June 1, 2005
WHEW! WE DON’T MIND APOLOGIZING, BUT WE’VE BEEN WORRIED ABOUT THAT LOOMING REPARATIONS CLAIM
Man 'not to blame' for extinction of giant wombat (Roger Highfield, The Telegraph, May 31st, 2005)
Humans may have been unjustly accused of wiping out the giant kangaroos, wombats and other massive marsupials that roamed Australia 40,000 years ago, new research suggests.One study by British and Australian scientists reveals today that humans co-existed with megafauna - large native animals such as the Diprotodon, a three-ton, wombat-like creature, a ferocious, marsupial "lion" and the world's all-time biggest lizard - for at least 15,000 years.
Another, by a Queensland team, suggests it was climate change, rather than early Australian aborigines, that killed off the "megafauna".
Large animals suffered extinctions on all continents except Africa and Antarctica between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. The cause has been hotly debated.
Experts have been divided over the fate of megafauna in Australia, which evolved in isolation for millions of years to give rise to the giant marsupials. Many have pointed the finger of blame at early humans.
But in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Clive Trueman, of the University of Portsmouth, and Judith Field, of the University of Sydney, used new chemical tests to establish that at least some Australian megafauna, including the largest animals, persisted until 30,000 years ago, co-existing with humans for at least 15,000 years.
By 30,000 years ago the world was in the grip of a major Ice Age. "While these findings do not free humans of all blame for the extinctions, they demonstrate that extinction was a gradual process, strongly implicating climate change as the driving mechanism," said Ms Field.
It’s funny how darwinists are always supremely confident they can explain the development of each and every aspect of unfathomably complex life, but profess to be puzzled by extinction, the only logical place their theory actually takes them.
Chances are the giant wombats and kangaroos didn't taste very good. No sense in killing something to extinction if it tastes worse than broccoli.
Posted by: John at June 1, 2005 6:58 PM"It’s funny how darwinists are always supremely confident they can explain the development of each and every aspect of unfathomably complex life, but profess to be puzzled by extinction, the only logical place their theory actually takes them."
A silly strawman and a howler in one sentence.
It's rare to compress that much nonsense into such a small space.
Jeff:
Hey, I live to amuse you. But, as over 99% of all species are now extinct, mutations are random and evolution is non-teleological, why isn't extinction the natural order? It's natural selection that is the mathematical miracle. Yet darwinists always seem to need some dramatic deus ex machina like human slaughter or climate change or meteors to explain extinction. Why not just unlucky random mutations?
Posted by: Peter B at June 2, 2005 5:16 AMPeter:
Your question gets into population statistics, a subject with which I am only notionally familiar.
That said, the short, notional answer to your question is that unlucky random mutations don't get a chance to propagate, but the lucky ones do.
Recursion is an amazing process, but it doesn't get to operate on what isn't there.
You reminded me of something, though. Sometime ago at the Daily D_ck (replace "_" with "u"; last night I couldn't post with the DD as a url--something to do with unsavory content) I wrote "Planned Obsolescence."
It seems the X-chromosome is--due to accumulating unlucky mutations--destined to fail completely, and not all that long from now.
So there's your answer. I don't suppose it is all that comforting, though.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at June 2, 2005 7:16 AM