If you want to get technical, cows, other mammals, other tetrapods, and so on really are "phylogenetically" fish (Osteichthyes: Sarcopterygii: etc). In my first lecture for comparative vertebrate anatomy every semester, I zing the students with "You are a highly evolved form of fish," and scan the crowd for wide eyes. :) I'm an evolutionary biologist and gritted my teeth through a couple parts of Ancestor while slaving away in a UTokyo lab all summer, but am all for suspension of disbelief. That said, nettling bits may have helped keep Ancestor at the bottom of my list of Sigler favorites. Still, it's all in good fun and remains vastly superior to nonsensical garbage produced on the SciFi channel. I was sorry to hear about the fate of the Ancestor pitch to that network. Blah.

er, that was in response to lened's Oct 19th post.

Scathing.

Um.... lol. Nothing you have said has yet to provide specific issues with Scott's book, especially the print verison. It cleared up a TON of factual errors. Overall, as a Developmental and Cell biologist I think that Scott has been doing a pretty decent job in the print version. I would actually argue that I am more qualified to make that assessment. Your comments about being "fish" (although true) have not bearing to this discussion. There still is a mammal ancestor species that lived sometime during the Permian era. Scotts factual errors with embryonic development were cleared up in the print version. All other bio-speak was decent. Scott really does put some effort into learning about his topics. 0100001101101000011010010110001101101011011001010110111000100000 0101001101100011011010010111001101110011011011110111001001110011

and still laughing to the average reader these errors are what make an interesting footnote and have no real bearing on the story line or the fact people wanna be entertained (THAT is what fiction is all about, right??) so errors in factual information can be overlooked and be as i said, an interesting footnote. in most cases it brings more interest to the story as my voices say, "FACTS be damned, FULL SPEED AHEAD!!" * It's all about the Numbers, my friends The Math god

Actually, I'm no stranger to embryology and cell. I spent some time in Danio and Neurospora labs a few years back. There's no need to be snarky - I'll overlook that uncalled for discourtesy. My comment was not meant to point out an inaccuracy in the text, but was rather a reply to an older post denying that mammals are fish. It was threaded incorrectly. Although if you want to throw the gauntlet down, we can discuss the quite impossible logistics of assembling a functional ancestral mammalian genome - epigenetics aside! - given the overwhelming preponderance of rapidly evolving selfish junk choking the code and pathetic taxon sampling among sequencing projects. Or, even a cursory knowledge of the fossil record precludes anything remotely resembling Sigler's entertaining beasts from being a MRCA of Mammalia. Calm down, really.

...perhaps if you'd read the attached addendum you wouldn't have misinterpreted the discussion.

The Irishman from Ohio"I never Get to Get it!"-Wacko Warner The secret ingredient is really...cockroaches...well I thought it sounded good. I will leave you two alone now.

Involved in Gregg Bear's Darwin books is what I love... i'm with you  it involves the What if factor

good to see the DARK OVERLORD raise up!

See I was relating it to humans, it happened to my oldest and it wasn't a good situation, but you guys are right, they were growing very, very fast.

It seems that there were problems... just not any specific ones? I'm just as curious as the next Junkie, but as of yet I don't think that any really valid complaints have been lodged. Back it up man!