Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils

Sadly we don't always get what we expect.I would expect we would have warehouses full of Passenger Pigeon fossils since they were around for at least 100,000 years and existed in huge numbers. Yet actually there's only a few.It seems to be the luck of the draw. Again I'm open to correction by an expert but I don't think you can predict that. The Theory Of Evolution does predict that transitional species must have existed between an ancestor species and a modern descendant (but not whether you will ever find fossils of them) but it does not predict how wide or narrow the lineage between them will be.It might be possible for somebody to predict this sort of thing if they know the environment that existed for a given period of time - but the only way you could know about the environment was to find a representative set of fossils to allow you to describe it. Even then I doubt we'd know enough to do it.

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Oops! Wrong Planet

No, they originally said Pakicetus was aquatic and came out with cute little drawings showing a seal/whale-like creature. That was totally bogus and quite absurd since all they had at that time was the skull.Now, they recognize it was a land mammal and not aquatic, but this site is apparently out of date. Moreover, to say "these animals" do not refer to the animals in the same paragraph but to earlier animals is really a stretch. They are claiming Pakicetus is aquatic, as that was the original claim, presented in peer-reviewed literature, for whatever that is worth (obviously imo not worth much).

Why do we then have abundant fossils of every known whale family, except all these transitionals?I mean we have fossils of 100% of them.But we have relatively no transitionals, just 5 at best, and maybe not even that.Why is that?Could a reasonable explanation just be that we don't have such fossils because the species never existed?

Omnivirus, frank, or ....well, look at my post to Ned.I show, albeit only with internet links that:1. Every existing whale family has abundant fossils dating pretty far back.2. Therefore, it seems reasonable to expect a similar high number of the transitionals preceding whale fossils to be found.3. We don't see the transitionals.4. A reasonable explanation is we don't see them because they don't exist.

Also, please dig in areas of relevant info. Mammal fossils are relevant, imo.Other fossils probably are not.Agreed?

This is exactly where I think the problem in the current discussion is. In many (perhaps a large majority of the cases) this does NOT occur. There is no point where there is any 'form' which could not (theoretically breed with any of it's earlier ancestors or later descendents over 100's or 1,000's of generations. (For whales this would be a time span of 1,000's to perhaps 100,000 years)When this is the case it becomes very hard to point to an "event". When sufficient generations have past and sufficient change accumulated maybe there is no longer any possibility of interbreeding but there is no line of demarcation anywhere in the continuum.

I have in the immediately previous post attempted to explain about the problem with the term "event".It is a misunderstanding on both sides in the use of terms that hasn't been cleared up yet. It seems to me that it would be a good idea to start a new thread on just this topic. Discussing, perhaps, both the idea of "events" and the chances of fossilization.You have ignored the point in the spectrum analogy of Yaro's. That is, in my mind, a very good analogy to the issue for much (but not all evolutionary change). There is not "color change" event anywhere in the spectrum yet the color is not the same from one side to the other. There maybe in a lineage no speciation event but still the populations are eventually different species.So both sides are right to a degree: there are no events to point to but there are still forms that we could see are different species. The gaps in the fossil record seem to be large enough that all the samples we have are far enough apart to be different species to the best of our ability to tell.However, I think that harping on that issue isn't getting us anywhere but if we clear it up then we can get on with the real points of the discussion.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 08-06-2005 03:48 AM

You arrived at very specific numbers. I, and others, have asked for the calculations you used to estimate them. These have not been forth coming.

This is a Remingtonocetus not a Pakicetus. Pakicetus was never thought to be aquatic. If anything, it is thought to be semi-aquatic.Also, using language like:"That was totally bogus and quite absurd since all they had at that time was the skull."Implies deliberate desception by the scientific comunity for wich you obviously have nothing but contempt. No one is trying to decive you but yourself.

I did not say that "species" does not exist. What I am saying is that is merely a label, a classificational device used for convenience. As I have explained before, if the biologists wanted to, they could call every variant a new species. In that case we would have a lot more species (of butterflies, for example). A species used to be defined in terms of physical characteristics, but lately most have been defining it in terms of gene pool isolation. And even with this definition, they are problems, inconsistencies and disagreements. Why these problems? Because its merely a label, that's why.I did not say that there is no such thing as speciation; what I said was that there is no such thing as a "speciation event." You speak as though one morning a few hundred million years ago--whenever it was--a "whale" was suddenly produced from something else that was not a whale, and you want the fossil recording this "event." This would be a "speciation event" and it does not happen. If you think in these terms, you are thinking of "kinds," which is a discrete entity quite distinct from any other kind, and is not merely a label we give but something that is what it is essentially.What does happen is that life forms beget life forms that are slightly different. This happens in every generation with imperfect replication.
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Let's forget the definition of species as an isolated gene pool for a moment,and define species in terms of physical characteristics.Suppose a long time ago there was just brown-eyed people and then one day somebody gave birth to a person whose eyes were a slightly blue shade of brown, perhaps from a mutation. Let's assume there's some advantage to this, like slightly better sight. Keep going along that path and eventually we have some blue-eyed people. If one wanted to, one could classify these blue-eyed people as a new species. You would say, no no, they are the same KIND of creature because you are thinking in terms of kinds.Hippos give birth to hippos; whales give birth to whales. But there is an ongoing process of gradual change. After a few million years the hippo begins to look a little different from its ancestors. Should we call it a new species? We can if we want to. Don't have to.That's the difference between "species" and "kind."This message has been edited by robinrohan, 08-06-2005 01:14 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 08-06-2005 01:20 PM

Well then, draw the line of demarcation according to the standards used to define "species" in general, which is a classification used so there is no arguing that it does not exist or something.I think you guys are making a mountain of a mole-hill on the subject of "species." Just because at times there are difficulties with classification does not mean one cannot make such classifications with a degree of accuracy, and for estimates, there is no need here for exact accuracy since we are estimated imaginary creatures anyway since we have no fossils that show they exist.In other words, the difficulties with classifying some species apart from others disappears when you are doing an estimate based on a large time-line with species that are imaginary and so you are really just making a range of estimates for how many species appear.

Ned, this is silly. First, there are specific standards for species.Use those standards.Secondly, we are dealing with imagined species, and it is clear how one could do this. Quantify the differences in land mammal species with whale species, and then examine how many differences there are, and then divide that number into the number of differences between whales and land mammals, and you get an estimate on how many species would need to be in a chain.Then, multiply that number by estimates of the numbers of branches that would take place with every new family of species that would need to have arisen.If "species" is too narror, use genera or family. Either way, it works the same.This is just one big red herring.Furthermore, the spectrum analysis is absurd, and here is why. We do isolate and use specific ranges of the spectrum. Ever hear of X-rays?If the analogy was correct, we couldn't tell X-Rays apart from the the the visible spectrum, but we can, and we can do so with great accuracy in fact.Or, better yet, let's look at the radio spectrum/frequency. If this anology as at all correct, we couldn't develop technology for radio and cell-phones because, hey, if something is on sliding scale, we just can't tell where one spot begins and one ends.But that's pure rubbish. We know precisely where one frequency ends and another begins, and the truth is with the spectrum, we can tell with greater accuracy than just about anything else there is.Only an idiot, or biased person, would keep buying into that analogy after being shown so clearly it is fallacious.I mean are we to thinkk fiber-optic systems cannot work, that they cannot provide specificity of signals?This is just an attempt to divert the topic to the number of transitional species that should be evident in the fossil record, but are not.

Also, the spectrum analogy demonstrates a total lack of even how evolution is suppossed to take place.Ever hear of Punctuated Equilibrium?Do you know why PE was put forth?It was put forth because the evidence is strongly against the type of gradualism that you guys think of as evolutution. In fact, if you think the spectrum analogy is accurate, then you have an extreme gradualism belief that is outdated and just plain wrong.The new theory which was given to explain the lack of data is that the whole species did not evolve (i.e. no spectrum), but that isolated groups within that species evolved, including various methods of isolation, and evolved rather quickly which explains, supposedly, why there are no fossils of the event taking place.The fossil record pretty darn near disproves gradualism, but imo, PE is not sufficient either, but it at least tries to grapple with the actual data instead of throwing out tons of silly analogies not germane to the process, as evolutionists have done here.

It does work that way for the most part. Further, it's an analogy if you want to be pedantic go ahead, but it was there to prove a point. It's also several hundred posts old by now. PE is the exception, not the rule. And it is sort of like evolution on overdrive, it is by no means Pakicetes giving birth to dolphins out of the blue.Heare is a good intro: Punctuated EquilibriaABE: A quick blurb on it from the wiki (my emphesis): This message has been edited by Yaro, 08-06-2005 03:36 PM

Deliberate overstatement, yes, and I have proven that time and time again.That's a form of deceit, I suppose, but you could argue deceit is too strong a term.What occurs is that the unfounded belief and opinion of evolutionists is often put forward as fact, often with artistic renderings wildly out of proportion to the evidence in such cases like this, and that is exactly what occurred with the initial "aquatic" claims of evolutionists, coupled with an artistic rendering of a seal-like/whale-like creature swimming with webbed feet, not hooves. Mutations | Answers in Genesis It is still occurring by evolutionists calling this hooved creature, a fully land animal, and not even semi-aquatic, a whale.But you guys probably don't see anything wrong with calling a creature far closer to a land mammal, since he is a land mammal, with hooves and running along on 4 legs with a canine-type of jaw-line and head-shape, a whale.Calling it a whale is Orwellian, but somehow I am in the wrong, eh?