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Author Topic:   How did Monkeys get to South America?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 24 of 137 (499116)
02-16-2009 7:20 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Engineer
02-15-2009 10:09 PM


To explain this, evolutionists propose that monkeys, frogs, and some reptiles rafted to South America from Africa about 45 million or less years ago when the continents were supposedly closer together than the current distance of 1700 miles
Continents in the late Eocene, as reconstructed by geologists.
Not too bad, especially given the possibility of "island hopping" and the direction of the prevailing currents.
As is pointed out in the link you supplied:
Some rafts of flotsam, if they are washed out of rivers during storms and caught in ocean currents, can be more than a mile across.
Imagine monkeys having to cross the atlantic on a matt of moss and tree debris! They just drift listlessly at sea with no water for weeks, and perhaps months.
You do not say why they should have "no water", nor provide any calculations backing up your time scale.
How about this "raft story" that went 40 days and 40 nights:
Wrong. That's the period for which it rained, according to the Bible. The period for which the Ark was afloat was 371 days.
So how did the world's animals get back to their former environments from Ararat? They just rafted.....
What, all of them? Across the modern distances separating continents? All in a mere 4500 years? Without this happening once in recorded history? Without leaving anyone behind? Apparently not one single species --- nor individual --- among the platyrrhine monkey missed getting on a raft. Nor the sloths, or the armadillos, or the tapirs, or the distinctive groups of freshwater fish ...
Wow that made it a lot simpler!
No, I think the magic flood hypothesis still has its problems.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 51 of 137 (499167)
02-17-2009 12:05 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Engineer
02-16-2009 9:33 PM


Salt water is no good to drink. I think you know this already.
I do. But a raft of vegetation more than a mile in extent is not going to be without sources of water unpolluted by salt.
I assumed a sail boat is faster than rafting. How fast do you think an ocean current moves?
What figures did you use for distance?
A quick google around shows that the fastest surface ocean currents in the Atlantic would carry a raft ~ 110 miles/day. I don't have figures for the late Eocene. Given the Eocene distances and the possibility of island-hopping, I think that you're overestimating the time at sea.
The evolution approach only requires monkeys and rodents on board.
And fewer of them, traveling shorter distances, with millions more years for this rare event to happen.
So who even needs an ark anymore?
People arguing for the inerrancy of Genesis. Not that the Ark as described in Genesis would have been up to the job ...

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 Message 26 by Engineer, posted 02-16-2009 9:33 PM Engineer has replied

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 52 of 137 (499168)
02-17-2009 12:08 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by Engineer
02-16-2009 11:41 PM


ok folks, I'm using this tectonic model to caluate the speed of Brasilia, Brazil relative to Brazzaville, Congo:
UNAVCO
I get 12 mm/yr north.
In 40 million years that would be a linear travel of:
.12 cm/yr / [2.54 cm/in] / [12 in/ft] / [5250/ft/mile] * 40 x 10^6 years = 30 miles in 40 million years due north at linear speed.
That doesn't do much for an east-west separation. I did not include any rotational components.
Africa and South America are separated by at least 1700 miles.
The point of your calculation is non-obvious.

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 Message 48 by Engineer, posted 02-16-2009 11:41 PM Engineer has replied

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 Message 54 by Engineer, posted 02-17-2009 12:14 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 55 of 137 (499172)
02-17-2009 12:22 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Engineer
02-16-2009 10:44 PM


Re: Age of the earth
I said I don't know the age of the earth. I wasn't there.
The scientific age of the earth has changed a lot in my short lifetime, or I'm a half billon years older now.
The approximation has become more precise, yes. This is what we find with science: it gets better and better the more research you do.
"Taking the mean of this and the upper limit found above from the ratio of uranium to lead, we obtain 4 x 10^9 years as a rough approximation to the age of the Earth's crust." --- Russell, H.N., 1921. A superior limit to the age of the Earth's crust in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, vol. 99, pp. 84-86.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 57 of 137 (499174)
02-17-2009 12:33 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by Engineer
02-17-2009 12:14 AM


So what do you think a reasonable distance is for raft travel -- 1700 miles, 1500 miles, 500 miles?
I'd need more data about things like Eocene currents, these rafts mentioned in your link, and monkeys.
I would wonder if the modeling assumptions for south america were fudged to make the distance a whole lot closer 40 million years ago.
Let me set your mind at rest. No, they weren't.
---
You still haven't explained the point of your calculation.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 66 of 137 (499191)
02-17-2009 7:04 AM
Reply to: Message 63 by RAZD
02-17-2009 7:16 AM


Islands
But if you can show the concept is feasible without hypothetical islands (that there are no record of)
I presume the geologists had some reason for putting them there ... they're not allowed to make stuff up, you know.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 69 of 137 (499228)
02-17-2009 3:06 PM
Reply to: Message 67 by kuresu
02-17-2009 12:52 PM


Well, what seems to be wrong is that Engineer is only citing the northward component of the drift of South America, and relative to Africa, at that (Africa is also moving north, isn't it?); whereas what he should be interested in is the westward drift.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 94 of 137 (499308)
02-18-2009 8:50 AM


A Monkey On A Raft
The first google hit I got on rafts of vegetation was Charles Sutherland Elton's "The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants", which states that "a green monkey was noticed on floating timber near Java in 1883".
Where do green monkeys come from? Sub-Saharan Africa. And Java, of course, is in Indonesia.
I think an actual observation trumps an argument from incredulity.

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 Message 107 by Engineer, posted 02-18-2009 7:54 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 97 of 137 (499315)
02-18-2009 9:53 AM
Reply to: Message 85 by Engineer
02-17-2009 11:02 PM


In summary, if a monkey made it across from africa to south america I think the real problem was finding drinking water.
Well, this is where we need to know more about monkeys and rafts.
Is water, as such, necessary to a monkey's water requirements; or would succulent fruit, coconuts, even leaves, do as well? It seems to me that if I consumed nothing but fruit juice, I wouldn't die of dehydration. Do monkeys, in fact, ever come down from the rainforest canopy to drink? In a floating mat of vegetation more than a mile in extent, as your link says, might there not be places where rainwater would collect? How about in floating islands of pumice --- or would it drain through the porous rock? How much water does a small monkey need? Are there any monkeys that hibernate or estivate?
In any case, my example of a green monkey sighted off Java seems to demonstrate that traveling such distances is possible; the rest is a question of detail.
After a week or so, surely a large island of floating debris in ocean waves and swirling currents would of scattered apart.
In my long experience of EvC debates, I have never known the word "surely" to be an adequate substitute for evidence.
Why would the currents swirl? Normally they are kind of ... linear. It is true that such a raft wouldn't survive a maelstrom, but this is not necessary to the rafting hypothesis. Why would the waves do anything but lift the mat of vegetation up and down? How would this apply to a pumice island?
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 112 of 137 (499490)
02-18-2009 8:41 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Engineer
02-18-2009 7:54 PM


Re: A Monkey On A Raft
It probably was from africa, but wouldn't last more than about 10 days without fresh water.
See my previous post about "fresh water".
It would take several monkeys without any competitors to establish a new population.
"Without any competitors"? But of course.
We're trying to figure out how monkeys arrived in a continent without any monkeys.
The first monkeys to get to South America had no competitors in the business of being monkeys.
This would take several trans-atlantic rafting expeditions before one of them finally succeeded in establishing a population.
Again, yes. Of course.
Surely most monkeys cast out to sea on rafts of vegetation or pumice rafts must die. We concede the point.
But there are millions of years for this to happen again and again, and the monkeys only have to be lucky once.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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 Message 107 by Engineer, posted 02-18-2009 7:54 PM Engineer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 113 by Coragyps, posted 02-18-2009 9:18 PM Dr Adequate has not replied
 Message 115 by Engineer, posted 02-18-2009 9:46 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 114 of 137 (499506)
02-18-2009 9:43 PM


Vote Of Thanks For Engineer
At least this has been interesting.
Most stuff on EvC is just the same old stupid boring crap that was refuted 100 years ago
This topic has at least made us all think and do a little research. Pumice islands? Really? Vegetation rafts more than a mile in extent? Wow. Green monkeys off the coast of Indonesia? Well I didn't know that.
To speak for myself, I've found out stuff that I didn't know by participating in this discussion, so it's been fun.
I have made a post like this before, but I think it was more than a year ago ... we really don't get interesting questions that often.
So I should like to thank Engineer.

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 121 of 137 (499527)
02-19-2009 1:36 AM
Reply to: Message 115 by Engineer
02-18-2009 9:46 PM


Re: A Monkey On A Raft
Other sources say it takes more than once because there were natural competitors in south america at the time.
First of all, name these sources.
Second, how the heck would it help for it to happen "more than once". If monkeys turn up, are outcompeted, and die out, then this doesn't pave the way for them to make it a second time.
There are other threads on the internet that have already covered this debate. At 35 million years the separation between continents was about 1400 km.
Between which continents?
I posted how geologists reconstruct the distance between northwest Africa and northeast South America. I didn't figure out the distance, I just pointed out that the distance between the continents was smaller than it is today.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 122 of 137 (499528)
02-19-2009 1:47 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by Engineer
02-18-2009 9:49 PM


Re: A Monkey On A Raft
Some evolution experts think the raft from africa borders on ridiculous.
Quote them.
The so-called "millions of years of rafting opportunity" never existed unless monkeys found a time machine.
Substantiate your statement, or consider the possibility that primatologists know more about primatology than you do.
Here's an opening post from someone considerably more expert than you are:
Hello? How did you acertain his degree of expertise? This guy who calls himself "scmarlowe" posting on a cryptozoology forum?
How did this unknown person with no references to actual obseravations acquire his considerable expertise, in your eyes?

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 Message 116 by Engineer, posted 02-18-2009 9:49 PM Engineer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 124 by Engineer, posted 02-19-2009 7:02 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 131 of 137 (499616)
02-19-2009 12:51 PM
Reply to: Message 124 by Engineer
02-19-2009 7:02 AM


Re: A Monkey On A Raft
That will take some research but I'll give you a hint: Floating Islands on the ocean fall in the category of mythology:
Floating island - Wikipedia(fiction)
Hello? You stated that "Some evolution experts think the raft from africa borders on ridiculous."
Challenged to quote them, you refer me to a wikipedia article, presumably not written by an "evolution expert", which confirms that floating islands exist and does not mention monkeys in any way.
And perhaps they know more than you as well. I provided the link to Dr. Boch's presentation in the science journal. Did you bother reading it? If not, then I can't help you.
Hello?
You wrote that ""The so-called "millions of years of rafting opportunity" never existed unless monkeys found a time machine."
I ask you to substantiate that statement, and you refer me to Dr Boch, who says no such thing.
He does say that it is "at least possible" that primates originated in America.

This message is a reply to:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 132 of 137 (499619)
02-19-2009 12:53 PM
Reply to: Message 125 by Engineer
02-19-2009 7:13 AM


Re: Rafting certainly happens!
I think there is a better case for rodents than monkeys.
What time window do you propose?
Why is a parallel evolution of monkeys from creatures of similar origin so unacceptable in two different locations?
This is one of the issues I have against the theory of evolution in it's current form.
If an event can happen once then it can happen again. It should be repeatable. If monkeys can live quite well in both South America and Africa even today, then they should be able to evolve as such from a common ancestor.
You need more evidence to support that this is indeed happening, not just with monkeys but with other species as well including humans.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. New World and Old World monkeys did evolve from a common ancestor. This is exactly what is being claimed.

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