Evolution: monkey works for the theory (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, May 24, 2024, 16:58 (147 days ago) @ David Turell

Dispersal of dinosaurs just like the monkeys. Same dinosaurs in North America and Africa when separated by huge oceans:

https://evolutionnews.org/2024/05/fossil-friday-did-giant-dinosaurs-swim-across-oceans/

"I discussed the unlikelihood of trans-oceanic dispersal for terrestrial animals, which is implied by certain evolutionary hypotheses, for example about the origin of New World monkeys. This Fossil Friday we will add another absurd case, which made headlines after the highly unexpected discovery of duckbill dinosaurs in Africa. Therefore, today’s featured fossil is the duckbill dinosaur Edmontosaurus from the Late Cretaceous of North America.

"Duckbill dinosaurs (Hadrosauridae) originated during the Late Cretaceous in North America and later spread via a land bridge to Eurasia. Due to the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea in the Mesozoic and high sea levels, Africa was for 75 million years (including the Late Cretaceous) an isolated island continent similar to modern Australia. The vast ancient Tethys ocean separated Africa from Eurasia and America. Consequently, duckbill dinosaurs were not expected to be found in Africa.

"Therefore, it was a big surprise when Longrich et al. (2021) described the first duckbill dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco in North Africa. The new species belonged to a clade of lambeosaurine hadrosaurids otherwise only known from Europe, which arguably implies that these animals had to somehow cross the Tethys ocean to reach the shores of Africa. Longrich et al. discussed the various possibilities for trans-oceanic dispersal by rafting and swimming, and even mentioned that “dispersal across marine barriers also occurs in other hadrosaurid lineages and titanosaurian sauropods, suggesting oceanic dispersal played a key role.” Really? Just imagine a giant sauropod swimming or rafting in the middle of the wild ocean, not to speak about sharks and the large diversity of voracious large marine reptile predators (e.g., mosasaurs and pliosaurs) in the Late Cretaceous that would have happily feasted on such a helpless meat ball. Even mainstream paleontologists considered such “long-distance trans-oceanic dispersal of such large-bodied and highly terrestrial animals” as highly unlikely and implausible."

Comment: Bechly continues with a wry look at Darwinist just-so explanations: swimming, rafting, the geology is wrong, there were archipelagoes to skip along, etc. Any excuse to explain the fossil dispersal. Bechly, as a highly trained Ph.D. in paleontology, has taken up fossil studies which dispute Darwin in any way, and his examples are numerous, presenting a different one every Friday.