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Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:41 am
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.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:49 am
by Rokcet Scientist
Exactly like HE did it... they walked!
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 9:10 am
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 . . .
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 9:30 am
by Minimalist
Rokcet Scientist wrote:Exactly like HE did it... they walked!
To Fiji?
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 9:35 am
by Rokcet Scientist
uniface wrote:
Iguanas are collected and eaten -- right ?
They taste like chicken.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:11 am
by Minimalist
Rokcet Scientist wrote:uniface wrote:
Iguanas are collected and eaten -- right ?
They taste like chicken.
Barbarian!
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 3:07 pm
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.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:05 pm
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.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:19 pm
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.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 3:58 am
by Digit
And this 'land bridge' vanished when?
And evidence for HE in the Pacific?
Roy.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:33 am
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.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 8:12 am
by Digit
And he left not a bit above present day coast lines?
Roy.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:46 am
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?
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:50 am
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.
Re: Iguanas and Vegetation Mats!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:47 pm
by Sam Salmon
Digit wrote:And he left not a bit above present day coast lines?.
Maybe..........
