A Couple Explanations Please

Chiroptera writes:

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Actually (oops, sorry omnivorous), I wouldn't.

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THAT usage was entirely appropriate. No Actual Horn for you.

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Strangely enough, I'm citing the same paper in two different threads. In the land mammal to whale transition thread I mentioned a paper by Simon Tavare, who tries to assess the proportion of species which end up being fossilized. He finds that

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no more than 7% of all primate species that
have ever existed are known from fossils.

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Thanks again, mick, for finding that work. I was prepared to do some heavy lifting to justify analogous numbers for whales, and it is a relief to find, as one might expect, it has already been done.I felt the same excitement when I saw how long and rigorous the work on recent death assemblages has been.

I did not mean to convey that no evolution has taken place at all. I understand small (micro-evolution) could have occurred in all species I listed. Yet they are still basically seed-shrimp or cockroaches. They have not split into something else. In all those hundreds of millions of years they still remain virtually the same. Nothing has changed dramatically, they have survived one or two mass extinctions and yet they have not evolved into anything different or something else better has not replaced them.Now from my understanding Homo sapiens and chimps shared a common ancestor, why the huge change in us and not chimps? I would assume that at one time we were very similar through our shared ancestor.

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"A Dwarf on a Giants Shoulder sees the Furthest of the Two!"

This brings up two questions:1) Why do you think that chimps have not changed much compared to the common ancestor?2) Why do you think that chimps should have changed much since the time of the common ancestory?

This sounds like the "If we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" argument. The answer is simply that just because a new species may be well adapted to its environment, does not mean that another new species from the same ancestor (or even the ancestor itself) is not also perfectly well adapted to that environment.We are different from apes, and we have a common ancestor, but they survive jsut fine in their natural environments. Why would they die out? It's not like one day the entire species just "turns into" humans.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

I do not agrue against evolution, I believe it has taken place. I was just wondering why chimps have not changed much compared to us. And why we still have the same species (perhaps slightly different than the original) in existance even after millions of years. These were some things that I have not grasped yet with ToE. I am not arguing against it. I was hoping someone here with a better understanding of ToE could explain these to me. I have only been really study ToE for about 6 months now. Thanks for your information.

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"A Dwarf on a Giants Shoulder sees the Furthest of the Two!"

The answer to your question, then, is that evolution does not require change to take place. If an organism survives perfectly well in its habitat, it will thrive, whether part of the species continues to evolve into a new species or not. Nothing in evolution is mutually exclusive. Cockroaches, for instance survive very well, and have existed for millenia, but there are different varieties. Evolution doesn't stop, but a particular species doesn't have to die out simply becuase a new species descended from it.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Just to try keeping the books straight... I'm sure you were just throwing a random number out there, but there weren't any mammals 350 mya, much less chimps. Oh, but they are still chimps, and no chimp has ever given birth to a rhino. Evolution is a myth!

Why do you think they have not changed much. There is some suggestion that the last common ancestor of chimps and us may already have been walking moderately erect. If that is the case in that way at least they have changed more than we have.I don't think you should look at it from a overly anthropocentric point of view.

Re: Micro-EvolutionAt what point do you say that's micro-evolution vs macro-evolution. Asian cockroaches and Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches are very different. Under no circumstances could they mate. They are seperate species. But, they are both cockroaches.Take for example Zebras and Horses. They are clearly related, obviously share a common ancestor, but are not the same species. Are the differences between a Zebra and a Horse micro or macro evolution?re: Humans and ChimpsYou ask why we have changed so much from our common ancestor with chimps when they have changed so little.That's making a huge assumption. You are assuming that the common ancestor we share with chimps looked like a chimp. That's probably not the case. It's hard because you have a mental image of a chimp and of a person, but not of this older form.It may help to assume that this older form looked like a gibbon. (It probably didn't, but we need an image to work with). Chimps look different than gibbons, we look different than gibbons. All three of us look a lot different than a turtle.Hope that helps

Don't give up on the heavy lifting yet! That article presented a model which was tested only on primates. if you feel you are able to gather a dataset of archaeocete fossils, with dates, then you should do so. Testing Tavare's model in cetaceans would be VERY useful. You just need to find a mathy person to program the computer for you.Mick

mispostThis message has been edited by mick, 08-11-2005 12:44 AM

Spot the difference: Wolf, you are right to say that some species have evolved faster than others. But when you consider "human beings versus chimps" please take a look at these pictures. What's the difference?Hint: it isn't the "content"This message has been edited by mick, 08-11-2005 12:14 AMadded in edit: linkThis message has been edited by mick, 08-11-2005 12:41 AM

Thanks for the awesome link...I like the picture of the chimp, have never seen one without hair before. The similarities are striking...Maybe I still have not shaken off my sleepiness... difference? Not content?Maybe I am off but we have a larger brain and the ability to walk upright. Of course our DNA has changed by about 1.6%