3319
3320

There’s no problem with it in theory, though I suppose it would require a SCOTUS decision or an amendment, so in other words, it’s not gonna happen.

3321

I’d be ok with that. It would help to fix this particular issue of what I feel is unjust discrimination.

3322

I guess Ted Cruz is a creationist?

3323

Tech times has seriously botched the analysis of this study for hits. They make no assertion that 90% of all animals were born 100,000 years ago.

Irresponsible “tech” reporting feeds idiots like Ted Cruz. sigh

3324

Pretty much. Probably an Amendment if we’re honest.

Also the “same time as humans” is like… a looooooooooong time before Ted says the Earth was formed (100k-200k years ago).

It’s generally recognized that giant world altering events happen and wipe out most species from time to time. Anything that surviving after that event would “appear” at the same time. Also that 10% can’t be ignored if you’re making a Creationist play. Because I’m pretty sure the Bible doesn’t say “And then God added to the creatures that already were on the Earth.”

3325

Idiots cite stories like this, but it’s impossible to rebut them, because doing so requires that you explain the entirety of fucking science to them.

It’s like… We have concrete evidence that tons of things lived millions of years before humans existed. We know that, with what is effectively 100% certainty. If someone doesn’t understand or believe that… Then what? You are essentially talking to a monkey. There’s no way they are going to understand anything.

3326

Oh man that is so true! I’m laughing at how perfectly you phrased this.

3327

Tech Times is a garbage service anyway. They’re not a news organization, they’re a clickbait website. But yeah, it’s the kind of idiocy that passes for news these days, wherever it comes from.

3328

From the article:

In analyzing the COI of 100,000 species, Stoeckle and Thaler arrived at the conclusion that most animals appeared simultaneously. They found that the neutral mutation across species were not as varied as expected. Neutral mutation refers to the slight DNA changes that occur across generations. They can be compared to tree rings because they can tell how old a certain specie or individual is.

As to how that could have happened, it’s unclear. A likely possibility is the occurrence of a sudden event that caused large-scale environmental trauma and wiped out majority of the Earth’s species.

“Viruses, ice ages, successful new competitors, loss of prey — all these may cause periods when the population of an animal drops sharply,” explains Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment.

Such times give rise to sweeping genetic changes across the planet, causing new species to appear. However, the last time such an occurrence took place was 65 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth and killed off the dinosaurs and half of all other species on the planet

3329

From the abstract of the paper, it looks like the argument is this:

  1. All humans descended from a small population that existed ~100 ky ago.
  2. Human mitochondrial DNA diversity represents neutral changes from the uniformity that existed in the small population
  3. Almost all animals have approximately the same mitochondrial DNA diversity as humans
  4. Almost all animals must have had genetic uniformity and therefore a population bottleneck, in the last 100-400 ky

So Tech Times is not getting the paper that wrong. I haven’t read the whole paper, but rather than accept its conclusion I suspect that it is revealing a systemic problem with using mitochondrial DNA as a clock for genetic divergence.

3330

PZ Myers explains the paper here:

TL;DR (I think?): If you use mitochondrial DNA bar coding as a marker for speciation, then all extant species are no older than about 200,000 years. In other words, as far as mitochondrial DNA is concerned, species last about 200 millennia max, during which time they undergo a bottleneck of some sort that causes speciation.

EDIT: Ninja’d

3331

I mean… these things happen. We’re all going to be killed when Yellowstone erupts and a future species or humans looking back will be amazed at how many species died off suddenly and were replaced by new ones.

3332

I don’t think the idea that the shared DNA could reflect a Darwinian trait that allowed the survivors of a cataclysm to flourish afterwards is discounted. This just seems like there may have been a pretty grand-scale catastrophe then.

3333

3334

ZOMGs Fox poll dates go from right to left. There must be a Jewish-Muslim conspiracy behind it.

3335

I would almost assume that is on purpose so when you just glance and not watch you will read it reversed and think the current rating for reps is 50%

3336

Naw, we’re killing species off at a super-rapid rate right now without any help from some lame super-caldera.

Future analysts will be wondering why we voluntarily pumped almost every available atom of carbon into the atmosphere at once within 100 years. I wish I could see the clickbait headlines:

“Humans Deliberately Poisoned Atmosphere to Get Rid of Pig Infestation: Study”

“Study Shows that Humans’ Desire for Waterfront Property Drove Effort to Raise Sea Levels”

3337

On some level, we’re just another manifestation of nature. If we fuck stuff up, we might end up killing ourselves, but life will almost certainly continue along for a few billion years more.

3338

Study argues prehistoric humans attempted primitive Dysonsphere.