Saturday, November 10, 2012

Every time I read about new evidence for evolution I wonder why millions of Americans deny the whole thing.

Mounted skeletons of the extinct whales Ambulocetus and Pakicetus, both found in Pakistan, respectively 48 and 49 million years old.
Just this one article from sciencecodex.com should be enough to convince an idiot to grow up and accept the reality of evolution.

Recent studies bring fossils and genes together to piece together evolutionary history

Science deniers, take a look at those ancient whales. Notice the legs? There's many more whale fossils where these fossils came from. The fossil record that describes the transition from land animals to whales is complete. There are no missing links. For more information click the label "whales".

If fossils are not enough to convince evolution deniers to grow up, they should read Recent studies bring fossils and genes together to piece together evolutionary history to understand why other branches of science provide evidence for evolution many times more powerful than fossils.

For example, from the article:

Their review discusses the profound evolutionary changes that brought about some of the more spectacular animals of today and the past, including dolphins, whales, snakes, bats, elephants, and dinosaurs. For instance, although the transition from a four-legged ancestor to something with only two forelimbs, like a dolphin, or no limbs at all, like a snake, may seem like a big leap, transitional fossils have been discovered that bridge these gaps. Additionally, using developmental genetics, researchers have come to understand that these large changes in shape involved relatively small changes in the working of just of few genes.

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Even without fossils, we have evidence of human evolution from comparative anatomy, embryology, our vestigial traits, and even biogeography. We've learned of our fishlike embryos, our dead genes, our transitory fetal coat of hair, and our poor design, all testifying to our origins. The fossil record is really the icing on the cake.

-- Jerry Coyne

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The denial of evolution requires denial of the bedrock of two centuries of biology and geology. That is quite a feat.
-- Sean B. Carroll 

For all of those who do see the overwhelming evidence of natural selection and life's descent from ancestors, and the immense span of time over which the story of life unfolded, it is, to put it mildly, baffling how so many still do not. It is absolutely astonishing and often infuriating that some take it so far as to deny the immense foundation of evidence and to slander all the human achievement that foundation represents.
-- Sean B. Carroll

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