[ClearCase_guy]

I seem to recall a situation where biologists came to a different sort of conclusion. They had two fossils that seemed identical (or nearly so) but which could not have come from the same species (I forget why they determined that). They determined that Evolution could create the same type of animal twice (in two different locations or two different times). They had a fancy name for it but I don't recall.

Is an eight inch fossil sufficient evidence to conclude that the continents moved differently than previously thought? Or evidence that two species in different places were remarkably similar?

Either way, it seems like a lot to conclude from such a small piece of evidence.

[Born to Conserve]

“They had a fancy name for it but I don’t recall.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

[HeadOn]

“Either way, it seems like a lot to conclude from such a small piece of evidence.”

BINGO. Continental drift, evolution, ozone hole, global warming, you name it. Examine the assumptions, find the agenda.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Either way, it seems like a lot to conclude from such a small piece of evidence.

We have a winner!

Actually its better not to pay much attention to the media description of these discoveries. The actual paper by the discoverers is usually very different.

[Publius6961]

Either way, it seems like a lot to conclude from such a small piece of evidence.

Another excuse for me to post this!

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and "let on" to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor "development of species," either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Chapter XVII (Pg 209)