Extinction

The ancient ancestral fish are not here? Modern fish are "quite different"? ... Coleocanth (sp?) Shark? Horseshoe crab?

A LOT of ancient species of fish are indeed NOT HERE. Relatively few of the most ancient known species still have living cousins on earth. Furthermore, the most abundant and diverse fish species today are not the same kinds of fish that were most abundant yesterday. New types of lighter, fast swimming non-boney fish have indeed conquered the seas that were formerly filled with first, jawless fish, then armored fish and boney fish.

Regarding the exact examples you cited above, google and ye shall find: "evolution of the coelocanth" "evolution of the shark" "evolution of the horseshoe crab" and other varieties of the same question, like, "coelocanth's evolved" but remember to use "quotation marks" for exact matches of phrases you are seeking. I have arranged and edited the quotations below for ease of digestion.

COELOCANTHS

The most numerous species of fossilized coelacanth show up in the expected place in the evolutionary geological record, and also have anatomical features, that place them in the fish-to-tetrapod evolutionary bush. A long debate has gone on whether coelocanths or lungfish were the closest cousins to the species that eventually evolved from fish toward amphibians. But in April 2004 that tough question may have been cracked by a genetic comparison that makes a strong case that lungfish, not the coelocanth, has genes nearer to those of living species of tetrapods:

www.imcb.a-star.edu.sg

As for coelocanths remaining the same throughout geological time, not exactly. Living coelacanths found in Madagascar are neither the same type of coelacanth fossils that have been found in rocks that are 360 million years old, nor are they exactly the same type of coelacanth found in strata about 80 million years old; though the living species does resemble the younger fossil species more closely than it does the oldest known coelocanth fossil species. Hence differences are tracible through time as evolution would expect. The older coelacanth species, the ones that are known from before 80 million years ago, were far more diverse (more than 120 different known fossil species) smaller, lacked certain internal structures found in modern coelacanths and belonged to a different genera and suborder. Modern coelacanths also belong to a different genera than the 80 million year genera. See the book, Coelacanth. W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 1991, page 78:

"One point has to be emphasized; The living coelacanth is not a living fossil in the very strict sense that members of the species L. chaumnae itself have ever been found as a fossil. In fact, no other species assignable to the Genus Latimeria has been found as a fossil either. Latimeria and the Cretaceous fossil Genus Macropoma are quite closely related, and we could possibly include them in the same family. Beyond that, all fossil coelacanths belong to the order Coelacanthini."

Keith Littleton, New Orleans, LA

WHY NO COELACANTH FOSSILS FOR 70 MILLION YEARS? See:

www.don-lindsay-archive.org

Keep in mind that living coelacanths, Latimeria chalumnae,and Latimeria menadoensis are possibly the sole remaining representatives of a once widespread family of Sarcopterygian (fleshy-finned) coelacanth fishes (more than 120 species are known from fossils). That record dwindled down to only a single known fossilized Coelacanth species by the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. And likewise, only a single genus is known to still be alive today, and it more closely resembles the genus from 65 million years ago, not the over 120 different species know from 360 million years to 65 million years ago.

www.dinofish.com

SHARKS

Sharks also once had their "golden age." The evolutionary record of their ancestors shows that the earliest shark-like species started out fairly small, and only grew larger over time, till the "golden age" of sharks, and then their diversity declined. Some nice discussion with some cool pictures at

www.fathom.com

HORSESHOE CRABS

Kasaoka City Horseshoe Crab (kabutogani) Museum (hakubutsukan) is the only horseshoe crab museum in the world. The museum opened March 16, 1990 with the purpose of protecting and promoting the breeding of this "living fossil." This museum holds the world's foremost collection of information on the evolution of this creature.

Evolution

The ancestors of the modern horseshoe crab evolved from trilobite ancestors in the Early Cambrian period approximately 550 million years ago. It was not until the Carboniferous period (354 to 290 million years ago) that the horseshoe shape developed. True horseshoe crabs do not appear until the Late Jurassic period, with fossils discovered in the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria.

dsc.discovery.com

The trilobite, a fossil dating to the Paleozoic Era, is the ancestor of the horseshoe crab. (So, not all trilobites stayed the same, some trilobites evolved. *smile*) The sea scorpion is the ancestor of the spider and the scorpion, and fellow descendants of trilobites. So the horseshoe crab's closest living cousins include spiders and scorpions. Path of Transcontinental Migration Horseshoe crab fossils have been found in Europe and North America. The horseshoe crab evolved on the Laurasian Continent during the Paleozoic Era. The horseshoe crab reached Asia parallel to the Thetis Sea, when the Atlantic Ocean was formed near the end the Mesozoic Era.

Species Distribution There are four distinct species of horseshoe crabs living on earth now. One lives on the beaches of the East Coast of the USA. Three others live in Japan and on the southeastern shore of the Asian continent.

Today there are only 3 genera and 5 species of Xiphosura (Horseshoe crabs and their extinct relatives) left alive, but they were much more numerous and diverse during the Palaeozoic era.

Surviving horseshoe crabs (Limulus) are 'living fossils', barely changed in some 250 million years (since early Triassic time)...The exoskeleton generally consists of three parts, the large, semicircular cephalothorax, or prosoma, the usually smaller, subtriangular and in earlier forms "trilobite"-like opisthosoma, and the long stout tail-spine or telson (which is actually the end part of the opisthosoma)...The compound eyes are small (and absent in some early forms), and there are six pairs of legs (in the living Limulus) but no antennae...Paleomerus and Lemoneites are very early forms that were either Aglaspids or transitional between the Aglaspida and the Xiphosura. The late Cambrian (Caerfai epoch) marine family Eolimulidae is generally considered a true Xiphosuran,but again more research needs to be done if more is to be known about the early history of this interesting group.

In the billions upon billions of generations through the millions of years that fruit flies have had to evolve, why have they not become or at least spawned something else?

www.pbs.org features wonderful pics of different fruit flies found only on the Hawaiian islands, a chain of islands whose oldest rose up from the sea approximately 8 million years ago.

Discussion about the evolution of new fruit fly genera at a Christian website: www.asa3.org

"Reading a book on Drosophilia, I discovered the answer to the question of why no new genera of fruit flies have evolved in Hawaii despite the hundreds of species. It is due simply to the classification approach used by Drosophilia workers. The Hawaiian lineage is apparently descended from within the genus Drosophilia, as presently defined. Based on cladistic terminology, one genus should not give rise to another genus. Rather than reclassifying the 2000 or so "Drosophilia" into multiple genera, fruit fly workers use a variety of subgenera and informal terms to group them. In fact, genus names have been proposed for some of the Hawaiian lineages."

Dr. David Campbell, Biology Department, Saint Mary's College of Maryland 18952 E. Fisher Road, St. Mary's City, MD 20686-3001 USA

dcampbell@osprey.smcm.edu, 301 862-0372 Fax: 301 862-0996

Also, here's something interesting: "How to test that all Hawaiian fruit flies descended from one common ancestral population that began with a founder event," a question on an test:

www.bio.davidson.edu Add to this a creationist comment (!) about how Hawaiian fruit flies are larger and more brightly colored compared with the rest of the fruit flies on earth, and have even evolved a type of "song" that the mainland fruit flies never evolved. (!) Obviously, some new morphologies and behaviors peculiar to certain species of fruit flies have evolved on the Hawaiian islands:

www.creationmoments.com/radio/transcript.asp?track_id=94

About 25% of all fruit fly species worldwide are found on those tiny Hawaiian islands. Ecologists believe Hawaii has so many kinds of fruit flies because the islands were isolated for millions of years and the environment varies greatly from beaches to tall mountains and lush green tropical valleys. When the first fruit flies arrived, they were able to evolve quickly because there were few competing species of flies. When people first arrived at the islands centuries ago they also found that there were thousands of unique species of birds, plants, and other life forms. While it is the fruit flies that are the best known, many other insect groups have diversified also. Hawaii boasts a carnivorous caterpillar, the happy face spider and a whole host of other fascinating endemic arthropods, many of which are brilliantly illustrated in the book, Hawaiian Insects and Their Kin by Francis Howarth and William Mull. Lush, and also in the book, Remains of a Rainbow; Rare Plants and Animals of Hawai'i by David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. Published by National Geographic. See also Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution by Alan Ziegler. Published by University of Hawai'i Press which traces the natural history of the Hawaiian Archipelago, such as island formation in a chain due to plate tectonics slowly moving over a lava spewing point in the ocean far below, as well as plant and animal evolution, flightless birds and their fossil sites.

Sadly, people have over time brought many new species with them to the islands, and the competition is driving most of the native species into extinction. Even the unique Hawaiian fruit flies are disappearing, replaced by flies from other parts of the world.

Consider dogs. We have St. Bernards, Chihuahuas, Great Danes, poodles, and hundreds of other breeds of dogs. But not only are those animals all mammals, they are all dogs.

Then what were the "dog-bears" of the Miocene? Dogs or bears?

_________________________

Random Designer : Created from Chaos to Connect with Creator

by Richard G. Colling
Written in easy flowing personal narrative for working professional, pastors and religious leaders and people of all faith. It conveys the clear message that science is the friend of faith.
www.amazon.com

And...

Dr. Colling, fundamentalist Christian and chair of Biology at a fundamentalist Christian college is O.K. with Darwinian explanations and has even composed a book on the subject titled, Random Designer: Created From Chaos To Connect With Creator. "It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods" when they say evolutionary theory is "in crisis" and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. "Such statements are blatantly untrue," he argues. "Evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny...What the designer designed is the random-design process," or Darwinian evolution, Colling says. "God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals." "Random Designer" or "Divine Tinkerer?" Either way, Darwinism and God could be viewed as overlapping hypotheses.--E.T.B.

For the full story see, "Teaching Evolution at Christian College" by Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal (December 31, 2004)

Other pro-evolution books and websites by Evangelical Christians:

Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, September 1, 2003) by Keith B. Miller (a collection of 21 essays by theistic evolutionist orthodox Christians who are scientists).

God and Evolution (Nov. 2004) by David L. Wilcox (Ph.D. in Population Genetics, Professor of Biology, Eastern College, St. David's, PA.)

Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution by Kenneth R. Miller (Ph.D. biologist/evolutionist and orthodox Christian)

Darwinism Defeated? A debate between Phillip E. Johnson (I.D.ist) and Denis O. Lamoureux (Ph.D. biologist/evolutionist and Christian) Apparently Johnson does not offer copies of this debate book for sale at his website.

And these sites:

www.abc.net.au

www.faithreason.org

groups.msn.com

atheism.about.com

A number of academic Christians wrote the following to Tony Blair:

www.cis.org.uk

Darwin to Hitler: Weikart, the Discovery Institute, and History

Weikart, the Discovery Institute, and History

A Review of the Book, From Darwin to Hitler : Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Richard Weikart

Reviewer: Edward T. Babinski

Dr. Weikart is a senior fellow of The Discovery Institute, an Intelligent Designer think tank funded by a millionaire Evangelical Christian. Dr. Weikart's writings reflect the Discovery Institute's agenda to get "design" and a "Designer" mentioned in school whenever theories of origins are discussed. Since Weikart is a historian rather than a biologist, his contribution to the I.D. movement is a bit beside the point. Because even if his work does succeed in getting more people to think of Hitler whenever Darwin or Darwinism are mentioned, his book does not address the truth or falsity of the scientific theory of evolution (not any more than a book about atrocities committed by Christians addresses the historicity of the Gospels).

Perhaps Dr. Wiekart could have emphasized in his book that the threads of history point in many directions, and that although there are connections between Darwin and Hitler, there are also connections between Martin Luther and Hitler (as pointed out in the online book, Martin Luther: Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor). There are also threads in history connecting Christianity with anti-Semitism-racism-slavery-torture-murder-wars-irrational fanaticism. There are also the views of those who are not members of the Discovery Institute, and who accept both God and Darwin's theory of evolution. I am speaking of Christian Darwinists and/or fine-tuners (who believe God set the laws of the universe in motion in the beginning and nature worked things out thereafter). Books by such folks include: Finding Darwin's God; Darwinian Natural Right; Darwinism Defeated? (debate between an I.D.ist and a Christian Darwinistic biologist); Random Designer; Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (a collection of essays by Christian evolutionists); The Tree of Life (forthcoming from Michael Denton, a former Discovery Institute associate who asked his name be removed from their website); and, God and Evolution (the last book being written by Christian population biologist, David L. Wilcox). There is also the journal, Zygon, that has been publishing articles on the connection between religion, ethics and Darwinism, including many articles by Christian theologians, scientists and philosophers.

Points for readers of Weikart's book to ponder:

POINT #1) Weikart makes much of a statement Darwin made in The Descent of Man: "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races." Weikart says, "Based on this--and, of course, much, much [sic] more--evidence, I conclude that Darwin contributed to the development of theories of racial extermination that were prominent among leading German biologists and eugenicists in the early twentieth century."
"Darwin contributed to?" A rather vague assertion. You can find a lot of things "contribute" to other things in history. In context however, Darwin was not urging anyone to exterminate anyone else. Darwin was parroting a view that can be traced back 60 years before his Origin of Species was ever published, a view held in common by BOTH creationists and evolutionists from 1800 to the 1930's. Patrick Brantlinger in his book, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930, examines this commonly held view, namely, that all "primitive" or "savage" races around the world were doomed sooner or later to extinction. Humanitarians, according to Brantlinger, saw the problem in the same terms of inevitability (or doom) as did scientists such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley as well as propagandists for empire such as Charles Wentworth Dilke and James Anthony Froude. Brantlinger shows that by the 1890s, especially through the influence of the eugenics movement, extinction discourse was even applied to "the great white race" in various apocalyptic formulations. With the rise of fascism and Nazism, and with the gradual renewal of aboriginal populations in some parts of the world, by the 1930s the stereotypic idea of "fatal impact" began to unravel, as did also various more general forms of race-based thinking and of social Darwinism.

"One of the most impressive aspects of Brantlinger's book is its ability to trace the uniformity of extinction discourse across a number of ideological and political contexts. [Not just 'Social Darwinist' ones.]"
-John Kucich, University of Michigan

To give just one example, within two generations of the British colonisation of Tasmania in 1803, the entire full-blood Tasmanian
aboriginal population was dead, and a tribal society that had existed for tens of thousands of years had been destroyed in wars against the colonists and via diseases carried by them. (Some people of mixed Tasmania-Caucasian pedigree survived.) Edward Curr (1798-1850), director of the Van Diemen's Land Company, stated that the conflict between the colonists and the Tasmanians would end "as all such matters have ended in other parts of the world, by the extermination of the weaker race." (Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain? pp. 52-53) Curr's statement is an example of the kind of thinking prevalent before Darwin's Origin was ever published. Also, a book titled, Types of Mankind, appeared in 1854 (a mere five years before Darwin's Origin) containing essays by a number of creationist scientists, including Louis Agassiz (who soon would become a vocal critic of Darwin's theory), which argued stenuously in favor of the inferior position of the African race.

POINT #2) Weikart begins the first chapter of his book with these words: Darwin sums up his view of ethics and morality in his Autobiography, stating that one who does not believe in God or an afterlife--as he did not--"can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones."

Unfortunately, Weikart's snippet doesn't do Darwin's view of "instincts" justice. Darwin continued:

"A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly. A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely the social instincts. If he acts for the good of others, he will receive the approbation of his fellow men and gain the love of those with whom he lives ; and this latter gain undoubtedly is the highest pleasure on this earth. By degrees it will become intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his higher impulses, which when rendered habitual may be almost called instincts. His reason may occasionally tell him to act in opposition to the opinion of others, whose approbation he will then not receive; but he will still have the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has followed his innermost guide or conscience. [Extracts from Nora Barlow ed. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions (by Darwin's family) Restored. New York, W.W. Norton, 1969. pp. 85-96. Available on the web for free.]

Another Darwin quotation that Weikart did not address in his book is this one:

"Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection...Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man."(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man) (One must of course keep in mind that Darwin was not discussing all that could happen to a social animal to make it grow anti-social. Nor was he discussing the many psychological factors that drive fanatical mass movements--be they fascist, communist, or even Christian--see Eric Hoffer's book, The True Believer, for information on that topic. Darwin was addressing the much larger fact, often unnoticed, that among social creatures, positive gregariousness, a liking for each other's company, is the steady, unnoticed background for the conflicts.)

POINT #3) Weikart's low opinion of any morality not based on "supernatural revelation" is evident in his book. But, invoking "supernatural revelation" to explain "morality" is merely to invoke one mystery to "explain" another. Such a method of reasoning does not prove anything to philosophers with different views. (There are also Christian philosophers who find room for both God and Darwinism in their explanations of morality, see above.) The Bible, an alleged "supernatural revelation," exhibits its own cases of "moral relativity," because it never calls polygamy, slavery, or even genocide, "sins." Some "divine" commands in the Bible also appear barbaric by today's moral standards. And though the New Testament emphasizes that the individual believer ought to practice self-sacrificial love even toward enemies, it does not say what laws society as a whole ought to make and exactly how they ought to be enforced. Only the Old Testament contains laws for society as a whole--and as already pointed out, some of those are barbaric by today's standards. The letters of Paul instructed some believers to cast out other types of believers from their midst and label those other believers, "anathema." While a story in the book of Acts involving Peter says that two believers were struck dead by God for not telling the truth about giving "everything" they owned to the church, a supernatural punishment that even C. S. Lewis found a bit extreme (he doubted the historicity of that particular story). Also, the New Testament ends with a picture in the book of Revelation of people being "cast/thrown into a lake of fire," "whose smoke rises up forever in the sight of heaven's inhabitants." Is such an image less hideous or more hideous than herding people into box cars and sending them to concentration camps? Also, the idea of "eternal hell" has often made Christians fear the "heretical" beliefs of other Christians, rather than serve as a goad to making crime in society disappear.

POINT #4) Contra Weikart, notice what the British philosopher, Mary Midgley; the biologist, Frans De Waal, and the physicist/philosopher, Albert Einstein, had to say about Darwinism and/or morality.

First, Dr. Mary Midgley: "Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a morality because they need a priority system by which to resolve them. The need for morality is a corollary of conflicts plus intellect":

'Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection...Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man.'(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)

"That, Darwin said, is why we have within us the rudiments of such a priority system and why we have also an intense need to develop those rudiments. We try to shape our moralities in accordance with our deepest wishes so that we can in some degree harmonize our muddled and conflict-ridden emotional constitution, thus finding ourselves a way of life that suits it so far as is possible. These systems are, therefore, something far deeper than mere social contracts made for convenience. They are not optional. They are a profound attempt--though of course usually an unsuccessful one--to shape our conflict-ridden life in a way that gives priority to the things that we care about most. If this is right, then we are creatures whose evolved nature absolutely requires that we develop a morality. We need it in order to find our way in the world. The idea that we could live without any distinction between right and wrong is as strange as the idea that we--being creatures subject to gravitation--could live without any idea of up and down. That at least is Darwin's idea and it seems to me to be one that deserves attention." (Mary Midgley, "Wickedness: An Open Debate," The Philosopher's Magazine, No. 14, Spring 2001)

Second, Dr. Frans De Waal: "Forgiveness is not, as some people seem to believe, a mysterious and sublime idea that we owe to a few millennia of Judeo-Christianity. It did not originate in the minds of people and cannot therefore be appropriated by an ideology or a religion. The fact that monkeys, apes, and humans all engage in reconciliation behavior (stretching out a hand, smiling, kissing, embracing, and so on) means that it is probably over thirty million years old, preceding the evolutionary divergence of these primates... Reconciliation behavior [is] a shared heritage of the primate order... When social animals are involved... antagonists do more than estimate their chances of winning before they engage in a fight; they also take into account how much they need their opponent. The contested resource often is simply not worth putting a valuable relationship at risk. And if aggression does occur, both parties may hurry to repair the damage. Victory is rarely absolute among interdependent competitors, whether animal or human." (Frans De Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates)

Lastly, Albert Einstein: "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
I should add that Einstein's theories of relativity evoked savage attacks in the 1920s by the anti-Semitic physicists Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard, men who after 1932 tried to create a so-called Aryan physics in Germany. So the Germans were not only "Aryanizing Darwin" but also "Aryanizing physics" and anything else they could "Aryanize." With the rise of fascism in Germany, Einstein moved to the U.S. (a month before Hitler took power) and abandoned his pacifism. He reluctantly agreed that the new fanatical menace of German fascism had to be put down through force of arms. Evolutionists, creationists, and others in U.S., agreed.

Bovine Evolution and Bat Evolution

"... Why do cows wear bells? Their horns don't work!" Some cows have horns."

Seriously, are horns on a cow a vestigial appendage?

Black and white rhinoceros ... Usually the front horn is longer than the rear. ... black rhinos seem to like twigs and they will use the pointed ...

Then the cow will attack the bull and butt him in ...

Black and white rhinoceros

I can't really find any information on Google if cows (moo moo) use their horns for anything real, the cows I grew up around didn't that I know of -- and there's nothing there saying horns are vestigial on cows.

I looked up cow evolution and remembered that cows were bovines, and looked further and found out that the scientific latin name for bovines is "bovidae," which gives me access to all the scientific stuff on the web, so I googled: bovidae evolution fossil*

I also did a google image search just under bovidae.

Here are pics of the earliest known bovine skull and skeleton, apparently on display at two museums:

http://www.in.gr/ath/images/big/bovidae.jpg

http://musee.vacheres.free.fr/photo/bachiteriumgrd.jpg

Other ancient bovine fossils consist of the usual assorted teeth and jawbones, the above apparently being some of the best preserved fossils of more than just teeth and jawbones.

Short wikipedia encyclopedic entry with a few paragraphs on bovine evolution:

Wikipedia Bovidae

More extensive and footnoted article on the same topic, including some DNA comparison testing among bovine species!

"The conservative nuclear DNA data were remarkably effective in resolving associations among bovid subfamilies, which had a rapid radiation dating back to approximately 23 MYA. All analyses supported the monophyly of the Bovinae (cow, nilgai, and kudu clade) as a sister lineage to the remaining bovid subfamilies, and the data convincingly suggest that the subfamilies Alcelaphinae (hartebeest, tsessebe, and wildebeest group) and Hippotraginae (roan, sable, and gemsbok clade) share a close evolutionary relationship and together form a sister clade to the more primitive Caprinae (represented by sheep, goat, and muskox). The problematic Reduncinae (waterbuck, reedbuck) seem to be the earliest-diverging group of the Caprinae/Alcelaphinae/Hippotraginae clade, whereas the Antilopinae (gazelle and dwarf antelope clade) were always polyphyletic. The sequence data suggest that the initial diversification of the Bovidae took place in Eurasia and that lineages such as the Cephalophinae and other enigmatic taxa (impala, suni, and klipspringer) most likely originated, more or less contemporaneously, in Africa.

"Evolution within the family Bovidae (cow, sheep, and antelope) is characterized by global immigrations, adaptive radiations, and mass extinctions which, in concert, gave rise to the 49 extant genera and more than 140 species known today. The majority of these species are endemic to the African continent, and the complex evolution of the group was molded by a wide variety of mechanisms and natural events, including temperature adaptation, feeding ecology, vegetation physiognomy, rifting, and climatic fluctuations (Kingdon 1989 ). The oldest bovid fossils are attributable to the subfamily Bovinae and are known from France and sub-Saharan Africa, where the group evidently first appeared approximately 23 MYA (Vrba 1985 ; Kingdon 1989). "
--Molecular Insights into the Evolution of the Family Bovidae: A Nuclear DNA Perspective By Conrad A. Matthee and Scott K. Davis Department of Zoology, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa Department of Animal Science, Texas A and M University [Molecular Biology and Evolution 18:1220-1230 (2001) © 2001 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution]

I also discovered that the entire cow genome was recently sequenced:

genome.gov

And while cruising the web I also ran across a new study (Jan. 2005!) that compared segements of bat DNA taken from different species around the world. Bats are interesting because creationists used to make "the impossibility of cetacean evolution" their centerpiece "problem" for evolution, but now they are making "the impossibility of bat evolution" their centerpiece problem because too many cetacean intermediates fossils are now known, and because the fossil record of bat evolution remains sparser than that of cetacean evolution. Bats of course are tiny and thin-boned and generally live in places with plenty of insects to feed on, since they eat a lot of insects per their weight (and hence when bats die there are also plenty of insects and other organisms around where they live to make sure their own bones are eaten or break down quickly), so bats didn't leave a great fossil record. (While the fossil record of sea-animals remains better preserved, for many reasons.) Only after bat evolution had already taken off (pardon the pun) and bats began reproducing in large numbers and flying around, did their odds increase of some of them being fossilized and also later found. For instance there's a well preserved bat fossil found in the Greenriver fossil lake formations in the U.S. Anyway, the new study compared segments of the DNA of different bat species round the world, and "played back" the DNA similarities and differences, like tracing back old chain letters to their most common and most likely shared source. The DNA study showed that all bats (including the large fruit-eating bats of the tropics) evolved from tiny insect-eating bats in North America.

I guess Noah's ark kept moving around, letting the first bats disembark in North America, and the first bovidae disembark in Eurasia, and the Noah and his sons disembark in Africa, and the first perching birds disembark in Australia/New Zealand. (Comparing segments of DNA from perching bird species round the world lead recently to the conclusion that Australia/New Zealand was most likely where all perching birds first evolved.)

Speaking again of bat evolution, I read recently about a developmental gene being discovered that rats and bats share, that has to do with prolonged finger growth in the womb and how the skin remains between the longer fingers in the rats they experimented on. I also read about the discovery, a few years ago, of the fossil of a rat-like creature whose ankle bone could flex like a bat's for upside-down hanging.

I guess the creationists are batting zero (pardon the pun) on trying to disprove evolution.