From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos
From Address: karljohanson@shaw.ca
Subject: Re: Star Trek: Am I the Only One?
"Led4Aces" wrote in message
news:6c52cc8a-c12d-4028-bb19-4188c98f8426@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 22, 11:55 pm, "Karl Johanson" wrote:
> "Led4Aces" wrote in message
>
> news:bad3caa8-8151-4bf5-8858-114e54af3b94@g31g2000vbr.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 21, 12:11 am, "Karl Johanson" wrote:
>
>> >> And she created a pathogen that regressed most of the crew into half
>> >> whatever they were / half one of their ancestors (which doesn't
>> >> explain
>> >> why
>> >> Barclay became half spider, since they aren't ancestors of humans)...
>> >Not exactly.
>
>> Yes, exactly.
>Try again.
Try learning some biology.
>> >Go back far enough and Humans and spiders have a common
>> >ancestor. Probably hundreds of millions of years.
>
>> Humans and spiders have a common ancestor, but spiders aren't ancestors
>> of
>> humans. Even assuming the silly premise of reverting to half human / half
>> one of our ancestors,
>Of course the entire premise of the episode is silly,
We're agreed here.
>but my statement stands.
No it doesn't.
>What does the common ancestor of humans and apes look like? It
>is going to look ape-like.
It looked ape like and human like, compared to most life on Earth.
Humans are in the same family (and thus the same kingdom, phylum, class and
order) as chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans. We look like apes and apes
look like us. Our most recent common ancestor was around 14 million years
ago, and it looked a lot like humans, chimps, gorillas and orang-utans, as
it wasn't that long ago (compared to the common ancestor of humans and
spiders), and it was in the same kingdom, phylum, class and order.
>What would the common ancestor of spiders
>and humans look like? It's going to look a hell of a lot like an
>arachnid,
Wrong.
Humans are chordates (a phylum classification) while arachnids are
arthropods. Think about the implications of "different phylums." A
difference far greater than for humans and others in the family Hominidae,
and it happened considerably further back than 14 million years ago. Think
further on the implications of 500 to 600 millions of years of evolution
from the time our phylums split off. The common ancestor of humans and
spiders doesn't look like a half human / half spider creatures. Neither did
it look like a human. Neither did it look like a spider. It looked more like
a worm.
>wouldn't look remotely human at all.
You got that minor point right.
>Barclay didn't devolve into a spider (I'm assuming that's what
>happened, haven't seen the episode in years) he devolved into an
>ancestor of humans and spiders....
Wrong.
According to the script he, "...transformed into a horrible cross between
human and SPIDER (emphasis original)."
Data further classifies the transformation as into a Pisauridae with the
lines, "I recognized the chitin colorations. He is becoming a member of the
Pisauridae family." Pisauridae (which includes numerous species) is a family
of modern spiders not an ancestor of spiders' order Araneae (of the class
arachnida).
>which was going to look a lot like a spider. Pretty simple.
But wrong.
><<<Yeah, just spider-like. You really missed the boat on this one.
Again, our common ancestors aren't spider like. More "worm like."
Word of advice. Understand a topic before you accuse others of missing
boats. Or if you aren't sure, say things like, "I don't think that's
correct, isn't it X instead?"
Karl Johanson
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