I'm more in favor of materialization of thought forms into denser forms as the Earth formed and hardened, myself, after looking at the massive erroneous speculation of evolution, as it is taught, and creationism, as it is taught.
Posted on 12/03/2003 4:53:26 PM PST by Pharmboy
LONDON (Reuters) - Fossils discovered in Ethiopia's highlands are a missing piece in the puzzle of how African mammals evolved, a team of international scientists said on Wednesday.
Little is known about what happened to mammals between 24 million to 32 million years ago, when Africa and Arabia were still joined together in a single continent.
But the remains of ancestors of modern-day elephants and other animals, unearthed by the team of U.S. and Ethiopian scientists 27 million years on, provide some answers.
"We show that some of these very primitive forms continue to live through the missing years, and then during that period as well, some new forms evolved -- these would be the ancestors of modern elephants," said Dr John Kappelman, who headed the team.
The find included several types of proboscideans, distant relatives of elephants, and fossils from the arsinoithere, a rhinoceros-like creature that had two huge bony horns on its snout and was about 7 feet high at the shoulder.
"It continues to amaze me that we don't have more from this interval of time. We are talking about an enormous continent," said Kappelman, who is based at the University of Texas at Austin.
Scientists had thought arsinoithere had disappeared much earlier but the discovery showed it managed to survive through the missing years. The fossils from the new species found in Ethiopia are the largest, and at 27 million years old, the youngest discovered so far.
"If this animal was still alive today it would be the central attraction at the zoo," Tab Rasmussen, a paleontologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri who worked on the project, said in a statement.
Many of the major fossil finds in Ethiopia are from the Rift Valley. But Kappelman and colleagues in the United States and at Ethiopia's National Science Foundation (news - web sites) and Addis Ababa University concentrated on a different area in the northwestern part of the country.
Using high-resolution satellite images to scour a remote area where others had not looked before, his team found the remains in sedimentary rocks about 6,600 feet above sea level.
I'm more in favor of materialization of thought forms into denser forms as the Earth formed and hardened, myself, after looking at the massive erroneous speculation of evolution, as it is taught, and creationism, as it is taught.
You are universalizing the particular, a logical fallacy. The best you can say is you've never seen them change. To assert they never change is an article of the naturalistic faith.
How did you come to the conclusion that people who believe in evolution do not believe in God? Many of the evolutionists on this thread, me included, have repeatedly said we believe in God.
Just take the example of a recent U.S. President who redefined the word, "is,"
Ahh, argument by Clinton. If you don't agree with creationism, you are a statist, marxist, leninist clinton-lover. How persuasive.
The best I can say is that all of the evidence supports my claim. Your theory is possible and I can't prove it flase, but there is no evidence to support your position, other than your personal belief.
Each and every physics, chemistry and biology class should have an empty glass jar sitting in a very visible place in the classroom.
If and when a new species of life suddenly appears inside of that hermetically sealed glass jar, then we will all know that we were wrong about evolution.
Until then, I will continue to follow the factual exploration of life as we know it.
Simple, that is from someone with no concept of time.
Your claim that all the evidence supports your belief is based on limiting the evidence to material evidence. That limitation has no evidence other than your personal belief. If you can prove that empirical evidence is the only valid evidence, please do so. I'd be interested in it. Until that proof is demonstrated, naturalism is stuck in the boat of faith along with every other belief system.
Here are some snippets from the original Nature article with some telling words/statements bolded, compliments of Creation Safaris' editor:
During most of the Cenozoic era, from the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary 65 million years ago [sic] until roughly 24 million years ago [sic], Afro-Arabia was [sic] an island continent drifting steadily [sic] northwards towards Eurasia. Fossil mammals documenting this period are scarce and belong almost exclusively to endemic forms restricted to Afro-Arabia, such as proboscideans, hyraxes and elephant-shrews. But by around 24 million years ago [sic], a permanent land bridge had formed between the two landmasses. A burst of faunal interchange followed: many Eurasian mammals, such as rhinos and ruminants, dispersed into Africa, and some Afro-Arabian mammals, such as elephants, migrated in the opposite direction.
Among the proboscideans recorded are primitive [sic] forms such as Palaeomastodon and Phiomia (also known from older deposits in Egypt). But there are also representatives of modern families, for example taxa such as Gomphotherium, the earliest proboscidean on the branch leading to extant elephants. Another surprise is the oldest occurrence of deinotheres, peculiar proboscideans with downward-curved lower tusks, which were previously recorded only from rocks younger than 24 million years old [sic]. The new species of deinothere displays molars that are more ‘bunodont’ in form (that is, made of several distinct cusplets arranged in transverse crests) than its descendant, whose molars display plain transverse crests. This discovery seems to rule out the possibility that deinotheres are derived from an ancestor bearing plain, transverse-crested molars, as was formerly supposed, and provides new evidence about proboscidean evolution [sic].
Finally, the discoveries of Kappelman et al. highlight two other palaeobiological issues. First, on northern continents glaciation caused a significant cooling around 33 million years ago [sic], which resulted in numerous extinctions [sic] among mammalian communities. From these new data, however, it seems that large Afro-Arabian herbivores were not affected, either at that time or later, implying that the climatic changes were less severe on southern continents. Second, the fossil record of the Afro-Arabian continent is not only scanty but also largely concentrated on the northern edge. This has led to the proposal that other groups of mammals existed in Afro-Arabia during its period of isolation, but that they were restricted to more southern latitudes. However, the Chilga mammal community is rather like that found at Fayum in Egypt, which is some five million years older [sic], providing hints that there was little provinciality among Afro-Arabian mammals at that time. As yet, though, we have unveiled [sic] only a few of the secrets of mammal evolution on the Afro-Arabian continent. Many more surprising discoveries are to be expected.
Quite frankly, I interpret it as an attempt to reason that living creatures were not created based on divine design. Please let me know how you would interpret this statment.
I interpret it to mean that it is more likely that the structural similarities are the result of common descent than the result of being minted from scratch. The ultimate cause isn't mentioned or inplied.
What other kind of evidence is there? As mentioned earlier, evidence needs to be of a character that allows more than one person to perceive it. Otherwise, it's completely irrelevant.
Your point earlier that I can't prove the existence of anyone else is true. However, unless we agree on the premise that we all exist, all discussions are completely irrelevant.
By divine revelation, what else?
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. -Matthew 16:15-17
Now, if I were able to independently verify your experience, that would be empirical, wouldn't it?
You still have to empirically demonstrate that other observers exist, otherwise you're rooted in something other than empiricism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.