Guest post by David H. Middleton
Truly amazing…Miocene (~20 MYA) lizards, preserved in amber, “identical to their modern cousins.”
Ancient lizards in amber amaze scientists
Tuesday, 28 July 2015 Stuart Gary
ABC
A community of lizards from the Caribbean, preserved for 20 million years in amber, have been found to be identical to their modern cousins, say researchers.
This suggests the different niches inhabited by the lizards have – incredibly – changed little over the past 20 million-year, report the team, in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
[…]
I guess the Warmists are wrong about climate change endangering lizards…
…because 20 million years ago, the climate was warmer than today, and the lizards lived through at 3.0°C temperature spike 15 million years ago.
(Older is to the right.)
Ah but those are “special” lizards 🙂
Lounge lizards.
Austin Lounge Lizards–great band
Lizards facing mass extinction…he’s saying they will migrate to the poles and then run out of poles…and go extinct
..right after they start growing bananas and coconuts in Quebec
You aren’t paying attention. Bananas are also going extinct. But the coconuts should do okay — they’re migratory.
I live just North of Clearwater, Fl. We have coconut palms here. My friends laugh when I tell them it’s too cold here for coconuts. In Ft. Meyers they have coconut palms WITH coconuts. It gets hotter in Ft. Meyers than it does here.
Whenever the subject comes up I just ask when we’ll have coconuts here… No answers yet. And in spite of this drastic warming, still no coconuts.
I know…amazing, right? 😉
I’m waiting for the same info. I’m ready to start farming all of those tropical plants that don’t currently grow in my agricultural zone. It should be any day now………..
Also, the current warming is man-caused, as opposed to natural. While colder, this kind of warming is more deadly. Probably there is a paper on this out there somewhere….
I got banamas and coconuts…and I tell ya…them coconuts take much longer. Pineapples do ok, if you protect them on the one or two cold nights…they hate frost.
Growing fruit is a real easy thing to do…hard to believe everyone has trees that are NOT fruit trees and goes and buys fruit every week.
Why does not everyone have an apple tree and a blueberry or blackberry bush?
This is interesting in that it shows even during the middle of the ice ages there was a steady supply of warm air once you got down to the Cibibbean. This l believe helps to explain why there was wide swings in temps during the ice ages. As there would have surly been times that this warm air invaded the northern ice sheets so leading to warming for a time and so causing to the swings in temp like there was in Greenland.
Sorry “Caribbean”.
I like the picture of that scientist holding that little lizard by the tail. Apparently he doesn’t know Anoles drop their tails. Ah, but he’s an expert.
My cats cause them to drop their tails too. I suspect that’s a different cause tho.
The dropping of the tail was caused by global warming sneaking up and threatening to bite them in the a.., A natural defense mechanism.
Well, the heat probably caused the sap to flow more quickly that the lizards were used to.
A caveman probably had a campfire nearby. (Fire plus CO2!)
Seriously, are there pictures of the amber lizards available?
They accompany the orig. article:
http://news.discovery.com/animals/ancient-lizards-in-amber-identical-to-modern-cousins-150728.htm
“… and the lizards lived through at 3.0°C temperature spike 15 million years ago.” I believe that sentence should have an “a” where you have an “at”, but I am not an expert.
Anyway, seems to me that the “scientists” are saying that since the lizard has survived such a great, hard-to-believe long time with no change then they are not adapting well and are in danger of failing to adapt to any small change. Yes, you heard it here first —- the lizard by surviving 20 million years proves it can not survive in the future. Send more grand money. (off shore bank account number enclosed for your grant giving convenience)
“Grand money”? I think that’s a slip that’s truer than the correct phrase.
One more for the evolutionists to explain away too – 20 million years is quite a long ‘pause’, not so?
Not at all. A well preserved genome simply means changes have not been advantageous to survival or reproductive fruitfulness. In mammals the HAR is well preserved except in humans.
No not lizards,lizardmen.
Global Warming could-would-maybe wipeout, I mean enhance the alien lizard men who walk amongst us.
Usually found impersonating human beings by taking on the role of political hacks.
The fact there has been little change in the climate in the Caribbean even during the ice ages.
Goes a long way to explaining
“why there was large swings in temps in Greenland during the ice age”
“why it would have been possible for there to be at times some warming in Greenland while North America and Europe were still been kept in the ice age”
“why ice ages can end quickly”
I talked to several herpetologists after an earlier claim by Sinervo 2010 that climate change is killing lizards. Sinervo used a plastic tube painted like a lizard and with a data logger inside as his model “lizard”. He then left the model in place for a few days and concluded the lizards were overheating due to climate change. The herpetologists laughed at this method. They all mentioned that herpetologist joke about lizards being homeotherms because wherever they measure a lizard’s temperature it is always seems the same. That is because lizards are always moving between microclimates that can vary by 40 degrees F within a 100 yard radius, and thus behaviorally maintain an optimal temperature. To argue a 1 degree global change has been deadly, was laughed at as pure nonsense!
yeah, but here’s the rub. How much did the guy with the plastic tube get in grant money to travel about and place his little green glass tube in various places throughout the Carib? 🙂
And that’s why they’re still laughing.
It being 100 here in Houston, I have been catching and releasing Geckos right and left from in the house. I can’t blame them, I don’t want to be outside.
Good Gaia, dontcha know it’s the Lizard People who are creating the climate change scare?
=================
With 38 samples in amber, they could attempt to create a “Miocene Park” similar to what was done in the movie “Jurassic Park.” But if it looked identical to a modern nature park, what would be the point?
Good riddance to the Gorns.
Oh, God, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Not the lizards!
What is a kitty to do with her life?
Tallulah is having a conniption at the mere suggestion that her precious little friends may be in jeopardy.
She wonders, too, how it can be that these creatures, known to inhabit scorchingly hot rocks in their native habitats, and metal rooftops on tropical homes, among other places, could be at risk from a few degrees rise in temp when they seem most at home on sidewalks hot enough to fry an egg on?
I know it’s going to be a shock, but the New York Times is in on this story too. Hurray for the Times. So, here goes:
‘About 15 million to 20 million years ago, anoles were trapped in tree resin on what is now the island of Hispaniola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
‘Anoles still live … on the island… Jonathan Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, has studied them for decades.
‘These lizards, … occupy very specific bits of space on trees in rain forests. One species may live from the ground up to six feet high on the trunk, another species from six feet up the trunk to the crown, and another in the crown.
‘Dr. Losos was interested in finding out how long such communities have existed, so he turned to Hispaniola, famous for its amber … in which … small creatures have been preserved.
“… he managed to gather 38 anoles in amber, … all 15 million to 20 million years old and all from Hispaniola.”
‘When they analyzed the body forms of the fossil anoles, they found the same categories that exist now. Dr. Losos said there was a great amount of discussion in evolutionary biology about whether ecological communities stay stable for long periods. It may not happen often, he said, but “our study does show that the same set of types of species can remain very static for long periods of time.”’
Got that? A specific subspecies of Anole has lived from 6′ to the crown of a tree (nowhere else) for … 20 million years. And we thought Bristlecone Pines lived a long time! Ok, I’m misinterpreting what he said, I admit it. But, seriously, an animal finds that narrow a niche, and manages to survive for; not just thousands of years; but millions? No earthquakes ever happen there, eh? No landfall hurricanes? No tropical storms? New, competing species don’t float in on logs? Or, arrive as eggs hidden in birds’ feathers? Nothing, nothing, nothing happens for 20,000,000 years until someone shows up with a weed whacker. And, of course, when that tree falls down that Anole travels from its 6 foot perch over to another 6 foot perch on a moonbeam. And, how does the good doctor know this? From thousands of examples? (After all, it’s been 20,000,000 years.) Ok, how about hundreds of examples. No, he knows that an environment has not changed one itsy bitsy bit for 20,000,000 years from a whopping 38 samples. And there’s no possibility that a subspecies occupied a niche, became extinct, and was replaced later by another subspecies bearing a striking resemblance for the simple reason that the adaptation would have to be similar in nature?
Yes, science has now given us eternal life.
This is totally off-topic but I can’t help myself. I am just so witty! I am going to wet myself unless I post this. I was just at Bishop Hill where someone asked the question —
What’s black and white and red all over?
My answer — President Obama
Eugene WR Gallun
Sitting in the corner and chewing razor blades? Oh, never mind…different line of joke.
Ok, wait…a newspaper?
Nah, not even funny.
Oooh…a Russian penguin!?
Oops, no…penguins live in the Antarctic (and nearby locales) only. So that don’t fly.
Hmmm…
+1
What we need is a model that shows lizards will go extinct with warmer weather…
IMHO it is pretty dang difficult to seriously relate this one to the climate change debate. Scientists find a species which has adapted to a particular niche sufficiently well to survive largely unchanged over 20 million years (interesting enough in itself). Presumably the “particular niche” has remained within a sufficiently narrow environmental parameter band for that to occur.
But that tells us very little about other species, or other environmental niches.
Where is the photo? Is this it?:
http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/dnews-files-2013-11-amber-gecko-jpg.jpg
Doc Daniel.
Please give the temperature in 1/10 C degree increments when the Each of the verius Lizard begin to expire.
If they offered you a Research grant to prove that CO2 increase did not drive temperature, for twice the money you received for this piece of fiction, would you take it!
Them lazy assed lizards musta been really hot to just lay there and let that sap just run all over ’em. Prolly a little high too, on sumpti’n or udder.
Hey you’re talking the Caribbean!
Gads I wish they would, here in Florida my house is surrounded by lizards 5 years ago when I moved here there was maybe 2 or 3 of them. There are a lot more lizards here than in Vermont. I’m not sure but I think it is warmer in Florida than Vermont.
Perhaps every time one of these Globull Warming scientists comes out with another “could”, “might”, “should” disaster caused by rising temperatures, that refuse to rise, they could also tell us how much they got paid to produce the report – as in – their grant totals each year.
Not going to happen I know, but a little honesty might go a long way.
The only fork-tongued lizards who are an endangered species are Homo sapien, subtype, gub’ment climatescientist when (not if) their climate data manipulations are revealed.
The lizards in our garden hibernate during winter when it is cold. During Spring, Summer and Autumn they emerge and bask in the sun until they warm their bodies enough to scamper about after insects. The lizards appear to love the sun and seek the hottest possible weather. I am sure that they will love it if and when the long promised warming finally does appear.
If I may be permitted a non-sequitur…
Where’s Janice? I haven’t seen any posts from her in awhile.
Yoohoo, Janice! Are you out there? I miss you.
Maybe her Big Oil checks dried up?
sorry, may have info.
The fact that the lizards haven’t changed is not an indicator of stasis so much as it is a refutation of evolution and vast ages. The assumed vast ages required by evolutionism are imposed upon the data. But if you look at the data without presuppositions, it screams youth, not age. Look up more info on this subject on sites like Creation.com. There is a vast amount of evidence disproving both evolution and vast ages. (By the way, Natural Selection is not Evolution. Natural selection operates on existing genetic information. Evolution has to create vast amounts of information out of nothing.)
There is zero evidence in support of a young earth and all the evidence in the universe conclusively showing it to be around 14 billion years old and the solar system five.
But evolution doesn’t need vast ages to work. The evolution of new species and even genera can and often does occur in a single generation, through such mechanisms as polyploidy and hybridization. Natural selection usually takes more generations, but not necessarily vast ages. Artificial selection is even more rapid, such for instance that domestic sheep are now a separate species from their wild ancestors.
Evolution would predict that modern lizards would appear superficially similar to their Miocene ancestors if their environment hadn’t changed much. Natural selection works both to preserve adaptive genomes under stable conditions as well as to favor differences when the environment changes.
People misunderstand evolution. There is no genetic barrier to accumulated variation producing new species, genera, families, orders, classes, phyla and kingdoms gradually. Indeed, this process has been repeatedly observed, along with the rapid evolution mentioned above. Evolution is an observed scientific fact, with a body of theory explaining it, always subject to improvement, just like the heliocentric theory, the theory of gravitation, the atomic theory of matter, the germ theory of disease, relativity theory, quantum mechanics, etc.
One source of the many genetic and chromosomal variations upon which evolution works is mutations. Previously negative mutations can become positive in new environments. For instance, the point mutation that allows formerly sugar-eating microbes to metabolize nylon occurred over and over again for millions if not billions of years, but was always fatal until the advent of nylon.
University of Lincoln? Never heard of it. It must be one of those new third-rate “universities” – rebranded polytechnics. Chris Packham (ultra-green BBC favourite) is a ‘visiting professor’.
So the lizaards will also be able to survive the projected future cooling
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/study-finds-long-term-solar-oscillations-and-predicts-cooling.html
“The paper follows research reported this month to the UK Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales, by physicists who predicted that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the “mini ice age” that began in 1645. ”
Interesting read.
Sooooooo. Why does my neighbour, who raises lizards and snakes, have to have a heat lamp when the outside air temp is 90F, so that her pets can bask and survive? Oh my. “Pet” lizard/snake. Is that a PC/cAGW wrong? The last 50 years in so called “human” history may go down as the stupidest ever studied. We both have normal, skittering about snakes/lizards in our backyards. When it does get too warm (?), they hide out under shrubs and cool spots. Oh wait. Maybe the mammoths ate all the grasses? And I know for a fact, her cages for them are kept between 95-105F, not 0.001F difference. However do they survive?
Many people seem to confuse natural selection with evolution as being the same thing and they are not. Natural selection usually involves the LOSS of genetic information, not its increase (the only increase has been from adding “existing” genetic material between organisms). If you think that you have heard of some evidence of real evolution (creation of new genetic information out of nothing), then it has never been reported in any scientific journal.
The mindset that rejects the evidence is exactly the same as the mindset that insists that anthropogenic global warming is a “fact”. They believe it because some authority figure told them that it is true and they are not interested in any evidence to the contrary.
It is a huge subject, and hurling elephants will not make it go away. Sticking with the biological arguments, there have been lots of surprises that the general public are ignorant of. These lizards are not a rare occurrence; there are lots of “living fossils” being discovered quite frequently. For another biological example of facts that fly in the face of vast ages, mammoth blood has been recovered from specimens over a supposed 10K years of age. DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older, and even blood cells and connective tissue from supposedly 65 million year old dinosaur fossils. No matter what stories are made up to attempt to explain away the impossible, it remains the truth.