On Transitional Species (SUMMATION MESSAGES ONLY)

I think you might have transitional a little misunderstood or unclear. The transition your examples brings to mind is that of a transition to a new environment. Penguins have transitioned to water, ostriches to land, and alligators to both.To be clear, a transitional species is B in the series A->B->C. It has nothing to do with their environment but with their placement in the genealogical family tree. In that sense, my mother (B) is the transitional from my maternal grandparents (A) to me (C).

I'm well aware of this.I just thought it would be fair to say that archaeopteryx is (B), it's unkown descendant is (C), and its ancestor, a maniraptorian dinosaur, is (A).Besides, if we do actually know the lineage (I'm thinking of the forams although I'm probably remembering that wrong, or human evolution where we almost certainly know that our ancestor is H. erectus, with the question remaining over whether H. erectus is descended from H. habilus or if the two are cousins), I would think that B could be called transitional.

Wait, what?I thought that was basically the whole point of transitionals. That they show the potential evolutionary lineage.You want to ask how a fish became a frog, that's where transitionals come in.You want to ask how a frog become a reptile, that's where transitionals come in.You want to ask how some cattle-like creature became a whale, that's where transitionals come in.You want to ask how Hyracotherium became the modern horse, that's where transitionals come in.Even if the example we have isn't B, it still shares an ancestor with B. If it doesn't have such an ancestral link, it's worthless as a transitional, no?Chirop's Chart, D being the transitional example we've found:
A
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------------B-----------
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------C------ D
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E FExample D disconnected.
A G
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------------B- |
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------C------ D
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E FIf this is the case, it's no longer a transitional, right? Obviously, it was an example to get the point across. I don't see what the problem with being a non-interbreeding population is, since a transitional species obviously doesn't interbreed with it's parent or daughter species. As to being the same species, I'm talking about a genealogical family tree for crying out loud. Did the allegory completely miss? Besides, the point was that you use the middle to show how the changes appeared from A to C, and one species or many can show that.

No shit. And I never claimed that to be the case. The entire point behind my example was that transitions are through time, not environment. You have a before, you have an after, and the transitional fills in the between time. When I bring up the family tree, I say "In that sense", which means I'm not using any technical examples of transitional species. My goal was to use a very simple and easy to understand example, given that the thread's author wasn't exactly being all that technical. That's what I meant when I asked if the allegory completely missed: did you miss that I wasn't being technical? That I wasn't actually saying that the family tree is a real transitional species. That I was being very simplistic. I wasn't asking whether you thought it was a bad example, as you obviously do.Again, my point was that transitionals are in time, not environment. My point was not to pick out all the fun little caveats about evolution or evolutionary history we have to keep in mind. Sorry I'm not allowed to be so simple. Then I don't see how you could say that they are transitionals between saurischia and birds. But then, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote. I was under the assumption that birds are most likely descended from a group of therapods, so therapods would certainly be transitionals from the earlier group and birds. But if birds aren't even from therapods, then therapods are fairly useless as transitionals, because then the similarities would be from convergent evolution. It would help if the first line in both charts had lined up properly. Somehow the forum shunted them to the left. The point was that unless (D) shares a common ancestor with (B), it is useless as a transitional between (A) and (E,F). So transitionals have to share some ancestry at the least and be close to the line that did continue. We need, to continue with the family allegory, an uncle or aunt if we don't have the parent. Anything further removed is really quite useless. Whales descended from most likely from artiodactyls, which are ungulates. This group of ungulates currently includes deer, giraffes, antelopes, hippos, and cattle among many others. If they didn't descend from artiodactyls, it was from a different ungulate group, mesonychids, which are now extinct.

You know what's funny?The definitions you're providing basically describe A -> B -> C, where B is the transitional.Your definitions also basically state that the transitionals are descended from group A and are ancestral to group C.So what, exactly, was the problem with my example?

Debatable, I suppose. Allegories are symbolic representations, whereas analogies are more tied to logic/reason. The ring (from LoTR is supposedly allegorical to the nuke. Shall we read my statement again? Here's what I said:"To be clear, a transitional species is B in the series A->B->C. It has nothing to do with their environment but with their placement in the genealogical family tree." Then I say "in that sense", meaning, in the sense of placement within the family tree, given that transitionals are the link between A and C, "my mother (B) is the transitional from my maternal grandparents (A) to me (C)."I'm not actually talking about species in my example. I'm talking about what would qualify as a transitional. Your very definitions of transitional species rely upon knowledge of descendancy and ancestry. If we don't know the descendant, or even have a possible candidate, of a transitional species, it's not yet a transitional. If we don't have a possible candidate for it's ancestor, we don't have a transitional, but instead only the beginning of the line. Because as you like to say, "transitional to what?" So far I still fail to see how this is the case. The definitions you are providing from paleontologists and biologists really do seem to suggest that B in the series A -> B -> C is a transitional and that there is implied ancestry and descendancy at some level.I'm not too sure that I would bring up sinonyx, since DNA analyses and other molecular studies are apparently placing whales and such closer to hippos and other artiodactyls than to mesonychids, which brings into question just whether sinonyx is a transitional to whales. And no, the artist's rendering on wikipedia does not look very dog or wolf-like to me at all. You must be familiar with different creationists, because the creationist misunderstanding I'm familiar with demands the "croco-duck" or some other miraculous beast, or they demand a transitional that has half of something, such that it (in their minds) would be nonfunctional.

From the article: So is this species an actual transitional? I would say no, since it appears it didn't lead to today's seals. On the other hand, by being in the same group as that ancestor, as the researcher says, it shows what the actual ancestor, the actual transitional could have looked like.

Oh, I understand quite clearly.I just think it's foolish to call something a transitional species when it doesn't have any known or possible ancestors.Apparently you think the same, since you call both the proto-seal and archaeopteryx transitional forms. Not transitional species. And yeah, you guys get to set the definitions. But definitions can change and/or have problems with them.I especially think it's stupid to present something like P. darwini as a transitional species because creationists aren't going to buy it. First, because they don't accept evolution, second, because we now have two more holes to fill (since they claim there are no transitional species), and third, because P. darwini isn't even a missing link in their book (since they want to know what actually led to seals, not what might look like something that did actually lead to seals).And please, don't patronize me. Really good way to get me to not listen to a single damn thing you say. Are you now going to wash my mouth out with soap?Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

Yeah, fuck off.I know you're new here, still learning who everyone is, but I am certainly not a creationist. Yeah, fuck off. Shouldn't you want to invite me into discussions on things (you think) I don't understand so I can begin to understand them? Instead you've been nothing but patronizing and annoyingly arrogant to me and suggested that I should leave any discussion of things I don't understand, thus relegating me to ignorance (of this or any other subject).Did your degree really inflate your ego that much?Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

Yeah, whatever. Nice thing about this forum. It saves every damn post you make, every damn thread you've participated in. So long, of course, as you don't go back and delete them all through the edit function.I've got a three year record that speaks for itself.
EvC Forum: kuresu Topic IndexPlenty of mistakes, to be sure, but overall, it's the record of someone who generally understands evolutionary theory, the evidence behind it, and why it works. It's the record of a non-creationist.Ask buz, randman, faith, or any of the other multiple creationists we've had over the years (buz is still around, the other's aren't) which side of the debate I'm on. Jesus christ. Still on this? I never claimed my mother was an actual transitional species, only that she demonstrates the characteristic of linking me to my grandmother like transitionals would link some descendant group to an ancestral group. That's not my argument whatsoever. My argument (lately, at any rate), is that it wouldn't be accurate to call something like P. darwini a transitional species because it's a dead end. But, and here's the big but, the important but, it's still important because it does show us what the actual transitional could have, and likely did, look like.Why do I think that more accurate? Because transitional species imply some sort of ancestor/descendant relationships. And darwin himself said that finding that actual links would be damn near impossible, so we should look also for those in the same family to get an idea as to what the real link looked like.Of course, it seems to me as if this is almost an argument over why it's called the coulomb instead of the franklin, when it was Franklin who discovered electrical charges before Coulomb.ABE:
A better example, perhaps, would be the description of the Swedish economy in the 1600s as capitalist. As everybody understands the term (and indeed, as economists use it), the Swedish economy is anything but capitalistic in the 17th century (it's definitely not feudalistic, as Sweden never really experienced feudalism, but it's only somewhat mercantile). So who describes it as such? Historians at Uppsala University who hold to a more communist/marxist interpretation of history with everything being driven by exploitation. Capitalist/ism/ic is the stand-in for exploitation. Any system that exploits, thus, is capitalistic. That's the definition they use, and I find it absolutely bunk. But it's the definition they've agreed on, so who am I to challenge it?Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

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kuresu writes:

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I know you're new here, still learning who everyone is, but I am certainly not a creationist.

Your arguments and methods belie that claim.

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If you are not a creationist (who are all smug and arrogant because of their (note: spelling) unwillingness to learn), how are you different?

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Here's a great example of a creationist:
http://EvC Forum: Natural selection proven wrong -->EvC Forum: Natural selection proven wrongHow do I differ? For one, I'm an atheist. Kind of hard to believe that whole god created the earth in 6 days shtick when you don't even believe in a god(ess). Second, I'm not anti-science in any manner. Third, I'm not shit-bat crazy like they tend to be (read: Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Falwell, Roberston, Bush, etc). That's just off the top of my head. Of course, if you could actually read, you'd see that I disassociate myself from creationists in this very thread by referring to them as "them" or "they", never "we". Instead, I associate myself with evolutionists.Of course, when you define creationist as anyone who doesn't understand, then everybody's a creationist. Which seems to be your definition since you have me confused for a creationist when I'm not simply because I'm arguing about the definition of transitional species and you think I'm wrong and don't understand. The irony? At the beginning of this thread you didn't consider me a creationist. Go figure.