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Earliest placental mammal ancestor pinpointed

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Metspitzer

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Feb 8, 2013, 4:33:57 PM2/8/13
to
The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge
group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last
been pinpointed.

An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and
genetic clues to trace the lineage.

Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small,
furry, insect-eating animal.

A report in Science resolves the debate as to when the creature lived;
it came about after the demise of dinosaurs.

That had been a hotly debated question over years of research.

Placental mammals - as opposed to the kind that lay eggs, such as the
platypus, or carry young in pouches, such as the kangaroo - are an
extraordinarily diverse group of animals with more than 5,000 species
today. They include examples that fly, swim and run, and range in
weight from a couple of grams to hundreds of tonnes.

A wealth of fossil evidence had pointed to the notion that the group,
or clade, grew in an "explosion" of species shortly after the
dinosaurs' end about 65 million years ago.

But a range of genetic studies that look for fairly regular changes in
genetic makeup suggested that the group arose as long as 100 million
years ago, with mammals such as early rodents sharing the Earth with
the dinosaurs.
'Tree of Life'

Deciphering the very distant past on the basis of fossils and animals
that are around today is inherently a subjective business.

"Comparative anatomy" - in which, for example, the forelimbs of a
number of fossils are compared to establish which are most closely
related - was the entire toolbox for the earliest palaeontologists.
The era of genetics ushered in a more incisive tool to compare
similarities across species.
Continue reading the main story
Life on ancient Earth
Planet Dinosaur : Ep4 : Fight for Life

Life explodes: Did an evolutionary 'big bang' spring from the rise
of creatures with eyes?
Walk with the dinosaurs: See the beasts that roamed long before
humans evolved
Comets and volcanoes: Find out how entire species were wiped out
in mass extinctions

But the new work tackles the question of placental mammals in
unprecedented detail, taking six years to develop a database of
physical and genetic data some 10 times larger than any used
previously - and taking a decidedly modern take on it.

"Anatomy and research in palaeontology had a very 19th Century veneer
to it - that we would sit in small groups in a lab with a fossil
describing it," said lead author of the study Maureen O'Leary of Stony
Brook University in New York, US.

"That is a very effective and important part of what we do, but by
trying to bring this into the 21st Century and using new software, we
were able to really band together as a group of experts and tackle a
much larger problem," she told BBC News.

To build the database, the team gathered more than 4,500 details of
phenotype - diet, lengths of limbs, shapes of teeth, length of fur if
any, and so on - from 86 different species that are around today, and
from 40 fossils of extinct animals.

To that they added some 12,000 detailed images and genetic information
for all of the current species, putting all the data into what Dr
O'Leary called "a supermatrix - essentially like a spreadsheet, filled
with observations and images, to create a really rich description of
mammals we'd sampled".
Neanderthal skull The work handles the tricky combination of physical
and genetic measurements

That, in essence, allows not just one or a few researchers to log
details and make comparisons of, for example, fossil or genetic data;
it becomes a problem shared - in this case, among 23 co-authors.

"That really wasn't possible until we developed this software called
Morphobank. Our experts in China or Brazil or Canada or the US or just
across the hall could all be working in one place at the same time,"
Dr O'Leary said.

By noting which traits have been preserved down the lineage and how
they are expressed, the team was able to feed their phenotypic and
genetic data into standard software that makes relationship and age
estimates - suggesting the ancestral animal lived just 200,000 years
after the extinction event that saw the end of the dinosaurs.

It also yields informed guesses as to the traits of the ancestral
animal that gave rise to them all, and the team incorporated them into
an artist's conception of what it would have looked like.

The result resolves a long-standing debate, but Dr O'Leary said it
could also contribute to a new way of tackling such thorny questions.

"I think that it will go a long way toward showing people a way
forward for using all the data... both DNA and anatomy. I think that
had been an intimidating kind of project because of its scale," Dr
O'Leary said.

"Now that we can do that... we are sort of iteratively working and
refining the 'Tree of Life' in that way."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21350900

--
Stephanie: What did you do today?
Leonard Hofstadter: Well, I'm a physicist, so I just thought about stuff.
Stephanie: That's it?
Leonard Hofstadter: I wrote some of it down.

John Harshman

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Feb 8, 2013, 4:54:48 PM2/8/13
to
On 2/8/13 1:33 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
> The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge
> group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last
> been pinpointed.

Urk. Science journalism at its worst.

> An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and
> genetic clues to trace the lineage.
>
> Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small,
> furry, insect-eating animal.
>
> A report in Science resolves the debate as to when the creature lived;
> it came about after the demise of dinosaurs.

This seems odd, considering the number of claimed Cretaceous placental
fossils. Are they all outside the crown group? Maybe, but I'd like to
see that backed up.

No subscription to Science, unfortunately.

Glenn

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Feb 8, 2013, 5:01:42 PM2/8/13
to

"John Harshman" <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:06mdnc6Pk46...@giganews.com...
Don't they pay moderators enough?

wiki trix

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Feb 8, 2013, 5:23:31 PM2/8/13
to
On Feb 8, 5:01�pm, "Glenn" <glennshel...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> "John Harshman" <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote in messagenews:06mdnc6Pk46...@giganews.com...
There are cheaper sources of toilet paper.

John Harshman

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Feb 8, 2013, 5:58:17 PM2/8/13
to
Please don't encourage the delusions of others. It's cruel.

Glenn

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Feb 8, 2013, 6:42:32 PM2/8/13
to

"John Harshman" <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:QsGdna2L96e...@giganews.com...
How does one encourage delusions? For that matter, how do you know you
haven't?

Ron O

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Feb 8, 2013, 6:45:36 PM2/8/13
to
Placental mammals including marsupials may have evolved after the
Permian extinction. There were plenty of eutherian placental mammal
lineages before the dino extinction 65 million years ago. We diverged
from cow and dogs 80 to 90 million years ago, so unless there was a
lot of parallel evolution the article is just wrong on this point.

Ron Okimoto

John Harshman

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Feb 8, 2013, 8:40:49 PM2/8/13
to
On 2/8/13 3:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> On Feb 8, 3:54 pm, John Harshman<jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> On 2/8/13 1:33 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
>>
>>> The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge
>>> group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last
>>> been pinpointed.
>>
>> Urk. Science journalism at its worst.
>>
>>> An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and
>>> genetic clues to trace the lineage.
>>
>>> Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small,
>>> furry, insect-eating animal.
>>
>>> A report in Science resolves the debate as to when the creature lived;
>>> it came about after the demise of dinosaurs.
>>
>> This seems odd, considering the number of claimed Cretaceous placental
>> fossils. Are they all outside the crown group? Maybe, but I'd like to
>> see that backed up.
>>
>> No subscription to Science, unfortunately.
>
> Placental mammals including marsupials may have evolved after the
> Permian extinction.

Certainly true. But how long after?

> There were plenty of eutherian placental mammal
> lineages before the dino extinction 65 million years ago. We diverged
> from cow and dogs 80 to 90 million years ago, so unless there was a
> lot of parallel evolution the article is just wrong on this point.

That's based on molecular clock estimates, which might be iffy.

Steven L.

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Feb 9, 2013, 9:26:52 AM2/9/13
to
On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> On Feb 8, 3:54 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> On 2/8/13 1:33 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
>>
>>> The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge
>>> group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last
>>> been pinpointed.
>>
>> Urk. Science journalism at its worst.
>>
>>> An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and
>>> genetic clues to trace the lineage.
>>
>>> Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small,
>>> furry, insect-eating animal.
>>
>>> A report in Science resolves the debate as to when the creature lived;
>>> it came about after the demise of dinosaurs.
>>
>> This seems odd, considering the number of claimed Cretaceous placental
>> fossils. Are they all outside the crown group? Maybe, but I'd like to
>> see that backed up.
>>
>> No subscription to Science, unfortunately.
>
> Placental mammals including marsupials may have evolved after the
> Permian extinction. There were plenty of eutherian placental mammal
> lineages before the dino extinction 65 million years ago.

I'm curious: How do paleontologists know whether one of these mammals
was a placental and not a marsupial, just by analyzing a fossil skeleton?

Unusually wide pelvis?


--
Steven L.

John Harshman

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Feb 9, 2013, 9:53:43 AM2/9/13
to
"Placental" isn't a condition. It's a clade. You know if something is a
placental if after phylogenetic analysis it falls into the clade
Eutheria. And you know this by various picky little characters of teeth
and bones.

Ron O

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Feb 9, 2013, 10:00:54 AM2/9/13
to
Mostly by teeth for early mammals from what I recall.

The article is lumping marsupial and eutherian placental mammals
together and is talking about the ancestor between egg laying mammals
like monotremes and the placentals like marsupials and eutherians. It
states that it is talking about the ancestor that separated us from
our egg laying ancestors.

Marsupials do have placentas. They are not just internal egg layers
that give birth after the eggs hatch inside the mother. The young are
just not as developed as most eutherian mammals at birth.

Ron Okimoto

alias Ernest Major

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Feb 9, 2013, 10:29:39 AM2/9/13
to
Fide Wikipedia, absence of epipubic bones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eomaia

but also as you speculate a wide pelvic opening.

Anyway the paper has the placental crown group as post-Cretaceous. But
is has a stem-ungulate (unlike much recent work it has ungulates as
monophyletic) at 0-400,000 years after the K-Pg boundary, which means
packing rather a few lineage splits into a short time span.

One anomaly is that while 2 fossil and 2 recent whales fall within
(Cet)Artiodactyla, Rodhocetus falls outside the ungulate crown group.

The taxon sampling is not particularly rich (86 species), and lacks any
late Cretaceous species.

It looks as if the meat will be in the supplementary materials (131pp),
which are not paywalled.

--
alias Ernest Major

alias Ernest Major

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Feb 9, 2013, 10:31:48 AM2/9/13
to
There's a number of people who consider Placentalia a subgroup of
Eutheria. The paper under discussion has quite a number of Mesozoic
eutherians which it doesn't consider to be placentals.

--
alias Ernest Major

jillery

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Feb 9, 2013, 12:21:38 PM2/9/13
to
On Sat, 9 Feb 2013 07:00:54 -0800 (PST), Ron O <roki...@cox.net>
wrote:
Richard Dawkins first introduced me to the idea that mothers and their
offspring have competing evolutionary strategies. The reproductive
mechanisms of marsupial and eutherian mammals are different responses
to that competition. I am no expert, but IIUC whatever uterine
connection develops in marsupial embryos is extremely small and
shallow compared to that of eutherian embryos, and that whatever
development occurs in utero is supported primarily by the yolk.

Jim T.

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Feb 9, 2013, 12:19:30 PM2/9/13
to
One of the authors of the the study is on CBC's Quirks and Quarks as I
speak. She claims they are able reconstruct some very specific things
about it, like that it had light fur on its belly and darker fur on
its back.

John S. Wilkins

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Feb 9, 2013, 6:48:40 PM2/9/13
to
Ooh, this is the first I've heard of this. Any reviews I can check?
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne
- http://evolvingthoughts.net

alias Ernest Major

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Feb 9, 2013, 7:41:09 PM2/9/13
to
Other than the paper under discussion, I can't offer any thing off hand,
and your google-fu is probably as good as mine. I have the impression
that (some) people as using Eutheria for the stem group and Placentalia
for the crown group. The same distinction is made between Metatheria and
Marsupialia.

--
alias Ernest Major

John S. Wilkins

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Feb 9, 2013, 8:40:05 PM2/9/13
to
Then, when I have time, I shall google-fu it. Thanks.

Walter Bushell

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Feb 10, 2013, 1:31:10 PM2/10/13
to
In article <6o6dnaY4w4h...@giganews.com>,
But some placental mammals are single celled, like HeLa.

--
This space unintentionally left blank.

pnyikos

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Feb 14, 2013, 9:42:05 PM2/14/13
to nyi...@math.sc.edu
On Feb 8, 4:54 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> On 2/8/13 1:33 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
>
> > The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge
> > group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last
> > been pinpointed.
>
> Urk. Science journalism at its worst.

Fortunately, there is a link in the article which takes you to an
abstract in the 8 February issue of Science.

> > An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and
> > genetic clues to trace the lineage.
>
> > Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small,
> > furry, insect-eating animal.

A mountain labors and brings forth a mouse, er, a small furry insect
eating animal.

[Two out of three ain't bad.] :-)

The abstract is underwhelming. Specific "discoveries" are listed in
the second half:

"Many nodes discovered using molecular data are upheld, but phenomic
signals overturn molecular signals to show Sundatheria (Dermoptera +
Scandentia) as the sister taxon of Primates, a close link between
Proboscidea (elephants) and Sirenia (sea cows), and the monophyly of
echolocating Chiroptera (bats). Our tree suggests that Placentalia
first split into Xenarthra and Epitheria; extinct New World species
are the oldest members of Afrotheria."

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6120/662.abstract

"echolocating Chiroptera"? why the qualifier? aren't they sure of
the non-echolocating ones?

Come to think of it, are there any non-echolocating Chiropterans?

Anyway, by now the monophyly of all of Chiroptera is at least as well
established as the dinosaurian origin of Aves. In fact, the only
conclusion above that is the least bit surprising is the last
sentence. I always did wonder whether "Afrotheria" is a well
supported group.

> > A report in Science resolves the debate as to when the creature lived;
> > it came about after the demise of dinosaurs.
>
> This seems odd, considering the number of claimed Cretaceous placental
> fossils.

It also flies in the face of a huge number of estimates of divergence
time in that website you gave me on another thread, John.

http://www.timetree.org/

Entering "human" and "armadillo" I get an average date of divergence
of 104.1 million years, deep within the Cretaceous. Even two animals
as close as colugos ("flying lemurs") and bats get 94.4 mya.

The lead article of this thread in talk.origins [I've added
sci.bio.paleontology] has a lot of popularized talk about the
characters of the LCA of the crown group, but very little as to how
the dates were arrived at.

I wonder what the "clincher" in the report is supposed to be, the one
that sets aside all the research behind this website. The abstract
simply states a bald claim:

"Combining these data with molecular sequences, we obtained a
phylogenetic tree that, when calibrated with fossils, shows that crown
clade Placentalia and placental orders originated after the K-Pg
boundary." [ibid.]

> Are they all outside the crown group? Maybe, but I'd like to
> see that backed up.
>
> No subscription to Science, unfortunately.

Our university library has one, and I might even be able to access it
online at my office. Here at home, it is paywalled.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

pnyikos

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Feb 14, 2013, 10:02:56 PM2/14/13
to nyi...@bellsouth.net
On Feb 9, 10:29 am, alias Ernest Major <{$t...@meden.demon.co.ukl>
wrote:

Looks like you've read the article. Do they give any clue as to how
so many earlier "molecular clock" studies are being overturned? As I
told John Harshman, figures as old as 104.1 million years are the mean
of numerous earlier studies.

> But
> is has a stem-ungulate (unlike much recent work it has ungulates as
> monophyletic)

Well, if they were only working with the crown ungulate group, that's
not too surprising. I wonder what they would do with Pantodonta and
Dinocerata.

> at 0-400,000 years after the K-Pg boundary, which means
> packing rather a few lineage splits into a short time span.

Not to mention the split between Xenartha and the rest of Eutheria,
which occurred before the first stem-ungulate, no?

> One anomaly is that while 2 fossil and 2 recent whales fall within
> (Cet)Artiodactyla, Rodhocetus falls outside the ungulate crown group.

Verrrry interesting. That double-pulleyed astragalus may not be the
be-all and end-all about whales being artiodactyls.

By the way, do they count aardvarks among the ungulates? Reason I ask
is, morphology suggested in the past that they are descended from [the
last common ancestor of] condylarths.

> The taxon sampling is not particularly rich (86 species), and lacks any
> late Cretaceous species.

Didn't they try to root their tree??

> It looks as if the meat will be in the supplementary materials (131pp),
> which are not paywalled.

<groan> That would tax even Harshman's patience, I would imagine.

Peter Nyikos

pnyikos

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Feb 14, 2013, 10:33:01 PM2/14/13
to nyi...@bellsouth.net
On Feb 9, 10:00�ソスam, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Feb 9, 8:26�ソスam, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:


> > >Placental mammals including marsupials

Nonstandard terminology, as Harshman pointed out to you.


> > > may have evolved after the
> > > Permian extinction.

This has got to be the understatement of the year!

Did you, perhaps mean to say,

"may have evolved *before* the *Cretaceous* extinction"?

But wait: this would make it seem like you are contradicting yourself
by inserting "may be" before "evolved" when compared to the next
statement:

> > > There were plenty of eutherian placental mammal
> > > lineages before the dino extinction 65 million years ago.

Are you counting marsupials here? That would make the statement
almost universally accepted.

> > I'm curious: �ソスHow do paleontologists know whether one of these mammals
> > was a placenta land not a marsupial, just by analyzing a fossil skeleton?
>
> > Unusually wide pelvis?
>
> > --
> > Steven L.
>
> Mostly by teeth for early mammals from what I recall.
>
> The article is lumping marsupial and eutherian placental mammals
> together and is talking about the ancestor between egg laying mammals
> like monotremes and the placentals like marsupials and eutherians.

Not according to the BBC website which Metspitzer was using for his
opening post:

"Placental mammals - as opposed to the kind that lay eggs, such as
the
platypus, or carry young in pouches, such as the kangaroo - are an
extraordinarily diverse group of animals with more than 5,000 species
today."

>�ソスIt
> states that it is talking about the ancestor that separated us from
> our egg laying ancestors.

Are you saying that Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC
News, got it all wrong?

Look, I suppose you can be forgiven for claiming that all marsupials
are "placentals" -- just because they have structures that some
biologists call placentas-- but this is really going out on a limb.
I'd like to see you cite from the Science article itself for this
claim of yours.

> Marsupials do have placentas.

"choriovitelline placentas," meaning that the young obtain some
nourshment from the mother through the so-called yolk sac [which
generally does not contain yolk, but is believed to be homologous to
the yolk sacs of reptiles, etc.] being in contact with the urterine
wall.

This is in contrast to the chorioallantoic placentas of most mammals,
and the placentas of primates and closely allied orders, which connect
directly to the fetus via the umbilical cord, with the vestigial
allantois and "yolk sac" off to the side, not touching the placenta.

> They are not just internal egg layers
> that give birth after the eggs hatch inside the mother.

Nor, I suspect, were ichtyosaurs. I suspect that it was the old
prejudice against "reptiles" that simply made it unthinkable that they
were viviparous. And so all the old paleontology books opted for
"ovoviviparous"-- eggs hatching inside mother.

�ソス>The young are
> just not as developed as most eutherian mammals at birth.
>
> Ron Okimoto-

Young ichthyosaurs were very well developed, btw.

Ron O

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Feb 16, 2013, 5:21:13 PM2/16/13
to
On Feb 14, 9:33�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Feb 9, 10:00�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 9, 8:26�am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> > > >Placental mammals including marsupials
>
> Nonstandard terminology, as Harshman pointed out to you.

Nyikos what are you doing in this post? Do I care about your opinion
on anything except the issues that you have run from and lied about?
No. Do you understand what kind of asshole would make the claims that
you have been making about me and then do junk like this and your
other posts to me? Who has the problem with projection? Who has the
delusional and paranoid view that there is a conspiracy to make you
look bad?

Why am I the one with the anti-Nyikos agenda when it is almost always
you that gets in my face and does something stupid and bogus? Just
demonstrating that you are incompetent and lie a lot does not mean
that I have an anti-Nyikos agenda. It just demonstrates that you are
incompetent and lie a lot.

Instead of posting stupid taunting posts like this that I could care
less about why not post your third knockdown attempt, and then stop
posting to me like you claimed that you would do over a year ago?
Just think if you had done what you claimed that you would do back
over a year ago, and did stop posting your degenerate crap to me?
There would be a lot fewer of your bogus posts that you have run from
and lied about. You wouldn't have had to do such pathetic things such
as lie about being an agnostic that goes to mass to worship the
intelligent designer of his immortal soul that he hopes lives on after
he dies.

Just because you are an assoholic doesn't mean that there is some
grand conspiracy to make you out to be an ass. A lot of posters
understand the fact that you simply are an ass. Why am I the center
of some cabal out to get you when you are the one that has been
threatening me with knockdowns and hammer blows for over a year, but
then you have always run away and lied your ass off about your
misdeeds?

What I will probably start doing is just putting up a similar message
every time that you post your stupid crap to me. Should I also start
putting up links to your pathetic knockdown attempts? If I am the one
that is out to get you, why are you always the one caught doing the
stupid and degenerate crap? Who ran from the ring in his first
pathetic knockdown attempt, and then punched himself in the face and
knocked himself out of the ring in his second degenerate knockdown
attempt. Not only was it stupid to use that bogus side thread post as
your second knockdown, but you knew it was no knockdown because over a
month after that post you were still boasting that you were soon going
to deliver the second knockdown. No time zone difference can explain
such bogus behavior.

Learn to live with reality and get over yourself.

Ron Okimoto

>
> > > > may have evolved after the
> > > > Permian extinction.
>
> This has got to be the understatement of the year!
>
> Did you, perhaps mean to say,
>
> "may have evolved *before* the *Cretaceous* extinction"?
>
> But wait: this would make it seem like you are contradicting yourself
> by inserting "may be" before "evolved" when compared to the next
> statement:
>
> > > > There were plenty of eutherian placental mammal
> > > > lineages before the dino extinction 65 million years ago.
>
> Are you counting marsupials here? �That would make the statement
> almost universally accepted.
>
> > > I'm curious: �How do paleontologists know whether one of these mammals
> > > was a placenta land not a marsupial, just by analyzing a fossil skeleton?
>
> > > Unusually wide pelvis?
>
> > > --
> > > Steven L.
>
> > Mostly by teeth for early mammals from what I recall.
>
> > The article is lumping marsupial and eutherian placental mammals
> > together and is talking about the ancestor between egg laying mammals
> > like monotremes and the placentals like marsupials and eutherians.
>
> Not according to the BBC website which Metspitzer was using for his
> opening post:
>
> "Placental mammals - as opposed to the kind that lay eggs, such as
> the
> platypus, or carry young in pouches, such as the kangaroo - are an
> extraordinarily diverse group of animals with more than 5,000 species
> today."
>
> >�It
> �>The young are

pnyikos

unread,
Feb 21, 2013, 10:55:42 PM2/21/13
to nyi...@bellsouth.net
On Feb 16, 5:21�pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Feb 14, 9:33 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 9, 10:00 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 9, 8:26 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > > On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> > > > >Placental mammals including marsupials
>
> > Nonstandard terminology, as Harshman pointed out to you.
>
> Nyikos what are you doing in this post?

I'm trying to teach you some science, and to challenge you on a wild
statement you made [see below for both].

I wouldn't have issued this challenge, if Harshman, Wilkins, etc. had
not fallen asleep on the job. But SOMEBODY needed to ask you to
support your wild statement.

[snip long rambling off-topic rant by you to get to the wild on-topic
statment made by you earlier:]

> > > The article is lumping marsupial and eutherian placental mammals
> > > together and is talking about the ancestor between egg laying mammals
> > > like monotremes and the placentals like marsupials and eutherians.

Here is why it was wild:

> > Not according to the BBC website which Metspitzer was using for his
> > opening post:
>
> > "Placental mammals - as opposed to the kind that lay eggs, such
> > as the platypus, or carry young in pouches, such as the kangaroo -
> > are an extraordinarily diverse group of animals with more than
> > 5,000 species today."
>
> > > It
> > > states that it is talking about the ancestor that separated us from
> > > our egg laying ancestors.

And here is the challenge, from which you ran away:

> > Are you saying that Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC
> > News, got it all wrong?
>
> > Look, I suppose you can be forgiven for claiming that all marsupials
> > are "placentals" -- just because they have structures that some
> > biologists call placentas-- but this is really going out on a limb.
> > I'd like to see you cite from the Science article itself for this
> > claim of yours.

I've snipped the rest, which was a science lesson by me on the subject
of how marsupial "placentas" differ from those of "Placental mammals -
as opposed to..." [see above]

Peter Nyikos

Ron O

unread,
Feb 22, 2013, 8:27:11 AM2/22/13
to
On Feb 21, 9:55�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Feb 16, 5:21 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 14, 9:33 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 9, 10:00 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 9, 8:26 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > > > On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> > > > > >Placental mammals including marsupials
>
> > > Nonstandard terminology, as Harshman pointed out to you.
>
> > Nyikos what are you doing in this post?
>
> I'm trying to teach you some science, and to challenge you on a wild
> statement you made [see below for both].

Do I care what your opinion is on this topic?

Do you really believe what you wrote? Remember that you never lie on
the internet, so a simple yes or no will do.

What would you do if someone was being as bogus as you are in my
case? Really, Who has done all the bogus junk and then just runs and
lies about it? If anyone was doing to you what you are guilty of what
would you be doing? What do you claim in your projective behavior?
How could the guy that was responsible for the Dirty debating thread
make any rational claims about how unfair someone else is being to
them? Hasn't it just been down hill from there? Who started that
thread? Who made the bogus initial allegations and then would not
even try to defend them? Who badgered me that I had to respond to
your second post to someone else in that thread? Who lied about never
running misdirection ploys? Who made up the whole dirty debating
story that you told to that poster? Who ran and just started more
threads to rag on me when his foul up was obvious?

What you snipped out:

QUOTE:
END QUOTE:

This is going to be my standard response to you and you know why.
Just review your bogus and degenerate posts for the last year and a
half. Who hasn't had an issue to honestly discuss with me for well
over a year? What are you doing in your recent "witch hunt" type
threads? Who is initiating the witch hunts? Who started the lame
"Dirty Debating" thread? Who was the dirty debater? Who has started
all those types of threads where you have been shown to be so
degenerate and dishonest? Who was being the sadist in your second
knockdown side thread? Who has the anti-Nyikos agenda when I have
never come close to making up a stupid google story to make fun of
you. You do it all to yourself. You are the biggest anti-Nyikos
influence on the web. I do not lead any anti-Nyikos cabal. Who
usually initiates our exchanges that results in you running from more
bogus deeds? You are just an assoholic that has pissed off a lot of
posters.

Don't just snip and run but reflect on how bogus and degenerate you
are. Do you want me to put up some of your paranoid delusional recent
quotes? Why don't you put up your delusional quotes and defend them
in the context of the last year and a half. Just explain the running
away from one post thread. That would be a good place to start in
explaining who has the anti-Nyikos agenda. I didn't even read your
complete post. Give me one good reason why I should have when it was
obvious after the first few lines that it wasn't going to be worth
reading. Really, do I care about your opinion on this topic? Get
over yourself and try to be what you lie about being.

Ron Okimoto

pnyikos

unread,
Feb 22, 2013, 4:30:21 PM2/22/13
to nyi...@bellsouth.net
On Feb 22, 8:27�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Feb 21, 9:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 16, 5:21 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 14, 9:33 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 9, 10:00 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 9, 8:26 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > > > > On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> > > > > > >Placentalmammals including marsupials
>
> > > > Nonstandard terminology, as Harshman pointed out to you.
>
> > > Nyikos what are you doing in this post?
>
> > I'm trying to teach you some science, and to challenge you on a wild
> > statement you made [see below for both].
>
> Do I care what your opinion is on this topic?

You'd better care whether you are misrepresenting an article in
_Science_, even if Satan himself [if there is such a being] suggests
that this is what your are doing and shows how your summary disagrees
with that of a BBC Science Writer.

> Do you really believe what you wrote?

Yes.

> �Remember that you never lie on
> the internet, so a simple yes or no will do.

Correct.

> What would you do if someone was being as bogus as you are in my
> case?

I'd ask for documentation, whenever ANYONE makes a claim that a
Reuters Science writer got the content of an article in _Science_
wrong, just as I have done below, :

[Snip you running away from the challenge to provide documentation.]

You made the following claim:

> > > > > The article is lumping marsupial and eutherianplacentalmammals
> > > > > together and is talking about the ancestor between egg laying mammals
> > > > > like monotremes and the placentals like marsupials and eutherians.

Here is why I asked for documentation:

> > > > Not according to the BBC website which Metspitzer was using for his
> > > > opening post:
>
> > > > "Placentalmammals - as opposed to the kind that lay eggs, such
> > > > as the platypus, or carry young in pouches, such as the kangaroo -
> > > > are an extraordinarily diverse group of animals with more than
> > > > 5,000 species today."

[snip redundancy]

And here is the challenge, from which you TWICE ran away:

> > > > Are you saying that Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC
> > > > News, got it all wrong?

[snip redundancy]

> > > > I'd like to see you cite from the Science article itself for this
> > > > claim of yours.

You have not cited from the article. Enough said.

Peter Nyikos

Ron O

unread,
Feb 22, 2013, 7:21:03 PM2/22/13
to
On Feb 22, 3:30�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Feb 22, 8:27 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 21, 9:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 16, 5:21 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 14, 9:33 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 9, 10:00 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Feb 9, 8:26 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > > > > > On 2/8/2013 6:45 PM, Ron O wrote:
> > > > > > > >Placentalmammals including marsupials
>
> > > > > Nonstandard terminology, as Harshman pointed out to you.
>
> > > > Nyikos what are you doing in this post?
>
> > > I'm trying to teach you some science, and to challenge you on a wild
> > > statement you made [see below for both].
>
> > Do I care what your opinion is on this topic?
>
> You'd better care whether you are misrepresenting an article in
> _Science_, even if Satan himself [if there is such a being] suggests
> that this is what your are doing and shows how your summary disagrees
> with that of a BBC Science Writer.
>
> > Do you really believe what you wrote?
>
> Yes.

Another lie.

>
> > Remember that you never lie on
> > the internet, so a simple yes or no will do.
>
> Correct.

What a loser. How can you stand yourself?

Ron Okimoto
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