Re: Speciation (was Lung Fossils Suggest Dinos Breathed in Cold Blood)

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Thu, 15 Jan 1998 21:06:51 -0600

At 05:11 AM 1/16/98 +0800, Stephen Jones wrote:
>On Sun, 11 Jan 1998 17:58:09 -0600, Glenn Morton wrote:

>GM>First, no one is denying that dogs came from wolves. But we
>>know that from history. Suppose all you had were the bones and
>>the bones were really old. Suppose further you didn't know the
>>history of the dog. In such a case, you would have difficulty saying
>>that a chihuahua is related to a St. Bernard. The bone shapes are
>>quite different the ratios of various skeletal measurments are quite
>>different. One might note that they are related but the same
>>species? Without prior knowledge, I doubt that any future person,
>>creationist or evolutionists would place them in the same species.
>>>REMEMBER when RESPONDING TO THIS THAT THE HISTORY
>>>OF THE DOG IS UNKNOWN TO THEM. Put yourself in that position.
>
>Yes. I have. So what is your point? Obviously if there are poorly preserved
>fossils bones, it is harder to tell what species they came from. But
>even if these bones were perfectly preserved, we still couldn't see
>the point where the wolf-dog split happened. It could have taken
>100, 5000, or 50000 years, or it could have taken only 1 year - the
>fossil record cannot (unless we are incredibly lucky) reveal the
>wolf-dog speciation event(s).

Never mind Stephen. Talking with you is often an experience in redundancy
and frustration.

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm