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Author | Topic: Why are there no human apes alive today? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
Hi Traste,
Actually they are advanced because the theory of evolution itself claimed as complexities increased they became more advanced than there predessors No it doesn't. If you think this is the case, why don't you go and find a reputable source that uses this as the definition of evolution? Bluescat is correct. Derived forms are not more advanced, just different. If you said more complex, that might be more accurate, over the long term, but even that is not necessarily true at all times.
Because if they are not advanced. Why they survived? Because advanced or not, their genetic inheritance just happened to equip them well enough to survive.
The theory of evolution claimed that natural selection choose only those organism that are better adapted, it cannot be called better adapted if it is not advanced. If this were true, then the earliest and most primitive lifeforms would inevitably died out as soon as they emerged. Not advanced enough. Good job it's not true then. Mutate and Survive "A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1053 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
What made them better adapted? If they are better adapted then it follows that they have advanced feutures. In this respect my argument remained intact and my question remained unanswered. Adaptation is purely relative to your environment. Take the sperm whale. It's very well adapted to life in the sea, so by your reckoning it's features must be advanced. However, if you put a sperm whale in the middle of the Kalahari, it wouldn't last five minutes. There are spotted hyaenas in the Kalahari who are very well adapted, and get by just fine. Given that these would survive will, and the sperm whale would die rapidly, the hyaena must have more advanced features than the whale, by your description. If we threw a hyena into the sea a few hundred miles from the Azores, though, it would drown. The sperm whale is happy as larry here, so it must be more advanced than the hyaena. But then we've already established that the hyena is more advanced than the whale... The solution to this dilemma is simply that it doesn't make sense to discuss one as being more advanced than the other. The two are simply different, and it's very subjective which traits count as advanced. What we can say about both is that their well-adapted. Spotted hyaenas have jaws powerful enough to crush bone and stomachs capable of digesting it, for example, which is a useful adaptation for an environment where a partially decomposed carcass might be the only food you come across for a while. Sperm whales have flexible rib cages that help them withstand great pressures without being crushed; and a high proportion of red blood cells to hold oxygen - both useful traits if you're going to spend part of your life in the deepest, darkest depths. Being well adapted to one environment doesn't mean you're adapted to all environments though, as noted in the extreme contrast between the two environments these animals occupy and their total inability to survive if switched. Environments change, and when they do you need to either be built in such a way that you're sufficiently adapted to the new environment, or you go extinct. I live in a moderately sized, human-built city - a relatively recent appearance on the landscape. This area used to support things like bison, bears and wolves; but these are all gone as they were not well adapted to a new urban environment filled with hostile humans. Other species, like rats, pigeons and magpies for example, were well adapted to get by in this sort of place, so they've flourished and are probably more common. Their relative success doesn't mean they're more advanced than the species which have gone locally extinct or declined in numbers. It just means they're better adapted to the new environment. Their success is only the result of this new environment, and if the environment had changed in a different fashion it might never have happened - this is why an absolute concept of 'advanced' makes little sense. Similar things probably happened to many other hominid species. Environments changed - Africa dried for example, meaning more dry open spaces and less swampy marshlands. If a hominid species was specially adapted to living in these swampy wetlands, they'd find it harder to survive when these are reduced. Again, though, this doesn't mean they're less advanced than the hominids which were adapted to life in the new, drier Africa. Had the climate changed differently and gotten wetter, the same hominids forced to extinction might have flourished.
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Peg Member (Idle past 4958 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
Rahvin writes: Have you heard of taxonomy? Terms like "genus," "phyla," "family," species?" We group organisms according to their common features, and it helps us see where new branches of the family tree formed. of course this is despite the fact that the fossil record strongly indicates that the major kinds of plants and animals appeared abruptly and did not evolve into other kinds, even over aeons of time
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bluescat48 Member (Idle past 4218 days) Posts: 2347 From: United States Joined: |
Peg writes: of course this is despite the fact that the fossil record strongly indicates that the major kinds of plants and animals appeared abruptly and did not evolve into other kinds, even over aeons of time Where is the evidence to this? Where does it show any abrupt appearance? Most of the main phyla appeared over about a 20 million year period, the last time I checked, that is a little longer than abrupt. There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002 Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969 Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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of course this is despite the fact that the fossil record strongly indicates that the major kinds of plants and animals appeared abruptly and did not evolve into other kinds, even over aeons of time This is, of course, not true. This is why paleontologists, who, unlike you, spend their lives studying the fossil record, do not agree with your fantasies about the fossil record.
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Peg Member (Idle past 4958 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
DrAdequate writes: This is why paleontologists, who, unlike you, spend their lives studying the fossil record, do not agree with your fantasies about the fossil record. In The New Evolutionary Timetable, Steven Stanley spoke of the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another. He said: The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution]. Niles Eldredge also admitted: The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist. its this that has led to other radical theories such as life started elswhere and landed here on a meteorite. The World Book Encyclopedia says that Many biologists think new species may be produced by sudden, drastic changes in genes. this is proposed because the fossils show sudden fully formed animals rather then progressive changes. You would think that with all the millions of fossils collected, there would be at least some evidence to show that one kind of life turns into another kind. But the gaps between different types of life found in the fossil record, as well as the gaps between different types of living things on earth today, still persist.
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Peg Member (Idle past 4958 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
bluescat48 writes: Where is the evidence to this? biologist Jonathan Wells writes: At the level of kingdoms, phyla, and classes, descent with modification from common ancestors is obviously not an observed fact. To judge from the fossil and molecular evidence, it’s not even a well-supported theory. many within the field are seeing it for themselves.
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2324 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined:
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Peg writes:
Original sources please? This seems very much like a creationist quotemine.
In The New Evolutionary Timetable, Steven Stanley spoke of the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another. He said: The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution]. Niles Eldredge also admitted: The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist. its this that has led to other radical theories such as life started elswhere and landed here on a meteorite.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
The World Book Encyclopedia says that Many biologists think new species may be produced by sudden, drastic changes in genes. this is proposed because the fossils show sudden fully formed animals rather then progressive changes.
They show both. Fully formed animals that showcase progressive changes.
You would think that with all the millions of fossils collected, there would be at least some evidence to show that one kind of life turns into another kind.
Yes, this is why we have this evidence. It's called the fossil record.
But the gaps between different types of life found in the fossil record, as well as the gaps between different types of living things on earth today, still persist.
Only in creationist circles. I hunt for the truth
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2324 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined:
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Peg writes:
Wells is lying.
biologist Jonathan Wells writes: At the level of kingdoms, phyla, and classes, descent with modification from common ancestors is obviously not an observed fact. To judge from the fossil and molecular evidence, it’s not even a well-supported theory. many within the field are seeing it for themselves.
Pray tell, who are these "many" you refer to? I hunt for the truth
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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biologist Jonathan Wells writes: At the level of kingdoms, phyla, and classes, descent with modification from common ancestors is obviously not an observed fact. To judge from the fossil and molecular evidence, it’s not even a well-supported theory. many within the field are seeing it for themselves. Jonathan Wells is not a professional biologist. He works for the Discovery Institute: he's a professional creationist propagandist. He has achieved various academic qualifications, of which he has written: "Father's [Sun Myung Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle." Yes, he's a "Moonie", and yes, his only reason for seeking out qualifications was because his cult leader thought that they would give him more credibility in disseminating creationist propaganda, not because he wanted to acquire knowledge. You write "many within the field" --- but your one example is not actually within the field. He's a religious zealot who has contributed nothing to biology. Even if we were to count him as "within the field", he is not "many". He's one crank adhering to a cult which even you must find ridiculous.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
You would think that with all the millions of fossils collected, there would be at least some evidence to show that one kind of life turns into another kind. And this evidence is, of course, abundant, which is why, despite all the misinterpreted quotations out of context you can muster, every paleontologist in the world thinks you're talking crap.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Hi Peg,
About your first two quotes (from Steven Stanley and Niles Eldrege), do you really beleive that these two very prominent paleontologists actually believe that the fossil record is not consistent with evolution? They're on the evolutionary side, remember? Do you think it's possible that the quotes you found are actually just posing a conundrum to which they next provide the solution? Can you even count the number of times you've been warned not to trust creationist websites when it comes to quotes? Stanley is misquoted. Where you have [slow evolution] he actually said "gradualism." Stanley is an advocate of punctuated equilibrium. So is Eldredge, a colleague of Gould. They're making the point that the fossil record actually indicates that species change can be relatively rapid, with the emphasis on "relatively." They're still talking about thousands of years at a minimum. If the World Book Encyclopedia actually says that, "Many biologists think new species may be produced by sudden, drastic changes in genes," then it is just plain wrong. No biologists believe this. Unless the broader context makes clear that by "sudden" they mean "over thousands of years," what they say is completely wrong. The fossil record is compatible with the descent of chimps, gorillas and humans from a common ancestor, but more relevant is the morphological and genetic similarities. Both morphologically and genetically chimps, gorillas and humans are more similar to each other than to any other animals in the animal kingdom. Chimps, gorillas and apes are all animals. They're all vertebrates. They're all mammals. They're all primates. And they're all apes. In biology's classification system all animals have to be in some group with other animals until you get down to the bottom level, the species level. Human beings are a unique species, Homo sapiens. We're even unique in our genus, Homo, since we're the only species in this genus. But we're not the only species at the family level, which is called Hominidae, less formally and more ambiguously, apes. Chimps, gorillas and humans share the same Hominidae, or apes, classification group. --Percy
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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If the World Book Encyclopedia actually says that, "Many biologists think new species may be produced by sudden, drastic changes in genes," then it is just plain wrong. Polyploid speciation? Surely all biologist know that species can arise suddenly, because this can be observed. Also, they all know that this has nothing to do with the halfwitted garbage that Peg has attached to this about how "life started elsewhere and landed here on a meteorite". Is there any idea that can't pass through a creationist mind and come out the other end as crap? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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I wasn't ignoring polyploidy, I just felt that chromosome duplication wasn't the same thing as "sudden, drastic changes in genes" since the genes in the duplicated chromosome are, except for the inevitable copying errors, the same as the originals. While a species can arise suddenly in this way (usually in plants, I think), I was assuming the DNA nucleotide sequences in the genes themselves aren't much changed.
But however this is related to the topic, my main point to Peg was that gorillas, chimps and humans have to be in a common group at some level of our classification system, and that happens to be the Hominidae family, informally known as apes. --Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9201 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2
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The only reference to this quote from World Book is on Creationist sites.
It seems there is a cut and paste out there, that has hit a few forums, that mentions this line from World Book. I cannot find the original doc. This is the attribution.*World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, p. 335 (1982 edition). Anyone have that edition to confirm and to get the context? Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
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