Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
Neanderthal man was shown to be an old man with severe bone/joint disease (arthritis?). The misshapen face is a result of acromegaly--the forehead and other bones thicken with age.

What year do you think this is? We're not a the end of the 19th century when Piltdown man was still thought to be an ancient human. It's been around a century since the first Neandertals were found, and the several dozen specimens certainly aren't all simply misshapen individuals.

Further, you have the entire Homo genus going back 2.5 million years, then the Australopithecines before that.

No "transitional form" in the fossil record has stood the test of time. Each one has been shown to be something other than what it was first thought to be. Have you seen photos of the skeletons? Or just drawings of the fleshed-out artist's conception? Need I remind you of Java man and his history?

This is a completely false statement. You can see the transitionary forms of horses for example as they go from dog sized with many toes to modern-sized with a hoof. Or take bison, who have more than halved in size in the past 100,000 years.

Volcanic "spewing" doesn't account for enough new mass to make up for it, though. AFA the continental drift maps, why is Africa actually shrunk?

If it's shrinking it's because one edge is being pulled down into the magma.

What about all that dirt in between the continents on the ocean floor? The continents don't actually float, you know.

Yes, the continents do float. They float on a bed of molten rock. There is absolutely no reason why a continent can't shrink, all it takes is a subduction zone. Iceland grows larger every single year as the mid-Atlantic ridge pulls apart.