Try out this exercise, sitting in front of fossil distribution data

wjI would have to say I would expect mangroves to start around the amphibian sort of region of the column or a little earlier, so how about Devonian/Carboniferous? I'm sure you've designed this to be a dud right? I have admitted here already that our scenario is primarily a proclamation from the POV of fossil ordering. From the POV of the rocks themsleves, on the other hand, there is much evidence of rapidity.

RandyYou may be entirely correct. You may be entirely wrong.

EdgeI'll amend the ordering to sea-floor, general marine, wet-land, terrestial, bird-life which does make sense from a global flood POV and is the observed ordering. Dinosaurs vs extant mammals is a big problem for us.

^ The key issue, that I did consider yesterday but decided not to complicate my answer with, is whether amphibians would be generally buried in their habitat or transported seaward or landward (or escaped landward).A Cretaceous first appearence of mangroves suggests that the amphibians were transported from their habitats and buried seaward. This is clearly a post-observation comment. In our scenario it suggests that freshwater flooding from highlands preceded marine innundation leaving mangroves higher than their fauna. Of course one would expect transport of flora as well as fauna and we would have to argue that the devil is in the details.I do not claim any detailed predictive power in this scheme at this point.

EdgeWhere you draw long dotted lines, we suggest transport, escape, ecology and sorting. Not too different.You didn't really predict that flowering plants come after amphibians! The raw data told both of us that.

^ You have highlighted one of the biggest problems of the flood model as I have admitted on dozens of occasions.

Laugh away Edge.I must similarly confess to cracking up every time I read Gould's famous 'tradesecret' quote. The idea that an entire discipline would have a secret that utterly destroys the entire basis of their paradigm and yet continue going in to their work places each day is highly amusing but also very sad.When I first read paleontology monographs I was sure that all those dotted lines were littered with transitional forms or at least two or three per line. When I finally realized the truth of it, that none of the dotted lines represented actual data my jaw dropped and I suddenly realized in what sense Gould was writing. Gould was writing literally. I had given mainstream science so much benefit of the doubt I never accepted what the creationist books said or even what Gould et al had said. Only now that I have seen the data with my own eyes do I understand how it all works and how Gould could possibly have said what he said.You ridicule our faith in the flood (distribution mechanisms in particular) but in your scenario you have systemaitc dotted lines that link not to observed forms but to more dotted lines. Your faith is at least as great as ours.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-15-2003]

Paul K I disagree. The distribution diagrams show that not only are gaps systematic but the dotted lines don't even join up to anything other than more dotted lines. Gould meant it literally. I kmnow all about PE. PE was required becasue of the distinctness of the fossil groups. And I fully agree with him with the proviso of inverted commas around the word 'transitional'! Whether we talk from fish to amphibian to reptile or within orders you can get apparent transitonals but they are distinct organisms. They are simply organisms buried in a pattern of sea-floor to marine to aquatic to land. The more similar the closer they are vertically!The crown jewel of transitonals is the mammalian reptile sequence. Look what evolutionists say about it: You said: I have been at pains to point out that the ghost lineage problem is a systematic one for six seperate groups only because of evolutioanry assumptions about three other groups. You can believe the problem will go away if you want. Your supposed transitonals here are weaker than those of the reptile-mammal transition.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-20-2003]