Monday, February 25, 2008

The Darwin Papers Fraud

I stumbled across a very intersting web page today called "The Darwin Papers". It was about the supposed fraud of Kathleen Hunt in her Transitional Vertebrates FAQ. I was going to quote the author, but when I left clicked, an alert popped up that said "Jesus Loves You". Very Bizarre. Anyway, toward the end of his essay he states that Dr. Hunt listed "Purgatorius" as a transitional fossil, even going so far as to describe them as "pointy-faced, small early mammals with mostly primitive teeth, and claws instead of nails. But they show the first signs of primate-like teeth; lost an incisor and a premolar, and had relatively blunt-cusped, squarish molars. " The Darwin Paper Author goes on to state how ridiculous he thinks this is, as Purgatorius, according to him, is based on only two teeth. I decided to check up on this claim. If you look at the primate fossils of her FAQ, you will see that she lists "Palaechthon, Purgatorius," before her description. Now as far as I have searched, Purgatorius is known mainly by its teeth, save one specimen that included a jawbone. But what about Palaechthon? Well, that's a different story. There's a fairly complete skull that was found (click here to see a Nature entry on it). Here is a website that contains information on several Palaechthons, and three different Purgatorius fossils.

Describing a fossil transition from a skeleton, skull, jawbones, and dozens of teeth (these being from many individuals) is a far cry from creating an in depth description based on two teeth. It may not seem like much, but the evidence of transition was made only from what we have, the dentation. Personally, I was much more impressed with the partial skeleton of Cantius Trigonodus, a so called "primitive lemur" as a transitional fossil.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Ryan,

Have you seen this website (http://www.earthsgreatestlawsuit.org/)? They want to file millions of lawsuits against churches, televangelists, and other religious organizations who have lied, cheated, and defrauded believers out of their money. They are looking for volunteers and anyone with evidence of fraud to help them build their case, and I thought of you. You seem to have plenty of evidence of deception in the name of religion and perhaps you might want to share with them all the evidence you have. You are also welcome to include the posts I submitted some time back. Good luck.

Jere Y.

The Eternal Gaijin said...

Just wanted to let you know that I've passed the 'E' for excellence rating on to you for your work here.
http://einengaijin.blogspot.com/2008/02/that-for-effort-right.html

Romeo Morningwood said...

Did you happen to catch the four winged Dinosaur on NOVA?http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/

Very interesting. It was cool to see the various theories tested in a wind tunnel. What an exciting time to be alive.

Keep up the Excellent work I really enjoy your site.

Unknown said...

Three comments in one year... Wow, I'm impressed. Boy, you really nailed those AIG guys. After that article, I'm surprised they're still in business, thought you would have shut 'em down. You're a credit to all athiests out there. Well, gotta go. I've been digging up my back yard and I found all kinds of transition fossils to play with. My favorite is a pigeon turning into a goat.

Pépé said...

When you're hit with bird shit, aren't you glad cows don't fly?