How did the Aborigines get to Australia?

I realize that your actual point was that Ice Age land bridges would not account for the presence of marsupials in Australia because fossil evidence shows that they were already there millions of years before. Kind of like trying to claim that the arrival yesterday in New York of an airliner from Western Europe accounts for the presence of Europeans in the Americas.{More for the benefit of lurkers, though I'm sure that Chuck will stubbornly cling to his blessed ignorance:}However, land bridges did exist during the last ice age and, I'm sure, during the previous ice ages as well. During the last ice age, so much water was tied up in the ice caps that sea level was about 200 feet lower. That means that sea floor that is less than 200 feet down had been dry land during that time, thus forming what we call land bridges.Take a look at maps that also display sea depth; Google Earth provides that feature as well. The Persian Gulf is less than 200 feet deep, though beyond the Strait of Hormuz it starts to drop off; that means that during the Ice Age that was dry land. I suspect that the flooding of that region which must have been well populated may have formed the basis for Mesopotamian flood myths. Much of the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea is less than 200 feet deep, so that would have formed a well-known land bridge between Asia and North America. We can also see lots of land bridges extending from Southeast Asia through Indonesia and even extending up into the Philippines, though there doesn't seem to have been any land bridge providing a direct connection to Papua New Guinea, since most of the ocean floor there is thousands of feet deep.However, there is no land bridge connecting Asia with Australia. Separating Australia from that Southeast Asian land bridging is a trench that is thousands of feet deep. Not land-bridge material, that. Also, it looks very much like so many other trenches where one tectonic plate collides with another and the one trench starts subtending beneath the other. There is a land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea, but there is no land bridge connection from there to Southeast Asia, so still no land-bridge route for marsupials to take from Asia to Australia.Therefore, CMI's land bridge claim does not hold water.BTW, supporting Percy's source that marsupials migrated from Antarctica when it and Australia were next to each other, when we look at the sea bottom between Australia and Antarctica we see the signs of spreading that occurs when plates move away from each other, such as we see in the mid-Atlantic expansion zone. I concur, though I would have started with "huh?". Creationist migration scenarios make absolutely no sense, even if we ignore the fact that with so many species pared down to such incredibly small initial populations, it would have taken very few acts of predation (hey, carnivores have to eat too) to have brought nearly all prey species to extinction. Plus, with so many species' specialized diets, such as the koala's that require leaves from mature eucalyptus trees (of which there would have been none right after The Flood, let alone along the long trek to Australia), what would the herbivores have had to eat while trying to out-run the carnivores trying to eat them? And most of all, how did the sloths make their own migration from Central Asia to Central America? And how were they able to out-run all those hungry carnivores when their top ground speed is little better than that of a snail?As they say (I think David Ruse was credited), "Creationism is more fun than science!"

In which case they would have been wiped out by your Flood. You know, that massively catastrophic single-year event that killed off every land creature that hadn't ridden on the Ark. The event that completely changed the surface of the earth, laying down all the geological formations ... again, all within a single year.When you're making stuff up, you (plural) should at least make some attempt to keep your story straight.I'm still very curious how creationists imagine that the sloths were able to high-tail it from Central Asia to Central America, out-running all the carnivores in the process, when their top speed on the ground has been compared to that of a snail (and their speed in the trees is only a bit better).

It should also be pointed out that we are very well aware of what happens when continents move. The collision of plates against each other and their grinding past each other is a major cause of earthquakes and volcanos. If Chuck's high-speed burlesque (accompanied, no doubt, with Benny Hill music) were true, then history would have been wracked with constant and massive earthquakes and massive vulcanism. Which was not the case.Chuck needs to do what no other creationist has been willing to do: think his claims through. But another creationist in another forum long ago once revealed their secret: they don't care the least bit that their claims are nonsense nor that their own claims, including the ones made by the same creationist, contradict each other; they only care that their claims contradict what science says.

Just what exactly did the Flood do? Kill everything except for the animals brought on board Noah's Ark. Haven't you read the Bible? It wouldn't matter the least where Australian marsupials had lived before the Flood, because they would have all been killed by the very Flood that you believe did happen.If instead you want to now claim that vast populations survived the Flood where they used to live, then why all this nonsense you've been promoting about how they had migrated from where the Ark had landed? Either those original populations had been annihilated or they had survived. Which is it?Also, "Flood geology" says that the surface of the earth was changed entirely, which is also what you have promoting here with your talk of high-speed plate tectonics. Wherever those marsupials had originally lived, that place would no longer exist, most certainly not in the same place as before. Either the Flood changed the surface of the earth or it didn't. Which is it?If you're not inclined to try to keep your made-up stories straight, then please at least try to think them through for once.

When you finally present some kind of evidence that you have thought your claims through so that you are able to engage in discussion of those claims, then we can finally have a discussion. Because until you have taken the time to think them through, you will not know what you are talking about.

You know full well that I did not twist your views. You should not make such false accusations in order to avoid attempts at discussion. That is not honest.And you still have not responded to my question about the migration of sloths from Central Asia to Central America. They are very slow-moving, you know, very much slower on land than in the trees. How were they able to out-run the carnivores?If you avoid considering that long migration of the sloths, then you have not thought through the entire migration claim.Edited by dwise1, : added last paragraph

You are repeating creationist claims and are not thinking any of it through. Discussion requires that you think your position through. You are not doing that. Nor are you the only creationist to avoid at all costs thinking through their claims. Because the simplest way of exposing the falsehood of creationist claims is to think them through.

Here is what your wonderful CMI marsupial article is quoted in Message 90 as saying: According to CMI, there was indeed a race. And your "discussion-quality" "response" to Granny's serious question was "They walked ...". Answered nothing and avoided the question. And you keep wondering why we constantly plead with you to do something to end your ignorance?Sloths don't outrun anything; they can't. Sloths are arboreal animals, not ground animals. They avoid predators by staying high in the trees, coming down to the base of the tree only for their once a week bowel movement. When they do leave the trees, they are so painfully slow on the ground that they couldn't possibly get away from a predator.Trees take time to grow and mature. In an immediately post-Flood world, what trees would sloths have had to hide in. But then to also go quite literally half-way around the world, the only way they could have done it with any degree of safety would have been if a continuous canopy of trees covered every mile of that trek along whatever land bridge they would have taken. Since the post-Flood climates and terrain were obviously very much like at present, we know that they would not have had that continuous canopy of trees, even if we could assume that enough time had passed for trees to have grown enough right after the Flood that destroyed everything.If CMI's (and, by adoption, your) migration claims are to hold any water, they need to be able to address all cases. Including sloths.And, no, you were not even starting to attempt to address the case of sloths. Which makes it difficult to believe that you are interested in discussion.Ah, good, tomorrow's rice pudding has finished baking. Good night.

Indeed, that is the key question about "creation science": if Goddidit and used miracles to overcome all possible difficulties, then why insist on trying to come up with scientific explanations for everything that Goddidit? What possible purpose could that serve?Well, knowing the history, we do know the answer to that second question. "Creation science" was created as a legal subterfuge, a deliberate deception, to circumvent the court decisions that struck down the 1920's "monkey laws" in the wake of Epperson vs Arkansas (1968). Since they could no longer have laws that barred the teaching of evolution for religious reasons, they created the deception that they were opposing evolution for purely scientific reasons. So they twisted and distorted and fabricated and lied. And the courts saw through their deception. Ironically, the only ones they've been able to fool with their "creation science" lies were themselves.

First you write: And then you write: So bottom-dwelling animals lived on mountain tops at 20,000 feet above sea level? That's the completely and utterly idiotic claim that you just made.Which illustrates quite clearly how much credance to give to your rehash of silly creationist nonsense. Not only the animals, but also the plants! The trees and flowering plants saw the Flood coming and they ran up the mountains to higher ground.Portillo, you really need to actually learn something and to stop relying on stupid creationist lies.

And, actually, you finally get most of it right. The fossils were buried where they had lived and then subsequently that stratum ended up elsewhere through geological processes. That is exactly what geologists also say, though you disagree with them as to how long that took. As well as your ignoring all the other geological strata. And, yes, localized flooding did and continues to happen. Geologists are fully capable of telling rapid from slow depositation, so they're not idiots. The history of geology is born out of geologists looking for evidence of Noah's Flood, which they never have found.But that's not what you were saying in Message 155, to which I was replying. In that message, you invoked two old, old standard "creation science" nonsense claims (read "bullshit"), which claim both that fossils were of animals living at those elevations and that those animals who could see the Flood coming and were "swifter of foot" fled to higher elevations. Here is what you wrote, in case you wish to forget: Nowhere in that scenario did you speak of strata in which fossils were buried being raised to other elevations. Instead, you spoke only of life living in or moving to other elevations. The scenario to which I was responding was one in which topography did not change -- lower and higher elevations then were the elevations at which everything was buried.Your "reply" is to completely change your story. You are not sticking to your story in any way. You know full well that you have been caught in a lie and so you are making up yet another lie.Typical creationism in action.Please answer me this question. Your actions indicate that you believe that your god must be served through lies and deception. According to Christian doctrine, which Christian deity is served by lies and deception? Let me give you some clues in case you're stuck: 5 letters, starts with "S", ends with "n", has a "t" in the middle, both vowels are "a". Need any more clues?

That has already been covered in this topic. As I explained in Message 97 in response to Granny Magda's question: RAZD in turn replied to me in Message 99, describing Wallace's Line with coincides with my description ("Separating Australia from that Southeast Asian land bridging is a trench that is thousands of feet deep. Not land-bridge material, that."): Ignoring what has already been discussed will not help your case in the least.

Do you mean that red circle between Australia and Papua/New Guinea? But how is Papua/New Guinea connected to Asia? Where's that land bridge? Through those deep-sea trenches. And the deep water barrier that coincides with Wallace's Line (see again Message 187).There's a reason why Wallace found such a great difference between animals on either side of that line: there was no land bridge across that line. And hence no land bridge connecting Asia and Australia.

But what then of the Weber Line and Lydekker's Line?In reality, there's an entire region, Wallacea with Wallace's Line as its western boundary and Weber's Line as the boundary for Australian mammals and Lydekker's Line as its eastern boundary.This is all described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallacea and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line.The bottom line is still as I described back in Message 97, repeated in Message 187:

quote:

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Take a look at maps that also display sea depth; Google Earth provides that feature as well. The Persian Gulf is less than 200 feet deep, though beyond the Strait of Hormuz it starts to drop off; that means that during the Ice Age that was dry land. I suspect that the flooding of that region which must have been well populated may have formed the basis for Mesopotamian flood myths. Much of the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea is less than 200 feet deep, so that would have formed a well-known land bridge between Asia and North America. We can also see lots of land bridges extending from Southeast Asia through Indonesia and even extending up into the Philippines, though there doesn't seem to have been any land bridge providing a direct connection to Papua New Guinea, since most of the ocean floor there is thousands of feet deep.

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However, there is no land bridge connecting Asia with Australia. Separating Australia from that Southeast Asian land bridging is a trench that is thousands of feet deep. Not land-bridge material, that. Also, it looks very much like so many other trenches where one tectonic plate collides with another and the one trench starts subtending beneath the other. There is a land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea, but there is no land bridge connection from there to Southeast Asia, so still no land-bridge route for marsupials to take from Asia to Australia.

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Just to hammer the point home even more, the Wikipedia article on Max Carl Wilhelm Weber says (my emphasis added):

quote:

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He drew Weber's Line which encloses the region in which the mammalian fauna is exclusively Australasian. Weber's Line is an alternative to Wallace Line. As is the case with plant species, faunal surveys revealed that for vertebrate groups, except for birds, Wallace’s Line was not the most significant biogeographic boundary. The Tanimbar Island group, and not the boundary between Bali and Lombok, appears to be the major interface between the Oriental and Australasian regions for mammals, and other terrestrial vertebrate groups. Thus, for many invertebrates, and birds and butterflies, this interface is better represented by Weber’s Line than Wallace’s Line.

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"mammalian fauna is exclusively Australasian" refers, of course, to precisely the types of critters that Portillo is talking about (eg, "Kangaroos/wallabies" in Message 177). Which were trying to spread out of Australia, not into it, but they hit a barrier at the Weber Line that stopped their spread. If there had been a land bridge over the Weber Line, then they would not have been stopped.If Portillo still wants to insist that his land bridge connecting mainland Asia with Australia existed, then he needs to look for it along the Weber Line and the Wallace Line.