Duck Billed Platypus

Not exactly. Remember that the monotreme of today is as distant from those early ancestors as we are.But they can still teach us much. A few years back some researchers at Duke were looking at "genomic imprinting". In their study they were looking at platypus and opossum and they expected that "genomic imprinting" would not be found in either the monotremes or the marsupials, but at least in the case of one gene, they found imprinting in the opossum.This tells us that the mechanism of "genomic imprinting" goes back even further than thought.You can read more on the study here.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Prayers going with you. Been there, had to run more than once out there.May it all work out for you.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Of course the things that make up Natural Selection can be the products of Chance. If lightning strikes and starts a fire it is chance. If a meteor falls and creates a world-wide cloud cover, it is chance. It is pure chance that the Tunguska strike happened when it did and so was over desolate parts of Siberia instead of several hours later when it would have been a strike on heavily populated Europe.To imply that even Natural Selection does not involve chance is simply to deny the obvious. Au contraire. It is indicative of someone seeking the truth as opposed to the Untruth and down right falsehoods that are Biblical Creationism.BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!This thread is on the Duck Billed Platypus and whether or not it presents any problems to the Theory of Evolution. Actually, it does not and in fact, helps answer many of those "probables" and "maybes".Some examples.The inner ear bones were originally part of the jaw, and in the monotremes, we see the bones have migrated from the jaw, but the opening for the ear is also very close to the base of the jaw as predicted.The eggs spend far more time internally that in birds and reptiles. In the Platypus, the eggs spend about 28 days in utero and only about 10 days externally, while with birds like chickens it is more than reversed, the egg being internal for about one day and then external for twenty or more days.The eggs themselves are not hard shelled like those of birds, but rather leathery like those of reptiles.The Platypus produces milk from mammary glands but has no teats. Instead the milk is simply secreted from glands like sweat glands.No, the Platypus is not a problem at all for evolution of the Theory of Evolution, but it is yet another nail in the coffin of the bankrupt nonsense called Biblical Creationism.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yes, I do not doubt that YOU might say that. That of course, is simply an incorrect statement. Natural Selection does not lead anywhere, it is only after the fact. The platypus, like every other organism, is still on its evolutionary journey but not towards anything except reproducing.

No.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Totally irrelevant. What does that have to do with mutations in monotremes? Please show where I excluded either?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Nice misrepresentation of what I have said.Mutations are random. What happens in one line is unrelated to what happens in another.The facts are that certain mutations happened and were NOT Filtered Out and that led to splits in the descent.It is not a zero sum game. If something is not fatal, and fatal before the critter reproduces, it can be carried forward.If a critter is adequately suited to live long enough to reproduce, it will continue to do so. If some of those critters have a mutation which gives them some advantage, they will also reproduce.That does not mean that the earlier form disappears.The result is two lines, a branching, but both forms are still "good enough" to live long enough to reproduce.Natural Selection does not play favorites. It does not select the "better". If a life form is "good enough" it passes through the filter.The second big mistake is to assume that the mutations for forming teats that may have occurred in monotremes were selected against. That is simply false.If at some time long in the past, some monotreme had a random mutation that led to teats, it too passed through the filter and those critters became something new, perhaps marsupials.The monotremes of the original population that did not have that mutation still kept evolving into the modern monotremes, but those with the mutation became something else.It is not that Natural Selection selected for and against the same mutation. The new mutation passed through the filter of Natural Selection and so did the critters without the mutation.Edited by jar, : No reason given.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion