Evolution/Gravity question

[mmbt0ne]

This is a line from an article I'm reading for a class from a 1994 edition of Scientific America. It doesn't appear incredibly relevant for the class, but please explain it for me.

Life's pathway certainly includes many features predictable from laws of nature, but these aspects are too broad and general to provide the "rightness" that we seek for validating evolution's particular results - roses, mushrooms, people and so forth. Organisms adapt to, and are constrained by, physical principles. It is, for example, scarily surprising, given laws of gravity, that the largest vertebrates in the sea (whales) exceed the heaviest animals on land (elephants today, dinosaurs in the past), which, in turn, are far bulkier than the largest vertebrate that ever flew (extinct pterosaurs of the Mesozoic era).

Why is this surprising? I've been thinking for the past 10 minutes, and can't understand it.

[Borodog]

I suspect a typo.

"scarcely surprising"

[mmbt0ne]

That's the only thing I can possibly think of. It just doesn't make sense. Chewbacca-living-on-Endor-with-ewoks level confusion.

[ArtVandelay]

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I suspect a typo.

"scarcely surprising"

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I agree; in addition to not matching the context, "scarily suprising" seems like a very odd phrase

[MidGe]

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I suspect a typo.

"scarcely surprising"

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I am prepared to bet it is a typo. /images/graemlins/smile.gif Gimme the odds.

[J_V]

That sentence is so bad.

[bocablkr]

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I suspect a typo.

"scarcely surprising"

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I hate it when I agree with Boro.

[Meromorphic]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I suspect a typo.

"scarcely surprising"

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I hate it when I agree with Boro.

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It really depends on the forum. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Trantor]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a line from an article I'm reading for a class from a 1994 edition of Scientific America. It doesn't appear incredibly relevant for the class, but please explain it for me.

Life's pathway certainly includes many features predictable from laws of nature, but these aspects are too broad and general to provide the "rightness" that we seek for validating evolution's particular results - roses, mushrooms, people and so forth. Organisms adapt to, and are constrained by, physical principles. It is, for example, scarily surprising, given laws of gravity, that the largest vertebrates in the sea (whales) exceed the heaviest animals on land (elephants today, dinosaurs in the past), which, in turn, are far bulkier than the largest vertebrate that ever flew (extinct pterosaurs of the Mesozoic era).

Why is this surprising? I've been thinking for the past 10 minutes, and can't understand it.

[/ QUOTE ]

TYPO

"Life's pathway certainly includes many features predictable from laws of nature, but these aspects are too broad and general to provide the "rightness" that we seek for validating evolution's particular results - roses, mushrooms, people and so forth. Organisms adapt to, and are constrained by, physical principles. It is, for example, scarcely surprising, given laws of gravity, that the largest vertebrates in the sea (whales) exceed the heaviest animals on land (elephants today, dinosaurs in the past), which, in turn, are far bulkier than the largest vertebrate that ever flew (extinct pterosaurs of the Mesozoic era). "

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2948/gould.html

[Jshuttlesworth]

Ocean: upward bouyant force
Land: Vertical forces sum to zero (pretty much).
Air: Animals need upward force to exceed their weight (in order to get off ground).

Therefore, heaviness is more evolutionarily stable (or less evolutionarily instable) in Ocean vertibrates than land, and in land vertibrates than in flying vertebrates. At least that's what I think he's getting at.

[Rduke55]

I think he meant why "scarily" and people figured out it was an error and should have read "scarcely" rather than the idea you're talking about.

[Jshuttlesworth]

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I think he meant why "scarily" and people figured out it was an error and should have read "scarcely" rather than the idea you're talking about.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a retard

[Rduke55]

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I think he meant why "scarily" and people figured out it was an error and should have read "scarcely" rather than the idea you're talking about.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a retard

[/ QUOTE ]

A retard that knows about physical constraints on body size though!

[EvilSmurf]

Gravity is only a theory.