In a way sometimes the best science turns over your world view, and sometimes just confirms your feelings rationally. This seems an interesting look at something we kind of knew already.
[arstechnica.com]
5
Enjoy being online again!
Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.Create your free account
3 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.
"advancing an unusual hypothesis: those ancient creatures who first crawled out of the water onto land may have done so because they figured out there was an "informational benefit" from seeing through air, as opposed to water"
If taken literally, because :they figured out", smacks of the Lamarckian principle of "inheritance of acquired characteristics" or soft inheritance. The idea that evolution can be willed be an individual to occur because it gave them an environmental advantage. A concept that was corrected with the advent of Darwinian evolution.
Fortunately the author clarified later along in the article:
"They found that, over about 12 million years, there had been a tripling of eye size during that transitional period, from 13 millimeters before to 36 millimeters after. Even more intriguing, that increase began before the full transition from water to land was complete. This suggested that those aquatic creatures who learned to poke their eyes above water, like a crocodile, to find new food sources on the nearby shore had stumbled upon "the gateway drug to terrestriality,"
t1nick
Level 8
July 30, 2020
2
Recent Visitors 24
Photos 292 More
Posted by JoeBKite-like structures in the western Sahara Desert.
Posted by TriphidAn Aussie Indigenous Message Stick.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by JoeBDortoka vremiri: A new species of Dortokid Turtle from the Late Cretaceous of the Hațeg Basin, Romania.
Posted by JoeBThe Cabeço da Amoreira burial: An Early Modern Era West African buried in a Mesolithic shell midden in Portugal.
Posted by JoeBMusivavis amabilis: A new species of Enantiornithine Bird from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of northeastern China.
Posted by JoeBTorosaurus in Canada.
Posted by JoeBStone tools from the Borselan Rock Shelter, in the Binalud Mountains of northeastern Iran.
Posted by JoeBDating the Lantian Biota.
Posted by JoeBBashanosaurus primitivus: A new species of Stegosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Chongqing Municipality, China.
Posted by JoeBDetermining the time of year when the Chicxulub Impactor fell.
Posted by JoeBSão Tomé and Príncipe: Possibly the last country on Earth never to have been visited by a working archaeologist.
Posted by JoeBMambawakale ruhuhu: A new species of Pseudosuchian Archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of Tanzania.