Too Heavy to Fly? Darwin-Defying Design in Huge Pterosaurs

Intelligently designed for flight. Image courtesy of Hugo Salais López, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).





Joel Kontinen



Some pterosaurs were as big as giraffes. With a wingspan of 10–11 metres (32–36 ft.), they seemed to be too large and too heavy to fly.

So, how did they do it?

A recent post in The Conversation suggests that in a way they resembled giant bats, with exquisitely designed features:

“Unlike birds with feathered wings, pterosaurs had a membrane that stretched from the end of an elongated fourth finger to their legs (more similar to a bat than a bird). This membrane had internal structures called actinofibrils to strengthen the wings, and provide structural support. They also had a unique bone in their wrist called the pteroid, which controlled the leading edge of the wing.”

But it seems that like some extinct mosaic-like animals (such as Archaeopteryx and Tiktaalik) and some living mosaics (for instance, the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater), they also shared some features with another kind of living animal, viz. the bird:

“Pterosaurs also had a highly specialised respiratory system, similar to that of birds, with air sacs in addition to their lungs. This is a much more effective breathing system, which is important for providing the large amounts of energy needed for flight. Pterosaurs had air sacs in their necks and trunk, and larger creatures also had them in their wings. In many cases, the air sacs invade the bones and hollow them out, making their wing bones extremely thin-walled. This is referred to as skeletal pneumaticity and is another important element contributing to large pterosaurs' ability to fly.”

The take away message from this post is that the pterosaurs were designed for flight.

Darwin-defying top-down design is very evident in these amazing creatures of yesteryear.

Source:

Martin-Silverstone, Elizabeth. 2016. Pterosaurs should have been too big to fly – so how did they manage it? The Conversation (30 June).

Evolution: The Best Designer Of All Time?

Evolution did not produce this dog, but humans did change it a bit – through artificial selection, also known as animal breeding.





Joel Kontinen

"Evolution, to me, is the best designer of all time,” says Frances Arnold, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who was recently awarded the Millennium Technology Prize for pioneering an approach Darwinians call directed evolution.

The name of this approach is an oxymoron. Darwin’s watchmaker is supposed to be blind, as Richard Dawkins would say.

The BBC explains what this is all about:

“With her engineering background, Prof Arnold wanted to make new, useful, problem-solving proteins. So she took her cue from the way nature does the same thing.”

It’s a long way from nature to evolution. They’re definitely not the same thing. The amazing features we see in the animal kingdom look as if they are intelligently designed.

The obvious conclusion: they are.

But the BBC article goes on to quote professor Arnold:

"I looked at it and said, well, nature didn't actually design enzymes... How does this happen? You make mutations randomly, you look through a large number of things for the ones that have the properties you're interested in, then you repeat the process.”

This is a bit problematic, as mutations are hardly ever beneficial. And they might not even be random.

Prof. Arnold continues:

“And you iterate, accumulating beneficial changes over multiple generations - pretty much like we've done for cats, dogs, cows, chickens, you name it."

There is a name for this: it’s called artificial selection, also known as animal breeding.

It is neither random nor Darwinian.

What Prof. Arnold does might be very beneficial, but it is definitely not directed evolution.

Evolutionists have tried to squirm away from what is obvious by proposing more or less bizarre solutions, for instance, that natural selection is akin to predestination, evolution is smart, complexity just happens or evolution was experimenting.

None of them address the serious drawbacks of neo-Darwinism.

Source:

Webb, Jonathan. 2016. Evolutionary engineer Frances Arnold wins €1m tech prize. BBC News (24 May).

Natural Selection As Predestination: Biologist Warns of the Dangers of Ignoring the Ideological Background of Research

Blind cave animals inspired a recent paper on evolution and predestination.





Joel Kontinen

Despite claims that scientists are objective, no one does research in a vacuum. The underlying ideology plays a major role in the choice of direction the study and its conclusions take.

Biologist Aldemaro Romero Jr. (Baruch College) discusses how predestination, a key concept in Calvinism and some non-Christian religions as well, can have an effect on research:

“Since the advent of Modern Synthesis we have a pretty consistent set of evidence that evolution is not linear, that there is not such a thing as direction for evolutionary processes, and that nothing is predetermined since natural selection, the main evolutionary mechanism, is a process that is not moved by any mystical force nor directs beings toward a particular end.”

Using blind cave animals as an illustration, he goes on to say:

“Yet, biospeleologists continue seeing 'preadaptations' and 'regressive evolution' (which implies direction) anywhere when it comes to cave fauna (Romero 1985, Romero and Green 2005).”

Dr. Romero seems to suggest that researchers have – either unwittingly or not – made evolution into a teleological or goal-oriented process, as though it had the picture of the final product in mind from the very beginning:

“Therefore, this paper demonstrates that the imprint of the idea of predestination still casts a shadow in modern evolutionary biology. I am not saying that modern biospeleologists do science under some sort of religious fervor but what many of them seem to neglect is that words matter and that words can hide a lot of the philosophical baggage that sooner or later may influence their ultimate conclusion.

Therefore, I hope this paper serves as a warning to scientists that no matter what reductionist view they have in the way they practice their research, if they do not understand the historical roots and the philosophical framework of their research they are doomed at presenting only a very partial (and many times biased) view of nature.”

What we see in nature is top-down planning in which there is little room for randomness, the hallmark of Darwinian evolution. We see teleology or goal-orientation, which does not match the blind watchmaker view of neo-Darwinism.

Almost everything in the animal kingdom looks designed.

While many evolutionists detest the d-word, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid it.

Even Darwinian just so stories are full of goal-orientation and teleology.

It seems that the problems evolution is facing are not about to disappear anytime soon.

Source:

Romero, Aldemaro Jr. 2016. The influence of religion on science: the case of the idea of predestination in biospeleology. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9015 (27 April).