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Convergent evolution: Tasmanian tiger pups “extraordinarily”similar to wolf pups

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The Tasmanian tiger (thylacine), an Australian marsupial equivalent to a wolf, is believed to be extinct:

Micro-CT scanning and digital reconstructions have been used to compare the skulls of the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) and wolf across their early development and into adulthood, establishing that not only did the thylacine resemble the wolf as adults, but also as newborns and juveniles.

“Remarkably, the Tasmanian tiger pups were more similar to wolf pups than to other closely related marsupials,” Professor Andrew Pask from the University of Melbourne said.

The collaborative study with Flinders University and Museums Victoria complement earlier findings that thylacine and wolf have evolved similar instructions in their genome, which influence cranial stem cells during development.

While scientists have worked out that different animals evolve to look the same because they occupy similar places in the ecosystem, they have yet to explain how animals evolve to become convergent, particularly the forces driving their early development. The study provides significant new insights into how animals develop to look a certain way and then when in development these things happen.

University of Melbourne, “Tasmanian tiger pups found to be extraordinary similar to wolf pups” at ScienceDaily

The paper is open access.

It may be a pattern that relates to the ecology, in the sense that a predator might inevitably end up having the characteristics of a wolf or thylacine.

See also: Evolution appears to converge on goals—but in Darwinian terms, is that possible?

Comments
There's a missing piece in the usual logic. An ecosystem includes every plant and animal and weather condition. Without the wolf type, it's not the same ecosystem. Gaians try to "reintroduce" wolves and grizzlies into ecosystems that no longer include them, and it doesn't work. So the marsupial version and the mammary version of a wolf can't be pre-existing creatures that happen to wander into the "wolf-shaped hole" in an ecosystem that "needs" them. The entire system, including the wolf type, must be designed in advance.polistra
January 10, 2021
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It might greatly behoove Darwinists to first explain how any individual organism might achieve its own biological form before they try to claim that they have figured out how two different organisms arrived at the same 'convergent' biological form.
Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no clue how any organism might achieve its own distinctive biological form, much less do they have a clue why any two different organisms should take the same biological form. Nor do they even have a clue "why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?"
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings
Needless to say, if, within your reductive materialistic framework, you have no unifying principle to appeal to in order to explain exactly "why things don’t fall completely apart", then perhaps it is time for you to search for a new framework so as to be able to explain this most fundamental question,, i.e. "What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?" As Pastor Joe Boot points out, reductive materialists simply have no 'design plan' to 'connect the dots', in order to explain why the universe takes the form it does, (and also to explain why any organism might take the form that it does).
"If you have no God, then you have no design plan for the universe. You have no preexisting structure to the universe.,, As the ancient Greeks held, like Democritus and others, the universe is flux. It's just matter in motion. Now on that basis all you are confronted with is innumerable brute facts that are unrelated pieces of data. They have no meaningful connection to each other because there is no overall structure. There's no design plan. It's like my kids do 'join the dots' puzzles. It's just dots, but when you join the dots there is a structure, and a picture emerges. Well, the atheists is without that (final picture). There is no preestablished pattern (to connect the facts given atheism)."? - Pastor Joe Boot - Defending the Christian Faith – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqE5_ZOAnKo
You don't have to take Stephen Talbott's and Pastor Joe Boot's word for it. The failure of the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. (at a much lower level than DNA itself.) In the following article entitled 'Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics', which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description."
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
In fact, quantum mechanics, although it is the reigning scientific theory for trying to explain the 'spooky' actions of the fundamental particles of the universe, quantum mechanics has, never-the-less, been largely ignored by modern day Darwinian biologists.
Jim Al-Khalili, at the 2:30 minute mark of the following video states, ",, Physicists and Chemists have had a long time to try and get use to it (Quantum Mechanics). Biologists, on the other hand have got off lightly in my view. They are very happy with their balls and sticks models of molecules. The balls are the atoms. The sticks are the bonds between the atoms. And when they can't build them physically in the lab nowadays they have very powerful computers that will simulate a huge molecule.,, It doesn't really require much in the way of quantum mechanics in the way to explain it." At the 6:52 minute mark of the video, Jim Al-Khalili goes on to state: “To paraphrase, (Erwin Schrödinger in his book “What Is Life”), he says at the molecular level living organisms have a certain order. A structure to them that’s very different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in inanimate matter of the same complexity. In fact, living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate cooled down to near absolute zero. Where quantum effects play a very important role. There is something special about the structure, about the order, inside a living cell. So Schrodinger speculated that maybe quantum mechanics plays a role in life”. Jim Al-Khalili – Quantum biology – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOzCkeTPR3Q
Needless to say, for Darwinian biologists to, basically, completely ignore quantum mechanics in their explanations of biology is for them to have a rather large and gaping hole in any of their proposed explanations for biological life. Which is just as well, for if they did allow quantum mechanics into their proposed scientific explanations of biology, then it would necessarily defeat the entire reductive materialistic framework that undergirds their Darwinian worldview,
Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg
Verse and Music
Psalm 139:13-14 For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well. CAIN - Rise Up (Lazarus) [Official Lyric Video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw8IgPHRBr4
bornagain77
January 10, 2021
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from the article: "... they have yet to explain how animals evolve to become convergent ..." "yet to explain ...." .... yeah yeah, i heard that so many times. But obviously, nobody can't, and examples of repeated evolution cumulate, but nobody can't explain how is that possible ... all what we hear are Darwinian just-so stories... here is my blog on convergent/repeated evolution, have a look at some very absurd examples of 'convergence' http://www.stuffhappens.infomartin_r
January 10, 2021
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