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Author | Topic: Evidence for Evolution: Whale evolution | ||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi TheArtist, and welcome to the fray.
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.... Vestigial does not mean without function, it means no longer used for original function. These bones are no longer used for locomotion. Vestigial Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
quote: The reason they still exist -- long after the other bones of the legs have disappeared -- is because they have a useful secondary function. Curiously, that is how evolution works - adapting parts to new functions. See CB360: Function of vestigial organs.
quote: 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. Found in some whales and not in others. Guess that means that the other whales don't have their genital wall strengthened. Gosh what a problem that is for creationists to explain. Enjoy.
ps -- another way to do quotes (such as from your sources) it to type
[quote]quotes from source[/quote] and it becomes:
quote: also check out (help) links on any formatting questions when in the reply window. For other formatting tips see Posting TipsFor a quick overview see EvC Forum Primer If you have problems with replies see Report Discussion Problems Here 3.0 Edited by Zen Deist, : ps Edited by Zen Deist, : clrtyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi again TheArtist,
One of your problems is unreasonable expectations for evidence. You expect evidence to show you every step. Evidence does not just turn up to support your scientific thesis, the scientific thesis is developed from the evidence available. If the evidence were complete it would not be a thesis but a statement of the facts shown by the evidence. If you walked across the US and took a video of every step, then you would have a smooth transition from east to west (or vice versa). If instead you took a series of photos, then you would have a set of stepping stones that could be placed by time and location into a series that travels from east to west (or vice versa).
... You don’t see a smooth enough transition in the fossils ... Why should all the intermediate fossils have been preserved in this case? If you want to see a smooth transition, there are examples of that.
quote: This shows a smooth transition from one species of ancestral primate to two daughter species of primate. They diverge further after this speciation event, each evolving within a different ecology, the ecologies overlap initially but later diverge as they evolve.
quote: Virtually every species of foraminifera that lived in the last 65 million years is represented. That's a lot of species, a lot of speciation events, and a lot of smooth transitions.
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. Curiously, science does not argue that each one evolved directly from the other, just that the known fossils show an overall pattern that is consistent with evolution, it shows descent from a common ancestor by the nested hierarchy of hereditary traits that relate one group to the next, and the existence of certain traits that are not shared with other animals. There are many smooth transitions known to science, but not all the evidence of past life is available, so we don't expect smooth transitions to show up in all cases. Instead what we expect to find are stepping stones that show the path of the development of the diversity of life on this planet, stepping stones that may diverge into different paths, but which lead back in time in a pattern of nested hierarchies of hereditary traits. This is precisely what the whale fossils show.
What about the fact that this species survived for a while questions my reasoning? Species A is adept at living in a shallow sea environment, occasionally climbing out on a shoreline. Species B is more adept at living in the sea than A, but less adept at using the shoreline, and can venture into the deep sea. Species A becomes extinct (it survived for a while but the ecology challenges and opportunities changed, in part due to the new existence of species B). Species C is more adept at living in the deep sea than B, and has no need to use shorelines at all. Species B becomes extinct (it survived for a while but the ecology challenges and opportunities changed, in part due to the new existence of species C). Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi dan4reason, herebedragons, etc.
So you were asking whether evolution COULD happen in such a short period of time (if whale evolution did take a short period of time), and I answered it. Another thing to point out is that evolution predicts an increase in evolution of diversity where survival pressure is low, such as when a species moves into a new ecosystem with little opposing forces, or after a massive die-off. This is because there is less selection overall and this allows a greater diversity in phenotypes. It also leads to rapid speciation when pockets of parent populations breed more within a subpopulation than the whole population due to dispersal into the ecology -- distance is a barrier to breeding from one side of the population to the other. Is there any evidence of this actually happening? Yes. The foraminifera experienced an "explosion" in new species following the Y-T extinction event. Then there is the issue of diversity within a species, and whether or not two fossils could overlap in phenotype variation given the dates and locations and the differences in the fossils. See Dogs will be Dogs will be ??? for a discussion of what I mean here. In essence the variation known in dogs today, while still being one species, shows a large degree of variation in phenotypes that can then be used to compare the degree of differences between fossils (horses are used in the thread cited) to see if that is the same degree of difference or not. You can also look at the variation at each level and how much they overlap the variations of each previous generation in pelycodus (previously discussed):
We see that the average change from generation to generation is less than the variation in the population, but by the time you get from Pelycodus ralstoni to Pelycodus jarrovii the whole population has shifted. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi again herebedragons,
We certainly don't have the resolution in the Cetacean record that we do in Pelycodus. How does the amount of change from P. ralstoni to N.nunienus / N. venticolis compare to that of the Cetacean series? ... I agree that we don't have the resolution in the Cetacean record that we do in Pelycodus, the Cetacean record is more like stepping stones along a path, while Pelycodus is more like a paved stone walkway. The question is whether new fossils (paving stones) fill in the walkway or branch off the path.
... It covers about the same time span. One thing to remember about evolution is that the time metric is measured in generations, rather than years, and that average offspring per generation can condense one lineage compared to another by introducing more variation per generation. This would likely mean that pelycodus has more opportunity for diversity than the cetaceans on both counts. The other thing to remember is that selection is in response to ecological opportunities and challenges. In the mature ecosystem of pelycodus there is less opportunity and more challenge for added diversity, so this slows down the process. It is only as the whole population moves gradually towards larger individuals that an opportunity is made for a smaller species to survive. Looking closely at the pelycodus chart there are a couple of short branches towards smaller species, but they die out: not sufficient opportunity to survive. The opportunity for a smaller species only occurs once the main population is pretty much all larger than the ancestral (P. ralstoni) species was. In an open ecosystem there would more opportunity and less challenge.
Could you expand on this a bit? Are you saying that a reduction in selection pressure allows increased diversity within a population? Which then allows increased opportunities for speciation? Yes, reduced selection pressure means that more of the population survives to breed, including more of the ones with diverse variations compared to the parent population, thus resulting in greater diversity in the whole population. As population size increases it also becomes more difficult for all genes to spread equally through the population, so you develop varieties in different areas, especially when subpopulations live in slightly different ecologies (shallow vs deep ocean). The fossil evidence of foraminifera (another case where we have a paved walkway vs stepping stones) shows us that this in fact happened after the K-T extinction event:
quote: There is no reason to think that this is an isolated incident applicable only to foraminifera.
How could we apply this to the whale series? They were moving into a new ecosystem that was also impacted by, and still recovering from, the K-T extinction, and they had few competitors amidst an ecosystem of opportunity. Whale evolution would logically have diversified rapidly into a variety of forms that then gradually honed in on specific adaptations to different aspects of the ecosystem, baleen vs toothed, etc. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Just so you know, the beginning of an answer to one aspect of your proposed A holistic understanding on the evolution belief system has been posted at Explaining the pro-Evolution position , and that it addresses the issue of what evolution science IS -- a science, not a belief system.
Curiously I read your proposed topic and was struck by how little it pertained to evolution science, and rather was attacking a creationist straw man that characterizes all science and humanistic or materialistic beliefs under the banner of "evolutionism" as if calling it an 'ism' makes it a belief system that unites these different elements. It doesn't. For instance morals and what is "good" and what is "bad" -- science studies what happens in the physical testable world, and does not make judgements like that, rather that falls under philosophy (like humanism or materialism), and if you want to discuss this further I can open another new thread to that effect. Or you can proceed as admin suggests. No reply here please, you can message me. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
quote: Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Is this supposed to be referring only to mysticetes? There are still a lot of three, four, five, metre whales. The impression I got was that the Gigantism" occurred due to the environmental conditions of the later ice ages and that most of the smaller whales went extinct. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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