Re: AAT Theory
Phil Nicholls (pnich@globalone.net)
Sat, 09 Sep 1995 21:55:14 GMT
Troy Kelley <tkelley@hel4.brl.mil> wrote:
[Polar Bear Challange Deleted]
> The fact is, the polar bear is an semi-aquatic creature and has become
>so with very little skeletal changes. Most of the aquatic changes are
>non-skeletal (i.e webbing between the toes, changes in oxygen
>consumption) which is the same as the proposed human model of
>aquaticness.
>So looking for skeletal changes to support, or refute AAT, is worthless
>if you use the polar bear as an example of an aquatic creature with very
>few aquatic adaptations.
>Troy
[Best Church-lady impression]
Well, isn't that speeeeecial!
When is a hypothesis NOT a hypothesis?
When it cannot be tested.
How can we test the AAH? Well, gosh, since fossils are almost
exclusively skeletal remains and since, according to the AAH, no
skeletal changes occur (except for those consistant with terrestrial
locomotion) then, gosh, I guess you can't test it.
Is that just circularity? Could it be Saaaaaaatin?
We have arboreal apes in the Miocene and Pliocene.
We have terrestrial hominids in the late Pliocene and Pleistocene.
Where is the suntan?
Phil Nicholls pnich@globalone.net
"There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and
that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been and are being evolved."
[Last sentence from _On the Origin of Species_, by Charles Darwin
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