True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing

"Trust the word of no one..." except for your word of course. You have certainly come across as far less than objective and simply questioning evolution. You have come across as a pretender, we've seen it many times before (as has been explained). If you want to be taken seriously, ask serious questions, which so far you haven't. Be more specific. You want evidence of transitional species in the fossil record... ask about that. Serious questions, questions that really deserve answering are specific, not vague "everything is wrong and untrustworthy" type questions. How could "everything" be addressed in one post when its not even clear what you object to? You object because a few people made videos that question the ToE? People make videos about EVERYTHING - all kinds of wacky ideas... that doesn't make them worthy of scrutiny. RAZD didn't even post in this thread. You do have the earmarks of an undercover creationist. Do you think throwing a couple of F-bombs around eliminates that suspicion? Total BS. I am a biologist and can tell you this is just not true. In science, the evidence leads where it leads. A hypothesis must be testable, it must be measurable, it must be reasonable. If your hypothesis for how a particular cell process came to be was "It was intelligently designed!" well of course that will be rejected as a valid hypothesis... it is not testable, measurable or reasonable. If the reasoning behind why that would not be a valid hypothesis is not clear, that could make a good discussion. Propose the discussion topic.If you were ill and went to the doctor and he said "I think the germ theory of disease is just a religion and I don't believe it, so I am going to treat you for bad humors." You would get out of there, wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you allow a doctor to treat you with his "alternative theory of disease"? Source please? Was it Jonathan Wells? lol No problem, but throwing around accusations is not the same as questioning. 1. There are not "so many people" opposing the ToE, just a small minority, usually religious zealots.2. The arguments have been countered, you are just apparently not aware of that. That's what you could get from a place like this. Take the chip off your shoulder and loosen up the combative attitude and ask specific and focused questions. You have come across as the hater, as far as I am concerned... and you haven't even tried to engage in a discussion. I don't really care if you don't come back, that's up to you. But it's kinda crappy to blame everyone else for your short comings in the ability to have a productive scientific discussion.Good luck to you as well.HBD

Let's take inventory then.false: 15
ignorant: 5
confused: 3
misleading: 4
true: 4If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...The only thing missing was an obsession with logical fallacies. HBD

RAZD, great job on the tree. I am impressed by your coding ability!I just wanted to clarify something... I think you understand it, but how you phrased it made me feel it necessary to clarify. Those names indicate taxonomic rank, not ancestral identification.names ending in "-oidae" are superfamily (or epifamily)
names ending in "-idae" are family
ending in "-inae" are subfamily
ending in "-ini" are tribeSo essentially they are the names of the clades and everything after the name are a part of that clade and "Homin" is the base word. Taxonomic rank endingsI believe that Hominid is not an official taxonomic rank, but represents a clade that includes those groups listed.Hominin, however, is an official taxonomic rank No, not misleading. This would indicate an unresolved polytomy which simply means that it is uncertain which branching order would be the best hypothesis. It's possible that all three share a single common ancestor, but it is more likely that we just don't have enough information to resolve the relationships.What's "misleading" or confusing is that the branch tips you show in this example include different ranks. Adapiformes is an infraorder, Darwinius is a genus, and Haporhini is a suborder, so these should not resolve in a trichotomy. But I suspect you only used the names as examples maybe?-------The thing I find confusing about how your cladogram is depicted, is that taxonomic ranks look like they are at terminals rather than on branches. I see you tried to duplicate the dendrogram in your source, but there is some odd things happening and I don't think it is very clear. It a difficult tree to interpret.For example, I think Adapiformes should be a rank under Strepsirrhini with Darwinius under Adapiformes and Haporhini should be under Primates. Getting the taxonomic names to look more like they are on the branches and not the terminals would go a long way to being better able to see the relationships and solve some of the problems like this.But again, good job on the tree, I just think it is really hard to see the relationships.HBDEdited by herebedragons, : clarity

Sorry, I made a typo there.-oidea is the correct spelling for superfamily-oidae is used for epifamily (although I 'm not sure how often this is used. It seems as if in cladistics, they want a name for just about every clade, so that often requires additional ranks than what we are traditionally used to. ) First, I want to say that I am not any kind of authority on Primate evolution. Where my "expertise" lies is in phylogenetics and in reading/developing trees (I put expertise in quotes because I don't really consider myself an expert, I am still learning... maybe a better word would be "skill" but even that might be exaggeration )I like to use the Tree of Life Project (ToL) as a pretty good source for the latest taxonomic classifications. They may not include the most recent updates or the more controversial rearrangements, but they are pretty close. Taxonomy is very contentious (and the human tree even more so) and taxonomists argue and argue about their particular view until a general consensus is reached and then most researchers will adopt the consensus view, but it can take a while til the literature reflects the newest changes. With the advent of molecular methodology and now with deep sequencing techniques, the taxonomic world has gone crazy and there are many competing views on particular groups.But yes, I see that as an accurate depiction of that section. Here's why... This depiction shows Strepsirhini and Haplorhini as sister taxa, not descendants of one another. The lemurs and Adapiformes are descendants or branches within the Strepsirhini, not associated with Haplorhini. I am not sure about the arrangement you have under Strepsirhini, but it is close enough for this project, since it is not really the focus.This is in accordance with ToL - Primates. Haplorhini is not listed on the ToL page, but it is the group that includes Tarsiers, apes and new world monkeys. The branch leading to Platyhini and Catarrhini is the Simians or Simiiformes. On your chart it is listed as Anthropoidea.These names are controversial as to which has precedence. The root Simi is the oldest but the rank name Anthropoidea is older than the name Simiiformes (by 2 years). However, Simiiformes uses the proper rank suffix "-formes" while "-oidea" is supposed to be used for superfamily. So... I personally would favor Simiiformes as the proper name for the rank.You can see the kind of controversies that taxonomists argue about - name precedence and conformation to naming conventions is always a hot issue.I have more comments further down the tree, but I will have to come back to it later. Maybe we could move this discussion to a new thread? Idk, there doesn't seem to be much going on here right now, but I wouldn't want to clog up Porkin's thread with knowledge , but that's up to you. I think this could be a really great tree (actually it already is, it just needs some clarifications).HBD

Actually, now that I spent some time there on this project I would have to agree they are not an up to date source for hominid classification.I retract my support for ToL.HBD