Re: post from Holloway
H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
18 Oct 1995 23:33:41 -0400
chris brochu <gator@mail.utexas.edu> writes:
>By "deeper," I mean "laterally compressed." Most nonavian reptiles have
>compressed tails to some degree, but not like in crocodylians, sea
>snakes, or mosasaurs. The distinction is actually quite sharp.
I was just trying to start up a scenario similar to the
walking_foot/climbing_foot scenario. The point is that there
is some midpoint at which we should shift from one to the
other whereas at the extremes we don't have any problems
recognizing (via analogy again) what it is or should be.
>1. Flush the "lower vs. higher" misconception down the commode. There
>ain't such a thing.
Sure there is. HUmans are high up the evolutionary scale.
Fishes are low. So are bacteria and viruses.
You seem to be trying for the PC version of genetics :-)..
[cut>...
>are sea turtles and some plesiosaurs, but the feeding mechanisms are very
>different from those of more conventional swimmers in both cases.
What you write above is nice but I was thinking of even a bigger
picture. The face gets shorter and shorter as the humanoids become
more and more modern. Something similar occurs among apes.
And something like it occurs even when you bring in animals like
dogs etc and compare with apes.
And even more so when you bring in lizards and compare them to
dogs. There is a clear pattern which was seen long time ago
by D'arcy Thompson. So in this pattern if there is some
clear and measurable difference, does it indicate that the
longer it is more likely to be aquatic or that it's lower
on the evolutionary scale. If you don't like the phrase, then
we can use brain_mass/body-mass instead of "evolutionary scale".
Naturally I expect this to continue to evolve in the same
direction just like in scifi movies :-).. But then again
I think evolution has a direction, and others don't seem to
see it.
--
Regards, Mark
http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey
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