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Author | Topic: where was the transition within fossil record?? [Stalled: randman] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4927 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
Percy, that's a good graph, but here's the fallacy in evo thinking. Let's use your graph and assumptions.
Species A and E have fossils (but not B,C,D), and that would be OK. But the evo claim is more like species 1 is seen, and then 2-999 is so small it leaves no fossils, and then species 1000 is seen. If all we were dealing with were gaps as your graph suggests, the claim would be reasonable, but it's not even close, especially as you consider the branches that would have spun off in different directions and gone extinct.
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4927 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
nwr, you are correct on that, which is more evidence for my point that there were facts on the record, for decades, as far as the fossil record which evos refused to admit to, until Ethridge and Gould used those same facts to help advocate ToE models.
When facts were used to denigrate ToE, those same facts were denied as being true at all. All you ever heard from the evo camp was how the fossil record substantiated evo models when, in fact, the fossil record did not substantiate the gradualistic models, as Gould and Etheridge pointed out the need for a correction in the models to try to account for stasis and sudden appearance.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Let's also remember that when proto-whales were still at least partially land-dwelling creatures, they spent a lot of time in and around the edges of bodies of water. Muddy marine environments are particularly well-suited to fossilization. That's why we see many, many many fossils of trilobite.
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halucigenia Inactive Member |
I don't intend to play devil's advocate here, however I have been trying to follow this debate and think that I have a handle on a particular misunderstanding here. I think that what randman is trying to explain is that where it is considered that a species is transitional in form then this transitional form should increase in population size sufficiently to leave abundant fossils. However others are saying that the transitional forms stay in small population size. What has failed to be communicated, or what randman has failed to understand, is that these small populations of transitional forms continue to evolve and do increase in population size if successfull, but in evolving are no longer that specific transitional form that randman is looking for.
In bringing up Punctuated Equilibrium it is clear that randman believes that all new species appear in the fossil record "fully formed" therefore none of these "fully formed" species can be considered transitional. I do not know if it helps to consider that even what the rest of you see as transitional species will appear to be "fully formed" from this perspective. If I am correct in my assumptions of randman's way of thinking (it is difficult to get inside a creationist's head), then, to this way of thinking, there are just no such things as transitional fossils. |
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
randman writes: But the evo claim is more like species 1 is seen, and then 2-999 is so small it leaves no fossils, and then species 1000 is seen. I can't really engage in debate as moderator, but I would suggest that you ask yourself whether numbers like these are really what evos claim as representative. Regarding what you say in this post, here are the issues I suggest people raise with you, though I believe they've all been discussed before:
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IrishRockhound Member (Idle past 4464 days) Posts: 569 From: Ireland Joined: |
I'd like to make a point about the rarity of fossils, if I may.
Any number of things can destroy a potential fossil, from disturbance while its still a corpse to geological influences like folding and faulting. As well as that, it has to eventually be brought to the surface in some way or otherwise come into contact with humans. On top of that, someone has to want to dig it out and spend a while examining it and identifying it. So, identified, good quality fossils are rare. Let's say for arguments sake that the chance of a fossil making it all the way to the Natural History Museum is one in a million. Now, this is considered to be rare. That chance might change depending on the factors above - some creatures fossilise well, some don't, i.e. there are only 6 verified Archaeopteryx fossils in the world (as far as I know), but brachipods are literally ten a penny because they fossilise so well. The figure of one in a million is an average, lets say, of all the creatures that have ever been fossilised. So why do we have so many fossils? Well, how many million billion animals are alive in the world today? You'll have to multiply that by (the number of years life has existed on earth that can be fossilised)/(the longest known generation length in years of any living creature on earth) - this will give you a minimum ballpark figure for the number of animals that have existed, in total, over the course of the earth's history that could have become fossilised. In the face of that, the rarity of fossilisation becomes trivial - there are simply so many animals than can become fossilised that actually finding fossils, period, is pretty easy. What's rare is finding a fossil of a particular species that lived in this timeframe in this particular area. In most cases you can just forget it - the factors involved are against you. For example, there are practically no dinosaur fossils in Ireland - because there's practically no Mesozoic rock in Ireland. So information about what dinosaurs lived in Ireland is largely unavailable, and finding a dinosaur fossil here is a rare event. So let's look at the record. You want the "specific numbers and frequency of fossils discovered relative to what we should expect based on transitional forms that must have occurred." Let's say a transitional form has been predicted by the ToE to occur between fossil A and fossil B that has not been found yet (fossils found = 0). There could easily be more than one, but let's keep it simple. It must have occurred, therefore we want to examine the frequency and number of fossils we expect to find. We can do this by having some idea of the total population of A, B, or the transitional. If you have any idea how to get that information, I'd be happy to hear it. As it stands we have no other information about life in prehistoric times other than the fossil record. (I will grant that I might be misunderstanding what exactly you're looking for, please correct me if I have.) Now, let's leave out the ToE for a moment.
quote: We don't ignore this - but perhaps I can clarify. We cannot know if fossilisation is rare for a species as a whole because we have no way of finding out any prehistoric species' total population. The only evidence we have of them is fossils, ergo we must base our speculation on the frequency of fossilisation in that species on the number of fossils we find of that species. Yes, we may be wrong, but we have no way of knowing.
quote: That's because the evidence you ask for does not exist. There is no reliable way of knowing, other than looking at the number of fossils found. We can speculate on enviromental conditions, and other factors influencing the likelyhood of fossilisation of a member of a particular species, but it is just that - speculation. We do not know enough about the prehistoric world to draw many solid conclusions, and certainly not enough to get some actual figures.
quote: Like I said, some species fossilise readily, like brachiopods. Some are in ideal environmental conditions. Some have not been disturbed geologically. See my explanation of rarity above - it is a relative term. Certainly you are correct that for some species, fossilisation does not appear to be rare - but we have no way of knowing without population data. For example, brachiopods are quite common fossils. But for all we know brachiopods were as numerous as insects, and only a small handful fossilised. Conversely, they could have been quite rare but a very high percentage of them fossilised.
quote: Because there is no hard evidence. It's not something we can calculate with any degree of accuracy, because it requires population data we don't have and can't get to the best of my knowledge. I feel that perhaps this was not explained adequately by others in this thread, and I hope it's useful to you - as always I am open to corrections from either side if I've made a mistake. The Rock Hound "Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."
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halucigenia Inactive Member |
randman writes: So you do actualy understand Punctuated Equilibrium then? Species 2-999 (small populations, yes, in time) appearing in rapid succession. Rapid (geologically speaking) periods of evolution with long periods of stasis in between. No wonder we don't see the transitional species 2-999 in the fossil record.
But the evo claim is more like species 1 is seen, and then 2-999 is so small it leaves no fossils, and then species 1000 is seen
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DrJones* Member Posts: 2290 From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
Species 2-999 (small populations, yes, in time) appearing in rapid succession. Rapid (geologically speaking) periods of evolution with long periods of stasis in between. No wonder we don't see the transitional species 2-999 in the fossil record.
And species 2 may only differ from species 1 in a feature that doesn't fossilize. A change in an organ or other soft tissue. If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! *not an actual doctor
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4927 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
Species transition as a continuum, making estimation of the number of undiscovered transitional species extremely problematic. In terms of sexually reproducing species such as mammals, that just is not true. There is no continuum. There are discrete bunches that sexually reproduce with each other, and not with other species (other discrete bunches of creatures). To continue to pretend this is not the case is the height of arrogance in the face of facts, imo, and although you perhaps are just echoing other people's arguments, I do think anyone continuing to claim species transitions is a continuum is denying the reality of how species reproduce. Moreover, the claim is isolated groups, too small to leave fossils, are the vast majority of species that evolve. If large species genuinely did transition as a continuum, then we should expect to see fine-grained transitions in the fossil record, not just the evolution of all of the major features. It is noteworthy though that we see neither.
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4927 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
Dr Jones, if there is only small change between species 1 and species 1000 in the evo transition, then my numbers are off.
It should be species 1, followed by species 100K or maybe 1 million or something like that seen with all the species in between not seen at all.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Thanks for the well-written post, Irishrockhound. Very lucid.
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4927 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
I don't think it's reasonable to think the species 2-999 would not develop into larger species. I think it's reasonable that a couple, or very few "steps" or speciation events can occur within very small populations, but that it is likely one of the species to be more successful and spread, and without that process, it is more likely that the line of evolution would just die out.
The idea that rapid speciation one species after another for hundreds of speciation events is not supported, that I know of, by what we see in nature, at least for mammals.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
speciation events There are no speciation events. One might speak of a speciation "process."
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4927 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
We don't ignore this - but perhaps I can clarify. We cannot know if fossilisation is rare for a species as a whole because we have no way of finding out any prehistoric species' total population. The only evidence we have of them is fossils, ergo we must base our speculation on the frequency of fossilisation in that species on the number of fossils we find of that species. Yes, we may be wrong, but we have no way of knowing. I disagree. We can determine, for example with whales, which whale species or families of species since some whale "species" do interbreed and produce fertile offspring, and then look at the fossil record, going back in time, and see how they are represented. The reading I have done indicates every whale family is well-represented in the fossil record going back millions of years. So for that time-frame, we can estimate whether whale fossilization is "rare" or how "rare" it is. Since all whale families are well-represented, it can just as easily be said, in context, that whale fossils and whale fossilization is common. Terms like "rare" and "common" by themselves are meaningless unless placed into a specific context. Now, the next step would be to consider the fossilization process. Where do we think these whales fossilized? Then, we consider that before whales, it is likely that some other creatures occupied the same habitats, the precursors to modern whales, and we can see how well-represented they are in the fossil record. For example, do we find more whale fossils or more Basilosaurus fossils? Do we find the same numbers? It may be that the differences in fossilization rates and finds for the period 1-30 million years ago are basically the same for 30-45 million years ago. That's the type of analysis evos should make BEFORE THEY MAKE THEIR CLAIMS instead of making unsupported claims and demanding they be disproved.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 4.5 |
nwr, you are correct on that, which is more evidence for my point that there were facts on the record, for decades, as far as the fossil record which evos refused to admit to, until Ethridge and Gould used those same facts to help advocate ToE models.
Most evolutionists (in the sense of those who do research in evolutionary biology) are working in genetics, biochemistry, reproductive biology. The theory of evolution is mostly derived from what is observed in these studies. The fossil record was never the basis for the theory. These evolutionists can be excused for not noticing the details of the fossil record until paleontologists pointed it out to them. That they adjusted the theory, by paying more attention to likely environmental conditions for speciation, only shows that they are concerned with evidence.
When facts were used to denigrate ToE, those same facts were denied as being true at all.
What is repeated being brought up by creationists has only a weak evidential basis and does not refute ToE. If creationists come up with solid evidence that is inconsistent with ToE, they will get a lot of attention. Thus far they have only come up with evidence that they don't even understand ToE.
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