Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

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Minimalist
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Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Minimalist »

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 155112.htm
Scientists have long puzzled over how iguanas, a group of lizards mostly found in the Americas, came to inhabit the isolated Pacific islands of Fiji and Tonga. For years, the leading explanation has been that progenitors of the island species must have rafted there, riding across the Pacific on a mat of vegetation or floating debris. But new research in the January issue of The American Naturalist suggests a more grounded explanation.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.

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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Rokcet Scientist »

Exactly like HE did it... they walked!
uniface

Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by uniface »

Umpteen thousand years from now (if the current system is lucky) people are similarly going to be wondering how (feral) pigs came to inhabit many of these same islands. It will not occur to them that sailors seeded them as a future food reserve.

Iguanas are collected and eaten -- right ?

Hello . . .
Minimalist
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Minimalist »

Rokcet Scientist wrote:Exactly like HE did it... they walked!

To Fiji?
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.

-- George Carlin
Rokcet Scientist

Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Rokcet Scientist »

uniface wrote: Iguanas are collected and eaten -- right ?
They taste like chicken.
Minimalist
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Minimalist »

Rokcet Scientist wrote:
uniface wrote: Iguanas are collected and eaten -- right ?
They taste like chicken.



Barbarian!

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Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.

-- George Carlin
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Digit
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Digit »

So Noonan and Sites tested the possibility that iguanas simply walked to the islands millions of years ago,
So how old was HE then?

Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
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Sam Salmon
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Sam Salmon »

The two islands, located about 2000 miles east of Australia, are home to several iguana species, and their presence there is
Not to be too didactic but there are over 300 different islands in Fiji and over 160 in the Kingdom of Tonga.
Rokcet Scientist

Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Rokcet Scientist »

Digit wrote:
So Noonan and Sites tested the possibility that iguanas simply walked to the islands millions of years ago,
So how old was HE then?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus:
Homo erectus (from the Latin ērı̆gĕre, "to put up, set upright") is an extinct species of hominid that originated in Africa—and spread as far as China and Java—from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene: about 1.8-.3 million years ago.
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Digit
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Digit »

And this 'land bridge' vanished when?
And evidence for HE in the Pacific?

Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Rokcet Scientist »

Digit wrote:And this 'land bridge' vanished when?
When sea levels rose, and volcanism, tectonics, and tsunamis destroyed them.
And evidence for HE in the Pacific?
Is 400 feet below sea level today, just like everywhere he went.
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Digit
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Digit »

And he left not a bit above present day coast lines?

Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
kbs2244
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by kbs2244 »

Those islands are volcanic.
They stick up like bumps off the ocean floor.
The water is pretty deep around them.

Has anyone done a comparison on the age of the islands to the time frame they are talking about?
Were they even there then?
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Digit »

Were they even there then?
That was one of the questions I was going to ask as well kb. Saved me the trouble! :)

Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
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Sam Salmon
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Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!

Post by Sam Salmon »

Digit wrote:And he left not a bit above present day coast lines?.
Maybe..........

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