Re: tree-climbing hominids
H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
15 Oct 1995 15:46:38 -0400
chris brochu <gator@mail.utexas.edu> writes:
>There are, in fact, ways of separating semiaquatic nonavian reptiles from
>their terrestrial relatives.
You're some amazing character. I've been saying from the
beginning that analogical reasoning in one form or another
is about the only thing that is used when looking at behavior
or skeleton shapes or bones and yet whenever AAT'ers try to
use anything of the sort or point things out immediately
there's a problem.
>Semiaquatic reptiles, like crocs, have deep, flattened tails; low,
>elongate snouts; short, stout limbs; and dorsally-projected orbits.
><cut>
I hope you're not saying that you went back tens of millions
of years on your time-travel machine and looked at them. If not
then obviously exactly the same problems that bedevil the
thinking processes of what's an aquatic/arboreal/terrestrial
ape will bedevil them too. For a real convincing reason you'd
still have to explain why these particular shapes would take
place in water and not land because otherwise we'd never be
sure that these changes that we observe now were not due
to some historical accident but rather to fitness criteria.
--
Regards, Mark
http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey
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