Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,807 Year: 3,064/9,624 Month: 909/1,588 Week: 92/223 Day: 3/17 Hour: 1/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win.
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 3 of 2887 (767887)
09-03-2015 2:50 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dr Adequate
09-03-2015 1:02 AM


Weird.
You (who is "you") "have" the fossils? You're hoarding them?
The fossils are creatures that died in the Flood. They show the range of life on earth before the Flood. That's all.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-03-2015 1:02 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-03-2015 3:09 AM Faith has replied
 Message 5 by Coragyps, posted 09-03-2015 8:21 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 6 of 2887 (767908)
09-03-2015 11:59 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Dr Adequate
09-03-2015 3:09 AM


There is no "right order." They are sorted in a rough way according to size and original location, lower levels being generally smaller and marine, upper being land creatures. There is no gradation according to complexity or any clear criterion. Creatures of a kind are found together, just as they are found in life. Different races or varieties of the same creature are found together in different layers, not because the upper evolved from the lower but just because that's where they ended up. They're cousins that lived at the same time, and it's very possible the lower trilobites, for instance, microevolved from the upper. You have no way of knowing, you just make assumptions. A very careful study of the order would have to show no rational order at all.
But of course it must be added that there is no rational explanation for the sorting of the sedimentary strata in which they appear either, as if eras of time could be characterized by only one kind of sediment. But we do know that moving water sorts sediments, river water, ocean water. The rising of the ocean water in the first months of the FLood would certainly have deposited sediments according to Walther's Law. The overwhelming evidence is that the layers in which the fossils are found were simply mechanically produced by water.
And of course the very abundance of fossils can only be explained by a one-time water catastrophe, which provided the ideal conditions for fossilizsation, which otherwise hardly ever occur.
It's merely fanciful imagination that invents time periods to explain them.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-03-2015 3:09 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by ringo, posted 09-03-2015 12:31 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 9 by PaulK, posted 09-03-2015 12:44 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 10 by Tanypteryx, posted 09-03-2015 1:02 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 13 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-03-2015 3:34 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 14 by edge, posted 09-03-2015 4:15 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 25 by ramoss, posted 09-03-2015 11:31 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 19 of 2887 (767947)
09-03-2015 7:59 PM


Note: Not one single post here has offered evidence or reasoned argumentation for anything. Mine has actually done more in that direction than any other.
I'd like to see someone actually PROVE that the order of the fossils supports evolution. Can you prove increasing complexity perhaps? Anything at all.

Replies to this message:
 Message 20 by Omnivorous, posted 09-03-2015 8:50 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 21 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-03-2015 9:04 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 22 by Tanypteryx, posted 09-03-2015 9:40 PM Faith has replied
 Message 29 by PaulK, posted 09-04-2015 1:39 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 23 of 2887 (767962)
09-03-2015 10:09 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Tanypteryx
09-03-2015 9:40 PM


There is no body of scientific work that refutes that the fossils completely support the Theory of Evolution.
Of course not. Because once the paradigm was established and accepted there was nothing to do but build upon it and within it. It has become an entrenched assumption or presupposition. There is enough seeming evidence, or at least plausibility, to keep the system going, as long as tge few best bits of evidence are emphasized over and over and the difficult areas are sidestepped, which is very easy to do with a theory that is unprovable in the direct ways the hard sciences are provable.
Unprovable because the whole thing is an edifice of interpretation upon interpretation, none of it can be replicated, it can only be interpreted. You can't replicate the burial of dinosaurs, all you can do is interpret what you think must have happened, and in that enterprise you are limited by what has already been accepted, so you fit your bit of understanding into the already-constructed edifice. You add your interpretive plausible bit to the whole edifice and just keep building, although it has no foundation in actual fact, it's all mental conjurings. The whole thing is a gravity-defying reality-defying multiplication of interpretations floating some distance above planet earth. You have the illusion of science, the illusion of evidence, you mentally manipulate mental figments as if they were realities. It's all very convincing if you are entrenched in the system yourself.
You have no motive to see through it but it's pretty transparent to one who does.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by Tanypteryx, posted 09-03-2015 9:40 PM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by Tanypteryx, posted 09-03-2015 10:37 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 26 by New Cat's Eye, posted 09-03-2015 11:48 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 27 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-04-2015 12:13 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 41 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-04-2015 12:05 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 42 by edge, posted 09-04-2015 12:11 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 31 of 2887 (767980)
09-04-2015 2:23 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by Dr Adequate
09-04-2015 2:01 AM


Re: And Now Some Ankylosaurs
Good grief, how is that evidence for evolution? With any such similar creatures we can be sure microevolution has occurred either from one to another, in what order is impossible to tell, since the level of the layer means absolutely nothing in relation to the time needed for such developments to occur, or from an ancestor to all that is not represented in the fossil record. They are the cousins I was talking about earlier, that are also seen in the trilobites that also are found collected together in different sedimentary layers. Not time periods, just layers of sediments. The evidence supports creationism just as well as it can be made to support evolution. It's all a matter of interpretation. In fact I see nothing about these creatures that makes them evidence for evolution, that evidence is all in your head.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-04-2015 2:01 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-04-2015 2:51 AM Faith has replied
 Message 37 by Coragyps, posted 09-04-2015 9:22 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 33 of 2887 (767983)
09-04-2015 3:09 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by Dr Adequate
09-04-2015 2:51 AM


Re: And Now Some Ankylosaurs
Because it's what we'd expect to see if evolution had taken place.
But it's nothing more than normal microevolution that occurs all the time, within years or even months sometimes, so that you have varieties living side by side. So it's also "what we'd expect to see" if evolution had NOT taken place and if the supposed enormously long time periods aren't time periods at all but just layers of sediment that happened to get deposited along with different breeds or races of whatever the creature is.
It's like Darwin's finches. They are assumed to have "evolved" over some long period of time to adapt to their different environments, but there's no reason at all to assume that. (MrHambre showed that historically there's been criticism of this idea of adaptationism from among evolutionists, although of course he wouldn't allow a creationist interpretation of that criticism). You don't need long periods of time to get such variations or breeds of creatures, and there is no reason to put one variation above another as more "evolved" either, they are simply variations that are possible in the creature's genome simply through sexual recombination.
There is also no reason to assume that an observable adaptation between a breed or race and something in the environment was the cause of the variation; it could easily be that the variation occurred and the adaptation followed. The kind of finch beak microevolved through the normal genetic processes of variation that make us all different from our parents and the finches with that kind of beak naturally gravitated to the kind of food that beak was most suited for.
One example of a dramatic change over a very short period of time showed up on a previous thread: the large-headed lizards on the Croatian island. They were ordinary small-headed lizards that had been introduced to that island by human beings, who went back thirty years later and found nothing but the large-headed variety. Since evolutionary theory told them this sort of change takes enormously long periods of time they were surprised, But they shouldn't have been. There is nothing more common than that dramatic changes should take place when a small number of any species is isolated from others of its kind and allowed to breed among themselves. The observed change to the large-headed kind was probably already effected within no more than ten years. There's no reason to think it needed more than that.
So we see similar things in the fossil record. Breeds or races of creatures that lived at the same time, that microevolved in their own isolated niches and got deposited in their own sedimentary layers in the Flood.
Now this is a reasoned argument for my position, with a lot more thought than you've put into your presentations so far, so don't try to dismiss it.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-04-2015 2:51 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 34 by PaulK, posted 09-04-2015 3:41 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 36 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-04-2015 9:00 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 39 by dwise1, posted 09-04-2015 10:20 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 62 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-10-2015 11:01 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 64 of 2887 (768464)
09-12-2015 2:48 AM
Reply to: Message 62 by Dr Adequate
09-10-2015 11:01 PM


Re: And Now Some Ankylosaurs
It would help to have more information about the size of these creatures etc., but in any case you'd have to show that this feature of the club at the end of the tail couldn't just have developed from normal genetic possibilities in the genome, probably brought to phenotypic expression in isolation from other kinds of ankylosaurs, and probably starting with small versions and developing increase in size over generations, as Darwin's pigeons developed the exaggerated size of features he selected for in each breeding event.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-10-2015 11:01 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 65 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-12-2015 10:34 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 98 of 2887 (768663)
09-12-2015 8:51 PM
Reply to: Message 95 by ICANT
09-12-2015 2:21 PM


Yes, there is no clear gradation between creatures in the fossil record, I agree, but I disagree that "...the record shows that at many times there appeared completely new creatures on the earth."
You are misreading the fossil record the same way the evolutionists are. ALL the fossils are of creatures that lived at the same time before the Flood, and all together died at the same time IN the Flood. That is why there seem to be "jumps" from one level to another in the fossil record, which is what Gould got all exercised about.
But the fossil record does not represent genetic descent from one level to another at all, that's THE delusion, or spell, that all evolutionist science labors under.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 95 by ICANT, posted 09-12-2015 2:21 PM ICANT has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 105 by Coragyps, posted 09-13-2015 1:46 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 106 of 2887 (768722)
09-13-2015 1:47 PM
Reply to: Message 105 by Coragyps
09-13-2015 1:46 PM


Why SHOULD they ever be found together?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 105 by Coragyps, posted 09-13-2015 1:46 PM Coragyps has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 107 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-13-2015 1:50 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 108 by Coragyps, posted 09-13-2015 2:08 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 109 by Admin, posted 09-13-2015 2:58 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 110 of 2887 (768736)
09-13-2015 3:06 PM
Reply to: Message 109 by Admin
09-13-2015 2:58 PM


I have no idea what you're talking about but that's OK, I don't need to be on this thread anyway.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by Admin, posted 09-13-2015 2:58 PM Admin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 111 by Admin, posted 09-13-2015 3:35 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 114 of 2887 (769371)
09-20-2015 9:07 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by RAZD
09-20-2015 7:23 AM


Re: From the Homo naledi thread
Need to move dwise post here.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by RAZD, posted 09-20-2015 7:23 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 118 by dwise1, posted 09-20-2015 12:55 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 115 of 2887 (769373)
09-20-2015 9:10 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by RAZD
09-20-2015 7:23 AM


Moved Post: There's Just Something Funny about the Transitionals Idea
My post 152 from the Homo Naledi thread:
Yes I was going to leave the thread but then dwise posted this story of a creationist who converted to an evolutionist on the basis of a specific experience with a scientific journal, and I found myself pondering it and objecting to it, and I have questions I just HAVE to raise about it.
It's convincing enough as presented:
I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligent...
The part I put in small type, about the medical students who might operate on him is just irrelevant emotional puff. Knowledge of human anatomy they certainly need, but there's no way reptile-mammal evolution could help them in the slightest to operate on a human being.
Anyway, I find myself having the same sorts of questions I had about Dr. A's skulls. The supposed evolutionary sequence is just too pat, too "just so" to be realistic. Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation? Doesn't evolution ever make mistakes? But of course you'll say it does, all the time, and yet this sort of perfect sequence is what you give for evidence. How did we get this neat progression of skulls from small cranial capacity to large human cranial capacity with such plausible morphological gradations from one to another of the skulls? How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host?
Malcolm agreed in Message 138* that the skull sequence IS artificial in the sense that "many" of the types are not considered to be in the genetic line suggested by the linear arrangement of the skulls, but thought to be separate lines of development. That alone should raise an eyebrow because the presentation obviously implies a direct line of genetic descent from one skull type to the next. Without those particular types in the genetic line, how then do you get from chimp to human skull or type to type within the human line? You've got no ladder without those. Isn't there some degree of self-delusion going on here?
First, reality produces variations, not gradatons. Microevolution creates variations, not smooth gradations. I say more about this in my footnote below. There is no gradation from one trilobite type to another in the fossil record, for instance, there are only populations of different types that happen to have been buried at different levels of the strata. So why should there be gradations between skulls or ear bones rather than just many different variations? There is an enormous variety within some species of living plants for instance, each with its own qualities and characteristics, but no clear gradation. The Pod Mrcaru lizards really should have been followed up with further experiments. Other groups of pairs from the original population should also have been isolated for thirty years. Then groups of pairs from those new populations again isolated. My guess is you'd get lots of variations on lizards, assuming there was sufficient genetic diversity in the original population for that to occur. I'd guess that the chance f a similar large-headed type evolving from another random set is very low, because any particular phenotype that develops from a small isolated population is the result of the pecular gene frequencies of that small population, and those are not going to be identical from population to population. You should end up with a whole bunch of different types of lizards all from that original population.
THAT is genetic reality. Linear gradation in genetic descent doesn't happen in nature, so why should it be expected in the fossil record?
Yes, it sure LOOKS like it happened according to those skulls and that journal full of supposed transitional types of ear bones. I don't know the explanation but I have to doubt it all.
Second, microevolution does not need the millions of years supposedly objectively dated between fossil skulls and reptile-to-mammal ear bones. As the Pod Mrcaru example shows, thirty years is plenty when you have an isolated small population, and nature should create such isolated populations frequently enough to be the explanation for the different breeds of fossils too.
Dates. Sure seems open-and-shut when you've got each skull dated, each example of reptilian or mammalian ear bones dated, and they all so nicely follow one from another just as evolution says they should. It's the dating of the specimens that seals the deal, right, so unless one wants to accuse all researchers in the area of outright fraud the dates have to be accepted don't they? How can one answer that?
First, I'm not accusing anyone of fraud, but there is certainly something odd about how this all fits together that ought not to be taken at face value.
Microevolution does NOT take millions of years, as I say above. The few thousand years since the Flood is plenty of time for the variation of all those saved on the ark to have developed into the races and varieties and breeds we see today, especially given that they all had to have spread out to populate the earth from one single location, which would have involved series after series of populations splitting off from other populations and subsequently developing its own set of gene/allele frequencies.
On that same thread with the Pod Mrcaru lizards Percy posted information about breeds of Jutland cattle:
Our results further demonstrate the rapid diversification of the Jutland breed herds due to limited gene flow and genetic drift.
The only point I'm making is that rapid diversification is not rare and it's an example not only of rapid microevolution but of the VARIETY within species that is the reality those fossil arrangements of skulls and ear bones defy.
Also, if millions of years even occurred every living thing would long since have become extinct because evolution DOES "use up" genetic diversity and mutation isn't orderly enough or rapid enough to replace that diversity, especially if rapid microevolution due to changed gene frequencies with population isolation is as common as I think it is. You run out of genetic diversity and that is the end of evolution for any particular line of genetic microevolution. There is no evolution from one species to another, it is all within species.
=================
*
Malcolm writes:
Well for the most part it is an artificial arrangement, since our current understanding of human evolution indicates that many of the species which these skulls represent branched off from our line of descent from a common ancestor we shared with Chimps.
This I've addressed above, but Malcolm goes on:
The reasoning we have for this common ancestor is the genetic evidence that Humans and Chimps are related, from simplistic DNA hybridisation to full genome sequencing, endogenous retroviruses, pseudogenes etc. Now to some, including yourself, a direct comparison between Humans and Chimps would suggest too many differences for the two species to be related, or to put it another way, for them to be related would require some ‘macroevolutionary’ change.
No, I don't think this quite reflects my thinking, right now I'm absorbed with questions about the skulls which he goes on to:
The arrangement of hominin skulls illustrates the much smaller ‘microevolutionary’ changes that have occurred between populations leading up towards our own population. You did agree with this by stating that the skulls represented normal human variation, the only exception being skull A, the modern Chimp. However, when you look at skull B it has a lot more in common with skull A then it does with skull N.
True, and as I did say somewhere I'm not sure if B and C are human or not. But I have problems with the arrangement of those that are most clearly human anyway. I did say they represent normal human variations, but in saying that I meant that in living reality you wouldn't find them in the just-so arrangement that implies line of descent from one to another that Dr. A's chart presents. What you would find in reality is differences between individuals but probably most clearly differences between racial groups, at least in general. One group would generally have broad faces for instance, another long faces, one prominent large teeth, another small crooked teeth, one would have short noses, another long noses, one high set prominent cheekbones, another hardly any clear cheekbones at all. GENETIC REALITY SHOWS VARIATION, IT DOES NOT SHOW LINEAR DESCENT FROM ONE TYPE TO ANOTHER. Even in isolated populations where genetic inbreeding has developed a distinctive racial appearance what you find is variation between individuals, not some gradation from individual to another or parent to child to child etc. Since this is the case with living things, why should we expect such neat linearity in the fossils that are found all over the planet that are unlikely to have any close genetic relation between them? AGAIN, WHERE ARE THE DEVIANTS IN YOUR JUST-SO SEQUENCE?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by RAZD, posted 09-20-2015 7:23 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by Faith, posted 09-20-2015 9:17 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 117 by RAZD, posted 09-20-2015 10:19 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 120 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-20-2015 1:46 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 116 of 2887 (769374)
09-20-2015 9:17 AM
Reply to: Message 115 by Faith
09-20-2015 9:10 AM


RAZD's post 155 from other thread
The part I put in small type, about the medical students who might operate on him is just irrelevant emotional puff. Knowledge of human anatomy they certainly need, but there's no way reptile-mammal evolution could help them in the slightest to operate on a human being.
The point, Faith, was that IF the information in the journals was all made up arbitrary evolutionist nonsense, then those students were studying arbitrary evolutionist nonsense.
Anyway, I find myself having the same sorts of questions I had about Dr. A's skulls. The supposed evolutionary sequence is just too pat, too "just so" to be realistic. Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation? Doesn't evolution ever make mistakes? But of course you'll say it does, all the time, and yet this sort of perfect sequence is what you give for evidence. How did we get this neat progression of skulls from small cranial capacity to large human cranial capacity with such plausible morphological gradations from one to another of the skulls?
No Faith, evolution does not make errors -- it is not a person.
The reason we find such a neat pattern is because it is the history of evolution as it occurred, a little change here, a little change there, and over time creating the path from early hominid to modern man.
This path has many side branches, cousins, like the Neanderthals.
But the main point is that IF you have an actual evolutionary lineage, THEN there will be intermediate stages from one point to another in the fossil record. Finding intermediates confirms this.
Homo naledi is the latest find in a field with increasing numbers of intermediates between a common ancestor with Chimpanzees and modern humans. It fits neatly into the sequence shown.
The similarities between (A) and (B,C) point to that common ancestor.
Here is one image of possible lineage from 1998 with skull images:
Fossil Skulls!
quote:
Below are 12 fossil skulls that represent more than 3.5 million years of human evolution. Click on any of them to find out more. This exhibit is enhanced with the Shockwave plug-in, which you can download for free from Macromedia.
American Museum of Natural History
Note that this is interactive on the referenced page so that you can pick a skull and get further information on it.
Another version of such a tree can be seen at
The human story: We’re still here!
quote:
In Fossils: The Key to the Past (2009), British palaeontologist Richard Fortey points out, Not many years ago, there were very few named species of Homo — now there are a whole clutch of them. The original idea of ‘links in a chain’ leading to modern humankind has been replaced by a view recognising a number of branches that did not give rise to any survivors, and a rather special lineage that led to the whole panoply of the human race in all its diversity of colour, language and creed: that is to say, Homo sapiens.

You can check these against the Talk Origins skulls picture that DrA posted:
29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1
You can also note that the new find, Homo naledi fits into these diagrams, as does a previous find by Lee Berger of Australopithicus sediba
quote:
Australopithecus sediba
The fossil skeletons of Au. sediba from Malapa cave are so complete that scientists can see what entire skeletons looked like near the time when Homo evolved. Details of the teeth, the length of the arms and legs, and the narrow upper chest resemble earlier Australopithecus, while other tooth traits and the broad lower chest resemble humans. These links indicate that Au. sediba may reveal information about the origins and ancestor of the genus Homo. Functional changes in the pelvis of Au. sediba point to the evolution of upright walking, while other parts of the skeleton retain features found in other australopithecines. ...
MH1
quote:
MH1 is a juvenile australopithecine, about 12-13 years old. It was the first specimen of Au. sediba found at Malapa Cave. Both cranial and postcranial remains have been recovered from this individual. The mixture of primitive and derived traits may help link the genus Australopithecus with the genus Homo.

Arranged by time the evolutionary trends appear.
Enjoy
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Faith, posted 09-20-2015 9:10 AM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by RAZD, posted 09-20-2015 1:33 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 123 of 2887 (769456)
09-21-2015 9:40 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by RAZD
09-20-2015 7:23 AM


Reptiles to Mammals
From Homo naledi thread.
Faith writes:
... How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host? ...
There is information of this sequence of evolution that I have posted before ...
quote:
... The fossil transition from reptile to mammal is one of the most extensive and well-studied of all the transitions, and detailed series of fossils demonstrate how this transition was accomplished. ...
... In reptiles, the lower jaw is made up of a number of different bones, and the jaw joint is formed between the quadrate bone in the skull and the angular bone in the jaw. In mammals, by contrast, the lower jaw is made up of a single bone, the dentary, which articulates with the squamosal bone in the skull to form the jaw joint. Reptiles also have a single bone in the middle ear, the stapes. In mammals, there are three bones in the middle ear, the malleus, incus and stapes (also known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup). ...
Paleontologists point out that the therapsids possessed many of the characteristics of both reptiles and mammals:
"In many respect, the tritylodont skull was very mammalian in its features. Certainly, because of the advanced nature of the zygomatic arches, the secondary palate and the specialized teeth, these animals had feeding habits that were close to those of some mammals . . . . Yet, in spite of these advances, the tritylodonts still retained the reptilian joint between the quadrate bone of the skull and the articular bone of the lower jaw. It is true that these bones were very much reduced, so that the squamosal bone of the skull and the dentary bone of the lower jaw (the two bones involved in the mammalian jaw articulation) were on the point of touching each other." (Colbert and Morales, 1991, p. 127)
... it is apparent that, during the evolutionary transition from reptile to mammal, the jaw joints must have shifted from one bone to another, freeing up the rest of these bones to form the auditory ossicles in the mammalian middle ear. .... As Arthur N. Strahler puts it, "A transitional form must have had two joints in operation simultaneously (as in the modern rattlesnake), and this phase was followed by a fusion of the lower joint." (Strahler 1987, p. 414) ...
... it can be clearly seen in a remarkable series of fossils from the Triassic therapsids. The earliest therapsids show the typical reptilian type of jaw joint, with the articular bone in the jaw firmly attached to the quadrate bone in the skull. In later fossils from the same group, however, the quadrate-articular bones have become smaller, and the dentary and squamosal bones have become larger and moved closer together. This trend reaches its apex in a group of therapsids known as cynodonts, of which the genus Probainognathus is a representative. Probainognathus possessed characteristics of both reptile and mammal, and this transitional aspect was shown most clearly by the fact that it had TWO jaw joints--one reptilian, one mammalian:
"Probainognathus, a small cynodont reptile from the Triassic sediments of Argentina, shows characters in the skull and jaws far advanced toward the mammalian condition. Thus it had teeth differentiated into incisors, a canine and postcanines, a double occipital condyle and a well-developed secondary palate, all features typical of the mammals, but most significantly the articulation between the skull and the lower jaw was on the very threshhold between the reptilian and mammalian condition. The two bones forming the articulation between skull and mandible in the reptiles, the quadrate and articular respectively, were still present but were very small, and loosely joined to the bones that constituted the mammalian joint . . . Therefore in Probainognathus there was a double articulation between skull and jaw, and of particular interest, the quadrate bone, so small and so loosely joined to the squamosal, was intimately articulated with the stapes bone of the middle ear. It quite obviously was well on its way towards being the incus bone of the three-bone complex that characterizes the mammalian middle ear." (Colbert and Morales, 1991, pp. 228-229)
Thus, the fossil record demonstrates, during the transition from therapsid reptile to mammal, various bones in the skull slowly migrated together to form a second functional jaw joint, and the now-superfluous original jaw bones were reduced in size until they formed the three bones in the mammalian middle ear. The reptilian quadrate bone became the mammalian incus, while the articular bone became the malleus. The entire process had taken nearly the whole length of the Triassic period to complete, a time span of approximately 40 million years. ...
There are several other fossils that are in this lineage of transition detailed in the article. Please read the article to get the full transition description.
I can understand how convincing this seems to be, with all the apparent gradations that would get from the reptilian to the mammalian jaw bones, with a therapsid type in between that appears to be a perfect transitional between the two, but it has to be pointed out that the whole scenario is assumed for starters. Evolution from one to the other is assumed, so the task is clearly laid out as speculating about how the one set of bones changed into the other type of bones. It's all quite plausible, if you assume evolution between the specimens to begin with. These bones had to shift, we had to get a different arrangement here, then thus and so had to occur, and because there is enough similarity between them to make the changes plausible -- if you believe one evolved from the other -- it makes a very neat progression from the one to the other. It would help to have drawings or photos of the different sets of bones to illustrate the sequence of changes being discussed so one could judge just how much change is being talked about, just how neat the sequence would have been had it occurred in reality. I did look up some images of therapsids just to know what that creature is supposed to have looked like.
The same observations and questions apply that I've already brought up.
I would guess that microevolution occurred between some of the specimens but without knowing exactly what they looked like, how many there are, what positions they were in relative to each other in their burial places, what distances etc., there isn't anything to go on, and it would involve too much time anyway. But most likely two of the same type of reptile with small differences between them would be genetically related, but whether both evolved from an original population or one evolved from the other, and in this case whether the one higher in the strata evolved from the lower or vice versa, would be impossible to know.
The article mentions an "earlier" form of therapsid, which must mean that it was found in a lower position than other forms, as having a more reptilian arrangement of bones, while a later specimen has a different, more mammalian arrangement.
This is again very plausible sounding but only if you are assuming evolution from one to the other to begin with. Otherwise I would understand them as simply different variations or breeds of the same creature, with no way of knowing which came first or how closely they might be genetically related.
Just how reptilian or mammalian the arrangements are must be a highly subjective judgment. Because one type is lower you'd be expecting it to be more reptilian, and the higher to be more mammalian. There probably are enough morphological reasons to make the judgment based on the assumption of evolution, but what if they are simply variations as I would guess they are?
Because you believe in evolution you are looking for gradations between morphologies. Apparently this particular set of fossils is very encouraging for that kind of speculation, apparently more so than other sets of fossils since it is being studied as a particularly fine example of a transitional series.
One question I'd have is whether there is enough similar transitional morphology between other parts of the creatures to parallel the supposed transition of these sets of bones in the jaw area. Perhaps if I read the rest of the article something would be said about that? But I have more than enough to think about just from what you posted here.
As I was arguing before, genetics doesn't normally produce gradations. Microevolution produces phenotypic variations, even between parent and child, but in an isolated population complete changes from the parent population, not just a gradual change. Darwin bred some of his pigeons to exaggerate a particular chosen feature, and in that case you'd see gradations of the qualities of that feature from generation to generation.
But nature doesn't very often do it that way. You isolate a few pairs of lizards on an island and they develop a very large head and a new digestive system in thirty years. These features didn't exist at all in the parent population, they arose from the new gene frequencies in the few individuals that were put on the island, that were different from the gene frequencies of the original population.
Darwin's finches had different kinds of beaks that were adapted to different kinds of foods. Not gradations of change in one kind of beak. That's because the genome is designed to produce new variations.
So your different kinds of bone arrangements in the fossils being discussed would best be understood as merely genetic variations. Assembling them in a graded series is a mental exercise that probably doesn't reflect the reality at all.
Yes I know there are the dates. What can I say, the dates don't make any sense. Both because of how genetics works, as I've been saying, and because the changes that occur with microevolution can occur very rapidly, in a matter of years, maybe hundreds but that seems unlikely. In any case millions is out of the question.
(Also, note that I highlighted the word "advanced" in the discussion because it's one of those words that sneaks into evolutionary descriptions that implies what evolutionists claim isn't the case, the implication that one species is higher or more evolved than another.)
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by RAZD, posted 09-20-2015 7:23 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 124 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-21-2015 10:39 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 125 by herebedragons, posted 09-21-2015 2:04 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 126 by RAZD, posted 09-21-2015 3:14 PM Faith has replied
 Message 137 by RAZD, posted 09-21-2015 7:12 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 128 of 2887 (769497)
09-21-2015 6:28 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by Diomedes
09-21-2015 3:23 PM


Re: Reptiles to Mammals
The additional proof is DNA. Upon it's discovery and when we started genome mapping, scientists began aligning the findings against our current taxonomy table. The results matched the predictions. i.e. species that diverged had common DNA traits that could be linked back to specific common ancestors. And species that were deemed 'close' to each other from an evolutionary standpoint and a specific timescale (i.e. Chimps and Humans) had a high level of overlap in their respective genomes.
But this can be deceptive. Common traits would of course have common DNA because the finished house follows the plan. Similar plans, similar houses. But descent from one to another cannot be known from these comparisons.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by Diomedes, posted 09-21-2015 3:23 PM Diomedes has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 129 by Coragyps, posted 09-21-2015 6:46 PM Faith has replied
 Message 130 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-21-2015 6:51 PM Faith has not replied
 Message 132 by Tanypteryx, posted 09-21-2015 6:53 PM Faith has replied
 Message 141 by herebedragons, posted 09-21-2015 9:10 PM Faith has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024