The Great Creationist Fossil Failure

All of my great-grandparents died out before I became common, but to conclude on that basis that we are not related one would have to be some sort of creationist.

No, which is why I didn't mention Anomalocaris.

Your wish is granted.The American opossums are the top two clades, the Caenolestidae and the Didelphimorphia. You notice how they don't fall within the Diprotodontia? And as usual, creationist theory is wrong. Creationist theory has lead you to believe that only a few point mutations separate kangaroos and wombats?Well, you're wrong. There are some rather gross and obvious differences. For example, "Diprotodontia contains species with both the highest (2n = 32) and lowest (2n = 10) known chromosome number for marsupials."So, now that you know that "creationist theory" is utterly, completely, wildly wrong, you will doubtless be reappraising the respect in which you hold that "theory".

I can make no sense out of this post.

Define "significant"?Don't you think there's a bit of a double standard here? Look, in the world according to mindspawn:(1) The Earth a mere 5000 years ago was inhabited by great big organisms with hard parts: elephants, rhinos, whales, ichthyosaurs, etc.
(2) And yet not one, none, zero of these has been discovered in fossil form in the present day.
(3) But this is not a big problem for your "theory", tralalala, no big deal.And yet when we come and tell you that we've only found a few dozen or hundred species (WHICH IS STILL MORE THAN ZERO, MINDSPAWN) of the small, soft-bodied creatures from 540,000,000 years ago, you act like it's a major problem.Could you not try to apply a single standard for your expectation of the preservation and discovery of fossils? Er, mindspawn, when he says "radiation" he means evolutionary radiation. (The full paper can be read here.) But that aside, I've got to ask --- would that be the same Siberia where our supposed inability to look at the pre-Triassic fossils explains away how we can't find any Pre-Triassic mammals?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Why, yes, any scenario at all is consistent with "a wizard did it". But unless the wizard is also a liar who made the whole of the fossil record into a lie, one would have to wonder why the wizard magicked up a fossil and geological record which perfectly verifies evolution. But this is manifestly false; which is why although creationists unanimously assert that the fossils are either "full fledged apes or full fledged humans" they cannot agree among themselves which is which.Or, indeed, with themselves. So for example according to Duane Gish in his book Evolution: the challenge of the fossil record the specimen ER1470 was a "full fledged ape"; but according to Duane Gish in his book Evolution: the fossils say no it was" a "full-fledged human". Similarly in P.S. Taylor's The illustrated origins answer book Peking man is a "full-fledged ape", but in P.S. Taylor's Who's who and what's what in the world of "missing" links? it's a "fully-fledged human".Right here on these forums we had a guy called Mazzy. One day he was writing this: "Turkana Boy is human, the others, especially the one on display at the museum in Michagan, are apes. I am remiss in my ability to understand how such intelligent scientists cannot see the difference"; and a couple of weeks later he was writing "I have no idea why any creationist would purport Turkana Boy to be human". Isn't that amazing even for a creationist --- one day he can't understand how anyone could think Turkana boy wasn't human, and yet two weeks later he can't understand why anyone would claim it was. (I pointed out to him that if he could remember what he himself was thinking two weeks previously, he might come to understand that particular mystery. He took my helpful suggestion rather poorly.)So, if all the apemen divide neatly into apes and humans, why cannot creationists come to anything remotely resembling a consensus as to where the great gulf between them lies?Would you like to have a go? Here's some skulls. Where would you yourself like to place the Great Divide? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I can't really see why you'd object to human evolution anyway. (Apart from, y'know, religion.) But if you can believe that in a couple of thousand years we got from a basal bipedal archosaur such as Archosaurus to such distinctive forms as Triceraptops, Stegosaurus, Spinosaurus and Dracorex ... ... then I don't see how you can cavil at the proposition (supported by many intermediate forms) that humans descended from more basal apes over a period of millions of years.On what basis would you believe that major morphological changes can take place over a few thousand years, but relatively minor morphological changes can't take place over millions of years?Again, couldn't you apply a single standard to the sort of thing you find credible?According to you, giant organisms with hard parts living 5,000 years ago can disappear from the fossil record completely without trace, but the theory of evolution is in big trouble if we can't find all of the small soft-bodied creatures from 500,000,000 years ago. And according to you, Triceraptops, Stegosaurus, Spinosaurus and Dracorex can all evolve from a Permian archosaur in a couple of thousand years, but millions of years aren't enough to get from something like this ... ... to something like this ... ... despite all the intermediate forms that exemplify the transition.

The fossils we do have. We have lots. You have none of the fossils that your "theory" requires. How about you discard it?

I don't know. Can you find any unique coding genes in humans that chimps don't have? Would it prove the theory of evolution if I could find an instance of that in any clade, or does it only apply to marsupials for some reason?

Wait, are you claiming that dinosaurs severally descended from different pre-Triassic reptiles, many of which were not archosaurs at all?Then how do you explain how they all have the distinctive features of (a) diapsids (b) archosaurs (c) dinosaurs?From WP: And: Are we meant to believe that separate groups of reptiles which did not originally have these features acquired them through convergent evolution, even though they had widely, wildly different habits of life?I note that the absence of intermediate forms doesn't bother you one whit in putting forward this extravagant hypothesis. Whereas we do have some. For example, the evolution of ceratopsians from more basal dinosaurs is evidenced in the fossil record. Their evolution from dicynodonts is not. Incidentally, dicynodonts are not, as you claim, archosaurs. They're not even diapsids.

Could I again point out that the paper you referred to was talking about evolutionary radiation and not mere geographical spread.And could I again ask if we're talking about the same Siberia? Your excuse for the absence of pre-Permian mammals was that they were hidden in Siberia where we can't look. But apparently we can look at pre-Triassic trilobites in Siberia. Which suggests (a) that you're wrong about us not being able to look there and (b) that Siberia was at the time in question underwater.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Why would you need to know that? And why would you need to know that? The location? The scientific name? What for? Some of them, say creationists, are total full-on humans, others are absolute apes. Can't you tell an ape from a human?If you present me with skulls of humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans, I will be able to tell the humans from the apes with unerring accuracy and without asking any further questions. So why can't you do the same with this equally clear-cut collection of fossils, which, as we know, has nary an intermediate form in it?

And, just to be clear about this, the areas that were entirely covered by molten lava happened to be the areas where all the mammals were?Then why are there mammals?

I posted it, I know for what purpose. It's to see how you separate them into apes and humans.

But we can point to many observable instances where the number of genes has increased, e.g. polyploidy, which has been reproduced under lab conditions.http://www.biology-pages.info/P/Polyploidy.htmlWhat we have never seen is an invisible wizard poofing organisms into existence by magic. That would be fantasy.