So you show some pictures of some fossils and you think that proves anything?
The fossil record should, if evolution is correct, show us each transitional species that lead on to the next. Where are they?
There are several different forms, but nothing in between.
The fossil record does not support evolution, please show me all the thousands, if not millions, of transitional species that go in between those few fossils you showed. Maybe then you'll actually have a leg to stand on.
As it is, the fossil record discovered since Darwin shows stasis and saltation. He told us to relinquish his theory if no transitional species were found, why don't you take his advice?
But to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Darwinism's death are highly exaggerated. The fossil record may be full of holes, but the venerable theory of speciation via slow change over vast stretches of time is backed by formidable evidence derived from both the fossil record and the field of population genetics. And once the findings of two FSU paleontologists become well-known, the whole restive world of evolutionary biology may wake up to find that Darwin indeed had it basically right all along.
Drs. Tony Arnold (Ph.D., Harvard) and Bill Parker (Ph.D., Chicago) are the developers of what reportedly is the largest, most complete set of data ever compiled on the evolutionary history of an organism. The two scientists have painstakingly pieced together a virtually unbroken fossil record that shows in stunning detail how a single-celled marine organism has evolved during the past 66 million years. Apparently, it's the only fossil record known to science that has no obvious gaps -- no "missing links."
"It's all here -- a complete record," says Arnold. "There are other good examples, but this is by far the best. We're seeing the whole picture of how this organism has changed throughout most of its existence on Earth."
The famous naturalist always held that new plants and animals arise from unstable varieties sprung off from old species. Competition among varieties, pressured by the law of "survival of the fittest," inevitably leads to populations that are so profoundly different that they become sexually incompatible (incapable of producing offspring) with populations other than themselves. And voila, a new species is born.
The pattern is exactly what Arnold and Parker have found in the forams. It is but one of a number of observations that the FSU team has made thus far about what arguably is nature's crowning achievement -- the act of speciation itself.
"We've literally seen hundreds of speciation events," Arnold added. "This allows us to check for patterns, to determine what exactly is going on. We can quickly tell whether something is a recurring phenomenon -- a pattern -- or whether it's just an anomaly.
"This way, we can not only look for the same things that have been observed in living organisms, but we can see just how often these things really happen in the environment over an enormous period of time."
Adherents of Darwin's theory of gradualism, in which new species slowly branch off from original stock, should be delighted by what the FSU researchers have found. The foram record clearly reveals a robust, highly branched evolutionary tree, complete with Darwin's predicted "dead ends" -- varieties that lead nowhere -- and a profusion of variability in sizes and body shapes. Moreover, transitional forms between species are readily apparent, making it relatively easy to track ancestor species to their descendants.
In short, the finding upholds Darwin's lifelong conviction that "nature does not proceed in leaps," but rather is a system perpetually growing in extreme slow-motion. This means that, in foram evolution at least, the highly touted Eldredge-Gould theory of punctuated equilibrium apparently doesn't work.
In divulging this revelation, Arnold could be forgiven for taking a modicum of perverse glee, the kind a highschool smart-aleck displays when he catches the teacher in a mistake. Gould, now among the most famous scientists in the world, directed Arnold's Harvard dissertation. But there's no room for that here, he says. Arnold maintains a warm professional relationship with his former mentor, who paid his lab a visit when FSU's Distinguished Lecture Series brought him to campus last year. Gould concedes that the forams don't fit his model of punctuated equilibrium, Arnold said.
"He was characteristically pleased to be contradicted with this information.
Sorry, you assertion is false. Will you be "characteristically pleased to be contradicted with this information"?
Enjoy
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Well now that is interesting! Thank you for sharing.
You're welcome.
However, as you so astutely pointed out to me in another thread: how much change does an organism require to become an entire new species.
According to that fossil record, no new species were created, it was just the same species varying slightly.
In your opinion. In the opinion of the scientists doing the work (Dr. Philip Gingerich, Dr. Richard Haskin) there were several. But what would they know. This image shows several species in three genera, from a pdf behind a paywall:
If they're Darwinian-evolutionists then they don't know much about species, as he couldn't even define the term.
Says the person using "information" as if it was a well defined term used in biology.
If they don't even know exactly what a species is, how can they tell when there are different ones?
Curiously organisms could care less what we call them, what they "care about" is survival and breeding. If they can't breed with another individual, then they don't. You can see this at the top where there is a gap between P.frugivorus and P.jarrovii. The other names are arbitrary speciation tags the scientists use to distinguish which populations they are discussing.
That's why breeding populations are more important than any name we put on them.
That link gives hardly any information about the differences between the supposed species, in the picture of all the varying ones, the all look pretty much the same.
Other than a continual trend in sizes of the breeding population. That is what shows anagenesis, the accumulation of evolutionary change over many generations:
(2) The process of lineal change within species is sometimes called phyletic speciation, or anagenesis.
This is also sometimes called arbitrary speciation in that the place to draw the line between linearly evolved genealogical populations is subjective, and because the definition of species in general is tentative and sometimes arbitrary.
At the top we clearly see a second process that results in multiple species and increases the diversity of life.
(3) The process of divergent speciation, or cladogenesis, involves the division of a parent population into two or more reproductively isolated daughter populations, which then are free to (micro) evolve independently of each other.
The reduction or loss of interbreeding (gene flow, sharing of mutations) between the sub-populations results in different evolutionary responses within the separated sub-populations, each then responds independently to their different ecological challenges and opportunities, and this leads to divergence of hereditary traits between the subpopulations and the frequency of their distributions within the sub-populations.
And any changes that did appear in those single-cell organisms cannot be compared to higher animals, which are far more complex.
What are "higher" animals? Seriously - what makes some animals "higher" other than personal bias?
Again, this is a difference in degree(if that) and not a different type of change: genetic change is genetic change, regardless of the individual involved.
Several times in the past, biologists have committed themselves to the erroneous idea that life can be organized on a ladder of lower to higher organisms. This idea lies at the heart of Aristotle's Great Chain of Being (see right).
Aristotle's vision of a Great Chain of Being, above. We now know that this idea is incorrect.
Similarly, it's easy to misinterpret phylogenies as implying that some organisms are more "advanced" than others; however, phylogenies don't imply this at all.
In this highly simplified phylogeny, a speciation event occurred resulting in two lineages. One led to the mosses of today; the other led to the fern, pine, and rose. Since that speciation event, both lineages have had an equal amount of time to evolve. So, although mosses branch off early on the tree of life and share many features with the ancestor of all land plants, living moss species are not ancestral to other land plants. Nor are they more primitive. Mosses are the cousins of other land plants.
So when reading a phylogeny, it is important to keep three things in mind:
Evolution produces a pattern of relationships among lineages that is tree-like, not ladder-like.
Just because we tend to read phylogenies from left to right, there is no correlation with level of "advancement."
For any speciation event on a phylogeny, the choice of which lineage goes to the right and which goes to the left is arbitrary. The following phylogenies are equivalent:
Biologists often put the clade they are most interested in (whether that is bats, bedbugs, or bacteria) on the right side of the phylogeny.
Misconceptions about humans
The points described above cause the most problems when it comes to human evolution. The phylogeny of living species most closely related to us looks like this:
It is important to remember that:
Humans are not "higher" or "more evolved" than other living lineages. Since our lineages split, humans and chimpanzees have each evolved traits unique to their own lineages.
I don't know what you mean. Can you elaborate, please?
This statement of yours:
Message 465: The fossil record reveals the miserable failure of Darwism's most fundamental prediction - gradualism. ...
Is false: (a) it is not "fundamental" and (b) Darwin also discussed periods of rapid change between periods of little change.
This statement of yours:
Message 469:The bet Darwin never suspected that the superstition of spontaneous generation would reappear in a different form - Punctuated Equilibrium.
Is false: spontaneous generation has absolutely nothing to do with punctuated equilibrium.
These are two examples take from two recent posts of yours, showing a consistent pattern of telling falsehoods.
When you repeat falsehoods after being told they are falsehoods, that shows intent to tell falsehoods: lying.
Of course gradualism is fundamental to ToE - does a fish grow a foot overnight?
ROFLOL ... do you mean growing 12 inches or growing a new appendage?
Individual growth rates have absolutely nothing to do with rates of population evolution and nothing to do with ToE.
Growing a new appendage would be the "hopeful monster" of creationist imaginary and false understanding of evolution.
Different rates of gradualism is still gradualism.
So the slow rate of gradualism during periods of relative stassis in a population, and the higher rate of gradualism during periods if punctuation in a population ... are still gradualism. Punk-eek is not the "hopeful monster" of fevered creationist imagination.
This is actually what Dawkin's argued in counter to Gould's punk-eek claim. Glad you sorted that out.
Not a Scientific Theory without a falsification test
My theory involves ... As you can see, this is a u-beaut theory ...
What is your falsification test?
Without a falsification test it cannot be a scientific theory.
Since the earth has existed in corrupted states, there exist the possibilities of multiple catastrophes that are interpreted as the various "geological ages" by scientists. (Origen - an early Church father - suggested the possibility of many more creations than the few I have envisaged.)
Even calling it a hypothesis would appear to be a stretch.
This looks more like the concept of a stumbling, bumbling, patch-work god/s of the god-did-it variety.
Run into a problems then whip out another god-did-it add-on.
Goodness gracious, this is too deep for my shallow mind. Please don't mention such too-magnificent thoughts again.
In other words, you can't demonstrate that my theology is wrong.
There are many fantasies and delusions that we have no need to demonstrate whether or not they are "wrong" -- because they are irrelevant.
You can believe any little conceptual framework you like to construct around your pet beliefs, but that doesn't make them real or relevant to any other person.
If you would like to convince anyone that your mental ramblings are of value, the onus is on you to show how it is supported.
And that's why science is better than any theology, especially those that are compiled from after the fact god-did-it that way blustering -- because if it IS wrong THAT can be demonstrated.
Well, many fossils have been found but they cannot be submitted as evidence for evolution. ...
Can they be used as evidence that falsifies evolution?
That is the question. That is how science works. Evidence that doesn't falsify a theory becomes part of the pile of evidence used to formulate the theory.
We don't need evidence for evolution, we know it is happening all around us, we know that it has been tested by fossils and by DNA genomes, and we know that no evidence to date suggests that they cannot be explained by evolution.
... Here's why: The fossils that have been discovered so far could represent only the tiniest fraction of the total number of fossils in existence. So our present fossil collection could be so small as to be "statistically insignificant". An election result can't be decided if only 0.01% of the votes have been counted, can it?
Irrelevant. The question important to science is whether or not there is evidence can falsify evolution.
Furthermore, since there is no way of knowing the total number of fossils in existence, there is no way of knowing when a "statistically significant" number of fossils have been collected. In which case, the fossil record can never be safely used as definitive empirical evidence for evolution.
Also irrelevant. The question important to science is whether or not there is still whether evidence can falsify evolution.
As you have seen, all fossils found fall into nested hierarchies, all fossils found can be explained by evolution, including all the intermediate forms.
We don't need evidence FOR evolution, so the question is still whether evidence can falsify evolution.
This is another teaching moment brought to you by Dredge on how science works.
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