Back From the Dead: Living Fossil Identified

[tocqueville]

Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
2 hours, 58 minutes ago


A few months after researchers on one team thought they had discovered a new family of rodent, another group snatched their glory by identifying the critter as a member of a family thought long extinct.

Last year scientists described the body of a squirrel-like rodent found for sale in a meat market in Laos. They believed it belonged to a previously undescribed family and named it Laonastes aenigmamus.

But they failed to fully inspect the fossil record. Upon closer analysis of the creature's teeth, a second group of researchers determined it was a member of the previously known rodent family Diatomyidae.

So a family thought to have died out 11 million years ago is still alive and kicking, the scientists report in the March 10 issue of the journal Science.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060309/sc_space/backfromthedeadlivingfossilidentified

I know this should have been posted in the science forum, but I chose to post it here due to the political context...

hope it's OK

[SoCalDem]

1. Alive and kicking?? Sounds like they are being eaten into a new extinction

:shrug:..

I guess everything that cannot outrun humans ends up as food :cry:

[Sapere aude]

2. Now what is the fundie twist on this story? It just didn't happen I guess

[redacted]

3. Ummm....question, how is this political in context?

You said "to post it here due to the political context...".

I'm not doubting you -- just confused.

Cool story. Maybe they can go find some more.

Oh and I know an Irish Wolfhound that is so large I swear he is actually a dinosaur -- does that count too? ;-)

[tocqueville]

7. I don't know if the science forum's topics go to the frontpage of DU

and the discussion is intresting besides the pure scientific approach...

[LiberalEsto]

4. Was it shot by Deadeye Dick?

And how did it taste?

[BringEmOn]

5. Strom's baaaaaack!

[BringEmOn]

6. ..and Anna Nicole Smith immediately proposed

[Faygo Kid]

8. FReepers were right all along. Earth 6,000 years old.

As a too-frequent visitor to FR, I can testify that evolution is the number 2 most popular topic, only to worship of W., and ahead of hatred of Hillary and Lincoln. So let me be the first to acknowledge that all the science, beauty and wonders of two centuries in unfolding how our planet developed is BS put here as a joke by God, and read Genesis, and science is always wrong. I should have known; it would have saved me from being exposed to all the wondrous things that I thought science had to offer.

[eallen]

11. Speaking of message, I love Democrats saying "we are the party of science"

Now that the GOP has turned itself into the party of religious fundamentalism, we should be happy to stand up for reason.

[xchrom]

9. thought to have died out 11 million years ago?

is that right?

i'll keep watching this.

[slaveplanet]

10. mmm....

Tastes like chicken...