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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
 Posted - 11/05/2006 : 03:43:27
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quote:
TOKYO — Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin off the coast of Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, according to museum director Katsuki Hayashi.
Link (on FOX news web site no less)
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by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 11/05/2006 : 04:10:35 [Permalink]
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That is certainly interesting. I wonder about it a little, as these are actually fins -- unless the photo has been jiggered. I'd like to see if what the bone structure behind them is, if any.
Time to start monitoring Aig, again. Surely their take on it will be wondrous indeed. 
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 04:29:48 [Permalink]
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Very interesting news, pleco. I'd say the rear fin set looks like it belongs there, if I didn't know better.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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woolytoad
Skeptic Friend
313 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 04:43:09 [Permalink]
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| I hope they don't eat it before they finish studying it. :P |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 14:32:33 [Permalink]
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Well, that was quick...: quote:
Dolphin found with “remains of legs”
Should creationists surrender?
by Ken Ham and David Menton
November 5, 2006
The following headline was featured Sunday morning (November 5) on Fox News Television: “Japanese Researchers Find Dolphin with Remains of Legs.”
The reporters on the Fox News channel were surprised to find that this story was even more popular than the news that the guilty verdict concerning Saddam Hussein had been handed down. One news reporter said, “I can't believe a story about a dolphin with legs beat out Saddam's verdict!”
In a way it is not surprising that a dolphin with supposed legs was the top story. The creation/evolution issue has been a hot one for years—and with school board elections coming up, and atheists like Richard Dawkins (probably the leading spokesperson for evolution today) with his book The God Delusion near the top of the bestseller list on Amazon and in The New York Times, evolutionists have been on the march across this country.
These nitwits don't know any more about it than I, which is damned little, but feel qualified to critique it anyway. 
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 11/05/2006 14:56:28 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 14:40:11 [Permalink]
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A quick lying answer often is far more effective than a slow, careful one, Filthy. Just look at Ted Haggard's first quick reply to his accuser.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 11/05/2006 14:41:10 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 15:01:16 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by HalfMooner
A quick lying answer often is far more effective than a slow, careful one, Filthy. Just look at Ted Haggard's first quick reply to his accuser.
And a fat lot of good it did him.... 
  
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 15:28:22 [Permalink]
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And a fat lot their nonsense will do for AiG. These guys are as desperate as Rev. Ted.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 19:52:40 [Permalink]
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| As if the Saddam verdict constitutes news. That whole trial was a circus. I imagined it might have been planned to end today long before the war became so obviously a mistake. I can see Bush a year ago saying, have Saddam's verdict and sentencing right before the election to bolster our image as winning the war on terror. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2006 : 20:37:00 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
As if the Saddam verdict constitutes news. That whole trial was a circus. I imagined it might have been planned to end today long before the war became so obviously a mistake. I can see Bush a year ago saying, have Saddam's verdict and sentencing right before the election to bolster our image as winning the war on terror.
And then the Bush Bunch arranges for this dolphin to be discovered? Karl Rove must really be losing his touch, if not his mind. A lame (not to mention confusing) last-minute attempt to influence elections, if ever I saw one!
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 00:40:51 [Permalink]
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| I wonder if the extra fins are a help or a hindrince to the Dolphin? They don't seem to have been very dertrimental since it was able ot reach adulthood. This is the exact sort of mutation that evolution can "work with" - significant but not too gross a change. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 02:07:42 [Permalink]
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quote:
"I believe the fins may be remains from the time when dolphins' ancient ancestors lived on land ... this is an unprecedented discovery," Seiji Osumi, an adviser at Tokyo's Institute of Cetacean Research, said at a news conference televised Sunday.
Why would dolphins need fins on land?
Stupid eviluton liers, anyone can see that their make believe stories are pure fantasies.
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"Any religion that makes a form of torture into an icon that they worship seems to me a pretty sick sort of religion quite honestly"
-- Terry Jones |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 09:10:24 [Permalink]
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Having had time to give it some thought, I don't buy it. Those fins are just a little too pat, and I'm now wondering if the whole thing isn't some sort of joke.
Consider; when some regressive gene causes a deformity, that deformity is rarely, if ever, a perfect likeness of what it should be. And here, we have fins, perfect fins, showing up where legs once were.
Until I see a peer-reviewed study, I'm calling bullshit on it.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 13:22:13 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by filthy
Having had time to give it some thought, I don't buy it. Those fins are just a little too pat, and I'm now wondering if the whole thing isn't some sort of joke.
Consider; when some regressive gene causes a deformity, that deformity is rarely, if ever, a perfect likeness of what it should be. And here, we have fins, perfect fins, showing up where legs once were.
Until I see a peer-reviewed study, I'm calling bullshit on it.
Well, I don't see much reason to think this is faked. This wasn't a photo of kil's Bat Boy in a weekly tabloid.
I just don't see any motivation to go to the elaborate work of faking the fins. Some humans have tails, and I guess some dolphins have small, non-functioning, rear-limb fins.
In both cases, it's additional evidence, though minor taken by itself, of the critters' evolutionary origins. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, as Futurama reminds us.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 15:05:01 [Permalink]
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Understood, but this one is not in a scientific journal. As for going to the trouble, "Why not?" is a good a reason as any. In fact, it's better than most. Remember Piltdown? 
Not saying it's a for-sure hoax, and can't say that it's not. I'm saying it's a little too pat. And I must ask: what researchers, from where, and what are their qualifications?
Evolution selected against ventral and anal fins in cetaceans fairly early, I think. Due to their body form, these would seriously interfere with the way they swim. So everything behind the pectorals was lost except the horizontal tail flukes and, in the case of such smaller species as dolphins and porpoise, orcas, belugas, and so forth, the dorsal. The other fins are fine, indeed critical, for fish, which, mostly, propel themselves with vertical tails.
In short, I want to see somthing more authoritive than a Fox News blither before I buy it.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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