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Author | Topic: Evidence for Evolution: Whale evolution | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Very interesting topic. I have a few thoughts though.
First of all, I do not agree with the evolutionary diagrams depicting the changes happening over several millions of years. The oldest known DNA found according to http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...070705-oldest-dna.html is 400 000 years old. Thus, even getting the ‘youngest’ organism, Odontocetes’s DNA would not be possible. How can a diagram like this be assumed to be true when there are no DNA records that can prove that the transitions are even remotely related? There are so many different species of animals, you could make infinitely many different transitional diagrams to ‘prove’ that one species evolved into another when in fact evolution would totally disagree that the particular animal evolved in such a way. Mesonychids and Pakicetus for example could be two different and unrelated animals, putting them next to each other in such a diagram does not prove that the one evolved into the other. Off coarse I cannot disprove this either, I just believe that it should not be used in ‘proving evolution’ as there is NO evidence! For unproven facts no information is better than fiction. On one of your responsesWell, there are many organisms that eat algae and do not have 4-chambered stomachs. For example, some snails eat algae, and some shrimp. Also, some fish eat algae. You don't need a 4-chambered stomach to eat algae. Still, you have not provided Dr Adequate with a satisfactory answer in my opinion. It does not mean that if fish or other organisms eat algae and have only one stomach that whales do not need four. I would be very interested in some reference to evidence that whales do not use their four stomachs. In closing, if whales have these vestigial stomachs why didn’t they just stay on land where they would have gotten the most nutrition from a fully adapted system for eating grass. Where did this need come from? What was so attractive about the sea? Edited by TheArtist, : No reason given.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes:
Just for interest sake, what other ways are there?
DNA records are not the only way to detect relatedness, people managed to do that before the invention of DNA sequencing, you know. Dr Adequate writes: For example, even without DNA evidence, wouldn't you conclude that the two animals depicted below were related? I won’t disagree with you there, I will leverage off your comment here to try and make my point a bit more clear. This is something that I’ve been pondering about quite a bit and is quite a lengthy post but it does resolve back into context! Let’s suppose we have a Panda on an evolutionary transition diagram (such as the ones presented in this post) what would you put as the ancestor where it evolved from or the descendant where the evolution is continuing to, looking at modern animals? Is there any other animal on earth that is somewhere in the middle between a Panda and something else? Not nearly as much as to cause confusion as to whether it is a Panda or not. Why did evolution not try new avenues and evolve some intermediate steps or other variations?Here is the closest known relative to the Panda, the Spectacled Bear.
Different behaviour, different look etc. Look at the markings, more evil looking face, baldish, flatter snout, different ears, longer beak etc. No flowing intermediate steps alive to show gradual transition from the one species to the other, it is either Panda or Spectacled Bear. Look at it from a slightly different angle, the ease of naming the different transitions (Mesonychids, Pakicetus, Ambulecetus, Dalanistes etc.). If there were any fluent transition between these different versions, it would be difficult to put a name to each of them — if there was a smooth transition between the different species you would have to create bounds to clamp the specie names down. Where do you assume the Mesonychids end and the Pakicetus starts? If such a diagram (evolution in general) were true then animals on earth would just be a hodgepodge of intermediate steps of evolution and you would not be able to distinguish animals from each other. There would not be this is a Panda, that is a Lion or be able to tell where to draw the line between apes and human beings, just more human like or more ape like beings. One could argue that these transitional steps were just intermediate species that was later discarded by evolution (natural selection). Why did species evolve into these intermediate steps in the first place? They could not have been half bad as they survived good and well enough to apparently carry our species all the way from the apes to what we are today. Why would they mysteriously be absent from life today? And what better laboratory to test these ideas than the here and now? Going back millions of years gets rid of a lot of evidence making these ideas more plausible just because you can always make guess work. To apply this directly into this discussion’s context the question remains the same. Where is the semi-cow-hippo-whale combo? We are talking about a HUGE transition here all the way from a cow to a whale and there would be ample opportunity for some ‘inbetweeners’. I mean seriously, where are they??? In fact, we should be able to draw at least some kind of evolutionary diagrams showing the transition from live specimens today! Even if some of the species in the diagram above died out there should be new or other ones to use.
Dr Adequate writes:
As per my point mentioned above. Why can’t this diagram be drawn today where there would have been more than enough proof? Rather, it is the evidence of their relatedness that led people to draw the diagram. Edited by TheArtist, : No reason given.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
dan4reason writes:
Point taken, however, we are looking at fossils here. A mere outline of these animals. That is a small portion of an animal’s anatomy and these animals can be vastly different otherwise for all we know (organs, skin, hair, eyes etc.).
There is a strong correlation between anatomy and genetics. In fact the family tree constructed from genetics is very similar to that from morphology. dan4reason writes:
Let me rephrase; it does not mean that if fish or other organisms eat algae and have only one stomach that whales do not need four for whatever reason. I’m not saying that they would need four for digesting algae specifically. I mean that all four could be necessary for their lifestyle and environment i.e. not just there because it used to be part of a cow.
If algae can be digested without a stomach specialised for eating grass and leaves, then why in the world would a ruminant stomach be needed for algae?
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
dan4reason writes: It is doubtful if this pelvis has any function at all, although it might have some minor function. It is vestigial because it has lost its former function (holding the legs solidly). Apparently the pelvis is crucial to a whale's reproductive system. Edited by TheArtist, : No reason given.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
dan4reason writes: 1: I think you are using too strong a language when you say "crucial." Second you need to back up this whole statement. There is a book by Dr. Bergman and Howe called Vestigial organs are fully functional where they apparently explain in detail how these bones are used and that they are important to the reproductive system on pg 71. They also point out that these bones are different in male and female specimens. Unfortunately I do not have this book to give you a direct quote but it sure sounds worth reading. There are numerous references to this book and what it says about the pelvis but I couldn’t find any direct quotations as yet. Here is another: "Evolutionists often point to vestigial hind legs near the pelvis. But these are found only in the Right Whale. and upon closer inspection turn out to be strengthening bones to the genital wall." John C. Whitcomb, Early Earth (1988), p. 84. There might be later studies where these bones were found in other whales as well.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: Well, morphology. Hence my picture of the pandas. "These results reveal a large discordance between morphological and molecular measures of similarity. Rats and mice are classified in the same family, while cows and whales are classified in different orders. Perhaps molecular sequences are not necessarily giving us an accurate picture of ancestry." "The Marsupial Mitochondrial Genome and the Evolution of Placental Mammals," Genetics, 137:243-256 (1994). Seems like such a diagram is a pretty doubtful display of ‘evidence’ of the evolutionary process, especially considering that it is only the skeleton and does not include the vast array of other missing features as already mentioned. So the only way to prove these or have evidence of these transitions is morphology (DNA is not available) and this is has a large discordance to molecular similarity. Not very convincing.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: TheArtist writes:
Well no, because we don't expect all the intermediate forms to still be alive. If they were, what you're saying would be true, and the concept of species would break down in living species. If such a diagram (evolution in general) were true then animals on earth would just be a hodgepodge of intermediate steps of evolution ... Dr David Berlinski, made an important point in my opinion. He made the now semi famous statement that a cow would have had to undergo over and above 50 000 mutations to reach a whale which sounds very reasonable don’t you think? I would think that it would be way more than that, however let’s say it is only 50 000. Consider the fact that each of these 50 000 mutations can loosely be considered as new species as they are each slightly different from the previous. Your assumption is that none of these 50 000 species survived (only the hippo)? For any mutation to live on it would require the animal carrying the mutation to be fit enough to successfully mate with a female. Then the mutation needs to live on a couple of generations to ensure that it does not get lost at some point. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that if a mutation was good enough to enable a male interest in a female or the other way around, that this mutation (or species) would not die out anytime soon. Male/female courtship depends on both genres to be fit and fertile. We often see how males need to present great displays of manliness to females to win over courtship with them. A female will not easily mate with a weak male. So we can say that all of these mutations need to be very successful for them to live on. But only a hippo stands between a cow and a whale. Let’s take it easy here and count in the apparently 80 different species of whale in existence today (give or take). This will still yield 49 920 intermediate species or mutations that died out! Why such a great number of very successful mutations that died out? Why are none of them walking the earth today? Well, apparently all of them died out leaving us with no contemporary proof of this transition. It does not matter how you look at this, 49 920 transition steps being absent today seems a bit suspect. However if all of them did die out, I would SERIOUSLY question the existence of hippos and whales, as it seems that species which was extremely closely related to them, died off.
Dr Adequate writes: Well, consider the analogy with technical development. You might as well ask: "If the Atari ST was a bad computer, why did they sell so well? But if it was a good computer, why aren't people still manufacturing them?" Clearly they were good of their time, but were superseded by something better. Remember that these intermediate steps would have had to be very similar in appearance and function. Only miniscule changes would have happened if it took millions of years. In line with this analogy, you would have thousands of very slightly different versions of the Atari ST. We could say that these different versions came about due to imperfections in the production process. Some might be a very slightly different colour whereas other could have slightly more lead residue on their circuit boards. Then, saying that they were good for their time would include many of the slightly different versions, as the difference between them would be so small it would almost be unnoticeable and for all practical reasons the same thing. Then, when they get discarded due to some new technology, all of the versions will be discarded! You could pick any version and it would still be, very much an Atari ST. The ‘survival’ of the Atari ST would very strongly guarantee the survival of any of the slightly different version and the ‘death’ of the Atari ST will take with it all of these versions too. Apply this to the evolutionary process. You’ll get the same result.
Dr Adequate writes: Again, I would point out --- there must be some reason why the intermediate forms couldn't cut it in competition with the modern forms, because the intermediate forms are dead and the modern forms are alive. I would say that this is because the modern forms are better adapted to the whale niches. A creationist would say --- what? I don't know. That God just made them worse than other whaley things in the first place? But since they're extinct, we know that there is a reason why they're extinct. And this fact would seem to trump any a priori (a.k.a prior) reasoning on your part to try to show that they should still be alive. One would never have to reason that God just made them worse than related species. I can easily say that all creatures were made perfectly in the first place. We know that many a specie became extinct in the past because of natural disasters such as climatic changes, changes in sea levels or currents, volcanic eruptions, rapidly spreading disease etc. These natural forces can be attributed to number of different species’ becoming extinct. Some of them happen suddenly and wipe out entire species in their native area and other happen over time. Another example is the amount of species that became extinct due to human activity such as over hunting and pollution. So all of these were made worse than other animals living away from the harm? Is a certain specie of bird made worse than another if the former specie lives exclusively on a certain island and is wiped out due to a volcanic eruption’s toxic ash clouds?
Dr Adequate writes: A loose analogy ... if I ask why the coal scuttle is there, you can say: "Because it is crucial to the operation of the machine". Yes, but why a coal scuttle? And we would hazard a guess that it's there because it was what the Professor had to hand, rather than that the coal scuttle was originally designed for the role it plays in the Professor's pancake machine. I bet if you asked the professor what it is for he would passionately ramble on about how important it is to the rest of his machine. I’m just saying that just because you looked at this picture and cannot see an apparent reason for the coal scuttle to assume that it was just what the professor had at hand. This argument goes both ways. I’m simply responding to the initial statement It is doubtful if this pelvis has any function at all, although it might have some minor function. Ask the professor about the coal scuttle before making the assumption.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined:
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Dr Adequate writes:
Apologies, you’re absolutely right. I could not find the quote either, it does not seem to be anywhere in the paper. I found the quote and reference elsewhere and never thought to double check it. I've just been reading through the full text of the paper that you cited, and the "quotation" that you "quote" from it appears nowhere in the text. It does, however, appear on creationist websites. This would go some way to explaining why it's nonsense. It’s quite curious as to where this originated from as the same thing seems to be repeated on the net. I strongly agree with you that spreading lies or misinformation is distasteful. It wastes one’s time or is just plain embarrassing as in my case. A perfect example that one should never just except something you read. I’m not saying that this is definitely a lie though as it could well be that someone just screwed up and put the wrong reference to this quote. I am looking into this to try and find out for myself what the story around this is. Edited by TheArtist, : No reason given.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Panda writes: This sort of crap really pisses me off.We have to waste our time confirming every little thing they say - because we know it is normally wrong. Are creationists happy that they have such a reputation for dishonesty that people always check their sources? Are creationists happy that they are so often shown to be lying? Are creationists happy to be so closely related to politicians? I think your comments are uncalled for. You are badmouthing creationists as a whole and this is all you could contribute to the forum so far. It’s like saying that people are liars. You cannot make such a generalization just because some mishaps do happen. Sure somewhere someone will screw up, and this screw up can be spread quickly if someone forgets to check the validity of the claim as I did. No one is perfect.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Hi Dan,
According to wikipedia "Himalayacetus is an extinct genus of carnivorous aquatic mammal (from the same link you provided). This aquatic mammal was one of the earliest mammals on your list, alongside Pakicetus and even the Pakicetus seemed to roam dry land. What is your thoughts around this?
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: Hold on, weren't you the one saying that loads of intermediate forms should have survived even to the present day? So if the evidence is consistent with the idea that some of them did survive for a while, is that not what you would expect to see? I don't see how this brings my previous arguments into question in any way? If you looked back at my previous arguments, my main point was that one still sees a big enough gap between these species to easily assume that they were different animals not one that evolved out of the other. You don’t see a smooth enough transition in the fossils and neither do you see it today as part of continuing evolution. What about the fact that this species survived for a while questions my reasoning? Please explain.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: It's as suspect as my great-grandparents not being alive today, and my great-great grandparents, and my great-great-great-grandparents ... if I really am descended from them, shouldn't some of them still be alive? Please explain how this is relevant to my point. Human KIND is alive today, or not extinct, sure people die, that doesn’t mean that the human species is extinct. Please explain how this argument answers: It does not matter how you look at this, 49 920 transition steps being absent today seems a bit suspect. Edited by TheArtist, : No reason given.
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TheArtist Junior Member (Idle past 2681 days) Posts: 14 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: I've just been reading through the full text of the paper that you cited, and the "quotation" that you "quote" from it appears nowhere in the text. It does, however, appear on creationist websites. This would go some way to explaining why it's nonsense. Since this was the cause to some heated discussion I had taken the time to investigate this particular case. Unfortunately I could not find the true origin of this quote/reference but as I stated before this was most likely that the reference provided did not match the quote. In any case, here is some reading material that seems to make the same statement: Investigating species boundaries in the Giliopsis group of Ipomopsis (Polemoniaceae): Strong discordance among molecular and morphological markers: http://www.amjbot.org/content/96/4/853.full Discordances between morphological systematics and molecular taxonomy in the stem line of equids: A review of the case of taxonomy of genus Equus: http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/...311003362/abstract
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