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

[John Grehan]

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Frederick W.
Schueler


> * but it is based on empirical evidence: 1) Hoatzin fossils on both
sides of the Atlantic,

All that tells you is that the clade was on both sides of the Pacific by
a particular date at the MINIMUM. Nothing about dispersal.

> 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,

Presumably, but that has no direct bearing on their being on both sides
of the Atlantic.

3) funders prefer spectacular-sounding news-worthy results before
they'll renew funding.

It might have been more spectacular to claim that they were on both
sides before the Atlantic.

> * remember that the widely accepted alternative that Darwin was
arguing against *was* myriads of miracles, not plate tectonics. 

Is this explicitly stated by Darwin somewhere? 

> He was concerned to show that long distance dispersal was possible,
because otherwise 
> similar species couldn't be related by descent from common ancestors.

He did not have to appeal to means of dispersal, just as Hooker did not.

> 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.

But the same dispersal model continues to be in vogue - virtually an
appeal to a set of miracles.

John Grehan

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
now in the field on the Thirty Years Later Expedition -
http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
     RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
these methods:

(1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org

(2) a Google search specified as:
site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here