Pakicetus being presented with webbed feet.

Hi DT,
Another great example is elephant swimming. You would not gather from elephant fossils that they are superb swimmers i.e. they can go for miles.Swimming and diving elephants – Upali.ch

It's sad that you have degenerated in your posts to such low levels. Obviously, having discussed Neanderthals at some lengths on other threads, I recognize the differences. Unfortunately, neither you nor some others here see that there are much larger differences between the skeletons of Pakicestus and Ambiceletus or whatever it's name, than the 2 fully human skeletons you listed.In fact, your post is characteristic of the basic dishonesty and deception I have come to expect from you and evos in general. You present graphics in order to deceive rather than educate which is why you have no problem with falsely claiming Pakicetus had webbed feet and was aquatic.In fact, another here on this same thread engages in the same dishonest trickery, namely the use of graphics to try to reinforce false logic. The claim is because some animals can be excellent climbers or swimmers that somehow the depiction of webbed feet makes sense, but in reality, it is the exact opposite. There is no need to fabricate webbed feet because there is no reason for a land animal to need webbed feet to swim.It's clear that the depiction was designed to make the fully land animal appear more believable to the reader as an ancestor to whales.You call that education because you beleive so strongly in the concept that it's OK to you if false data and statements are part of the argument since it illustrates what you think of as a true principle.I call it deception because it's presenting false data and statements, and whether it's Haeckel's forged drawings, Pakicetus being presented with webbed feet, or any number of claims, such as presenting Neanderthals as anything less than human, you have no problem with it. You are so indocrinated that you cannot see it as deception, the presentation of false material as factual without any real basis for making that claim.Carry on, but don't be surprised if I ignore you and your cohorts. You refuse to engage the points, and then claim in snide tones that I am somehow cutting and running. It's pathetic really on your part.

see ya randman!I commend you on your dodge and weave, Ever think of becomming a boxer?ABE: Point taken Admin, I will show how randman is dodging the issue. Check back in a bit.This message has been edited by Yaro, 11-28-2005 02:13 PM

You may or may not be correct, but such postings are not good for quality discussion.I suggest actually rebuting randman, or say nothing at all.Take any responses to this message to the "General Discussion..." topic, link below.Adminnemooseus

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What is so low about the honest questions arach has posed? Can you really not see ANY similarity between the two skeletons? BZZT! Stop right there. You can't just make a blanket statement like this. First of all, what do you consider "larger differences"? Do you not see the obvious similarity between the two creatures?If so, why not assume relatedness? Why would two creatures look soooo alike, and not be related? Other than the fact that one is not actually a homo sapiens. First off, we don't know weather he did/didn't have webbed feet. Webbing doesn't fossilize, but how the hell can you say, with total certainty, that the creature didn't swim? After all, hippos spend most of their life in the water and they don't have webbed feet. All we have is bones! No one has unequivically stated he has webbed feat, an artists drawing is simply a guess and everyone freely admits that. The point is valid. You are saying unequivically that paki didn't swim and had no webbed feet. They are showing you how an animal doesn't necisseraly need to "look" like a swimmer to be a good swimmer.You are the one making statements based on knowledge you don't have. We have said over and over that the drawings and theories are based on evidince and therefore tentative. The depiction was based on a skull. It was the best guess at the time. Do you understand that?Look at the two skeletons, do you see how that guess could have been made? You have failed to show any deception. Continually asserting that scientists are liars is essentialy Ad Hominem. You should follow a different line of argumentation.....I saw Haeckel in your next paragraph so I knew it was a rabbit hole. Why not actually answer Arach's questions?If you don't, you are being intellectually dishonest.This message has been edited by Yaro, 11-28-2005 02:26 PM

why shouldn't elephants be good swimmers when they have the best snorkle in the animal kingdom?

Please keep discussion focused on the topic rather than the presumed deficiencies of your opponents.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

i'm sorry randman, you didn't answer the post. all i see is a bucnh of stuff calling me pathetic, low, dishonest, etc. which is it? you still haven't made up your mind, have you? why are pakicetus and ambulocetus completely different animals, with completely different habitats, but h. sapiens and h. neanderthalensis are the same species? what points did i refues to engage? you posted a study -- wow. someone posted a study directly replying to that study, and refuting it. you've been sitting here bobbing and weaving, dancing around the ring, and avoiding your opponents, and then you accuse ME of refusing to engage points? how long did it take you to not answer this post? a week?i'm sorry randman, everyone else here can see the blindingly obvious, and pretending it's really your opponents that are guilty of your tactics just isn't going to work. you have failed to address the most glaring issues in this thread, instead opting for slinging ad hominems.explain to me why you can't see that pakicetus and ambulocetus have some VERY OBVIOUS features in common?

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אָרַח

because it would mean admitting defeat. although, i must admit: as frustrating as it is, watching randman dance around admitting the stunningly obvious is kind of entertaining.and he calls me dishonest for revealing how silly his logic is. how 'bout it randy? how about you stop calling me snide and dishonest and deceptive and pathetic, and admit that it's kind of obvious that pakicetus and ambulocetus look damned similar?This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 11-28-2005 10:08 PM

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אָרַח

especially since their "snorkels" don't fossilize.

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אָרַח

Yaro, if you want to know why your posts to me are not read in their entirety, taken seriously, nor fully replied to, look no further than false statements and disinformation such as the following: I don't have time in my life to spend hours correcting nonsense like the statement above. if you want a discussion, you are not going to get it making absurd comments like the one above, totally fabricating my stance here.Enjoy your life, but don't expect me to be involved with it.This message has been edited by randman, 11-29-2005 01:07 AM

Not dancing. Made my comments and points which you cannot refute and don't want to waste time with absurd rants from you. If you feel that vindicates you, I really don't care. I don't see any of your arguments as substantial at all in this debate, and I doubt any objective observer not predisposed to reject criticism of evolution would either.Have a nice life because I don't plan to involve myself wasting time responding to people who are not serious about discussion in an honest manner. For example, you are aware of pretty major differences between pakicetus and ambulocetus, which is why evolutionists themselves do not classify them as close as modern humans are to Neanderthals, which were just a tribe of humans imo.Since I think you know that, I think you are being purposefully deceptive in your argument. I also think you are intelligent enough to realize that glancing at similarities without a more detailed analysis does not equate closeness in relatedness in the manner you imply, or many Marsupials would be considered more closely related to their counterparts among non-marsupial mammals, but as it is, even very similar looking creatures like marsupial moles are considered more further in their relatedness than to human beings.So depicting skeletal remains of a golden mole and a regular mole would suggest they are more closely related than the regular mole is to a human being, but that is not what mainstream evos teach and beleive, and the fact you are either ignorant of things like that or just evading the beliefs of evos is frustrating and why I am close to just exercising the option of blocking all your posts entirely so they are not even shown to me.You refuse to acknowledge and deal in the basic points and arguments here, even the claims of mainstream evolution you deny, in an attempt to debase the arguments and discussions into pettiness instead of honestly admitting what evos believe, what I have stated and beleived, and discussing the relevant merits of each.If you cannot see your basic approach as dishonest, then I really can't help you with that. If you are so ignorant that you think Neaderthals are more distantly related to modern humans(when they can arguably be considered the same species) than Pakicetus is to Ambulocetus, well, I still don't have an interest in correcting your ignorance. You need to take some time to learn what the debate is and isn't, and at least debate with a knowledge of what mainstream evos believe and claim. Otherwise, you are basically wasting everyone's time.This message has been edited by randman, 11-29-2005 01:22 AM

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which is why evolutionists themselves do not classify them as close as modern humans are to Neanderthals, which were just a tribe of humans imo

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opinions are nice but uniformed opinions are ridiculous..do you EVER research anything before you post?Evo's do not think Neandertals are a tribe of humans...in fact, every genetic study to date shows them to be a clearly distinct species without even having to take into account the morphological differences.

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Serre D, Langaney A, Chech M, Teschler-Nicola M, Paunovic M, Mennecier P, Hofreiter M, Possnert G, Paabo S. Related Articles, Links
No evidence of Neandertal mtDNA contribution to early modern humans.
PLoS Biol. 2004 Mar;2(3):E57. Epub 2004 Mar 16.

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This one is open access..anyone can read it..from the abstract

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PLoS Biol. 2004 Mar;2(3):E57. Epub 2004 Mar 16. Related Articles, Links

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No evidence of Neandertal mtDNA contribution to early modern humans.

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Serre D, Langaney A, Chech M, Teschler-Nicola M, Paunovic M, Mennecier P, Hofreiter M, Possnert G, Paabo S.

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Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

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The retrieval of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from four Neandertal fossils from Germany, Russia, and Croatia has demonstrated that these individuals carried closely related mtDNAs that are not found among current humans. However, these results do not definitively resolve the question of a possible Neandertal contribution to the gene pool of modern humans since such a contribution might have been erased by genetic drift or by the continuous influx of modern human DNA into the Neandertal gene pool. A further concern is that if some Neandertals carried mtDNA sequences similar to contemporaneous humans, such sequences may be erroneously regarded as modern contaminations when retrieved from fossils. Here we address these issues by the analysis of 24 Neandertal and 40 early modern human remains. The biomolecular preservation of four Neandertals and of five early modern humans was good enough to suggest the preservation of DNA. All four Neandertals yielded mtDNA sequences similar to those previously determined from Neandertal individuals, whereas none of the five early modern humans contained such mtDNA sequences. In combination with current mtDNA data, this excludes any large genetic contribution by Neandertals to early modern humans, but does not rule out the possibility of a smaller contribution.

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Note, the smaller contribution would mean a hybrid zone like the very occassional production of hybrids in the two species of African elephants...but whereas there is evidence for restricted introgression in African elephants..there is none for neandertals even in areas where human bones can be sampled from the same time period.continuing So, your "opinion" mean nothing in the face of actual facts that show you opinions to be based on your personal fantasies.This message has been edited by Mammuthus, 11-29-2005 10:51 AM

But the fact remains that these critters had webbed feet. And what about Rodhocetus, eh? It has "an astragalus and cuboid in the ankle with characteristics diagnostic of artiodactyls", yet was a swimmer with webbed feet. How do we know? We look at the bones.Here's the blighter, and I defy you to claim it's not related to the Pakicetus and Ambulocetus pics above. Gingerich et al (2001) 'Origin of Whales from Early Artiodactyls: Hands and Feet of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan', Science Vol 293 no 5538, pp. 2239 - 2242.

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Articulations both with the tarsus and with the phalanges indicate that the metatarsals were sometimes well separated. Contraction of intrinsic muscles narrowed the foot when it was tightly flexed. Unusual flanges of bone on the proximomedial base of middle phalanges II and III and on the proximolateral base of middle phalanges IV and V (arrows in Fig. 2C) provided leverage for opening the feet to maximum breadth during extension. Pedal phalanges cannot have been weight-bearing, but were elongated to stiffen a large webbed foot. On land Rodhocetus evidently walked on the plantar surface of the foot, with the calcaneum, plantar processes of other tarsals, and metatarsal sesamoids bearing weight, somewhat like eared seals do today. The structure of the hand is consistent with limited locomotion on land, but the foot shows that Rodhocetus was predominantly aquatic rather than terrestrial.

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A skeletal restoration of Rodhocetus is shown in Fig. 3. Metapodials and phalanges of the hands and feet are similar to those described for Ambulocetus natans (7, 36), but the hands of Rodhocetus are longer (about 165% of radius length in Rodhocetus, compared with 145% of radius length in Ambulocetus) and the feet are even longer (about 279% of radius length and 158% of femur length in Rodhocetus, compared with 197% of radius length and 121% of femur length in Ambulocetus). Thewissen and Fish (37) interpreted Ambulocetus as an otter-like pelvic paddler, and this is a good model for Rodhocetus. If the hands and feet were webbed as inferred here, then Rodhocetus was probably capable of quadrupedal paddling as well as pelvic paddling.

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Fig. 2. Right astragalus and cuboid (A) of Artiocetus clavis, new genus and species, GSP-UM 3458, compared with virtually complete left manus (B) and left pes (C) of Rodhocetus balochistanensis, new species, GSP-UM 3485 (pes reversed from right side). All are shown in anterior view. Elements with oblique hatching were not recovered. Note artiodactyl characteristics in the well-developed navicular trochlea on the head of the astragalus, convex fibular facet on the calcaneum, and concave astragalar facet paired with a convex calcaneal facet notched into the cuboid. The hand is mesaxonic with three central weight-bearing toes that evidently bore nail-like hooves (distal phalanges preserved on digits II and IV) flanked by more gracile lateral toes that lacked hooves [distal phalanx preserved on digit I; see (29)]. The foot is paraxonic with four long toes, flanges of bone on the medial or lateral bases of the middle phalanges (arrows) providing leverage for opening the feet to maximum breadth during extension, and narrowly pointed ungules (distal phalanges preserved on digits II and III). Abbreviations: Ast., astragalus; ast. f., astragalar facet; Cal., calcaneum; cal. f., calcaneal facet; Cub., cuboid; Cun., cuneiform; fib. f., fibular facet; Lun., lunar; Mc, metacarpal; Mt, metatarsal; Nav., navicular; nav. tr., navicular trochlea; Pis., pisiform; Sca., scaphoid; tib. tr., tibial trochlea; Tra., trapezium; Unc., unciform. Trapezoid and magnum are present in carpus but not separately labeled.

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Sure, it's an inference. You do realise that it is an inference that fossils are the remains of past organisms at all, yeah?

See ya randman. Thanks for showing everyone what an intellectual coward you are. You would be a bigger man if you would just fess up when proven wrong.