Difference between revisions of "Talk:Wombat"

Revision as of 01:52, July 25, 2007

Once again, it would be helpful to have actual evidence to back up the creationist ideas here. Evidence does not mean quoting an opinion from creationist books, but actual physical, observable evidence. Thanks. Palmd001 17:51, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

It's interesting to note that Reference 4 does not in any way support the assertion that it is supposed to be verifying - that there was a land bridge between Australia and Europe. Chrysogonus 05:52, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for pointing that out. I've provided a different reference. Philip J. Rayment 09:45, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Evolution of the wombat

If anyone has proof that the wombat evolved, please present it. Merely saying that some scientists "asserts" or "speculates" something tells our readers nothing.

I've heard speculation that the earth is hollow and we're all walking around on the inner surface of a sphere, with gravity pulling us outward. But without a theoretical explanation (which is falsifiable), I would dismiss such a notion as pseudoscience. --Ed Poor 11:08, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Ed, so under that logic why did you leave in the creationist section? Heck, we should remove any mention of origins related issues from all articles. I'm not going to do that since I appreciate the point of a WP:POINT sort of guideline even if we dont have one here. JoshuaZ 11:13, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Joshua, I appreciate your respect of the golden rule ("do as you would be done by"). In general, you can follow Wikipedia rules here, and "using disruption to make a point" is pretty much frowned upon here (as there). I'm glad you stopped your disruption after only one article.

Perhaps you'd like to explain why you feel the creationist section should be deleted. That is the usual "wiki" thing to do: explain one's intent or rationale, rather than engaging in an edit war. --Ed Poor 11:22, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Ed, I have to ask, Did you question the falsifiability of the theory of evolution? Also I do see where Josh is going with this. What proof is there for the creationist's claims that trumps the proof over the evolutionist claims?--TimS 11:27, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

The reasoning was (as Tim seems to have understood) was that if you consider the evolution section to be too speculative than a fortiori so is the creationist section. (Incidentally, it appears that CP agrees with me. See his recent edits restoring both). (I'll ignore your unfounded implication that I was "disruptive") JoshuaZ 11:29, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Mitochondrial and fossil evidence

JoshuaZ has inserted the line, "This hypothesis is supported by mitochondrial genetic evidence as well as fossil evidence". Not having access to his source, could he or someone please explain how the evidence support this? Thanks in anticipation. Philip J. Rayment 11:25, 7 May 2007 (EDT) (P.S. I hadn't see the section above when I posted this.)

The mitochondrial DNA divergence matches the expected phylogentic tree (actually, the ref shows slightly more, since there has been some controversy about certain details of the major marsupial evolution and the ref supports one version over another, what's known as the Marsupionta hypothesis). JoshuaZ 11:29, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

I was hoping for a little bit more detail than that (but not too much). Specifically, one of the things that anti-creationists so often overlook is that if both creation and evolution make similar predictions, then the evolutionary prediction being fulfilled does not support evolution over creation. Can you explain how the evidence supports the evolutionary view over the creationary view? If not, I don't think that bit should be in there. Philip J. Rayment 11:37, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

Well that paper and others give times of divergence based on the molecular evidence and neutral mutation rate that are close to the standard times from the fossil record. For example, the genetic evidence given in the paper gives a divergence time of around 70 million years between the Australian marsupials and the South American marsupials. This is consistent with that derived from the fossil record, which is generally put at between 60 and 90 million years or so(those numbers may be slightly, off I haven't look at some of this material in a while, but they are roughly correct). JoshuaZ 11:51, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

This little animal!!

This little animal is getting far to much attention... I mean like come on. People don't argue whether it it has evolved or not, if you can find the link then thats great. Joshua stop being so combative. Ed you always take a beating and I am glad you are stiking to your "guns". 2 or 3 of you work on this, or peacefully discuss this. Thats all folks.--Will N. 11:30, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

I would think…

that a rear-facing pouch is inconclusive at best. Here's a hypothetical evolutionary sequence:

1. Wombat is born with a mutation causing the pouch to face backwards

Now, at least one of at least two scenarios can occur:

2. Wombat is now able to dig w/o killing young, thus conferring an advantage

or

3. Wombat's young have a greater incidence of survival, thus also conferring a benefit.
   
   

Hypothetically, we could also imagine a scenario where the wombat's young better survived because predators were acclimated to forward-facing pouches. --Liπus the Turbohacker^{(contact me)} 13:03, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

True, it is not conclusive. Very few arguments taken in isolation are. However, this is just another example of an evolutionary just so story—pure speculation without any evidence and almost certainly requiring multiple interdependent biological changes, not the sort of thing that would come about "with a mutation". Philip J. Rayment 19:45, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

Are you talking about the scientific understanding of evolution of a backward facing pouch? I have never seen an evolutionary argument that says the wombat's pouch did a 180 degree rotation from front facing to backwards facing over a long period of time, rather that koalas and wombats are more closely related, and developed pouches that face backward, while other marsupials developed pouches that faced forward. It is not necessary to start from the position of a fully formed pouch: take monotremes: platypuses don't have a pouch, and an echidna has a temporary pouch. For live births with very small young, a pouch confers benefits. The direction would be less important.Myrtle 08:20, 24 July 2007 (EDT)

Perhaps you could tell us what the evolutionary understanding is? Proposing that pouches evolved separately twice is just making the evolutionary story even more incredible. Have you ever seen a pouch that is incomplete (not fully-formed/fully-evolved)? I'd suggest that such a thing is more evolutionary story-telling. Philip J. Rayment 08:34, 24 July 2007 (EDT)

The echidna has a not-fully-formed pouch. I have seen it.

As far as the evolutionary view goes, I understand that there are great variations in individuals. The heritable variations, over lots of time, end up resulting in huge differences. Genome analysis provides evidence of this.

Pouches are almost essential to marsupials, since the young are born so underdeveloped, and so it wouldn't really be a surprise if the pouch were found to have evolved multiple times.

The marsupials with backward facing pouches all use four legs to move (on two legs, a backwards facing pouch wouldn't work too well). These animals are: koala, wombat, marsupial mole, and the thylacine. The thylacine (tassie tiger) is the odd one out in this list, since it isn't (wasn't) heavily built like the other three. As for convergent evolution (similar features evolving more than once), even the eye is thought to have evolved more than once: ^[1]. Apparently, the octopus design is slightly better than ours.

Evolution describes the mechanics of how things came to be, not who did it or why. What you and I think about evolution is nowhere near as important as ensuring that conservapedia is trustworthy. I don't see how evolution is necessarily non-Christian, as the denominations of the majority of Christians accept evolution. As Pope Benedict says: "Truth does not speak against truth". Taking the line that most Christians follow would seem to be the conservative way to go, I think, unless by conservative you mean YE Creationist.Myrtle 21:52, 24 July 2007 (EDT)