Archive: Hominids, Sex, Dino-Bird, Evo-Devo, Ion Channel, Saturn, More

Here are some of the stories we were reporting in the week of Valentine’s Day in February 2002, restored from archives.

Note: some embedded links may no longer work.

Reconstructed head of an Austalopithecine in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington. (DFC)

Into the Trash: Old Ideas About Early Man   02/15/2002
The Feb. 15 issue of Science Magazine has four articles on early man. One “State of the Disunion” address by Ann Gibbons, “ BECOMING HUMAN: In Search of the First Hominids”, describes the disarray in which paleontologists find themselves because of new findings that are challenging old views (emphasis added):

The first surprise is that more than one type of hominid may have been living between 6 million and 5 million years ago and that these very early hominids show diversity in their teeth and anatomy. That suggests a period of hominid evolution even earlier than most researchers have believed and also prompts questions about how reliably the molecular clock is calibrated …

Into the trash, in fact, may go the very definition of what it means to be a hominid, as there is now little agreement on what key traits identify an exclusively human ancestor. Nor is there agreement on which species led to Homo, or even whether the fossils represent different species or variation within a single species. “Preconceptions of a large-toothed, fully bipedal, naked ape standing in the Serengeti 6 million years ago are X-Files paleontology,” says [Berkeley anthropologist Tim] White. “What we’re learning is we have to approach this fossil record stripped of our preconceptions of what it means to be a hominid.”

Gibbons describes how the two-decade reign of Lucy as first hominid is over, and how the origin of bipedalism may have to be described as “yo-yo evolution” in the words of Martin Pickford of France. The caption of a new proposed timeline says, “Who begat whom? Researchers have a new view of hominid diversity through time, but the picture is full of question marks–indicating uncertainty about dates, classification, and lines of descent.” The spate of recent finds like Kenyanthropus, Millennium Man, Chad Man, etc. (follow the category Early Man) are either contradictory or describe not an evolutionary tree but a branching bush. The diversity between the putative ancestors appears from the very beginning. Moreover, it appears that some ancient apes may have been bipedal, removing a long-held defining criterion of hominids. Bernard Wood of George Washington University tells his students, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to distinguish the earliest hominid from the earliest chimp ancestor anymore.”

The article tries to keep an optimistic tone about what might turn up, but clearly these statements are damaging. Anyone who has faith that paleoanthropologists have any credible story of man’s descent from ape-like ancestors should read this article by Marvin Lubenow who has followed reports of human evolution for over 20 years. The situation is worse now. Today’s article basically says, (again), “Everything you were taught in school and in National Geographic and on the Discovery Channel is wrong.” Paleoanthropologists are farther away from a solution than they were two years ago.

Here’s our solution: turn around, and repent of this thine evolutionary storytelling. Instead, look at recorded history, and thou shalt find who begat whom. Luke’s genealogy, derived from Genesis 4 and 10 fits the observations perfectly by omitting conjured-up speculations about ape in our ancestry: “… Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.”  (See also next headline.)

Evolutionary Anthropologists Stretch Their Dates   02/15/2002
A million here, a few million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money, Senator Everett Dirksen used to say. Paleoanthropologists seem to have the same flexibility with their timelines as politicians do with our tax dollars, the way Ann Gibbons describes molecular dating in the Feb 15 Science, in a news focus entitled, “BECOMING HUMAN: New Fossils Raise Molecular Questions”. Evolutionists have clung to a theory that humans and chimpanzees last shared a common ancestor about 5 to 7 million years ago (emphasis added):

But with paleontologists uncovering two or more hominids already on different evolutionary paths by about 6 million years ago … some researchers say that the timing is getting too close for comfort. By molecular reckoning, before 7 million years ago there shouldn’t even be a clear “hominid” lineage. That raises the question: “Has our molecular clock been correctly calibrated?” asks Phillip Tobias of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. For now, there’s enough fudge in both kinds of data to make a consistent scenario, but some geneticists are reviewing their calculations.

To help provide more time, Swedish geneticist Ulfur Arnason thinks he can push back the ape-man divergence point to between 10.5 and 13.5 million years ago.

The key word here is fudge. It’s Skinner’s Constant in action: that quantity which, when added to, subtracted from, multiplied or divided by the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten. Apparently evolutionists have “enough fudge … to make a consistent scenario” which translates, “enough pure faith to maintain their a priori assumptions.” This article makes it clear that molecular clock dating is based squarely on evolutionary assumptions of when animals diverged, making it a classic case of circular reasoning, using evolution to prove evolution. We reported a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 10 that molecular dating is unreliable.

Animal Sex Is War, Not Love   02/14/2002
Just in time for Valentine’s Day is a story to take the romance out of your relationship: sex evolved as a battle. A press release at the University of Toronto, based on a paper in the Feb 14 Nature by Swedish researchers, explains that the battle of the sexes led to an evolutionary arms race, with males evolving means to subdue the females, and females retaliating with means to resist the males (has anything changed?). They use the example of water striders whose males have hooks on their antennae to hold onto the female, while the female has spines to hold him at bay. One of the researchers explains,

Males of most animal species benefit from mating often with as many partners as possible while females, who are already mated, lose from mating too much. Males, therefore, seek to ‘convince’ females to mate while females evolve resistance measures to foil the male’s mating attempts.

Water strider (DFC)

The press release admits, however, that “Such arms races are, however, very difficult to study. … The fact that the male and female adaptations counterbalance each other means that the underlying conflicts often remain hidden. Thus, while both sexes may be frantically battling in an evolutionary sense, their match essentially remains at a standstill.”

Let’s stop putting human emotions into insect heads, shall we? Water striders could not care less about the benefits of sex, strategizing, or convincing potential partners. They don’t care about anything. They just do what comes naturally, like little robots. Evolutionary theory has a story for everything: sexual dimorphism and monomorphism, brilliant colors and dull colors, struggle and acquiescence, selfishness and altruism. Has it really explained anything at all?

Happy Valentine’s Day anyway. Practice some love and altruism.

Another Dino-Bird Missing Link Found   02/14/2002
A news release from the Field Museum of Chicago claims that a small chicken-size dinosaur named Sinovenator found in China is the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. The fossilized bird “probably had feathers” and is about the same age as Archaeopteryx. The find is published in the Feb 14 issue of Nature.
Update 03/07/2002: in the March 7 Nature, scientists claim to have found another Dromeosaur fossil with pinnate feathers identical to those on birds. This came from the same Liaoning area of China where similar finds have been alleged. The authors claim this shows feathers evolved before flight.

Always separate the facts from the interpretations. The bones are the facts. The dates and ancestries are interpretations. Note that word “probably” about the feathers. Even though the artwork shows them, none were found. The scientific paper is more cautious than the press; it just states that a few bones are bird-like, and that it is the oldest known troodontid dinosaur. The article admits the phylogeny of the troodontids is hotly debated, and attributes some of the debatable features to the evolutionary trick card “convergent evolution.” What may be just as important about this story as the claims, is what is not said, or what will be disputed, or found out later. Evolutionists have been known to exaggerate.

State of the Evo-Devo Address   02/14/2002
Wallace Arthur in a review article in the Feb 14 Nature reports on “The emerging conceptual framework of evolutionary developmental biology” (evo-devo for short). Evo-devo is a hot new area of evolutionary research, concerned with the relation of the developing embryo–its pathways, including epigenetic influences–and classical Darwinian selection, which operates at the phenotype level. Evo-devo represents a confluence of sorts between geneticists, embryologists, and evolutionary biologists, who have tended to be somewhat isolated. Their enthusiasm revolves primarily around the discovery of highly-conserved developmental genes (homeobox or Hox genes) that control major body plans; this was highlighted in the PBS TV series Evolution as a promising answer to a fundamental mystery in evolutionary theory: how do major changes in body plans occur?

So how is evo-devo doing these days? Arthur examines in detail two of five major areas of conceptual debate among evo-devo biologists: (1) Developmental reprogramming and bias: i.e., the path from mutated gene to altered mature organism, what he calls “a mutationally driven change in something that is itself a state of change,” but cautions that this concept needs to be interpreted carefully, taking into account epigenetic factors (factors beyond just genes that can influence development). (2) Co-option and paramorphism: i.e., whether existing genes or gene “cassettes” can be recycled for other purposes (co-option) or modified into new structures (paramorphs). (Neither of these concepts is supported by much experimental work, Arthur confesses.) He asks whether evo-devo is approaching a synthesis, but cautions that there is still much we don’t understand and much work to do: “In other words, we should attack the problem at both ends–its origins in terms of mutation and reprogramming within species, and its long-term results, manifested as accumulated evolutionary divergence over hundreds of millions of years.”

The impression reading this is that evo-devo biologists really know very little at all. Evo-devo involves generalized concepts only, with no rigorous testing, and arguments on both sides of every point. Like most evolutionary theory, it is a patchwork of just-so stories connected at a few isolated points by observation, shrouded in jargon that sounds impressive, but signifying nothing you can grab onto. It is so slippery, it explains convergence and divergence, stasis and rapid change. Whenever something puzzling is found, appeals are made to the magic words convergent evolution and selection, or another hypothetical concept is introduced. There is the usual lament that much is poorly understood and more rigorous testing needs to be done (which never seems to show up). Should anybody have confidence in this group of blind guides?

Evolutionists often reply that Well, at least we are trying to understand it by scientific means. They fail to recognize that their primary assumptions might be flawed, and they are hopelessly wandering in circles or in the wrong direction, and will never get closer to a solution until they turn around. It’s interesting to note that Arthur calls Haeckel’s famous 1866 “biogenetic law” wrong (or, if partly true, only in a very general way, not in the details of his popular but faked drawings). But Haeckel with his catchy phrase Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny was the father of a then-accepted evo-devo paradigm that has since fallen into disfavor. We are not building on Haeckel’s progress, therefore; it’s like starting over. But there is no basis for confidence that history is not repeating itself here. Everywhere we look in genetics and development, we see complexity on a vast scale. Trying to force-fit these wonders into a mindset of chance and purposelessness appears doomed from the starting assumptions. In a hundred years, will biologists be looking with the same scorn at today’s paradigm? Not all motion is progress; it might just be commotion.

Answers in Genesis posted a response to the claims the Hox genes demonstrate evolution. See also a recent article by William Dembski on why natural selection cannot create anything.

A fruit fly body is only a few millimeters in length.

Navy Wants to Know: How Do Animals Excel at Lift?   02/14/2002
Certain fish and insects seem to be masters of efficient lift, and the Office of Naval Research wants to learn from the gurus.

What do the hawkmoth, the fruit fly, and the bird-wrasse fish all have in common? Over millions of years, each of these animals seems to have figured out how to achieve high-lift in their respective medium …. quickly, and with more stability and less heave, pitch, yaw, torque, drag and cavitation than man-made machines have yet been able to approach. The Office of Naval Research wants to know how they do it.

The secret: just sit around for millions of years. Time works all miracles.

Doctor’s Orders: Get Off the Sofa and Get Active   02/13/2002
The generation following The Greatest Generation is fat and lazy, says the American Physiological Society. Raised on TV, obese, lethargic and addicted to pleasure, they are crippling their own health and that of future generations. Primary care physicians need to be the first line to play drill sergeant: Get off the sofa and get active!

There’s nothing on TV worth watching anyway. Go take a hike.

Article 02/13/2002:  On the Discovery Institute website, senior fellow David Berlinski has an article for the March 1 issue of Discover magazine entitled “Einstein & Gödel.” Berlinski compares and contrasts the German physicist and the German mathematician whose lives became intertwined in common interests but different priorities and personalities, and whose theories changed our modern perceptions of space and time. Berlinski describes Kurt Gödel as a neo-Platonist who believed the world was rational, and a theist who rejected evolution and believed in an afterlife. “He dismissed the Darwinian theory of evolution,” Berlinski claims, “ and declared flatly that ‘materialism was false.’”

Rotating Gate in the Cell Membrane a “Beautiful Design”   02/12/2002
Another gateway into the cell has been explored, and it’s a beauty, say the three biochemists who describe it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Feb 12 online preprint. This one is called KcsA, a potassium ion channel that is critically important for nerve impulses in humans, but also is used by bacteria. KcsA is one of many membrane proteins that are subjects of intense scrutiny by biochemists. It is so effective, it can let in 10,000 potassium (K⁺) ions for every unwanted sodium ion (Na⁺), even though sodium ions are smaller but have same charge.

How the KcsA channel does this was a surprise. Apparently, four helical rod-shaped parts rotate clockwise in such a way as to keep parts of the gate rigid while allowing other parts to flex. To picture this in a simplified way, visualize four chopsticks hanging vertically, forming a square looking from the top down. Each stick has a pivot point about 1/3 of the way down, allowing it to rock. The bottom ends of the sticks are bundled together in the shape of an inverted teepee, in such a way that as each stick pivots, the bottoms trace out a circle. Moving in concert, they cause a rotary motion that allows the potassium ions funneling into the stiff upper part, the “selectivity filter” wide berth as they exit into the interior of the cell. The selectivity filter, like a one-way ID-checking turnstile, attracts positive potassium ions but keeps unwanted molecules out.

The authors explain how only a clockwise rotation allows the gate to work. They did not state the rotation rate of the gate, but it must be phenomenal; the throughput of KcsA is an astonishing 100 million ions per second, very near the diffusion limit. The authors apparently could not help expressing a little awe in their otherwise straightforward scientific paper; they used the word “design” twice: “The interplay of the two pivot points is a beautiful design by nature for solving the gating problem of KcsA,” and “The swinging rotational motion of TM2 helices with two pivot regions is an exquisite design by nature to ensure an effective gating of KcsA without having to loosen up the structural integrity near the intracellular side of channel in the open state.”

It’s hard not to gasp at what scientists are discovering every week in cellular biology. Who would have thought that your muscles, nerves, and brain functions are made possible by such wondrous mechanisms as these? Who can continue to believe that such molecular motors and machines could ever self-organize without intelligent design? See also a related story from Jan 16 about the chloride channel.

Dino Vomit Found   02/12/2002
To some people at least, what a dinosaur barfed is interesting. Reuters News Service reports that English paleontologist Peter Doyle found the fossilized upchuck in a quarry and claims it regurgitated from the mouth of an ichthyosaur 160 million years ago, making it the oldest dinosaur vomit yet found. See also this summary in Nature Science Update.

One of our readers asks perceptively, “How would it have remained intact, not decomposed and flushed away by rain and wind?” (Try an experiment next time you call Ralph at the beach.)

Saturn’s rings are subject to disruptive forces that would destroy them in short order.

Saturn Described as Lord of the [Young] Rings   02/12/2002
Science @ NASA says that Saturn’s rings are still a mystery 400 years after their discovery. Jeff Cuzzi, planetary scientist, says there are two reasons they cannot be as old as the solar system: (1) they are too bright (interplanetary dust should blacken them over time), and (2) they would have spread out by now due to exchanges of angular momentum between the inner moons and the ring particles. “This is a young dynamical system,” he explains. He suggests they might have formed a few hundred million years ago by a collision of asteroids, or from a wandering moon that traveled too close. A few hundred million years from now, they will be gone. The article muses, “We can only be sure that Saturn’s rings are lovely now. And if they are indeed fleeting, as such ages are reckoned for stars and planets, their short life makes them even more wonderful.”

Actually, the situation is more difficult than this article describes. There are other forces working to disrupt the rings on time scales much shorter than the assumed age of the solar system. Gas drag is drawing the inner particles in, while micrometeorite impacts and sputtering by atomic particles are blasting them away. Sunlight pressure (the Poynting-Robertson effect) should have caused many of the particles to spiral into the planet by now. 100 million years sounds like a long time, but it is only one fiftieth the assumed age of the solar system. Other estimates have put the age of the rings at an upper limit of a few tens of millions of years, or a few hundred thousand years, or less.

The particles in Jupiter’s rings are the size of smoke dust. They would quickly be obliterated if not continuously fed by the inner moons Metis and Adrastea, but that supply cannot last forever either. The rings of Uranus and Neptune are also tenuous and short-lived. These facts do not prove the solar system is young; they are just additional hurdles that planetary scientists have to overcome, concocting improbable ad hoc scenarios to maintain their sacred parameter that “the solar system is 4.5 billion years old.” Maybe some day when enough anomalies prove intractable (comets, Io’s volcanoes, lunar recession, as possibilities), a planetary scientist will arise with enough courage to question the sacred parameter itself.

Why Snowballs Feel Cold   02/11/2002
Scientists have found a new skin receptor that senses cold, but it may just be the tip of the iceberg, says Nature Science Update. According to two new studies, there may be an entire class of previously unknown receptors that open ion channels in nerve cells to give us the sensation of temperature. One researcher called this “totally unknown and extremely interesting.” Nature describes the effect of these receptors: “A snowball in the face or a chilly breeze around the ankles opens a molecular trap door in our skin’s nerve cells.” The article concludes,

Like any well-engineered system, the body’s temperature-sensing network almost certainly has back-up mechanisms. Says [Arthur] Craig [physiologist at Barrow Neurobiological Institute, Phoenix]: “Biology is based on redundancy” – the teams are probably just working on different parts of the problem. “We can be sure that the biology is more complex than either study,” he adds.

Notice the phrases well-engineered system and back-up mechanisms. This is the language of intelligent design. Evolutionists are schizophrenic. On one side of their brain they marvel at the engineering. On the other side they say there is no Engineer. They want it both ways. Sorry.

Europa’s Cracks Hint of Tides, Life   02/11/2002
Richard Greenberg of the Lunar and Planetary Lab of the University of Arizona at Tucson writes in SpaceFlight Now that Jupiter’s moon Europa might have the conditions that favor evolution of life. The tidal forces that have riddled the moon’s surface may hint at warm water that approaches the surface. “The combination of tidal processes, warm waters and periodic surface exposure may be enough to not only warrant life but also encourage evolution, Greenberg said.”

Observation: cracks in a moon’s surface. Conclusion: life. Fascinating.