I think you have read something in here that NJ didn't actually say. He says the common idea is that those mammals that did coexist with dinosaurs were very small. I can see where 'barely eking out of existence' may be a confusing phrase, but I don't see NJ saying what you think he said.TTFN,WK

Nemesis_Juggernaut: Read in its entirety, it sure looks to me that NJ {in the role of speaking for virtually all evolutionary biologists} is denying the coexistance of (non-avian) dinosaurs and mammals as in the phrase "should have ever been contemporaneous with dinosaurs."It is possible that this is not what NJ meant, in which case I'm sure he can correct me and strive to be more concise in his use of the English language in the future.ABE - Also examine the subsequent sentence: Notice the dinosaurs first go extinct, then the proliferation of small mammals is allowed.Once again, NJ is saying, to me at least, that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists did not believe (non-avian) dinosaurs coexisted with mammals to any significant degree or over any significant timespan, if at all.Perhaps in this case proliferation implies preexistance, if one gives the benefit of the doubt.Once again, perhaps NJ can let us know what he really meant.Edited by anglagard, : clarity (for example)Edited by anglagard, : No reason given.

A religion that keeps reinventing itself may be suspect.A scientific theorey that keeps reinventing itself is a wonderful thing. The whole point of good theories is that they get adjusted when new evidence comes into play.The interesting thing about the mammal find is that in no way does it actually change the ToE.[/b]What it DOES change is the picture we have about the evolution of mammals. Mammals are only one kind of creature that has been evolving since the dinosaurs. Now we have a better picture of exactly how mammals evolved.

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NJ, how do you think this find alters the Theory rather than simply our understanding of mammal evolution?

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Unfortunatly for you there is no assertion going on. We found the impact craters. We have found the iridium layer. We can model the effects of the impact given the EVIDENCE of the impact.Others on this thread have iterated the specifics nicely enough. The only thing I would like to add is that after looking at some more evidence the thoughts are slightly changing (Oh no science must be broken!!) on the extinction of the dinosaurs. We start seeing a decline in dinosaur population before the K/T impact that correlates with changes in the Earth's environment. The K/T impact was probably just the finishing move on the dinosaurs as they were already headed for extinction.The other evidence about impacts in general is that they don't all correlate to extinction events. The K/T impact was rather large though and it is hard to imagine that it had no effect given the environmental impacts that would have occurred. The direction of the concensus now is that multiple effects over time contributed to the K/T extinction for which the impact was just the last asteroid that broke the dino's back.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

A case against evolution, huh? Other people have directly refuted that assertion so I'll take a different tack: exactly what explanation does this example build a case for?How is the presence of a dinosaur in the stomach of a small, extinct, primitive mammal that died more than 65 million years ago evidence for, say, a model of special creation by God of all organisms 6000 years ago?Don't tell us what this is evidence against, because this is entirely consistent with the evolutionary model. Tell us what this is supposed to be evidence for, in your view.

Of course if one were to believe in the typical theory of evolution that they had to be contemporaneous at some point. However, just as the article described, this discovery undermines what biologists and paleontologists previously believed. What everyone believed was that tiny, shrewlike mammals, such as the multituberculata lived in burrows and they were able to survive because they were endothermic and the saurian were exothermic who died out in a cataclysmic event. For this particular organism to have survived, one has to keep lowering the timeline, which has been increasing in frequency. Of course they would have to be contemporaneous at some point. I never suggested they weren't. What this has to deal with is pushing back the timescale that we've grown so accustomed to. Dog-sized mammals are said not to have been on earth in the early Cretaceous Period, right? And this is claimed to be known empirically through radiometric dating, right? So obviously somebody is seriously wrong. And if anyone wants to scoff at millions of years of discrepancies is more than welcome, but I see it a serious deficiency, especially when their entire credibility is on the line.

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“"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive." ”G. K. Chesterton

I don't understand the problem. Previously, all the known fossils of Mesozoic mammals were small herbivorous or scavenging mammals, so the reasonable assumption was that mammals were a small part of the ecosystem. Now fossils have been discovered that indicated otherwise. So now we have a better picture of what the Mesozoic looked like. What is the problem?

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

This has nothing to do with whether or not mammals ate dinosaurs. I know they ate dinosaurs and dinosaurs ate them, depending on the size variance. My objection lies in the timescale. Does this dicovery, coupled with a few others that were forced to change other long-held paradigms, is this going to present a problem? That's the question. That's because I didn't say "facial," I said "fascial." I'm surprised no one has heard of this argument. Surely prior to my arrival on EvC somebody had heard about this argument. I mean, I know that it was kept a little quiet in the evo community because it tends to undermine the timescale, but I'm surprised that no one seems to have heard about this.

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“"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive." ”G. K. Chesterton

And the answer is....[insert drum roll]

No!

[ /insert drum roll]

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Did you even read the article you linked to? The "dinosaur" was five inches long. The mammal was the size of a cat.

quote:

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In this case, the mammal was about the size of a large cat, and the victim was a very young "parrot dinosaur" that measured about 5 inches long.

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Paleontologists have long expressed the opinion that Laurasian mammals in the Cretaceous were both carnivorous and up to the size of cats (see, for example, Arundelconodon).The find is pretty cool - proof positive that all those folks who thought some early mammals were nest-robbers and small predators were right.Not only doesn't the article support any kind of "undermining [of] long-held paradigms", but it doesn't even support what you seem to be claiming for the find itself. Be careful, you're starting to "randman-ize" your arguments - which up to this point, while being mostly wrong, have been at least well thought out.

Well, you got me there, I thought it was a mispelling. My post #9 is therefore rendered irrelavant.I apologise for being mistaken.ABE - Note to self: Don't post when you have the fluEdited by anglagard, : No reason given.

n_j writes: You mean the theory has to keep accommodating new discoveries?Hey, guess what--that's not reinvention. That's what successful theories do. They accommodate new discoveries!The scientists like this. That's why they search for fossils in the first place. So they can get more details to explore and explain.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

The sentence is clearly badly written and ungrammatical, to make sense to me you need to insert 'only' before 'very small mammals' and you would have to move some of those commas around.AS you say it would help if NJ could tell us what he means in words we can understand.TTFN,WK

nj writes: Where are you getting this fantasy of 'no one hearing of it'? The discovery is well known and has been addressed directly in this thread.I understood your word 'fascial' at once. That word is also incorrect, as I showed you. The fossil preserves bone marrow, as I also explained. And it is incorrect to say as you did that the material was 'unfossilized.' It is indeed fossilized, but on the microbial level that allows the preservation of soft tissue and small details.I gave you a link and quoted a BBC article in which two scientists associated with the discovery were interviewed. Their responses make it clear that the discovery poses no problems for time scales or evolutionary theory.You have ignored that post. You have not addressed the corrections of fact it contains and you have reiterated the incorrect word 'fascial.' And now you put forward a fantasy that 'no one' at EvC knows of this discovery.I submit that it is NJ who is 'keeping things quiet' because the facts undermine his pet ideas.If you intend to discuss this discovery, answer my post. A good place to start would be with your detailed response to the comments by the scientists.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Obviously I'm not, as you can see in the article. The misrepresentation, not that it was malicious, came for years about how and when dinosaurs and mammals co-existed. Trilobite found contemporaneously with Coelacanth, fossilized footprints over trilobite, T-rex found with red blood cells, another T-Rex found with palpable flesh, then of course there are all the demonstrable frauds that were once unassailable "proof", such as the Heidelberg jaw, Haeckel's drawings, peppered moths, Ramipithecus, Piltdown Man, Java Man, on and on and on. Why does everyone think I said 'facial' when I said fascial? Do you really not see the profundity of such a discovery? It is said that T-Rex went extinct 70 million years ago. That means, according to evolutionists, that the specimen in question is at least 70 million years old, if not several millions of years older. Now, the tissue was found to be pliable. As well, the specimen was unfossilized and unfrozen. Obviously fossilization and freezing are excellent preserving mechanisms. But how can a logical person think that unfossilized bone, much less soft tissue, can survive decay past a few hundred years? Given the fact that examples of many human skeletal remains rarely surviving decay past 50 years indicates that in 70 million years nothing could survive past this unbelievable length of time. Oxygen accelerates the rate of putrefaction and overall decomposition, greatly. However, despite being in an airtight coffin, buried six feet under ground, many human remains rarely survive decay past half a century without the intervention of embalming techniques. Many instances where a body had been exhumed for legal cases of suspected homicide were found without any soft tissue, and sometimes, no bones survived decay altogether.I mean, I think people have been inundated with literature speaking about millions and billions of years of time with a certain frivolity. Do you really believe that soft tissue can survive decay this long? I ts extremely difficult to reconcile. And I doubt that you can truly appreciate what 70 million years actually means Yes, I was twisting my moustache, hatching a diabolical scheme to trick you all in the name of God. Be careful of your slanderous accusations."On the day of judgment, men will have to give account for every careless word they speak," -(Jesus)-Matthew 12:36

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“"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive." ”G. K. Chesterton