Abiogenesis - New Study

[ricketyclik]

In order... to predict the direction of evolution - you would have to know how all the parts fit together.

Did someone mention strawmen?

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Uh, it's not an argument from creationists that abiogenesis is impossible. It's been scientifically verified, and a crucial portion of biology. Particularly the germ theory of disease.

Newtonian gravity was scientifically verified. what's your point?

[Ben Kenobi]

Did someone mention strawmen?

How is that a straw man? A particular combination of genes has to be understood as a whole in order to understand the overall fitness.

If we select based on the parts, it may turn out that the expression doesn't give us what we are looking for from the factors that we do not at present understand.

Engine won't run if you're missing the starter.

[Ben Kenobi]

Newtonian gravity was scientifically verified. what's your point?

Point being that Abiogenesis is to biology as Aristotelianism is to physics.

[molly bloom]

So, IOW, it doesn't make testable predictions which is a core part of any scientific theory. Thanks Nestor!

You're an idiot who appears (strangely for someone permitted though not certified to teach) to have huge problems with the English language and veracity.

A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. If enough evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, it moves to the next step—known as a theory—in the scientific method and becomes accepted as a valid explanation of a phenomenon.

http://www.livescience.com/21491-what-is-a-scientific-theory-definition-of-theory.html

Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. In the scientific method, there is a clear distinction between facts, which can be observed and/or measured, and theories, which are scientists’ explanations and interpretations of the facts. Scientists can have various interpretations of the outcomes of experiments and observations, but the facts, which are the cornerstone of the scientific method, do not change.

Something you have problems with, facts :

A fact is something that is supported by unmistakeable evidence. For example, the Grand Canyon cuts through layers of different kinds of rock, such as the Coconino sandstone, Hermit shale, and Redwall limestone. These rock layers often contain fossils that are found only in certain layers. Those are the facts.

It is a fact is that fossil skulls have been found that are intermediate in appearance between humans and modern apes. It is a fact that fossils have been found that are clearly intermediate in appearance between dinosaurs and birds.

http://www.fsteiger.com/theory.html

Evolution and the vermiform appendix :

The appendix may not be useless after all. The worm-shaped structure found near the junction of the small and large intestines evolved 32 times among mammals, according to a new study. The finding adds weight to the idea that the appendix helps protect our beneficial gut bacteria when a serious infection strikes.

Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to theorize on the function of the appendix, which in his day had been identified only in humans and other great apes. He hypothesized that the distant ancestors of these animals survived on a diet of leaves, and so they required a large cecum, a portion of the gut that houses bacteria that can break down stubborn plant tissue. Later, he speculated, these ancestors shifted to a largely fruit-based diet that was easier to digest. A large cecum was no longer necessary, and it began to shrink; today our cecum is tiny. Darwin thought the appendix, which juts off of the cecum, is one of its former folds that shriveled up as the cecum shrank. Consequently, he thought it carried no function.

But some scientists have challenged the idea that the appendix serves no purpose. It's been clear for about a century that the structure contains a particular type of tissue belonging to the lymphatic system. This system carries the white blood cells that help fight infections. Within the last decade, research has shown that this lymphatic tissue encourages the growth of some kinds of beneficial gut bacteria. What's more, careful anatomical study of other mammals has revealed that species as diverse as beavers, koalas, and porcupines also have a structure jutting off of their guts in exactly the same place as our appendix—in other words, the feature is much more common among mammals than once thought.

http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2013/02/appendix-evolved-more-30-times

Do you think you'll ever evolve into a decent human being or teacher ? I suppose if a fish can walk on land....

A school of 30 catfish were spotted ‘walking’ through the street after they crawled out of a sewer.

The fish came out of the sewer after heavy storms in Pinellas County, in Florida, on Tuesday.

Resident Dianna Fernandez said: ‘I was like, ‘No way there’s fish in the street. ‘And I kept going further and further and seeing fish everywhere — in driveways. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

The fish used their pectoral fins to walk or shuffle around the streets.

Local Hannah Cline said: ‘(We thought) that maybe somebody dumped some fish but then we realized that it was coming up from the sewer that we had so much rain last night.’

A scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the catfish can travel on land as long as they stay moist.

http://metro.co.uk/2008/07/18/catfish-walk-down-street-289671/

[pchang]

It would be fitting if those who deny evolution were all killed by anti-biotic resistant infections.

[Ben Kenobi]

It would be fitting if those who deny evolution were all killed by anti-biotic resistant infections.

Yes, because antibiotic resistance = evolution. Perhaps one day we'll get antibiotic resistant monkeys.

[Berzerker]

Evolution makes a ton of assumptions. It finds a couple of bones in the ground and asserts that just because they are what they believe to be the right age that there is a direct relationship between men and these bones in the ground. Something that's not actually provable.

We cannot - legitimately, establish a descent going back more than 1500 years because the records simply are not there.

Your assumption is ~2000 years old...

lemme me know when they find anatomically modern humans in 3 myo strata along side small brained bipedal hominids

[N35t0r]

I also like how he disses evolution because we don't totally understand how proteins fit together, and then goes on to state that stellar mechanics is totally a science because it only depends on gravity.

[molly bloom]

Yes, because antibiotic resistance = evolution. Perhaps one day we'll get antibiotic resistant monkeys.

Perhaps one day we'll get a thinking bacterium then you'll have something you can feel parity with.

[DaShi]

A doubt the bacterium would waste its time with Ben.

Although, I will say that bacteria make better decisions than Ben.

[Sava]

It would be fitting if those who deny evolution were all killed by anti-biotic resistant infections.

[kentonio]

Talking of evolution!

Weird mushroom-shaped animals may rewrite animal family tree

Weird deep-sea animals discovered off the coast of Australia in the 1980s have finally been classified, and they’re like no animal alive today.

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The newly described species, discovered between 400 and 1,000 metres below the ocean off the coast of Tasmania back in 1986, have been named Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dendrogramma discoides. And they’re so unique that they don’t fit into any existing animal groupings - in fact, they appear to most closely resemble long-extinct organisms that lived in the Ediacaran period, between 635 and 540 million years ago.

The species have been described by scientists from the University of Copenhagan in PLOS ONE this week, and their discovery could completely rewrite the bottom branches of the animal family tree.

The multicellular organisms are just a couple of millimetres long and look like mushrooms, with a mouth at the end of their “stalk”. This is their only digestive opening, and it leads to a digestive canal that then branches out once it reaches the mushroom’s “cap”. They also have a dense layer of gelatinous material between their skin and inner stomach cell layers, the journal article explains.

The animals' mostly non-symmetrical body plan is unique, which means they’re not part of the Bilateria group, one of the main animal groupings that includes humans.

"Finding something like this is extremely rare, it's maybe only happened about four times in the last 100 years," co-author Jorgen Olesen told the BBC. "We think it belongs in the animal kingdom somewhere; the question is where."

The newly classified species do show some similarities to comb jellies, part of the Ctenophora phylum, as well as to Cnidaria, the phylum that includes jellyfish, corals and sea anemones. But they don’t fill all of the criteria to be included into either of these categories.

It’s possible that they may represent larval forms of existing species - or, interestingly, they may be surviving relative of ancient, long-extinct phyla.

Leonid Moroz, a neurobiologist at the University of Florida in St. Augustine, US, who wasn’t involved in the research, told Jennifer Frazer at National Geographic that if the new species is a descendent of early animals, the discovery could "completely reshape the tree of life, and even our understanding of how animals evolved, how neurosystems evolved, how different tissues evolved … It can rewrite whole textbooks in zoology."

Frazer explains for National Geographic:

“If the new animals are directly related to the ancient organisms, the find would be reminiscent of the discovery of the coelacanth fish, which had long been thought extinct, off the coast of South Africa in 1938. The new discovery also highlights how much of Earth's submarine realm remains unexplored, scientists say.”

Despite studying their anatomy, scientists still know very little about the species. After the animals were brought up, they were preserved in formalin and then ethanol, which makes genetic analysis almost impossible. They were then forgotten about until scientists started sorting the samples recently. Without any DNA analysis, scientists have little to classify the organisms from other than their appearance, and this means it’s extremely difficult to work out how the animals are related to other forms of life.

The researchers do believe, however, that the animals are free-living, as there were no signs they had been torn off something else. But they don’t seem to be able to swim and lack any obvious methods of propulsion. As Frazer explains, scientists believe the organisms feed by “ensnaring microbes in mucus secreted by the lobes surrounding their mouths”.

In the 28 years since these creatures were discovered off the coast of Tasmania, nothing remotely similar has ever been found. The researchers told BBC that they hoped people might become interesting in helping them after reading the paper.

"We published this paper in part as a cry for help," Oelson told BBC. "There might be somebody out there who can help place it.”

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/...est+Stories%29

Seriously awesome!

[ricketyclik]

I've always thought Western Australia is evolutionarily backwards.

[molly bloom]

A doubt the bacterium would waste its time with Ben.

Although, I will say that bacteria make better decisions than Ben.

They at least can learn and grow from acquiring new information.