the protein world", ancestor of the unfortunate speculation of "the amino acid world", predating the unfortunate and similar speculation of the "RNA world".

T. H. Huxley declares how Darwin's Origin helped him to left behind "the Pentateuchal cosmology":
"I was not brought into serious contact with the 'Species' question until after 1850. At that time, I had long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony, which had been impressed upon my childish understanding as Divine truth, with all the authority of parents and instructors, and from which it had cost me many a struggle to get free" [F. Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1905. Chapter XIV. By Professor Huxley. On The Reception Of The 'Origin Of Species.']
Huxley already wanted to get rid of "the Pentateuchal cosmology" but was unable to do so, until he read Darwin's Origin! So, its effects are pernicious...

Years before, Darwin wrote to Hooker:
"You ask how far I go in attributing organisms to a common descent; I answer I know not; the way in which I intend treating the subject, is to show (as far as I can) the facts and arguments for and against the common descent of the species of the same genus; and then show how far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more and more widely different: and when we come to forms of different orders and classes, there remain only some such arguments as those which can perhaps be deduced from similar rudimentary structures, and very soon not an argument is left." [C. Darwin to J.D. Hooker. [18th. July, 1855]. F. Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1905. Vol. 1. Ch. 11. Page 425.]
Darwin knew that only the 'benevolence' of the materialistic people will do for him, as he also wrote, as we have seen it:
"No doubt the more remote two species are from each other, the weaker the arguments become in favour of their common descent" [Francis Darwin ed., The foundations of the Origin of Species: Two essays written in 1842 and 1844 by Charles Darwin. Cambridge, 1909. from Darwin’s 1844 Essay]
And also in his 1842 draft for the Origin Darwin wrote about the weakness of his speculating ideas:
"Who, seeing how plants vary in garden, what blind foolish man has done (#) in a few years, will deny an all-seeing being in thousands of years could effect (if the Creator chose to do so), either by his own direct foresight or by intermediate means,—which will represent (?) the creator of this universe. Seems usual means. Be it remembered I have nothing to say about life and mind and all forms descending from one common type (*). I speak of the variation of the existing great divisions of the organised kingdom, how far I would go, hereafter to be seen" [Darwin, 1842 essay on the origin of species. Part I] The notes that Darwin's son inserted here are # - See Origin, Ed. I. p. 83, vi. p. 102, where the word Creator is replaced by Nature [My comment: What about Dover? for Darwin it is O.K., but not for you, Dr. Dean Kenyon (for whom the editorial team allegedly replaced the word "Creation" with the word "Intelligent Design" for his book "Of Pandas and People")]. * - Darwin's Note in the original. "Good place to introduce, saying reasons hereafter to be given, how far I extend theory, say to all mammalia- reasons growing weaker and weaker."
Are the reasons for a distant and incompatible common descent improved? Not a shred! Ony by the use of a materialistic philosophy and rhetorics willing people can be fooled in such a way...

But, to conclude with this review, done as a reminder of Darwin's past lies and to be able to recognize its present leftovers, we need to ask to ourselves, who was that evil Hooker with which Darwin was so confident, and viceversa, as to use words like "stupid", in refering himself to a magazine and such extreme sincerity as to express his real feelings, and their real and hidden agenda?

This is the historical finding, from the UK, by Andrew Rowell:
Chuckling behind their hands....
I [A. Rowell] found this very revealing quotation in David Samuel’s book “Without Excuse.” It was from a Letter of J.D. Hooker to Charles Darwin following Hooker’s address at a meeting of the British Association in 1866. In that address he had declared that he saw evidence for design in variation itself:

By a wise ordinance it is ruled, that amongst living beings like shall never produce its exact like…. A wise ordinance it is, that ensures the succession of being, not by multiplying absolutely identical forms, but by varying these.”

He [the Hooker] soon afterwards wrote to Darwin to assure him he was only talking like this to make the religious freaks feel comfortable with evolution!

He writes to Darwin:

"The only thing I do not like…. Was the passage about a wise Providence ordering &c, &c or something of that sort (I forget the words, it matters little). It is bosh and unscientific, but I could not resist the opportunity of turning the tables of Providence over those who will have a Providence in the affair, that yours is the God one and theirs the Devil’s." (Life and Letters of J.D. Hooker Vol 2 p. 106)

[A. Rowell concludes:] The clergy who suck up to Darwinists and say that there is no conflict at all between theism and atheism are rather like those who clapped Hooker’s address while he was chuckling behind his hand to his friend Charles.
The Hooker and The Darwin, Chuckling behind their dirty hands (smile.)

So, I conclude as I started, Buyer Beware (caveat emptor), Darwin's Evolution is a Big Fat Lie!

To the critics: You can classify this piece within the category of "history of the evolution deception".

http://teleological.org/?p=126

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Today's News, 17 Pictures From Indonesia's New Organisms

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/photogalleries/newguinea/index.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081118121946.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416223340.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/green_room/7561940.stm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070315075842.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071217092939.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070501095539.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080529200129.htm

[http://chem11.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=gaiasphere&action=print&thread=1840 (long file, many photos, slow)]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070427085902.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6530365.stm

http://www.sciencecodex.com/ornithologists_announce_discovery_of_new_bird_species

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080407-lungless-frog.html

[some of the other links got broken through time ... ]

Humans Were Living Here Before the Neanderthals

We already reviewed the finding that the DNA Shows that Neandertals Were Not Our Ancestors, also, confirming it, a newer (2004) Study Shows Neanderthals Were Not Our Ancestors, as Katerina Harvati et al demonstrated that:
examining the skulls of modern humans and Neanderthals as well as 11 existing species of non-human primates found strong evidence that Neanderthals differ so greatly from Homo sapiens as to constitute a different species... The study found that the differences measured between modern humans and Neanderthals were significantly greater than those found between subspecies or populations of the other species studied. The data also showed that the difference between Neanderthals and modern humans was as great or greater than that found between closely related primate species.
Harvati K, Frost SR, McNulty KP. Neanderthal taxonomy reconsidered: implications of 3D primate models of intra- and interspecific differences. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Feb 3;101(5):1147-52.
Today we are going to see that Humans existed even before the Neanderthals:
Herto's Human Skull, photo by David L. Brill.

"...these new [Homo sapiens] fossils predate classic Neanderthals and lack their derived features."
White TD, Asfaw B, DeGusta D, Gilbert H, Richards GD, Suwa G, Howell FC. Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature. 2003 Jun 12;423(6941):742-7.

"The archaeological assemblages contain elements of both [late] Acheulean and Middle Stone Age technocomplexes. Associated faunal remains indicate repeated, systematic butchery of hippopotamus [and bovine] carcasses. Contemporary adult and juvenile Homo sapiens fossil crania manifest bone modifications indicative of deliberate mortuary practices."
Clark JD, Beyene Y, WoldeGabriel G, Hart WK, Renne PR, Gilbert H, Defleur A, Suwa G, Katoh S, Ludwig KR, Boisserie JR, Asfaw B, White TD. Stratigraphic, chronological and behavioural contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature. 2003 Jun 12;423(6941):747-52.

Commenting on these two articles we found the next two ones (supportive and semi-supportive, respectively):

Stringer C. Nature. 2003 Jun 12;423(6941):692-3, 695 (PDF). Human evolution: Out of Ethiopia.
"...possible early H. sapiens fossils... are scattered across Africa at sites such as Florisbad (South Africa), Ngaloba (Tanzania), Eliye Springs and Guomde (Kenya), Omo Kibish (Ethiopia), Singa (Sudan) and Jebel Irhoud (Morocco). But the best dated of these finds, from Florisbad and Singa, are problematic because of incompleteness and, in the latter case, evidence of disease..."

"...the most securely dated and complete early fossils that unequivocally share an anatomical pattern with today’s H. sapiens are actually from Israel, rather than Africa. These are the partial skeletons from Skhul and Qafzeh..."

"The [more recently found (2003) Herto] fossils are complete enough to show a suite of modern human characters... Three individuals are represented by separate fossils: a nearly complete adult cranium (skull parts excluding the lower jaw), a less complete juvenile cranium, and some robust cranial fragments from another adult... there seems to be enough morphological evidence to regard the Herto material as the oldest definite record of what we currently think of as modern H. sapiens."
Stringer is in the Human Origins Group at The Natural History Museum, London.

Faupl P, Richter W, Urbanek C. Nature. 2003 Dec 11;426(6967):621-2; discussion 622 (PDF). Geochronology: dating of the Herto hominin fossils.
"the estimated maximum age () is valid... the maximum age () can reliably be used for this important anthropological material."
Faupl is in the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Vienna.
Response to Faupl by the original authors Tim D. White et al
:"...the Upper Herto archaeological and palaeontological remains, including the newly identified Homo sapiens idaltu, are securely constrained..."
Tim D. White in full conversation.

A popular comment related to the same finding of Herto:
"Three fossilized skulls discovered near the Ethiopian village of Herto in 1997 have now been identified as the oldest known remains of modern humans... modern humans existed thousands of years before the Neanderthals"
Then, a conversation with Tim D. White (notice that part 4 is entitled: "Discovery of the Earliest Human").

Friday, February 03, 2006

The Adaptations of the Cave Fish

Adaptive Comparisons of Cave Animals

Found at: http://www.reocities.com/kubyimm3/adap.jpg [thanks for saving the images!]
In a food-rich Mexican cave, just a few sweeps of the net yield as many as thirty finger sized Mexican blindfish. Indeed, these fish are so plentiful in certain caves that a hundred or more may be visible in just a few cubic yards of water. These closely related Mexican cave fish and a widespread surface form are so similar that some scientists think all may be subspecies of the same animal. In any case, the fish can interbreed, and residents of some caves show all degrees of eye and pigment degeneration. Here, a blind Mexican cave fish and its surface relative are compared.


Gliding slowly through the water, the blind cave fish Typhlichthys pauses occasionally to nose under rock ledges in search of isopods and other food. Vibration receptors on its head and sides detect movements in the water and guide it to its prey.


Typhlichthys subterraneus (Southern Cavefish).

The Cave Adaptations of a Fish. Now, imagine similar transformations for a mammal being adapted from the surface to the underworld...

References:
Mohr, Charles E. & Poulson, Thomas L., 1966, Our living world of nature: “The Life of the Cave”, McGraw-Hill, the World Book Encyclopedia and the U. S. Department of the Interior, 232 p., New York.

This continues my postings on Adaptive Comparisons of Cave Animals.

Note: At the end of the essay "The Simple and the Primitive: Some Cautionary Tales" (Dec. 2004), its writer declared:

More Adaptive Comparisons of Cave Animals

Ozark Fish
Axolotl
To pursue our study on adaptive comparisons of cave animals, started with 27 bugs discovered recently and continued with organisms known since 1966, we will see now some salamanders living inside the caves:



Found at: http://www.geocities.ws/kubyimm3/axol.gif [Thank you for saving it!]


Left: Several highly adapted species of cave salamanders found in Texas probably looked somewhat like this common surface dweller before they entered caves. Like its cave-dweling relatives, this salamander retains feathery gills and other larval characteristics even as an adult. Right: Two Texas salamanders, each inhabiting separate cave systems, probably resemble past stages of the highly adapted Eurycea rathbuni. Compared with their surface relative, they show progressively greater loss of pigment, degeneration of eyes, elongation of legs, slimming of the body, and flattening of the snout. Possibly at some time in the future both species also will develop the grotesque modifications of Eurycea rathbuni.
Eurycea rathbuni (Stejneger, 1896) Texas Blind Salamander.
With some similarities to Eurycea rathbuni, Typhlomolge rathbuni, the famous Texas blind salamander, which inhabits the San Marcos Pool of the Edwards Aquifer. This was the first organisms listed as endangered in the USA in 1967.
And similar to the second one: Eurycea, a troglobitic salamander from the Buttercup Creek Karst, near Austin, Texas.
Found at: http://www.geocities.ws/kubyimm3/ozark.gif [Thanks for saving it!]
Left: Slender and ghostly pale, the fully transformed adult Ozark blind salamander is three to four inches long. Its gills have disappeared, and its eyelids have grown together over small, nonfunctional eyes. The adult salamander moves freely in and out of water and usually lives deeper in caves that the larval form (right), which is from two to three-inch-long, and lives in cave streams and pools but sometimes ventures aboveground, unlike the adult, it has eyes, conspicuous coloration, and plumelike gills. Right: As the larval Ozark blind salamander approaches metamorphosis, it gradually loses pigmentation, its gills begin to regress, and its eyes become smaller in proportion to its head. Already losing the use of its eyes, the maturing larva begins to depend more on vibrations sensed through its lateral line system in order to locate isopods (in the picture), flatworms, and other small prey.
Head of G. palleucus, the Tennessee cave salamander. There are three subspecies.

References:
Mohr, Charles E. & Poulson, Thomas L., 1966, Our living world of nature: “The Life of the Cave”, McGraw-Hill, the World Book Encyclopedia and the U. S. Department of the Interior, 232 p., New York.

Alphabetical List of Cave Life.
Other cave-dwellers:

Cave-Dwellers Known Since 1966

In a previous post I declared: "how many of them [cave bugs] are just compatible VARIETIES of their related counterparts that we already know over the surface?"

Next, we will be able to see and to compare more cave dwellers known at least since 1966:



Left: This inch-long troglobitic isopod is a marine relict inhabiting Mexican caves along a former seacoast. Its possible ancestors were ocean-dwellings which invaded fresh-water caves when the ancient coastline retreated. Right: A predatory white spider prowls through the dark interior of a cavern on the Edwards Plateau. Troglobitic spiders usually stalk their prey instead of engaging in the energy-consuming practice of spinning webs.

Left: Blind but mysteriously sensitive to light, a cave-dwelling millipede curls helplessly in the glare of a flashlight beam. As it becomes more fully adapted to life in the cave over the years, it may lose even this feeble response to the intrusion of light into its nighttime world.

Two closely related Texas amphipods, a blind white cave dweller (left) and an eyed surface dweller (right), are each about a quarter of an inch long. Floods carry surface amphipods over wide areas, but cave amphipods tend to be restricted to single cave systems.

This two fresh-water shrimp illustrate a common adaptation of cave animals. The cave species (left) lays only a few large-yolked eggs at a time. Thus the young cave shrimp will be relatively well developed when they have to find food for themselves. The surface species (right) lays many small eggs. Once deposited, the incubating eggs are attached beneath the mother´s body.


Left: The large compound eye of a surface crayfish glints with hundreds of minute lenses. Right: The troglobitic (cave) crayfish has no eyes, only a knoblike supporting stalk. It retains eyestalks since the structures contain several organs not related to vision.

A pale shadow of its surface-dwelling relative, the blind and colorless cave crayfish (left) seems in every way more delicate than its larger surface relative (right). The cave species is slower-moving and able to fast between infrequent meals. It has a slimmer body, more slender legs, and longer antennae than the dark, robust surface dweller.

See also the compatible heterosis on The Crayfish Variation.

Reference:
Mohr, Charles E. & Poulson, Thomas L., 1966, Our living world of nature: “The Life of the Cave”, McGraw-Hill, the World Book Encyclopedia and the U. S. Department of the Interior, 232 p., New York.



And other cave-dwellers:

http://fdocc.blogspot.com/2006/02/adaptations-of-cave-fish.html

http://fdocc.blogspot.com/2006/01/new-27-cave-bugs.html

http://fdocc.blogspot.com/2006/01/laupala-cricket-variation.html

http://fdocc.blogspot.com/2006/02/more-adaptive-comparisons-of-cave.html

Thursday, February 02, 2006

More Images for The Discovery of New Organisms



Leaf deer (leaf muntjac), discovered in a remote mountainous region of South East Asia. It stands just 50 cm (20 inches) at the shoulder, and weighs about 12 kg.


The new South-American rodent Cuscomys ashaninka, a powerfully-built animal, pale grey, with a white streak running along its head to its snout, with large claws (there were found additionally two new mice, two orchids, 11 butterflies and more than a dozen new frogs and lizards.)

The Vietnamese rhinoceros, a sub-species of the Java rhino, known also as the lesser one-horned-rhino.

Between 50 and 60 animals of the other sub-species survive in Java itself, but cross-breeding between the two is thought to be impossible.

My comment: Those subspecies of rhinos indeed can interbreed!

Taken from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/420000/images/_422674_rbt300.jpg

Striped rabbit revealed in Laos and Vietnam forest, resembling the endangered Sumatran striped rabbit (seen only once since 1916 and captured by a camera again in 1998), the only other known striped rabbit (in the last few years a forest pig and a hoofed animal like an antelope, the saola, have also been found in the same region... "If there are large mammals still in there, you can bet there are interesting invertebrates as well", Dr Bell said.)

Again, more compatible VARIETIES of their related counterparts that we already know!

Add this list and images to the previously presented Bioengineering and The Discovery of New Organisms and to The New 27 Cave Bugs.