Fossil sorting for simple

Whatever,Your last post did nothing to explain your contradictory claims.You have claimed that the Ce is formed during the flood, & the Precambrian to Permian+ deposits that Joe M talks about are not.Given strata are cross correlatable how can one be flood & the other not?Mark

Simple, Your evasion is becoming tiresome.PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!!!WHY DO CLADISTICS & STRATIGRAPHY MATCH SO WELL?An answer to this question would begin something like, "cladistics & stratigraphy show such a high degree of correlation because......".Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-08-2004]

Simple, Well, thanks for the cladistics primer. For the purposes of this debate you can assume I know what it is, OK?Now, for the nnth time......WHY DOES CLADISTICS & STRATIGRAPHY MATCH SO CLOSELY?In case you hadn't noticed the changes can occur in different directions at the same time in different lineages. Exactly what you wouldn't expect in a flood scenario. Pray tell, why would one horse lineage that is reducing in size be at the same stratigraphic level as one that is increasing? Nor are the cladograms of taxa neecessarily close together stratigraphically.Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-08-2004]

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

Simple, And that somehow is WHAT, exactly?I'm afraid it isn't the proximity AT ALL, but the ordering.Please explain why the correlation of ordering of potentially multiple lineages in a cladogram matches evolutionary predictions to the tune of 5.68*10^323:1......568,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 : 1 ....chance of 300 cladograms only enjoying a 60% (as opposed to a 75% corroboration with stratigraphy).
of it occurring by chance.Your continued evasion is noted.Once more for the comprehensionally challenged......The cladograms are not necessarily close together stratigraphically (a cladogram of chordates covers all of the Cenozoic, Mesozoic, & about the same amount of sediment again before that), why does the ORDERING match so closely with evolutionary predictions?Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-09-2004]

Steve,Citing websites with no additional discussion is against forum rules. Use cites as a reference only. The core argument must come from yourself.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

arkathon, Nope.Stratigraphic layering is cross-correlatable globally. Given we know that layers, even in a flood scenario, are laid down superpositionally, we know that layers known as being in the Cretaceous are younger than those being in the Cambrian.So why, then, don't any terrestrial plants, let alone flowering plants, appear in Cambrian strata? Not a single solitary one.Terrestrial plants actually appear in the fossil record in the same way that cladistics & phylogenetic trees suggest. Bryophytes, seedless vasculars, seed ferns, gymnosperms & angiosperms. Since all but the bryophytes contain small plants to towering trees, this presents you with a problem. The old "it floats so it appears higher up the geologic column" dog won't hunt. Why club mosses should be found in Devonian strata to present, yet grass & oaks are only found relatively recently destroys the efficacy of such an argument. The seed fern Medullosa noei.Seed ferns are even more problematic, they too consisted of small plants & trees, yet none are found in post-Jurassic deposits. Trees float, don't they?Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Steve, I point you to the existing replies.And at the same time wonder why you question this? Given it is the first thing geologists did.Mark

Arkathon, Yes it is, for the reasons mentioned in my last post. Why not address the points directly rather than offer some if-if-if argument? Positive evidence anyone? A global flood should leave global evidence, right? A global flood responsible for the majority of the geologic column should have a start & a stop point. Where are they? How do you tell?The point you were asked to address, rather than wave away, was:"Terrestrial plants actually appear in the fossil record in the same way that cladistics & phylogenetic trees suggest. Bryophytes, seedless vasculars, seed ferns, gymnosperms & angiosperms. Since all but the bryophytes contain small plants to towering trees, this presents you with a problem. The old "it floats so it appears higher up the geologic column" dog won't hunt. Why club mosses should be found in Devonian strata to present, yet grass & oaks are only found relatively recently destroys the efficacy of such an argument.Seed ferns are even more problematic, they too consisted of small plants & trees, yet none are found in post-Jurassic deposits. Trees float, don't they?"Care to do so?I've never seen a flood "jumble" floating things up in a particular order below particles that sink. Have you? Spirit lake? How much sediment were the sunk trees there buried under?N-O-N-E. That's seed ferns, not ferns, it's like confusing vertebrates with invertebrates. But a careful reader would note even Jurassic dinosaurs would be able to feast on them. So why aren't seed fern trees found in recent strata? What about the other patterns? I'm afraid something that's supposed to float &/or sink (depending on what creationists need to happen in any given argument at the time) just doesn't explain the record at it is.If it sinks it's Precambrian, if it floats it's Holocene. But the pattern of deposition is neither. Like I have pointed out, it matches cladistic & therefore evolutionary expectations.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Arkathon, You see the layers in the bottom of the photograph? Tell me how they got beneath the ones on top & you get a Nobel Prize. Other than that you have no point. Or don't you understand what "superposition" means? Actually, they probably were! But that's neither here nor there....Do you understand what the word "terrestrial" means?How many terrestrial trilobites do you think there were? How many "terrestrial" SEA cucumbers?If you want to include the marine algae, fine, go for it, it's the same story! Everything is mightily ordered for such an alleged "jumbling".But the point remains, there were NO land (that's terrestrial to you)plants during the Cambrian. Strange, wouldn't you say, given your explanation elsewhere should have everything "jumbled"? Why aren't mosses, liverworts, conifers, grasses etc. found in terrestrial strata of the same relative age?Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Arkathon, Nope, please read more carefully. I noted there is a pattern to fossil deposition based on relative ages. Remember the pretty picture where I asked you to explain how the bottom strata got inserted under the top one? No? Well, you completely failed to address the point, so that must be why. Please explain how the layering isn't relatively older the deeper you go. Even if this formation were laid down during a flood this would be true.Key word - superposition. Trees aren't particles that settle out like sediments. And the taxa I mention are all in the fossil record so must have predated the alleged flood. If-if-if.Why are the taxa I mention a part of the fossil record, then? If-if-if.This still doesn't explain the pattern in the fossil record. I'm going to assume the penny has dropped regarding relative ages & restate my case in more detail. Your answers thus far have been if-if-if, none of which actually answer the question & explain the pattern seen in the fossil record, they are more like excuses as to why we shouldn't see a pattern in the fossil record.Apologies to those who have seen this a thousand times... Assessing Congruence Between Cladistic and Stratigraphic DataGiven that the phylogenies under study are independent of stratigraphy, it is possible to compare the two to see how well they match. There are two main reasons for disagreement. 1/ The phylogeny is wrong, & 2/ the fossil record is so poor that the daughter species is found in older rock than the parent. Given that this is the case, we should expect a very low SCI (SCI is the ratio of consistent to inconsistent nodes in a cladogram) value if evolution were not indicative of reality. ie. Nodes (in complex cladograms) match by chance rather than signal. In other words, the null hypothesis is that the SCI value will be a low value.Stratigraphic Consistency Index.The SCI metric may also be summarized either as a mean value for each taxonomic group or as a proportion of cladograms that score SCI values of 0.500 or more, an indication that half, or more, of the branches are consistent with stratigraphic evidence. By both measures, fishes and echinoderms score better than tetrapods. Mean SCI values are: echinoderms (0.773), fishes (0.757), and tetrapods (0.701). Proportions of cladograms with SCI values $0.500 are tetrapods (100%), echinoderms (94%), and fishes (93%). For both measures, values for all three groups are indistinguishable according to binomial error bars (Fig. 3).Within the sample of echinoderm cladograms, nonechinoids show somewhat better results than echinoids but not significantly so (Fig. 3). The mean SCI value for echinoids is 0.724, and for nonechinoids 0.849; moreover, 90%of echinoid cladograms have SCI values $ 0.500,compared with 100% for nonechinoids. SCI values for fish groups are variable but not significantly different (Fig. 3). For mean SCI values, the order is as follows: sarcopterygians (0.904), teleosts (0.744), placoderms(0.741), agnathans (0.733), and actinopterygians (0.722). In all cases, all sampled cladograms show SCI values > 0.500. The rankings of tetrapod groups by both aspects of the SCI metric are comparable. Mean SCI values give this sequence: mammals (0.837), mammallike reptiles (0.729), lepidosauromorphs (0.714), dinosaurs (0.698), archosauromorphs (0.660), and turtles (0.586). The low value for turtles is significantly lower than the high values for synapsids, mammals, and mammallike reptiles. Proportions of cladograms with SCI values $ 0.500 give this sequence: mammals (100%), mammallike reptiles (100%), lepidosauromorphs (100%), turtles (100%), dinosaurs (86%), and archosauromorphs (78%)."Why is the SCI so high? Why do cladograms & stratigraphy match on the whole if evolution is not indicative of reality? Given that cladograms & stratigraphy match relatively well, how do you explain this significant correlation?Given there is a clear signal of "evolution" in the rock stratigraphy & morphology combined, it therefore stands to reason that where these phylogenies would infer large scale morphological change (Cetaceans, basal tetrapoda, & basal amniotes, for example), evolution can be reliably inferred. Even more reliably than phylogenetic analyses, cladistics & stratigraphy on their own, that is. Amazing, isn't it, that organisms today, & organisms most similar to existing flora & fauna are more bouyant than ones that are dissimilar & find themselves in the uppermost strata. Amazing too, that the relative ordering of the fossil record should match evolutionary expectations.Please directly address the points raised & avoid if-if-if arguments. If you are going to assert, you are going to need evidence.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't