#Common Descent

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

Just because you don't understand something or you find the implications distasteful that doesn't make it false. Reality is not obliged to make sense to you.

[ailurinae]

You know what time it is!

It's Karoo Supergroup time!

*plays Africa by Toto*

[dailystargatebooty]

[gender-luster]

if i had a nickel for every 'lost in space' trope scifi show i started (re)watching this year where there's a storyline in which we meet a culture that has deified one of the main characters into a savior figure who's, according to their mythology, going to come from space and save them from the planet that their ancestors got stranded on, i would have two nickels...

[allpowerfulaxolotl]

A tumblr gremlin has reminded me of another fun fact I learned recently:

According to cladistics, we users of tumblr are all fish

Cladistics is a system used to describe relationships between organisms while skirting around the labels of taxonomic classification. Instead of using the group terms of class, order, family, genus, etc., ancestral groups are all clades. Everything within an ancestral group—everything descended from a particular ancestor—is within that ancestral clade. For example, the entire kingdom of plants is a clade, and all the species of prairie grasses are also a clade.

Organisms are divided into clades based on differences in features, paying particular attention to the order in which their features evolved. For instance, skinks that give live birth wouldn’t be in a clade with cats which excludes egg laying vertebrates, because skinks and cats evolved live birth separately. However, mammals that give live birth are in the same clade as platypuses because they share a common ancestor which had three ear bones and produced milk before mammals evolved live birth.

We creatures of the internet are all within the clade Osteichthyes (ahs-tee-IC-thees)—we are descended from bony fish. Therefore, cladistically, we are fish.

You’re welcome

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

It is a fact though because that's how common descent works.

Humans evolved from an ancestral ape, and are still apes.

That ape evolved from an ancestral mammal, and it was still a mammal. So we're also mammals.

That ancestral mammal evolved from an ancestral tetrapod, and was also a tetrapod. So we're also tetrapods.

And that tetrapod evolved from an ancestral lobe–finned fish, so it was also a lobe–finned fish. So we're also lobe–finned fish.

This hierarchy of descent is what modern taxonomy is built on. Organisms are classified into groups based on common ancestry, like I outlined above.

A group made up of the last common ancestor and every descendant of that ancestor is called a 'clade'. Clades are the groups that we classify in taxonomy.

Every descendant of a clade is by definition part of that clade, similarly to how you're still in the same family as your great great grandparents. You can be very different from your grandparents but you'll never stop being related to them.

Humans can be very different from other apes, mammals, tetrapods, or lobe–finned fish but that doesn't mean we stop being related to them, and it doesn't mean we don't share ancestors with them.

Because we use these patterns of relatedness to classify organisms we're part of each of those groups by definition.

Trying to get people to realize birds are full on actual no holds barred dinosaurs on the internet is like playing a constant game of whack-a-mole

The game never ends there's just another mole to whack

whack whack whack

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

(x) David - bisexual with a strong female lean. but he describes himself as “straight but also not opposed to any random impulses that may arise”

I kind of overlooked this for a very long time admittedly, as I assume a lot of people did because I rarely appear to see this discussed in depth minus one, but like. I know this is an Andrew Garfield quote, but the actual prospect of David being fifteen feet in the closet makes so much sense. He is an incredibly notable figure in the universe of DRDT, his whole character is basically built upon that fact. Something else that's pretty obvious is that David is someone who cares a lot about how he's perceived by others. He works hard to make himself as palatable and uncontroversial as possible to other people. It's no wonder that he would hide and/or sugarcoat his attraction to men when describing his sexuality to the public, or even begin repressing it himself. And not only that, but it makes the inappropriate way he responded to Nico being forcefully outed make so much more sense

(x) David: So then, revealing your secret was a good thing, right? That way, you won’t have to be misgendered anymore. Nico: … Nico: I wasn’t ready. David: This is definitely an improvement. It’s good for everyone to be open with their secrets.

Like no wonder this man cannot be trusted to handle queer identity in a respectful way, he's repressing his own so far that it's going to come out of his ass.

[druidshollow]

ugly baby rivers is gonna be in my brain forever

its not his fault..... newborns are just ugly

(i did some rambling in the tags if u wanna look at it lol)

[toytulini]

me, stupidly and weirdly resistant to listening to audio books vs reading a physical book for no real reason: man i wish there was a way to like, read a book while i crochet like i do with tv shows and movies and podcasts

[haveyouheardthispodcast]

Propaganda and description below the cut:

Not really propaganda, but I feel like tumblr would appreciate their Halloween specials ‘Spook-ulative Evolution/Spook-E’ where they try to figure out how famous monsters (or something like them) could feasibly be produced by evolution and natural selection. I particularly love the penguin sirens.

〰

Join David and Will as they explore the paleontologists’ perspective on various topics in life and earth history.

Each episode features a main discussion on a topic requested by the listeners, presented as a lighthearted and educational conversation about fossils, evolution, deep time, and more.

Before the main discussion, each episode also includes a news segment, covering recent research related to paleontology and evolution.

Each episode ends with the answer to a question submitted by subscribers on Patreon.

New episodes with new topics every fortnight!

[stupidsexygrizzop]

hey babe are you okay? you haven't had your Trinyvale Two-Shot: Merry Metal Mayhem today :/

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

@tornadoweirdo read the post again. Read my addendum carefully.

They're absolutely not 'tailored for their particular creatures' because there's no logical reason to use the same parts for wholly different functions or vice versa. And if that were the case, why create three totally different kinds of wing? Why not just create one kind the way humans have for aircraft? Because they're not engineered at all.

Common design falls apart because the structures are not organised the way designed structures are. When an engineer needs to design a wing they don't have to start with a wheel and try to turn that into one. They're not putting unnecessary components in, like the bones in a whales flipper.

The point of design is efficiency and simplicity, and instead of this living organisms display pointless and otherwise inexplicable complexity. Evolution and common descent readily explain this as the result of both shared ancestry and the goalless nature of natural selection – it's just going with what works within the constraints of already existing variation. Unlike a designer, it can't go back to the drawing board and start over, so we end up with wings that are structurally and functionally different, and hidden and redundant complexity.

Also I would think twice before citing ICR or the Discovery Institute for anything. The former's a pseudoscientific Christian apologetics organisation and the latter's a Christian fundamentalist conservative think-tank. Neither are interested in or actually do any science.

I just think homology obliterates intelligent design purely because structures that serve radically different functions have exactly the same parts in them and yet structures with the same function are composed of totally different parts.

Why do whales have finger bones?? What could they POSSIBLY need them for?? Primates use them to grasp, carnivorans use them for walking and running. In whales they're still there but hidden uselessly inside flippers.

Why are bird wings so different from bat wings if they're both used for flying?? Why are both of these completely different from insect wings??

Why do ALL of these except insects have the same layout of bones?? Humerus, radius + ulna, carpals and metacarpals.

It's like building planes out of boat parts.

[threehuskiesinatrenchcoat]

warzone season 5 promo is really subtle huh

[ailurinae]

Time to download

@mcb3k

[permanentlycatfused]

Learning about paleontology is like:

Did dinosaurs sing to their young? Did the creatures of the Cambrian marvel at the beauty of the world? When whales walked on land, did they dream of the sea? Was there a terror-bird dawn chorus, and how different would it sound? So much of the world and it’s life has gone unwitnessed by human eyes. But it was still there. But it was still beautiful.

[rxttenfish]

OH HELL YES