Tropes

popsci_2013 01009.txt

#In 165-Million-Year-Old Fossil, Evidence That Fur Predates Mammalsmeet Megaconus mammaliaformis a 165-million-year-old protomammal recently discovered in Inner Mongolia China. This squirrel-sized dude evolved long before the rise of modern mammals but the hair and fur residue found preserved in its fossil indicate that those traits existed even back in the Jurassic era. Hair and fur have generally been considered unique to mammals so it's exciting to find that they could have been around even before the first mammals arrived on the evolutionary scene. This bolsters the 2006 finding of one other pre-mammalian fossil with fur the only other hairy ancestor we've discovered. Megaconus probably ambled around with a gait similar to a modern rock hyrax or an armadillo and had teeth similar to modern rodents. On its heels it had a long perhaps poisonous spur like male platypuses do now. Megaconus confirms that many modern mammalian biological functions related to skin and integument had evolved already before the rise of modern mammals says Zhe-Xi Luo one of the fossil's discoverers and a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. Some of its other features though differentiate it from today's mammals. A middle ear still attached to the jaw is more reminiscent of reptiles and the structures of its anklebones and vertebrae look very similar to other mammal-like reptiles. We cannot say that Megaconus is our direct ancestor but it certainly looks like a great-great-grand uncle 165 million years removed Luo says. The paper detailing the discovery can be found in Nature. UCHICAGO News...The aquatic-ape hypothesis suggests that six million to eight million years ago apelike ancestors of modern humans had a semiaquatic lifestyle based on foraging for food in shallow waters. Fur is not an effective insulator in water and so the theory asserts that we evolved to lose our fur replacing it as other aquatic mammals have with relatively high levels of body fat. Imaginative as this explanation is and helpful in providing us with an excuse for being overweight paleontological evidence for an aquatic phase of human existence has proven elusive...http://www. scientificamerican. com/article. cfm? id=latest-theory-human-body-hairã¢Â#Âoemegaconus confirms that many modern mammalian biological functions related to skin and integument had evolved already before the rise of modern mammalsã¢Â#Â What this actually shows is that evolution is still nonsense and doesn't work. This animal was designed clearly and if it did predate anything then that would show De-evolution or as is better know genetic mutation. How could something first evolve hair only to then decide later Hey I need scales or maybe feathers! BUNK! Sorry you are a moron. No sorry you're a moron. Not r

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