Poems and Thoughts    by Frank Maurer

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Is Selection Our Mindless Life Guide? From my boyhood, and I was a very inquisitive child, I started learning about mammals, By first studying all aspects of my childhood domestic rabbits, And along with that, an intense study of our avian neighbors. Audubon Camps and bird counts kept me up to snuff. Of course also dinosaurs--but to a lesser extent than others my age, Although, later in life, teaching in Africa, I ferreted out the remnant tracks of the former dinosaur inhabitants, Making many plaster casts of their plodding on earth in good future sandstone. Now, even later in life, I am fascinated and overwhelmed With the 25,000 species of trilobite, Which densely populated the earth-seas for about 270 million years. Their morphology and progressive evolution towards greater elaboration, Was perhaps part of their end; Their ever-more elaborate morphology For sexulal competition getting the best of them. Remember the Irish Elk with their competing secondary-sexual-character antlers, With which the males could no longer bear in competition. This might demonstrate that 'mindless' selection to a 'double' end-adaptation, Can result where one, 'out-evolves' the other's 'benefit' and extinction occurs! Perhaps this questions the thought of a loving deity, Guiding 'all its creatures' to a perfect existence. Frank Maurer 21 June 2025 2020 Hours.