[Taxacom] Poor flying hoatzins dispersed (on flotsam) from Africa to S. America?

[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 10/10/2011 11:54 AM, John Grehan wrote:
> In this case the authors assume that the birds crossed the Atlantic on
> flotsam. It is indeed a fantasy because it is not based on any empirical
> evidence.

* but it is based on empirical evidence: 1) Hoatzin fossils on both 
sides of the Atlantic, 2) Hoatzins unable to fly long distances, and 
they say they've got evidence that this was the case for the fossils as 
well, and, of course, 3) funders prefer spectacular-sounding news-worthy 
results before they'll renew funding.

> Indeed their fantasy is the application of Darwin's original
> imaginings about centers of origin and dispersal, for which any
> alternative was to be regarded as calling in the agency of a miracle.

* remember that the widely accepted alternative that Darwin was arguing 
against *was* myriads of miracles, not plate tectonics. He was concerned 
to show that long distance dispersal was possible, because otherwise 
similar species couldn't be related by descent from common ancestors. As 
with species concepts, his concerns, in the Origin, were very different 
from those we have now that descent with modification is the underlying 
premise of biology.

fred.
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          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
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