Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utastro.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!dual!lll-crg!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!bill From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: Vestigal Organs (Addendum) Message-ID: <437@utastro.UUCP> Date: Sun, 28-Jul-85 15:46:24 EDT Article-I.D.: utastro.437 Posted: Sun Jul 28 15:46:24 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 00:35:08 EDT References: <1295@uwmacc.UUCP> <342@phri.UUCP> <366@scgvaxd.UUCP> Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX Lines: 53 > Is it possible that the whale once lived in relatively shallow habitats > and came out to walk on the land at times. After thousands of years of > living in deeper waters its legs could have suffered degeneration. > > Just a thought! > > Dan I neglected to point out that the only way that Dan's proposal differs from the evolutionary explanation is that while the fossil record shows the evolution from land mammals to whales to have taken about 50 million years, Dan would have us believe that it happened in only ten thousand years. Thus, Dan is proposing an evolutionary rate that is *5000 times as great* as those proposed by evolutionists! Which, coming from a Creationist who says that evolution doesn't happen at all, is strange, to say the least. Dan is not alone among Creationists in proposing fantastically accelerated rates of evolution. Since a simple calculation shows that only a small fraction of current species could have been accomodated on Noah's Ark (the dimensions of which are given in Genesis), not to mention the much larger number of extinct species whose fossils give mute testimony of their former presence on Earth, they propose that the present-day species arose from a very much smaller number of "basic kinds". The rate of speciation that they propose is far in excess of the wildest dreams of evolutionists. One can't get out of this by saying that the whales "devolved" rather than "evolved". Vestigialization of an existing organ is as much evolution as is the production of a new organ, and takes place at a comparable rate. In the first place, as much alteration of the genotype is required to vestigialize a formerly existing organ as to produce a previously nonexistent one. And in the second place, simplicity of phenotype is not correlated with simplicity of genotype. One way that an organ can be vestigialized is through mutations that *add additional enzymes* that repress the formation of the organ. In this case, simplification of the phenotype accompanys an *increased* complexity of the genotype. By the way, the fossil record shows that as the limbs of the former land animals lost their function in the development of whales, their nostrils moved from the normal position in land animals to the current position in the middle of the head. Take a look in the April, 1979 issue of *National Geographic* for some interesting pictures. -- "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)