Summations Only

Edge hasn't replied, so I'll attempt an answer, partly based on his posts, partly based on what I can fill in. Chronostratigraphic means assigning absolute dates to strata.This all started back in Edge's Message 1895: You replied in your Message 1911: Edge replied in Message 1912 that the upper horizontal line represents sea level at that time, which was at the top of the Desmoinesian Stage (North American) of the Pennsylvanian sub-System, which is part of the Carboniferous. In other words, that line represents sea level at about 306 million years ago.But addressing the issue that began your exchange, you asserted that there should have been obstacles in the way of sedimentation, and that's what that diagram shows. The ancestral Rocky Mountains are the blocks at bottom of the diagram that represent topographic obstacles. They're present in Edge's image, not yours.The geological strata are a record of the history of our planet. We know how sediments are deposited because we can see how sediments are deposited today. That sediments can be deposited over uneven terrain cannot be in doubt, because we can see it happening today.I've said before that I often find interpreting geological images challenging, so hopefully Edge will correct my errors.--Percy

If you do say so yourself. The quality of your arguments is determined not by what you think of them, but how they are thought of by others. I think you get a great deal of feedback about the quality of your arguments. I think everyone has experienced making a dumb argument, but I do have to admit that your determination to repeat the same dumb arguments over and over again is exceptional. You're cutting me off again? Aw, geez...--Percy

Okay, thanks. I won't put any more effort into figuring out what Faith meant, unless she decides to explain.--Percy

You can't make blatant statements like this declaring your determination to maintain your ignorance in discussion and then complain about how unfairly people treat you.--Percy

If that were really what you said then Edge would not have told you you were wrong, but you also said "and vice versa" in your Message 2044: Adding "and vice versa" makes this wrong. As Edge explained, the Cambrian includes the Tapeats, but the Tapeats does not include the Cambrian. The Tapeats spans only a portion of the Cambrian from the lower to the middle. Except it isn't a semantic disagreement, not even close. It was just you being self-evidently wrong and then arguing anyway. You can't say something as stupid as, for example, "A car encompasses a steering wheel, and vice versa," and not expect people to notice. This paragraph is equally nonsensical, and not even you believe what you just wrote. Whenever the sedimentary layers of stratigraphic columns were deposited it happened over some span of time. You believe that, we believe that. You might believe a certain strata was deposited over the period of a day some 4500 years ago, while we might believe it happened over a period of millions of years a couple hundred millions years ago, but we all believe that there was a span of time when it happened. We all believe the rock layers correspond to time periods.One point that Edge added that is probably important to stress is that not only does the Tapeats span only a portion of the Cambrian Period, it was not deposited all over the world and so can by no means encompass the Cambrian System. It's pretty clear to everyone the problem is yours. For example, you go on to say: This isn't an issue of paradigms. We're explaining the evidence of geology and fossils, and you're making up fanciful stories based on the first nine chapters of Genesis. The personal attacks almost exclusively begin with you. If you'd stick to the topic and argue the evidence then so would most everyone else, but you instead raise meta issues like about how unfair the discussion is, and how it's not about evidence but a clash of paradigms, and how your opponents' interpretation of the evidence is an illusion, and how your opponents are victims of mental cobwebs, and how you don't care about terminology, and how your opponents' views are wacky, and how you're ignoring certain people, and so forth. You jam pack most of your posts full of this nonsense and actually engage in very little discussion of the topic. It isn't that you're wrong about terminology. You are, but that's easily remedied unless you're determined to be ignorant, uncooperative, antagonistic and hostile. It's that you're just plain wrong, over and over again about things from the simple to the complex, from issues bearing directly on the topic to side issues. It is not an exaggeration to say that you rarely make it through a sentence without getting something wrong. But you never do. Here you are and here you stay while never working anything out. You can't even go to ICR or Answers in Genesis, because they don't buy your crazy version of the Flood story either.--Percy

The miscommunication was all you because in your Message 2047 you said: Even for someone who believes in the Flood there have to be rocks associated with time periods, even if it was a day 4500 years ago. You contradicted this when you said "There shouldn't be ANY rocks to identify time," and that's why Paul was questioning it since it implies that all rocks came into existence all at once and not associated with any particular time, which could only be at creation before time existed.Stop casting blame at everyone but yourself. If this discussion is a madhouse it is largely your doing, and such comments have no place in discussion anyway. Most of your posts have nothing to do with the topic, and that should stop.--Percy

Thanks for the correction. Faith, did you get that? Here's the diagram again: This is Edge's version, and if you expand it by clicking on it you should have no trouble reading it because it is very big.Edge is responding to your assertion that there should have been "hills and valleys to present obstacles to hundreds of thousands of square miles of straight flat sedimentary layers." That diagram is just such an example, showing the ancestral Rockies on the right that "shed debris off into the Pennsylvanian aged seas, forming a deep trough that was an evaporite basin for a long time."Let me risk adding something with the hope that Edge will correct me if I'm wrong. If you look at the great depth of the part labeled "alluvial fan and fluvial clastics", that depth is caused by the great weight of the material shed off the ancestral Rockies. The weight caused the region to sink.--Percy

Just don't post stuff like this and then complain about how poorly you're treated, since that would make you a hypocrite. Wouldn't it be ironic if judgement day placed special emphasis on discussion board participation?--Percy

Yes, that would be ever so nice, please explain it. How is that an explanation? Nope, still no explanation. Nope, still no explanation, just more name calling. Of course, it's understandable that you prefer name calling, since every time you venture into the realm of fact you just make error after error, as you do here.Let me explain your error, though it's something that's been explained to you many, many times. Past time periods did not consist of flora and fauna living on huge flat sedimentary rocks. They lived in prairies, forests, mountains, deserts, coastal plains, swamps, lagoons, rivers, lakes and seas. And undoubtedly some did live on exposed flat sedimentary rocks. Generally only regions of net sedimentation become buried, so we don't usually find upland regions represented in the sedimentary layers, but rather coastal regions and lakes and seas.Any life that becomes buried could become fossilized, but its important to understand that burial of an entire creature is very rare. Usually decay and disarticulation of the skeleton occurs, and then transport of the skeletal remains could occur (wind, streams, rivers, ocean currents, etc.), and then some pieces of skeletal remains might become buried, preserved and eventually fossilized.Only after deep burial do sedimentary layers become lithified.Will this finally sink in now, that geology and paleontology do not believe that prior life lived on huge flat sedimentary rocks, that it lived on landscapes much like our own? The way I just did for your ludicrous assertion. I just began typing and explained it. It isn't that hard.You're just making excuse after excuse for not being able to explain anything. First it was paradigms, then illusions, then mental cobwebs, then mere mental exercise, then semantic confusion, now it's ludicrous. Enough with the name calling already.If your views make sense and have evidence then you should have little trouble explaining them. Is this to be the nature of your contributions from now on, castigation of your fellow participants? If you're truly flummoxed at how to make your case, if you have nothing more to say about the topic, then I'd say it's time to move on.--Percy

Responding to a number of your messages:Replying to your general reply in Message 2138: You don't have a scientific paradigm. If you have a paradigm at all it's a religious one, the Genesis Flood Paradigm taken straight out of the first 9 chapters of Genesis. To make the transition to a scientific paradigm you need to do a few things:

• Explain radiometric dates of millions and billions of years.
• Explain how the flood sorted material by radiometric age not only vertically but also laterally, for example, that the Tapeats gets older not only from top to bottom but also from east to west.
• Explain radiocarbon dates up to 50,000 years.
• Explain archeological sites dating back thousands and tens of thousands of years.
• Explain civilizations spanning the flood period with no interruption.
• Explain fossil sorting.
• Understand that the Grand Canyon is not the geological model for the entire world.
• Understand how sedimentation works.
• Understand how Walther's Law works.
• Understand how floods work.
• Recognize that flat and straight is common throughout the world, particularly abyssal plains.
• Just generally fit your views into the framework of science.
• Keep your focus on the science instead of making meta comments about paradigms and illusions and semantics and how explaining your views is impossible for you and how unfairly you're treated.
• Stop citing God and Bible.

Anyone who reads your old posts from say 2005 will see you had the same misunderstandings then that you do today. In all your time here you've managed to learn almost nothing of significance. You lost the debate well over a decade ago but continue on like a zombi.

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Replying to your Message 2145 to Edge: But all you ever do is reassert your views, never presenting any evidence supporting them. Floods do not behave the way you describe - if they did then you could point to examples. The sedimentary layers of all the stratigraphic columns around the world reflect the same sedimentary processes we observe in the world today, but you can't even accept that sedimentation is still adding to these stratigraphic columns.You have some strange and enduring delusion that flat and straight strata say "flood", but flat and straight is the eventual endpoint of the processes of erosion, transport and sedimentation. What starts out like this:

Rocky Mountains

Ends up like this:

Northern Ohio

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Replying to your Message 2149 to Tangle: And you've done a remarkably fine job of maintaining your ignorance. YEC is synonymous with the Genesis Flood. If you have any paradigm at all it is the religious and Biblical Genesis Flood Paradigm that has no relation to science. But you haven't mustered let alone honed any scientific arguments for YEC. You haven't even honed any religious arguments for YEC, since your arguments are a mash of meaningless pseudoscientific jargon. All I can say is that you've done a much better job of maintaining your ignorance of geology and evolution than we have about the supposed Genesis Flood.

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Replying to your Message 2150 to PaulK: You're playing word games again. In essence you're declaring geology wrong while not making any arguments nor offering any evidence. Your posts continue to be either off-topic or content free.

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Replying to your Message 2153 to Tangle: Another content-free message declaring yourself right while describing no facts, no evidence, and making no arguments.--Percy

No, you haven't given any evidence. By your own admission all your evidence comes from mainstream geology. You've been reduced to arguing that geologists are misinterpreting their own evidence while you offer only interpretations of the evidence that make little sense and are often impossible. Right now you're not exerting yourself at all. You've posted another content-free message. You didn't address any of the issues surrounding the evidence that I described in my own message. As long as you continue promoting views that do not comport with and are often contradicted by the evidence, and as long as you continue making no effort to resolve these issues, your views will have no influence. Repeating "straight and flat, straight and flat" over and over again just makes it obvious how little you know or understand. The plain truth is that when people start describing the evidence that you quickly find something else to talk about.For example, and not meaning to imply that others haven't experienced exactly the same at you hands, you posted no reply to my lengthy Message 2039 explaining Edge's answers from his Message 1884.For another example, when Edge responded to your Message 2141 in his Message 2143 and Message 2144 you responded with an evidence-free redeclaration of your position in your Message 2145.If you don't want your claims of discussing the evidence to be called for the misrepresentations that they are then you can turn them into the truth by simply discussing the evidence.--Percy

Take away the Bible and no one would think anything geologically significant happened 4500 years ago. Certainly there's no evidence for it. The geological column is conceptual and not a "clear entity". The concept applies to all the world, both land and sea. Why do you believe something that can be disproven so easily. Go to the Wikipedia entry on the geologic column. It's a timescale. The geologic column is not actual strata, just a framework of time periods in which strata can be placed temporally. You keep saying things like this, but calling things names like "ludicrous" and "illusion" and "different paradigm" are not explanations. Can you explain what is ludicrous about current sedimentation adding to stratigraphic columns around the world?Let me ask a a couple questions in the context of your view that the Flood created the world's geography, including all the various stratigraphic columns. When sedimentation alights atop an existing stratigraphic column why has it not added to that stratigraphic column? Since sedimentation would have continued after the Flood that created the existing stratigraphic columns, how could that sedimentation not have added to them? But again, calling things ludicrous is not an explanation - it's mere name calling. What is ludicrous about the idea that erosion of mountains and landscapes creates sediments, and that these sediments are transported by wind and rain and streams and rivers to coastal regions and river deltas and lakes and seas? Practically any river in the world is evidence for this idea. Take the Mississippi. A fair amount of sediment is transported to the Mississippi by streams and smaller rivers which the Mississippi transports to the Mississippi River Delta. This is from the Wikipedia article on the Mississippi River:

quote:

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Before 1900, the Mississippi River transported an estimated 400 million metric tons of sediment per year from the interior of the United States to coastal Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. During the last two decades, this number was only 145 million metric tons per year. The reduction in sediment transported down the Mississippi River is the result of engineering modification of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers and their tributaries by dams, meander cutoffs, river-training structures, and bank revetments and soil erosion control programs in the areas drained by them.

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There is radiometric evidence of millions of years between strata. What is your evidence of only hours between layers? Calling something ridiculous is neither evidence nor argument. You keep claiming to have cited a great deal of evidence. What is the evidence that the difference in age between adjacent strata levels in only hours? You take insult rather easily. I think it's usually in the form or ridicule, but almost always with excellent justification. You present your views in the form of bald assertions with no accompanying evidential support, or you cite evidence that actually contradicts your assertions. We explain why the evidence doesn't support your assertions and you, apparently not comprehending a thing, double down on your assertions. Of course people are going to ridicule your decades-long lack of knowledge and understanding. The proper response to evidence and explanations placing that evidence in context is not insults. The proper response is rebuttal that explains how the evidence supports your views in ways that don't violate known physical laws of nature and that don't cite religious texts as authoritative. In a science thread the world is the record of what happened in the past, not the Bible. No one is claiming science is perfect, and that lack of perfection is embodied in its very definition that includes the property of tentativity. But as a method for understanding the world science is far superior to religion, and religion is what you're really practicing when you argue for the Flood, not science You can't just say it - you have to show it, something you've proven spectacularly unable to do. On the scale of centuries much of the land between mountains and seas represents landscapes of sedimentary equilibrium. As much sediment enters these landscapes as leaves. Elevated portions of these landscapes experience net erosion, gradually reducing their height. For example, there has always been sedimentary runoff from Pikes Peak, but construction of a highway to the summit increased erosion and sedimentary runoff to such a great extent (by channeling water runoff into gullies) that there is now a court imposed mitigation program.You might recall the movie The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. It's based upon a true story of a hill in Wales that was a few feet short of a mountain, so in 1917 the locals added a mound at the top so that it could be a mountain. By the time of the film in 1995 erosion had reduced the mountain back to a hill, so the locals added to the mound at the top so that it was again a mountain.The point is that erosion causes high points of a landscape, be they mountains, hills or just rises, to shed sediment that is then deposited in the low points. Landscapes are constantly undergoing this leveling process. Landscapes generally slope toward the sea, and so the sediments from the high points that are carried to the low points of the local landscape are also gradually carried toward the local streams and rivers and thence to the sea or perhaps a lake.If this is in reality delusional or illusory then you have to explain why. I don't understand why you think applying derogatory labels to things constitutes valid argument. Calling ideas absurd with no justification and indeed in the face of a great deal of unanswered rebuttal is what is truly absurd. And if you're not here to defend your position then why are you here? Nothing better to do? Ad hominem is just your thing? I can understand your tiring of your nonsensical exercise in futility arguing against and denying obvious evidence that surrounds everyone in the world including yourself. Anything that actually happens leaves evidence behind, and in the case of geology an incredible amount of evidence *has* been left behind. We walk atop it every day. Geologists decipher this evidence of the past in a manner analogous to forensic detectives. You creationists are fond of predictions like this. Geology will collapse, biology will collapse, cosmology will collapse. Your fellow religionists have often predicted the end times, and they've been wrong a lot, too. Religion is not a solid foundation for making reliable predictions.--Percy

Let it be noted that you have posted yet another message consisting of no evidence or argument, just self praise and unsupported criticisms of those arguing the other side. Just more content-free stuff.This is your pattern: a) Describe your position and provide a little of what you believe is supporting evidence and argument; b) In response to detailed rebuttals post message after message of praise for your position and content-free criticisms of the other position consisting primarily of ad hominem; c) Abandon the thread for a period of a few days to a few weeks; d) Reengage the thread and repeat the process from step a.--Percy

This is self-evidently not true, as has been pointed out to you many times. Almost all sea and lake floors experience net sedimentation, and life is everywhere on lake and sea bottoms. Most land experiences both incoming and outgoing sediments, and life lives most everywhere on land, too. Sedimentation rates on lake and sea floor away from continental margins are usually very slow, perhaps a few centimeters per thousand years, which is so slow that it could not possibly be a problem for any life living there. Closer to continental margins the sedimentation rates will be higher, some areas even experiencing rates as high as a yard per year. That's a tenth of an inch per day, but even that high a rate is not going to be a problem for most life, even slow snails. Every level of all stratigraphic columns throughout the world were once the surface of the Earth. Unintelligible. The science of genetics operates using knowledge gained from studying the natural world, not "evolutionist assumptions." Yes, this is correct. What you're trying to say is usually described as differential reproductive success. When a population is somehow split into two separate populations, both populations still experience differential reproductive success, but the selection pressures each experiences will very likely differ. This is worth repeating. Both populations always experience natural selection, but the selection pressures will likely differ. Mere isolation without changing the selection pressures can only bring about change through drift, and if you exclude mutation, as you usually do, then descendant populations will always be the same species as the original species. I think "sexually combine all the genetic material in the total population" is probably meaningless. Which is it, species or subspecies? Likely the lizards of Pod Mrcaru represent a new breed or race or subspecies, but they certainly are not a new species because they are genetically identical to the lizards of the original population on Pod Kopiste. The changes to the lizards of Pod Mrcaru are thought due to a change in diet whereby they increased the proportion of vegetation over insects by a great deal. If drift were responsible for the changes then that would mean that
the selection pressures on the lizards of Pod Mrcaru were identical to those on the original population on Pod Kopiste, and drift is very unlikely to have caused any measurable changes in a mere 30 years. This is incorrect. Mutation is not thought to have played any role in the changes to the lizards on Pod Mrcaru. The changes are thought to have drawn upon existing variation within the genome. This conclusion is unavoidable since, as stated earlier, the lizards on both islands remain genetically identical. There's no need to argue this point because that's what everyone already believed. Again, in the absence of different selection pressures from those experienced by the original population, all you have is drift, which is very unlikely to produce measurable change in short time periods. I think everyone agrees that selection pressures can bring about visible change in a small number of generations. Breeders do it all the time. Of course you do. Ignorance is hard work, after all. Don't want any knowledge to slip through. Of course you'll make your point again. That's what you do, ignore rebuttals and repeat your original points, forcing people to repeat their rebuttals again. Jutland cattle are the same species as all other cattle. They're just a particular breed (subspecies) of cattle. They're genetically cattle just like all other cattle like Jerseys and Herefords and so on. Breeding *is* evolution, but it's evolution within a species, that is, microevolution. Breeding doesn't have to take a hundred or a few hundred years - it does take longer for species where individuals take longer to reach sexual maturity and if the breeding goals are ambitious. But new breeds can be created in very short times. Many breeds of pigeon were created during the 19th century, and new breeds of dog and cat are created all the time. I have a Bengal house cat, a breed created during the 1970s.The popular scientific press has presented the case of the Pod Mrcaru lizards in a somewhat misleading fashion. Articles are rarely clear that the evolution that took place was only microevolution within a species, and they for some reason like to characterize the degree of change as something evolutionary science didn't think possible, which is definitely not true. The basis of evolutionary science is that selection pressures drive adaptation that results in change. The only thing unexpected was that the selection pressures on Pod Mrcaru would be so different from Pod Kopiste. It's analogous to beak size/shape variation in the same species of Darwin's finches across the various Galapagos Islands, and across climatic conditions (rainfall, temperature) that vary with time. Assuming the context is the wild, when a population becomes somehow divided into two reproductively isolated subpopulations, the members of each subpopulation can't really be said to have been selected since it was something that happened randomly (though naturally), for example, a river changing its course and dividing a population in two. I suppose the distinction between what is selection and what is not can be a bit tricky. Would anyone say the extinction of the dinosaurs was due to selective pressures, given that it was caused by an asteroid strike? Both population splits and extinction by asteroid seem more like serendipity than selection. You have a talent for cramming a great many errors into very few words. There is no evidence for the Flood, let alone any evidence of significant change in genetic variation before and after around 4500 years when this supposed Flood was supposed to have happened. You haven't defined kind, and so microevolution within a kind also has no definition. Many trilobite fossils are so vastly different that they are obviously different species, e.g.: --Percy

The Tapeats was a coastal region. As each centimeter (or millimeter or whatever increment you like) of sand was deposited, that became the new surface on which life lived, gradually accumulating to a depth of as much as a few hundred feet.the Tapeats contains the fossils of life that lived on the accumulating sediments. What I can find about Tapeats fossils on the web says that they included Correphioides, Diplocraterion and Skolithos, as well as some trilobite tracks. The Tapeats was deposited before life invaded the land, so those parts of the Tapeats that are crossbedded coastal sand dunes were uninhabited and contain no fossils. Each level of strata was at one point the Earth's surface (as land or as sea or lake floor), and this is true both in reality and in your Flood scenario. Erosion is very prevalent. There are two ways (that I know of, others may know of additional ways) that erosion at a strata boundary can be recognized. One is by a sharp contact (which is what I think you really mean by "knife-edge contact"). The other is by radiometric dating, which can indicate a gap in time between strata.Ironically, your "knife-edge contacts" are part of the evidence *for* the unconformities you claim don't exist. Here are two different trilobite species. Please explain how they could possibly be the same species: Of course there are reasons evolutionary change wouldn't normally happen as rapidly in nature as in a breeding program. The initiation of a breeding program immediately changes the selection pressures because the breeder is selecting who mates. In nature selection pressures can change only as fast as the environment changes, which is usually very slowly. The Pod Mrcaru lizards experienced a sudden change in selection pressures when they experienced a sudden change in environment when they were transported from Pod Kopiste to Pod Mrcaru. You can't say "species/subspecies" because there's a big difference between the two. Populations of different subspecies can interbreed while populations of different species cannot.Since we have no idea whether you mean species or subspecies (you can't mean both) your meaning is unclear. Since you don't believe speciation is possible, why do you say this?But anyway, I think we all agree that "it doesn't take millions of years to get new species," and I don't recall anyone ever saying that speciation requires millions of years.Drift alone should keep species from remaining unchanged for millions of years. It isn't impossible that speciation could take millions of years if environmental conditions remained very stable and if the impact of drift were negligible, but typically speciation occurs in much less than millions of years. The pace of evolutionary change is also proportional to generation times. Species with very short generation times (bacteria) can evolve very quickly, while species with long generation times (people) evolve much more slowly. The Founder Effect is a concept from population genetics, not breeding. The examples of cheetahs and elephant seals indicate that you're actually thinking about reduced genetic diversity, not dramatic phenotypes. Phenotype, dramatic or not, is not an indicator of genetic diversity. Breeding can reduce genetic diversity and cause health problems, but breeding dramatic phenotypes is not synonymous with reducing genetic diversity. PaulK didn't say anything about genetic diversity. He said that selective breeding can produce more varied phenotypes, and you agree. Yes. Well said. There's no such thing as controlled conditions in nature, and saying so will only create confusion. You say "geographic isolation" is an example of controlled conditions in nature, but it isn't, not even close. Again, since you don't believe speciation is possible, why do you say this? Again, you can't say "species/subspecies". When you do this your meaning becomes unclear since there's no way to know whether you're referring to interbreeding populations or not.Clearing this up once again about the Pod Mrcaru lizards, they are a subspecies of the same lizard species on Pod Kopiste, not a new species. They remain genetically identical to their Pod Kopiste cousins. Rapid change is observed by breeders all the time. What is rare is to see such rapid change in nature, which resulted from the rapid change in environmental conditions when humans transported the lizards from Pod Kopiste to Pod Mrcaru. On the contrary, all the evidence points to a continuous process of descent with modification followed by natural selection being responsible for the diversity of species observed today. Not assumptions but knowledge gathered by study of the natural world. The pace of genetic change is consistent with the degree of genetic difference we observe between related species, which is in turn consistent with the fossil record. The Pod Mrcaru lizards and Jutland cattle are the result of selection pressures on existing variation. They have not experienced any genetic change, usually necessary for speciation. Selection of existing variation will only cause change within the species, i.e., new breeds and races. Breeding (Jutland cattle, pigeons, cats, dogs) only creates new breeds, not new species. Suddenly different selection pressures on the Pod Mrcaru llizards created a new breed, not a new species. Creating new breeds has always been known to not take very long. This is not new.It is speciation that requires longer time periods because it (usually but not always) requires the accumulation of mutations in order to create the genetic incompatibility that defines a new species. You're successfully making the case for something that is already known, namely that microevolution creating new breeds doesn't take that long. You're describing microevolution creating new breeds. That is not rapid evolution in the sense of new species, and the timeframes you've mentioned are far too short for new mutations to have any significant influence. If all the 17,000 different trilobite types in the fossil record were different breeds then you might have a case, but they're obviously not different breeds. They're too wildly different from one another to be the same breed. They have to be different species, and the time it takes to produce new species is much longer than for new breeds. The scientific explanation for the genetic differences between species is mutation. Leaving aside God and Bible in this science thread and sticking to scientific arguments underpinned by evidence, how do you think those genetic differences happened? Yes, there is a great deal of variety in fossil trilobites. How do you explain the trilobite images from earlier in this message as the same species?--Percy