
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 21, 2009
/ 27 Iyar 5769
Evolution and the new fuel-efficiency standards
By
Bob Tyrrell
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This week, a 47 million-year-old fossil was put on
display at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Scientists
accorded the event enormous attention, as did the press. The creature may be
related to us, though it looks like a cat, not a chimpanzee, and certainly
nothing like your mother or father or even one of your more eccentric aunts
or uncles. Evolutionists tell us that of all the creatures known to science,
we humans are most closely related to chimpanzees.
That is not the whole story, of course. According to a very fine
book that I have been reading, "Why Evolution Is True," by Jerry A. Coyne,
an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, mankind can be
traced back over 3 billion years, to our most distant relatives:
self-replicating molecules. The fossil unveiled at the American Museum of
Natural History is a relative newcomer, but she (the creature was a young
female) has cleared up a debate among scientists. Anthropologists had been
pretty certain that we evolved from apelike ancestors, but they had been
divided on precisely which one. There were two, the family Tarsiidae
whose descendants, the tarsiers, are jungle creatures now living in Asia
and the family Adapidae, who were precursors of the lemur of Madagascar.
Scientists base their speculations on fossils that are rarely
complete. Some scientists have extrapolated our ancestors from as little
evidence as a tooth. The lucky ones have had a jawbone or a rib or some
other skeletal fragment. This week's fossil displayed in New York is a
complete skeleton, except for a missing lower leg. From it, evidence mounts
that our ancestors were the Adapidae, the precursors of the lemur. "Lemur
advocates will be delighted," Tim White, a California paleontologist, is
quoted as saying in The Wall Street Journal, "but tarsier advocates will be
underwhelmed." Scientists are given to such disputes, and then there are the
creationists, who doubt we have any animal ancestors whatsoever. Let the
debate continue.
What I have found fascinating in Coyne's book is how very old
Earth is. Some of his evidence comes from fossils and measurements of the
radioactivity in the layers of stone that harbors the fossils. The
radioactivity gives us a good idea of the stone's age, and the progression
of the fossils gives us an idea of their steady development.
Scientists, by dating old rocks, have established that Earth is
4.3 billion years old. The earliest fossils, those being photosynthetic
bacteria, trace the beginning of life on the planet to about 3.5 billion
years ago. About 600 million years ago, multicelled organisms appeared, for
instance, worms and jellyfish. Then came terrestrial plants and four-legged
animals, about 400 million years ago. Mammals did not show up until 250
million years ago, and birds can be found in fossil form dating from 50
million years ago.
Coyne writes, "Humans are newcomers on the scene our lineage
branches off from that of other primates only about 7 million years ago, the
merest sliver of evolutionary time." Then just over four decades ago, Barack
Obama was born, and just over six decades ago, Newt Gingrich.
Coyne and other evolutionary biologists have had their theories
fortified by the ability, starting three decades back, to sequence the
genomes of various species and discover genes shared by related species,
some that still work, some that do not, thus allowing us to go on our merry
way from, say, our relative the chimpanzee. The key to this process,
scientists say, is natural selection. There are good genes, which help us
survive, and not-so-good genes, which deny those who carry them the
possibility of survival.
Now, creationists find all this highly dubious, but for me, the
information has come as a great relief. The good news is that human beings
adapt. We have survived, according to my reading of Coyne, for about 60,000
years, adapting to all sorts of challenges, climate changes, dietary
changes, plagues and other such unwelcome happenstances. The present
hullabaloo over global warming is much ado about nothing. Let the climate
change; the species Homo sapiens has survived 60 millenniums. There is no
reason for the Obama administration to tamper with the automobile market. We
can survive carbon in the atmosphere and have since the last weak-gened
member of Homo erectus wobbled off. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the
automobile industry can survive politicians' designing our cars, taxing our
gasoline, and supplying us with tiny vehicles that few Americans want to
buy.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.
Archives
© 2008, Creators Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|