Platypus sequenced!

[TheOriginalName]

And all these years I have been trying to figure out how a Duck combined with a beaver and NOW you tell me it s part snake too!!!

Yes......like all things in this great southern land it's deadly!!

Platypus are awesome creatures though - if you ever happen to be in Melbourne make sure you head to Healesville Snctuary (http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary) which is famous for it's Platypus display. I beleive they are still the only place to ever have had success in breading them.

But at the end of the day, no matter if you are a scientist or a creationist, sit back and admire the Platypus as it is truely unique!!

 

[tellner]

mrhnau, it doesn't make science incompatible with religion. It makes science incompatible, and I was very careful to say this, with revealed religion.

Science is based on a radical sort of skepticism which holds conclusions to be tentative and open to question.

Revealed religion is based on the assumption that the revelation is inarguable and fundamentally unquestionable.

A revealed religion may be true to fact.

But it is fundamentally incompatible with scientific inquiry.

That is why creationism is not and can not be science. It may or may not be true that The One Whose Name is Neither Spoken nor Written made the world in seven literal days and all the creatures in it within well defined boundaries. It is the basis of the belief that distinguishes them. The scientific approach is to examine the evidence, draw conclusions and see if how well the conclusions fit with or predict other observations. The creationist approach, once you strip away the verbiage, is that the revealed text is true and that observations may only serve to confirm it. If they do not confirm the foregone conclusion they must be reinterpreted until they do.

On one side you have "What do you know? How do you know it?"

On the other you have "G-d said it. We believe it. That settles it."

It couldn't be any clearer.

 

[tellner]

As far as the platypus goes, I have to go with Terry Pratchett. In Last Continent he holds that it was a duck designed by a committee of people who had never actually seen an uncooked duck.

When you think about it, ecologically that's not far off.

The sequencing of its genome is a fantastic thing. Whole forests, not to mention moles of innocent electrons, can and should be sacrificed to describing it and seeing how it fits in with the genomes of the three-plus different classes that it borrows from.

 

[Twin Fist]

I understand, but it gets tiresome from this end too. Being called "intellectually bankrupt" based on someones beliefs gets old after the billionth time, especially when that individual has absolutely no clue who they are talking to.

Not to mention it is RUDE and totally OFF TOPIC

 

[Xue Sheng]

Yes......like all things in this great southern land it's deadly!!

Platypus are awesome creatures though - if you ever happen to be in Melbourne make sure you head to Healesville Snctuary (http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary) which is famous for it's Platypus display. I beleive they are still the only place to ever have had success in breading them.

But at the end of the day, no matter if you are a scientist or a creationist, sit back and admire the Platypus as it is truely unique!!

Thank You, if I am ever in Melbourne I just might do that.

I have always wanted to see a live Platypus but all I have ever seen is on TV.

 

[Xue Sheng]

You know, reading through this thread I have to say I cannot quite figure out how a simple Platypus can cause such a fuss and I doubt that the Platypus much cares about religion or the lack of it

 

[Sukerkin]

From whence comes such a fuss? Quite easy really, Xue.

Because I like a quiet life, I don't take Sky-God Worshippers to task for what I see as an abrogation of reason - particularly as I grew up as manic a brain-washed religionist as any cultist could wish for.

When refusal to face facts under the umbrella of 'spirituality' is laid bare, however, there comes a point when enough is enough and tho' Tellner may make his points more pithily than I would like that does not rob them of their fundamental validity.

It does not make them O(n)T(opic) either but that's for others than me to decide on. If the thread splits that's good in my book as it seperates out the 'conversational' from the 'disputive'.

The platypus is one of four things:

a) Proof that the mythical Invisible-Sky-God has a sense of humour
b) Proof that there is no such thing as a God (see 'mythical' and 'invisible')
c) Proof that Old Mythical is cunning and plants a dead-give-away of non-existence to test the faithful
d) Cute in it's own inimitable way

I'll take (b) and (d) but other peoples choices may differ, which they are welcome to do.

 

[Xue Sheng]

The platypus is one of four things:

a) Proof that the mythical Invisible-Sky-God has a sense of humour
b) Proof that there is no such thing as a God (see 'mythical' and 'invisible')
c) Proof that Old Mythical is cunning and plants a dead-give-away of non-existence to test the faithful
d) Cute in it's own inimitable way

I'll take (b) and (d) but other peoples choices may differ, which they are welcome to do.

Or proof that some how a beaver a duck and a snake got busy

I understand what you are saying but I guess it is to me simply a platypus, pretty cool in my opinion, but still just a platypus and not really proof of much other that nature is pretty amazing sometimes.

:asian:

 

[Steel Tiger]

Always interesting to see this kind of thing. 166 million years since we had a common ancestor, that's pretty cool. That's firmly in the Jurassic which is interesting from the point of view of mammal evolution. For so long no one has really looked at the earliest development of mammals, writing them off as a collection of small homologous creatures. But studies like this open up our perception of the diversity of the earliest mammal life.


You know, the only thing we don't have a venomous version of is a lizard, have to go to America for that one.

 

[Makalakumu]

Mammalian evolution is so interesting. Mammals first evolved in the Permian and when the Great Dying came about, they were one of the survivors out of the ten that died. When dinosaurs came on the scene, they out competed the mammals and won out.

Things didn't change much until the Jurrasic when Pangaea started to break up.

Mammals were not much different from reptiles at this time. Most early mammals, according the fossil evidence, which isn't much admittedly, laid eggs, had specialized teeth, and lived in burrows.

When Laurasia and Gondwana broke up from each other a split occured in mammals. The marsupials and monotremes remained mostly in the south while the placentals developed in the north.

The platypus is a throwback to an ancient time. It is the coelocanth of the mammalian world. For instance, the platypus nurses and doesn't have nipples. The platypus secrets milk from a diffuse network of glands on its belly that its young lick as it drains in rivulets.

This is very instructive because it gives biologists a clue as to why the nipple developed.

 

[jks9199]

And all these years I have been trying to figure out how a Duck combined with a beaver and NOW you tell me it s part snake too!!!

My brain can’t take much more of this you know

Very interesting article however, thanks for posting it

It does conjure quite an image, doesn't... Carnal acts over nests with confused snakes wandering by...:xtrmshock:erg::uhoh: