Some Evidence Against Evolution

That’s a statement? It looks like the first half of a sentence to me. And who cares what Milton says anyway? Science doesn’t derive its power from authority, but from evidence. Some people can never be convinced. It’s in South Kensington, in west central London. Which is nowhere near Teddington, which is in Middlesex (as was). Someone needs to get their facts straight, and this is indicative of the depth of research behind your claims. What said? ‘Darwinists’ not allegedly being able to demonstrate evolution to creationists is a criticism of a museum? Erm, what on earth are you on about? Well the Natural History Museum does, that’s for certain. Tucked away through doors the public doesn’t usually get to go through, there are rabbit warrens of corridors, all lined with grey metal sliding door fronted cabinets. Slide back a door at random, and there’s wooden drawers. Each contains a dozen fossils, each in a lidded cardboard box lined with cotton wool and labelled with names like Acanthostega gunneri.I have myself held some of these fossils; accompanied by Per Ahlberg, I have held the skull of a 340 million year old tetrapod, and a chunk of rock of a similar age, still being prepared, in which I could clearly see a shoulder and humerus.Would you like me to explain about all the ‘missing’ links that have been found which reveal the course of tetrapod evolution? Guess what? They are just about all in museums. The actual, real fossils.And many other museums do have these things too, because the NHM has from time to time put on exhibitions of material loaned from other museums. Earlier this year, for instance, they had an exhibition of many of the fossils -- the real fossils -- which confirm the dinosaur-bird link. I have seen them and photographed them. Fossils like ‘fuzzy raptor’ (not sure if it’s got a proper name yet), both the slab and counterslab; at least two Archaeopteryx (their own ‘London’ one and the Berlin one for sure, maybe another (altogether eight have been found)... I was so bowled over that I didn’t think to count up what I saw!); and many of the recently unearthed Chinese Liaoning fossils. Each one a non-missing link.Is all this material on display? Of course not. Is it real and in museums? Absolutely. Painstakingly moulded from the originals. The real things are rare and precious. Would you rather see a precise, moulded-from-the-original model at your local museum, or have to cross half the planet to see the original? Personally, I’d rather see the original too; but since I cannot, an exact replica will do. Nobody is being deceived. I’ve no idea what you mean by this. Do you mean adding in bones where the original has none... because a mounted Triceratops would look stupid with three legs and some spine missing? Or do you mean that the displays are entirely made-up tosh, and the so-called missing links are still missing? I suppose you could say that every museum HOPES to have its own T rex... but that’s not, I’d guess, what you’re getting at.Yep, it would be outrageous, if it were true. But since it isn’t true, there’s no cause for creationist celebration. Nope. It just means that there aren’t enough of the really important fossils to go round all the museums that might want them. Anyone can have a trilobite. Not everyone can have an Ichthyostega.Here’s another ‘missing link’ for you, btw. The real fossil. Here’s some more. The real fossils. You can see yet more here.Therre’s thousands and thousands of these ‘missing link’ fossils. But not all museums can have all of them.Remind me again what the problem was?TTFN, DT[This message has been edited by Darwinsterrier, 11-26-2003]

Just to be even more pedantic, the institution we're talking about was called the 'British Museum (Natural History)' until sometime in the 1980s, when it became simply the 'Natural History Museum', which is what it's called now. (See their website!) Though just to be confusing, their catalogue numbers are prefixed 'BMNH', which clearly translates as you said.(Edit: Argh, beaten to the punch by Mark! However, while the Act separated it off in '63, 'British Museum (Natural History)' was what it was (still?) called in the mid-70s when I used to go regularly. David Attenborough mentions the name change as being in the '80s in Life on Air, and I'd guess that would have been in '86 when the Geological Museum was incorporated.)[This message has been edited by Darwinsterrier, 11-26-2003]

Yeah, but why the innaccuracy? You won’t find it listed anywhere as being in Teddington, since it isn’t. Are you just making this stuff up? There are. Since there’s too much to chose from, perhaps you could be specific: let’s focus in on some major bit of evolution. What do you fancy? Fish getting onto land and becoming four-legged, air-breathing things? Reptiles becoming mammals? Land mammals becoming whales? Dinosaurs becoming birds? Horses? Humans coming from an ape-type creature? All of those are pretty major evolutionary transitions (except the last, which is actually mere tinkering). And for all of these I can offer hundreds of bones.I hereby challenge you to dispute any of these. Be specific, or kindly go away.But you need to realise, though, that ‘milllions and millions’ of bones, is rather optimistic. Fossilisation is a rare and chance event, requiring a dozen or more circumstances to come together for each specimen. Then the fossil has to survive for many, perhaps hundreds, of millions of years, while all around the strata may be bent, split, up-ended, heated to melting, and/or eroded. And then, they have to be found.So there are indeed one helluva lot of fossils. But it is pointless and ludicrous to expect that every thing that’s ever lived would be in a museum somewhere... which is what you are implying we should have in order to demonstrate evolution. No, they are not. Many are on display, and those that are copies are not inventions or scultures, but are taken from the real thing that happens to be elsewhere. Also, remember, that a museum is a research institute, but also a place of public exhibition. They have to get people, the ordinary public, in through their doors. And an awful lot of really important fossils are pretty uninspiring to look at.The tetrapod shoulder I mentioned earlier? Per was using it as a paperweight in his office when I saw it. He pointed it out to me in the (mostly vain, sadly) hope that I’d ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over it. But till he pointed out the relevant bits to me, it just looked like an oddly shaped chunk of light-grey rock. Once he’d indicated what I needed to look for, though, its nature was easy to see.Museums do not tend to have staff on hand to individually explain each and every specimen to each and every inquisitive person who drops by. Since most fossils look like chunks of rock, only the most easily understood ones get put on display. There’s not many of these, hence museums displaying casts made from the originals, which are in some other museum. Nope. It may take some persistence -- like considerable globe-trotting -- to get to see the real things, but they are available for anyone to find. Try writing a few letters. But remember that with a few million specimens in somewhere like the NHM, someone is going to have to take the time to get it out of its drawer and sit down while... some bozo wandering in off the street... looks at it. Which is why it might be difficult to get to see many fossils -- one needs to have a decent reason to do so... and I suspect merely verifying their existence isn’t one of them. That’s plain logistics. With science, nobody has to take anyone’s word for it. There are books stacked with photos and detailed drawings of the specimens. (Drawings are actually more use, because as I say many just look like bits of rock to the layman’s eye, especially in a photo, by its nature a 2-D representation.) Each issue of Nature and Science -- and all the other peer-reviewed journals -- will also contain these when there’s a fossil reported. And there’s plenty of photos of fossils on the web too. I’ve shown you some already. I note with dismay and disdain that you have ignored them.Just what are we supposed to do other than photograph, draw and note down every detail and publish it? Perhaps you would have us courier each and every new fossil -- and all the already-found ones -- around to each doubting creationist?TTFN, DT

Well apart from the fact that we share a common ancestor with apes, and so are no more descended from them than you are from your cousin...... apart from that, they are in places like the National Museum of Kenya. That’s why things like ‘Turkana Boy’ are catalogued with the prefix KMN. Apart, again, from the abovementioned error in comprehension, there are lots. I’ve shown you a picture of just a few of them. Would you be so kind as to tell me which ones are the apes and which ones are the humans, please? This may come as a surprise to you, but museums specialise. So the KNM has lots; I’m quite sure my local museum in Winchester has none. So? ... have not existed until very recently. ‘We’ have been few in number until the last few thousand years. An eon is one or more eras, Millions, or perhaps billions of years. Humans split from apes just 5 million years ago. Perhaps. Sure, we might guess that millions of bones have existed inside living hominins. But how many might we expect to get fossilised, to then survive, and then be found?(Anyone know if there’s something simple on taphonomy online? All my palaeontology books discuss it (Benton’s Vertebrate Palaeontology is good), but is there something to link to?) It is obvious that you have a paucity of knowledge about this. Please justify this assertion. Apart from those that are on display, the painstakingly made replicas that are on display, the photos in hundreds of books and websites, the detailed photos, drawings and descriptions of each one as it was published in the relevant journals.... yeah, we’re sure doing our best to keep this stuff secret. Back up that assertion or withdraw it.Let me guess: Piltdown man, Nebraska man, Lucy’s knee joint...?Perhaps you could explain the genuine controversy surrounding Homo habilis / rudolfensis? What ‘kind’ are KNM-ER 1470 and OH 24? That’s odd. I hadn’t realised that Hadar, Laetoli, Olduvai, Lake Turkana, Taung, Trinil, Ngandong, Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai, Mojokerto, and the rest, were in Germany! Funny old thing, creationist geography.TTFN, DT

Oh yeah. And it's no great surprise if Joachim Neander (actually, Neumann) was a creationist. There weren't a lot of evolutionists around in the 1670s.

Thank you for your kind words, Willowtree! And thanks for your frankness. It is a breath of fresh air in these sorts of discussions! Firstly, how does excluding the supernatural make it not make sense? Presumably you’d say that general relativity doesn’t make sense because it refuses to seat God at the gravity table? Chemistry similarly makes no sense because it doesn’t include God in the periodic table, yes?And secondly, God may well have been involved, and there’s plenty of people who see no contradiction, provided the ‘creation’ in question is not the Biblically literal variety. Such people are called theistic evolutionists, and there’s a lot of them, including many biologists. I would argue against them, for a number of reasons, but evolution does not mean that god was definitively not involved. Might he not have worked through the natural laws and mechanisms he himself set up? Does it? I’d be very grateful to know what passage(s) that’s in please. I’ve heard it said, but not come across it put bluntly. Oh dear. For once, I’m loathe to give out these links. But you’ve forced my hand. Personally, if I were you, I would wish to distance myself as far as possible from God being the ‘initiator’ of living organisms. Because the god we can deduce is an incompetent fool and a sadistic bastard.Here we have looked at the natural world, and noted some things about it. "God created in such a way that His invisible attributes can be DEDUCED from what is made", you say. Okay. Please could you tell me on what grounds we should not make these deductions about this God of yours?Cheers, DT

Okeley-dokeley!Um, is that the same "post #51" where you said: A situation that hasn't changed... yet you want me to respond to a later post of yours first? I'd've thought that that would just give you yet more to have to answer, but okay... Well, fifteen miles is a long way in London. It's a long way, place-wise, in the UK generally. Try telling people in Leeds that Bradford is as-near-as-dammit the same place! By your reasoning, it's not so inaccurate to claim that Southampton's Tudor House Museum is in Winchester.But you miss the point. It doesn't really matter whether you said the NHM was in Teddington London, Kennington Oxfordshire or Pennington Hampshire. It is in fact in Kensington. The point is that someone, somewhere -- you? -- did such painstaking research when criticising this museum that... they don’t even know where it is. Nor did they bother to check -- it's not like it’s difficult to find out! Did they just stick a pin in a map of London?Well excuse me if I'm not bowled over by the force of the rest of the claims (especially since they're cobblers). What’s to comment on? Please provide us with the full context of either Leakey’s quote or Pilbeam’s original. Here is why you should.This has 'out-of-context quote' written all over it. But okay, since you asked nicely...Firstly, both Leakey and Pilbeam are as 'evolutionist' as they come. Why would they be saying that their discipline is bunk? It's what they have spent most of their lives studying. Care to hazard a guess just what, physically, they have been studying?Next, it would hardly be a surprise if "a smart scientist from another discipline" would think there's little to go on. There really isn't a vast quantity of hominin fossils by volume -- which is no surprise either; it's due to the taphonomic conditions where these things are found.This is not some great secret that palaeoanthropologists lay awake at night worrying will slip out. Hardly a book on the matter goes by without the very call for caution that Leakey / Pilbeam note.You could fit the entire hominin fossil record in the boot of, well maybe a large estate. (No, I won’t translate; Americans never bother!) But the question is, so what?It is not sheer quantity that matters, but what a highly experienced anatomist and palaeontologist can tell from what there is. Show, say, a zoologist, geneticist or chemist -- ‘smart scientists’, all -- the fossils, and no doubt they would think there’s too little to go on, since many other disciplines have no trouble obtaining the basic materials of their study: they are not aware of how much information can be gleaned from a mere tooth (let alone the many whole skulls we do have).Those who do study these things, however, are skilled at finding out as much as possible from small pieces. Like -- very like -- forensics. Want to tell what the hominid ate, armed only with a tooth? Look at the microscopic wear on the enamel. And so on.Therefore all Leakey / Pilbeam are warning us of is... well, he / they put it well enough themselves: "Neither David nor others involved in the search for mankind can take this advice, of course [because then they too may as well not bother], but we remain fully aware of the dangers of drawing conclusions from evidence that is so incomplete."The conclusions in question are not whether humans evolved -- that is plain to anyone with the slightest knowledge about the fossil record (and anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, genetics...) -- but how humans evolved. Are the skulls OH24 and KNM-ER 1470 two separate species (Homo habilis and rudolfensis), or male and female of the same species (habilis)... and if they’re two species, which one is ancestral to ergaster / African erectus? Did humans evolve from Homo erectus or H ergaster? Is ergaster a form of African erectus, or a distinct species? Is Australopithecus africanus on our direct lineage, or an offshoot, and where does garhi fit?Because the evidence is so incomplete, these are difficult questions. They may be -- probably are -- insoluble till there is more evidence. But that's okay. More evidence keeps on turning up. (Sign yourself up to Nature Science Update at the Nature website, and you’ll get regular emails. Hardly one will go by without more evidence for evolution, from one discipline or another.)But notice that, though the evidence to decide specifics is limited, there is enough evidence to pose the questions! We could not wonder just how KNM-WT 15000 is related to previous and later forms if we didn't have it! But we do, and a large car boot more.And before you say it, sure, we're assuming evolution when working out the relationships. But that's only because the evidence makes no sense at all if we don't! What else are we to conclude when, the more recent the hominin fossil, the more human-like it is? See the pic I posted of the skulls. And have a browse round here: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html The fossils there are just some of the bigger, more obvious ones. And if you really are interested, spend some time looking through Fossil Hominids: the evidence for human evolution .What else but evolution are we to conclude, when we each have a tiny tail in our bums, complete with muscles that cannot move it cos it's fused into a single piece, made of the same bones that make tails, and by the same genes that make tails.What else are we to make of us having a single chromosome that is near-identical to two separate ape ones, with ours having chomosome endy-pieces (telomeres) in its middle, clearly showing that in our lineage the two chromosomes fused? Every aspect of our biology is slight-variation-on-a-theme-of-ape. and it's not merely comparison and assumption: with DNA, we have the actual patterns that are passed down lineages. And ape patterns are most similar to ours.The number of fossils is in the thousands, btw, it's just that many are pieces of skull, rib, leg bone and teeth (you did know that teeth are one of the most characteristically distinct features of mammalian species, yeah?), which is why complete skulls are so precious (and hence why you won’t find them in many museums -- there’s quite a lot, but they’re dotted around!)And finally, as already indicated, we have reason to mistrust Milton as a reported of quotes, or anything else from real science. Yes. Well, not to prove it to creationists, since they generally have hermetically sealed, lead-lined, concrete-bunker brains (it is the world that’s wrong, if it disagrees with the Bible, you see). But to any reasonable, rational person, yes. What would you like to know about these fossils? Just ask!You could also try your library: look out for Klein’s The Human Career and Aiello & Dean’s Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy.Oh, and Willow, I'm in no rush for your replies, personally; I'm just delighted that you're interested enough to reply! Don't worry about the impatient ones. Since you say you will be responding, that's fine, I won't hassle you... just yet .Cheers, DT[This message has been edited by Darwinsterrier, 12-05-2003]

Bwahahaha!Well well well... this was in fact the very first ‘problem’ a creationist ever posed me, back in 1998. Funny how creationists keep recycling the same tired old chesnuts...Please, Willow, could you, yourself, explain just how the bombardiers' mechanism works? Let me guess: you think that if you mix hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, the mixture will explode, yes?Here’s a clue that you’ve been lied to by creationists: it won’t. It won’t even get warm, though it might turn brown.How might they have evolved? Read Bombardier Beetles and the Argument from Design. Oh, and just to note that there’s not a bombardier beetle. There’s 500-odd different species of these little things, and they have a range of mechanisms. Could you tell us how many ‘kinds’ of them there are?And while you’re pondering the things your god has designed, let me remind you of all those living things designed by an idiot.TTFN, DT

Uh... was I in some way unclear then? I do apologise. Yes, that is precisely what I suspect.Whether Milton intended to decieve is neither here nor there. Until we can see Leakey’s (or Pilbeam’s) original, we can’t tell for sure, but meantime I strongly suspect that they are talking about resolving details, like the examples I listed. We can’t tell whether the skull known as OH (‘Olduvai Hominid’) 24 is a separate species from skull KNM-ER (‘Kenya National Museum, East Rudolf’) 1470, or whether they are male and female of the same species, based just on those two. So, we await more fossils which may resolve it. Theories and facts are two different animals. Facts are data; theories are explanations of that data. Therefore, evolution is a fact and a theory.There is too little data -- too few fossils -- to give a definitive answer on the precise path of human evolution. There is plenty of evidence for humans having evolved. Why else do you think that everyone -- except those with a fundy-nutcase axe to grind -- accepts it? You claim (or say Milton is claiming) that Leakey / Pilbeam are admitting there is too little evidence for human evolution. If someone else looked at it, they’d say ‘forget it’. Yet [N]either David nor others involved in the search for mankind can take this advice, of course. So there is virtually no evidence, yet they carry on regardless while knowing this. How is this not tantamount to them admitting their discipline is bunk? *sigh* Look, it’s this simple:Evolution of humans = not in doubt. All the fossils indicate it happened, and it is confirmed by several other, entirely separate scientific disciplines too.Which particular fossil species gave rise to which later fossil species, and how they are related to each other = open to question, need more data to resolve. You may quote ‘evolutionists’ all you want. Just make sure they are really saying and meaning what they seem to be saying and meaning. Creationists are notorious quote-miners, so check the original and don’t trust creationist websites. And note that, even if the person quoted really said whatever it is, it would still be merely an Argument from Authority. So the Authority must be relevant and up-to-date.And even then, science works by consensus, not by monolithic authority.How about you quote peer-reviewed papers? *bangs head on wall* From the link above:Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Well I reckon one could fit a feck (Irish term) of a lot of bits of bone in the back of a large, erm, station wagon. (A dig down through the top five pages of a Google search has left me none the wiser as to what a bread box might be. There’s a difference between parochialisms and obscurantism.)But you missed the point, once again. I don’t give a flying fruitbat what the net volume of the fossils is (though more would be nice). To repeat, it’s not how much you’ve got, it’s what you can tell from it that matters. Whole skeletons are very rare. Skulls are pretty rare. Fossil hominin remains in general are quite rare. But we nevertheless have a couple, dozens, and bloody thousands, respectively. And they all indicate evolution.For what I hope is the last time: all they don’t indicate is precisely what’s-ancestral-to-what. Nor do they indicate sudden creation. Nope. Just which ones are ape, and which are human. No I don’t. Some creationists have tried, quite gamely, to draw a line between them. It’s true that they have then struggled to say what the crucial difference is between the ones either side of the line... but you might have been able to. It's true that I'm not surprised you can't... but I didn't know without asking.I do not see why this need be so difficult. Humans are not descended from an apelike ancestor, yes? Therefore there should be no fossils of things that are more and more apelike, as we look at earlier and earlier ones, yes? It should be easy to say ‘X is human, Y is ape’. So, why don’t you try? I guess it would be difficult if you don’t know your coccyx from your olecranon though.If it is difficult, what does this tell us? That god created a range of more and more humanlike creatures, and put them in progressively younger strata?Please try to follow this bit of logic:Humans and apes are different now.Creation predicts that they always have been, since they were created separately.Evolution predicts that, since they shared a common, apelike ancestor, that earlier and earlier fossils would be harder and harder to tell ‘ape’ from ‘human’.Which prediction matches reality more closely? Eh, Willow?Tell me which are the ape ones and which are the human ones, or admit the blindingly obvious: that evolution is vindicated, that there is no ‘missing link’. We don’t need every last link to demonstrate that there is a chain. Just honest. I keep hoping that some creationist will be able to back up their assertions, or at least try to. But I see you’d rather dodge the issue.Do it for you? Okay. They’re all apes. And I justify this by pointing out that the first ones clearly are, and I cannot find any radical difference between those and the progressively later ones. It’s nothing but ‘a bit more of this’ or ‘a little less of that’. Nothing more than what microevolution -- which you’d be astoundingly stupid to deny -- can achieve.There. That was easy. Now it’s your go. There’s an old saying round here: when you’re in a hole, stop digging.Piltdown (it’s one word) lasted maybe thirty years. But it was a misfit from the start, and became more and more anomalous as more and more real (note: ‘real’, and ‘more and more’) fossils were found. It is now just a historical curiosity (it gets two paragraphs in Lewin’s 240-page introductory textbook), and only creationists seem to care about it. Why is that?And please explain which ‘Java Man’ is the fake one? Trinil? The Mojokerto, Sangiran and Ngandong specimens? As far as I can tell, Asiatic erectus is still doing just fine. So please explain just what the hell you’re on about.You only need ‘Nebraska Man’ for a complete set. Want to bring up Hoyle and Wickramsinghe’s ‘fake Archaeopteryx’ claims while you’re at it?Here’s a novel idea: why don’t you concentrate on the real fossils? Did I mention KNM-WT 15000? Ape or human? It must be one or the other -- surely it’s not ‘transitional’? Well I was last there in September, and didn’t notice any obvious empty cases. (Perhaps I was in Teddington .) Could you be more precise? What is Milton on about? Apart from being a creationist? Apart from wanting the world to be a particular way soooo badly that a little white fib or two won’t hurt?How about you pick up a proper palaeoanthropology book like Klein or Tattersall or Wolpoff or Stringer or Lewin or... I do apologise, but I’d not realised I was being logidemic. I see I used some catalogue numbers for specific fossils, and italicise the genus and species names... but a brief Google would tell you what they were if you were in any doubt. Which bits were unclear? I’ll try to rephrase. I can be as practidemic as you want, I hope!(Incidentally, Google has never heard of either logidemic or practidemic. I know enough Greek to hazard a guess, and the context is clear enough anyway, but they look like deliberately obscurantist coinages to me.)TTFN, DT[This message has been edited by Darwinsterrier, 12-08-2003]

It's hard to tell if you're being disingenuous or just plain thick here. There are thousands of fossils, it's just that they are fragmentary. Hardly any complete skeletons; a few dozen skulls; lots of single bones, and hundreds of teeth. But don't you dare say that that is not enough, till you can demonstrate that you know what an anteriorly placed foramen magnum indicates.Go learn some taphonomy. We're lucky to have what we've got.DT

I guess that you weren’t getting at me, Q, but I do try to talk simply when possible. OTOH, I don’t want to talk down to anyone either. But since I was apparently incomprehensible to Willow, here’s a glossary for the more, erm, logidemic language in my post. I do not know what level to aim this at, so if I am now talking down... well tough! Taphonomic: taphonomy is the study of how bits of living things get turned into fossils -- what happens to them as they do, how it happens, and what happens to them afterwards till they are found.Hominin: the more modern version of ‘hominid’, which I try to use but sometimes forget and use hominid instead. It is the grouping that humans -- and all their ancestors -- belong to.Palaeoanthropologists: the scientists who study fossil humans. Palaeo- means ‘old’; anthropo- means ‘man’; and -logist is someone who studies something (from logos meaning laws or rules about something).Anatomists: scientists who study how bits of bodies fit together and work.Palaeontologists: scientists who study fossils.Zoologists: scientists who study animals.Geneticists: scientists who study genes.Chemists: scientists who study chemicals and how they interact. Chemicals are the stuff that everything is made of (which is why I find it funny when people want chemical-free food: try eating a vacuum).Physiology: How a living thing functions -- breathing, getting rid of waste, getting food and digesting it, etc.Biochemistry: Chemistry of living things.Gene: in simple terms, a bit of DNA (a long string of chemicals that in certain circumstances makes copies of itself -- the chemical basis of heredity) that helps make a body or influences behaviour. Since it’s more complicated than that in reality, it can also mean ‘something that’s inherited’.Forensics: legal or crime-related science. Colloquially, it’s finding out as much as possible about something, especially an entire situation, often from small clues. My analogy in the post was between a spot or two of blood and a boot print at a crime scene (DNA analysis, where the blood is, splash pattern, etc; make of boot, size, wear pattern, how common they are, where they could have been bought, etc), and a fossil tooth (species, age of the owner, what they ate, chemical composition of the enamel, and so on).Enamel: The hard outer surface covering of a tooth.OH24 and KNM-ER 1470, etc: catalogue numbers of a couple of fossil human skulls.Homo habilis and rudolfensis: two (or possibly just one!) types of fossil humans.Chromosome: the long chunks of DNA that are found inside most living cells inside a central structure called the nucleus. (There are some exceptions which will just confuse matters.) The name means ‘coloured body’, because they were first seen down a microscope when a cell was stained with the right stuff, and they showed up as coloured.Telomeres: as I said, the endy-pieces that most chromosomes have. To repeat, humans have a chromosome with these bits in the middle of it. The halves either side of these telomeres happen to be nearly identical to two separate chromosomes in other apes.Hope that helps.TTFN, DT

Say, Willow... this thread's title is "Some Evidence Against Evolution". But all you've offered so far is a bunch of second-hand and erroneous assertions... and we're on page nine.Can we see some of this evidence now please?

The irony being, of course, that every one of my horrendously 'logidemic' words is ready currency among anyone who knows a bit about evolution. Put any of them into Google and I guarantee that hundreds of sites will drop out.There's a difference between using the common words of a discipline and deliberate obscurantism. I hereby find Willow guilty of the latter.I am, incidentally, still awaiting Willow's actual replies to my posts. It seems he/she would rather change the subject.TTFN, DT

Willow, let's cut all this pseudointellectual crap. And leave religion (which I’m sure you’d rather discuss) on one side, for now.You demanded to know where all the fossils are that demonstrate human evolution. I have told you, and shown you some, and given you links to plenty more.You have claimed not to dispute the facts of science, only their interpretation. So bloody well do so. Present an argument as to why the scientific interpretation -- that humans and apes share a common ancestor -- is wrong.You might start by actually answering some of my questions. How about whether 'Turkana Boy', the fossil catalogued as KNM-WT 15000, is ape or human? I have given you a link so you can see it; I have explained why it is exactly the sort of thing that evolution predicts, and which creation denies can exist.You have lost my patience, and most of my good will. It’s time put up or shut up.[This message has been edited by Darwinsterrier, 12-10-2003]

Sticks and stones, old chap.But it’s strange. The thing is, the more I learn about these things, the more I realise how little I do know!Take my current reading, for example. Jenny Clack’s Gaining Ground. I’ve had to set it aside for now, because I found the second chapter too hard going. It’s well written; it’s just that it is about the anatomy of a late Devonian lobe-finned fish called Eusthenopteron. Unavoidably, in order to talk about these bits of anatomy later on, what and where they are in the critter needs explaining first. So it’s paragraph on paragraph with, not jargon, but the names of the countless bones in the animal. I still don’t know a jugal from a squamosal.Or genetics. Despite A Levels in Biology and Chemistry, and all the other stuff I’ve read, I’m still totally in the dark about restriction enzymes -- I only know the name of these things, no idea what they are.Or population biology. Can’t do the maths. Or geology. Or oriental musicology. Or cancer. Or cross-stitch.But I realise that there’s still heaps to learn, and it’s interesting finding out. I now know of the existence of a load of bones in this fish, and want to know why they matter. I know that restriction enzymes exist, I now want to know what they are and what they do.So I apologise if I’ve sounded know-it-all. But I really do not see where anything I’ve said was really that complicated.All of the words I used could be explained by a short trip to Google.None of the words I used are, I promise you, very unusual to anyone with any understanding of human evolution -- the very thing you were criticising. Surely you wouldn’t criticise something without any idea of what it is... would you?And I have given you a glossary for these non-standard words.And you have not asked me to explain any of them.Yet you are still complaining about the vocabulary I’ve used.Please could you explain why I should not conclude that you’re changing the subject so as not to have to answer my points?It looks like you’d rather let this degenerate into name-calling and nastiness. Well I’m game. One advantage of a classics degree (not, note, biology or anything like that) is that I have a ready supply of gynecological and scatalogcal words that if you translated them would make your eyes water.But personally, I’d rather discuss which of us is right in our interpretation of the evidence. Which would you prefer? Huh? Who started this thread? Who demanded answers, that have been provided? Who has not yet responded to ‘matters arising’, but instead changed the subject? Who is at odds with all of modern biology, yet has come here to argue that he’s right anyway?Sure, you’re not on trial. You’re not even under arrest. You are free to leave any time you want. Liar. Please cite examples. I have gone out of my way to explain what I’m talking about. But I happily apologise for overestimating your knowledge of a subject you were criticising.But it would logically seem difficult to insult the nonexistent. (Now that’s an insult.) Now you’re just being silly. You mean the post no.1, which I responded to with post 7... which apparently literally dropped a safe on your head - checkmate.? The one in which you said you cannot refute the evidence you presented only the conclusions?You mean the post no.112 which contains a lot of waffle, but no evidence? The conclusions of which I had already challenged back in post 81?You mean the post no.136 which is nothing more than more wittering about scientists not making everything plain for lay people? The one which several people have thoughtfully replied to you about -- see especially Quetzal’s post 160...?Okay, so you’ve set up your framework for the evidence. Now you can present it, I guess...? My inability? (deep breath... Quetzal, you’ll realise how much self-control I’m expending here... )Your inability to participate in the topic you yourself started cannot be shrugged off by your trying to shift the goalposts. I’ll dismantle your other posts piece by piece if you really want. But others have already covered these side issues... and I could’ve sworn you said you had enough to reply to already. By gosh, so you did!Let me remind you: post no.51: I am so far behind in the responses you deserve.I waited patiently (post 110). The day after your post 131 (I am studying this reply and I will respond as soon as possible), I prodded gently (post 135).Finally, I got fed up.And you have the nerve to conclude that I somehow cannot participate in your change of subject?! You cheeky little coprophagus pudenda. I have yet to see the tiniest shred of evidence from you. So I repeat: put up or shut up. Please respond to my post 81. I covered this in that. So you cannot respond then?TTFN, DT[This message has been edited by Darwinsterrier, 12-11-2003]