Undermining long-held paradigms

I'm delighted to see something about Repenomamus robustus again. Exciting discovery!
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fierce mammal ate dinos for lunch It's hard to make sense of this statement. You seem to have mistaken notions about mammal evolution.No one doubted the existence of mammals all throughout the Mesozoic (dinosaur) Era. A number of species have been identified. Mammals had evolved earlier, in the Permian Era, from the therapsids. So the discovery of a previously unknown species of mammal in the Mesozoic causes no problems.It's just that this critter is very, very interesting. Most Mesozoic mammals tended to be small, shrew-like creatures. Dinosaurs and other creatures occupied most of the ecological niches. This new discovery shows us that at least one species of mammal grew large enough to pose a threat to the big boys--even if only to the baby versions of them.Mammals did not 'suddenly appear' after the K-T event--that is, after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. They had long been around. They just starting growing larger and diversifying at that point because many previously occupied ecological niches came open. What contradiction? What undermining? This is an exciting discovery that poses no problem at all for evolution. Notorious? Paleontologists are buzzed!You've got to quit snorting so much Hovind. That stuff will rot your brain. It is not unfossilized and it is not fascial tissue. It is remarkably well preserved bone marrow.Soft tissue structures of such delicacy are rarely preseved--or so scientists thought. But then, most paleontologists don't open bones, either. So this is a very exciting find and it raises the possibility of more discoveries to be made in bones we already have.Fossilization can be a very complex process mineralogically. This fossilized bone marrow certainly has the chemists going to work.Here's an excerpt from the BBC story:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | T. rex fossil has 'soft tissues'

"This may not be fossilisation as we know it, of large macrostructures, but fossilisation at a molecular level," commented Dr Matthew Collins, who studies ancient bio-molecules at York University, UK.

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"My suspicion is this process has led to the reaction of more resistant molecules with the normal proteins and carbohydrates which make up these cellular structures, and replaced them, so that we have a very tough, resistant, very lipid-rich material - a polymer that would be very difficult to break down and characterise, but which has preserved the structure," he told the BBC.

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But if there are fragments, at least, of the original dinosaur molecules, their details could provide new clues to the relationship between T. rex and living species, such as birds.

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Inevitably, people will wonder whether the creature's DNA might also be found. But the "life molecule" degrades rapidly over thousand-year timescales, and the chances of a sample surviving from the Cretaceous are not considered seriously.

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"I actually don't work with DNA and my lab is not set up to do that," said [discoverer] Dr [Mary] Schweitzer. "Our goal is more to look to see what we can find with respect to the proteins that are coded by the DNA.

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"To a large degree, most of the chemical studies that have been done suggest proteins are more durable than DNA and they have almost the same kind of information because they use DNA as their template."

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Dr Collins added: "I would agree that proteins are the molecules to go for - they are the major macromolecules in bone.

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"We've got some very interesting research coming out from a number of labs looking at stable isotopes (different forms of the same atom) in bones and clearly information about diets which comes from such isotopes may now be amenable from these dinosaur materials."

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However, he cautioned that the great age of MOR 1125 may put such detail beyond the investigating scientists.

As you can see, scientists are hardly going back to the drawing board on evolutionary theory or timescales. This fossil promises to give us exciting new information about how dinosaurs evolved. Again with the feelings! Earlier you were trying to decide your 'feelings' about the Big Bang. Every scientific discovery is something you have to decide your 'feelings' about. Well, I guess that's how it has to be when so many discoveries cure your diseases and so many other discoveries challenge your beliefs...Whatever you decide for yourself, scientists are excited, as you can see. Neither discovery poses any problem for evolutionary theory. On the contrary, both give us fascinating new details about it.Very good days for science--both discoveries.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Non-avian dinosaurs are extinct. The others are here. An object hit the Yucatan Peninsula area 65 million years ago--the time of the K-T event. No one is 'guessing' about the impact. The crater has been found and it's the right age. The environmental effects would have been severe all over the world. But the exact role of the impact in the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and the other large species is debated. No one is 'carried away.' Other natural factors are implicated, as is always the case with mass extinctions.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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.

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.

NJ writes: It's a wonderful discovery, but not because it alters anything about T Rex's extinction date (65 million years ago). The estimates I saw said 68 million years. True. ***WRONG***Another flat tire for the juggernaut.Everything else you say just waxes dramatic from the basic falsehood that the fossil is not really a fossil. The juggernaut just blew out another tire.You mention how difficult it is for soft tissue to survive 'past half a century.' This makes it obvious the material has been specially preserved--fossilized--in some way. Else, we would not have it.Read the article from the BBC. Read the scientists' descriptions of the fossilization process. Please respond.Otherwise, you may as well drop the subject. It's obvious you don't know what you are talking about. If you keep ignoring the information you have been provided, it will be equally apparent that you don't want to.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Credited quotes.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Dr Adequate writes: May we expect to see a retraction of these falsified assertions, NJ? Some of whom are still playing rugby.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

kuresu: Here's some conjecture from a non-specialist who just reads a lot.I think the effect you are talking about, kuresu, has to do with the way bodies of water can ameliorate the extremes of hot and cold temperatures. Everyone knows it's cooler on a beach or on a lake in summer than it is further inland. But bodies of water also curtail the extremes of cold temperatures in winter, even if their surfaces are frozen.A look at winter temperatures near the Great Lakes (Copper Harbor, Michigan, say, on Lake Superior) and further away (Minneapolis, Minnesota) on any given day shows this. The temperatures near the lake drop to freezing but do not keep dropping so far below. No one in Copper Harbor is going to break out the suntan lotion in January, of course. But the difference in temperature is one that could make all the difference in survival.You have an asteroid impact that swathes the earth in darkness and near freezing temperatures for six months. That shuts down a lot of photosynthesis and wipes out food chains in both the sea and land. That kind of catastrophe would run up the food chain in no time.The largest animals that require the largest quantities of food would be doomed. So out go the pterosaurs, the mosasoars, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and non-avian dinosaurs along with the largest species of fish and reptiles.Smaller animals that eat far less have an advantage. Avian dinosaurs (birds), with their insulating feathers, have an advantage in riding it out. Animals that can burrow or hibernate have an advantage. This is what crocodiles and turtles do, of course. They make burrows and hibernate through dry seasons.Small mammals would make it because they could burrow and perhaps hibernate. Many of them had been burrowing anyway to stay away from the big guys. But as omnivores they could also eat. Hard times favor the generalist. And they would have plenty in the 'fridge to nibble on: frozen dinosaur carcasses all over the landscape.

NJ writes; You're making this up. Show me the memo.I've read nothing that sets limits on how big mammals could grow during the Mesozoic. All I've read are generalizations that, based on the evidence gathered to date, they tended to be rather small. The new find does nothing to contradict this. It adds an interesting new wrinkle, but an animal that is the size of a cat as opposed to the size of a shrew is no monster--not at a time when critters the size of a double-length truck are walking around.And Mesozoic mammals tended to be omnivores, not herbivores.Another blown tire for the juggernaut. What's next? The transmission?Edited by Archer Opterix, : Quote box code.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Dr Adequate: I'd like to hear that, too.While you're at it, go for the gold.Please tell us why elephants are still around and camarosaurs are not.And why whales and dolphins are still around and mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs are not.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Format code.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Anybody have a size report for this beastie?
Just a moment...Castorocauda lutrasimilis, semi-aquatic, Middle Jurassic.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Attempted graphics link.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Many thanks, anglagard. It occurred to me we were overlooking another interesting creature.To the extent that mammals lived in forests--the habitat would provide cover in a dinosaur-dominated age--they wouldn't fossilize often. No doubt many more discoveries await us.Some friends of mine who love animals saw the picture of Castorocauda. Their first reaction:'I want one!'Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Dr Tazimus maximus writes: I mentioned the therapsids early on--not that anyone paid it much heed.And that's indeed quite a grin you have there. Please continue. I could use a refresher on the relationship between pelycosaurs, therapids, synapsids, and cynodonts, if you don't mind.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

The discovery of any kind of mammal in the Mesozoic, as everyone has said, does not pose a challenge for evolutionary theory. The existence of Mesozoic mammals during that time has long been known because mammals evolved earlier.Most terrestrial ecological niches for large creatures were occupied by non-avian dinosaurs in the Mesozoic. This makes the discovery of a Mesozoic mammal that even reaches the size or aggressiveness level of a housecat very rare. But regardless of how surprising the find or how journalism describes it, nothing about a Mesozoic mammal's size, in itself, challenges or overturns the theory of evolution. The ToE is a very big thing--a paradigm indeed--that already accounts for the existence of mammals at that time and leaves room for many possibilities about species variations. Discoveries can, and do, overturn prevalent ideas about how certain ecosystems worked. That's the exciting thing about this find. With each discovery come new insights and the picture comes into better focus.I can see why, NJ, from your perpective, it seems science gets some special break. Science revises its ideas to accommodate evidence. It can say one thing yesterday, pull out the eraser today and revise, and say another thing tomorrow--and be a healthy, worthwhile project the whole time. It admits its picture is incomplete. Filling in that picture is a learning process. Therein lies the fun.You are conditioned to value statements that remain the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Prooftexts reign; physical evidence is not needed. In that world, not having the right answer the first time is an indictment. It is the difference between a true religion and a false religion.You keep trying to hold science to the dogmatic standard of the religious world you know. The effort fails, not only because you rarely understand the discoveries to begin with, but because you don't understand the nature of scientific knowledge.Science is not religion. The two do not work the same way.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

NJ writes: What you say here is, except for the wayward last sentence, much closer to the mark.But this summary is not what you've always said. You're doing some revising of your own, though you don't admit it.To begin with, you have here declined to repeat the numerous gaffes you made about recent discoveries.And in your earlier posts you did not 'at most' say that 'ad hoc explanations are far from empiricism.' You said 'at most' a great deal more than that. Go back to your first posts and look. You spoke in terms of the entire unifying ToE. See how often you used the word 'undermined'--a word that never appears in this new formulation of what you have supposedly always said. Your first statements were far more extravagant than you acknowledge here.As you've toned down your claims you've also changed your subject. Instead of seeking to undermine paradigms you now ask us to consider whether people on message boards always mind their manners. A sizable shift in focus. Except for your use of present tense, you state the science on the point of ichthyosaur live births. Congratulations.But I find it hard to believe the mess you describe represents the content of any 'emphatic response' you received on a science board. It's nonsense. Science has long known that ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young. And why is anyone arguing for the K-T 'survivability' of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs when these groups went extinct?Something got garbled in the retelling, I'm sure. Can you provide a link? See the above. See also the title of this thread.On my monitor the heading reads 'undermining long-held paradigms.' It does not read 'questioning continuous ad hoc explanations that are far from empiricism.' _Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Brevity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.