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Joined: Mar 2008
Posts: 1,315
Master Elite Member
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Well, it looks like they're back to Lamarck for an evostory on giraffes. Indeed the proposal that the giraffe evolved its long neck as a sexual signal led to the proposal that sauropods do similar.
But in 2009, that hypothesis finally bit the dust after Professor Graham Mitchell of the University of Wyoming, in Laramie, US, and colleagues put the sexual selection hypothesis to the test by examining 17 male and 21 female giraffes.
They found if long necks were a sexually selected trait, they expected to find a number of things:
Long necks should be more exaggerated in males than females.
They should evolve to be bigger in size more than other parts of a giraffe's body.
They should confer no immediate benefit to survival, and may come at a cost.
Their results didn't support any of these propositions.
This refutation is similar to that by Dr Taylor and his colleagues. Sauropod necks aren’t more exaggerated in males than females, and they aren’t particularly costly.
Dr Taylor’s team make one final point.
There is no example, anywhere, of a type of four-legged animal, of which there are many species, that has evolved a single trait to be sexy.
Dark Matter + Dark Energy = Dark Truth"We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution." - Judge Jones Kitzmiller case http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Falsify.cfm"To Compel A Man To Furnish Funds For The Propagation Of Ideas He Disbelieves And Abhors Is Sinful And Tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?" - Thomas Jefferson
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