Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Living fossils expose evolution
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 30 of 416 (527017)
09-30-2009 2:44 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Calypsis4
09-29-2009 8:40 PM


Re: Next
Hi, Calypsis.
Welcome to EvC!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Gobiconodon is only known from a few fossilized teeth and a jaw fragment. The skeleton in your picture here (pasted below) is a reconstruction based on the assumption that it is similar to a modern opossum. That is, they made it look like an opossum because they thought it looked like an opossum.
I believe this counts as a creationist lie (note that the page even acknowledges that it is a reconstruction, but retained the argument anyway: that is horrible hishonest).
Edited by Bluejay, : Additions.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by Calypsis4, posted 09-29-2009 8:40 PM Calypsis4 has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(1)
Message 32 of 416 (527020)
09-30-2009 2:58 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Calypsis4
09-29-2009 9:42 PM


Re: Magnolias
Hi, Calypsis.
Don't even start with the insects, man: you have no idea what you're getting into.
Here are some features that are used to distinguish closely-related families of insects from one another:
  • 3 bristles on an exoskeletal plate instead of 2
  • a vein in the wing forks closer to the first notch in the wing than the second notch
  • the eyes of the male touch behind the antennae
  • the tiny knob underneath the hip joint is triangle-shaped instead of round
  • there are 3 pads on the foot, instead of 2 pads and a fat bristle
Incidentally, I count at least 8 differences in the venation of the forewing between the fossil and the first modern species. Would you like me to do a detailed analysis?

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Calypsis4, posted 09-29-2009 9:42 PM Calypsis4 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 41 by Calypsis4, posted 09-30-2009 9:39 AM Blue Jay has replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 33 of 416 (527024)
09-30-2009 3:09 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Calypsis4
09-29-2009 9:48 PM


Re: Magnolias
Hi, Calypsis.
Here are two modern water striders from two different genera:
Genus Limnoporus
Genus Gerris
They look very similar, don't they?
But, they are clearly different species, and cannot interbreed.
And, furthermore, there is no species on this planet in which the length of the legs varies by 200%, as the pictures you presented suggests.
This method of "look how similar these two things look" is extremely stupid.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Calypsis4, posted 09-29-2009 9:48 PM Calypsis4 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by Calypsis4, posted 09-30-2009 9:30 AM Blue Jay has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(1)
Message 214 of 416 (527326)
09-30-2009 8:56 PM
Reply to: Message 41 by Calypsis4
09-30-2009 9:39 AM


Re: Magnolias
Hi, Calypsis.
Calypsis4 writes:
Now tell the readers if [the scorpionflies] are of a different family organism... But the essential characteristics of 'kind'(family) are all intact. There isn't anything you can do about it.
Are you sure?
The fossil species is from the family Orthophlebiidae.
The modern species is from the family Panorpidae.
They are not from the same family.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 41 by Calypsis4, posted 09-30-2009 9:39 AM Calypsis4 has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 293 of 416 (527691)
10-02-2009 8:58 AM
Reply to: Message 292 by Arphy
10-02-2009 7:55 AM


Re: kinds
Off-topic: stuff hidden.
Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.
Edited by Bluejay, : off-topic
Edited by Bluejay, : nevermind
Edited by Bluejay, : I undid my hiding, apparently?

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 292 by Arphy, posted 10-02-2009 7:55 AM Arphy has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 296 by Calypsis4, posted 10-02-2009 10:27 AM Blue Jay has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(3)
Message 362 of 416 (527860)
10-02-2009 9:59 PM
Reply to: Message 360 by Archangel
10-02-2009 8:24 PM


Re: Living and dead fossils
Hi, Archangel.
Archangel writes:
the evos will squirm and waffle but the fact is they found the fossils, many of which they originally considered solid evidence of evolution until they found they still exist unchanged these millions of years later.
But that's just it: the bat, Onychonycteris is not like modern bats. There are many changes that have happened over these millions of years.
Did you see this:
...posted by Jacortina in Message 39 and reposted by LindaLou in Message 308?
See how the limb dimensions of Onychonycteris (the two red circular dots that are between the two circled clusters) are more similar to the limb dimensions of non-volant (i.e. non-flying) mammals than to bats?
Onychonycteris is not just another bat like the ones we have today: it is a bat of a kind that is no longer alive, and this kind is more like non-flying mammals than modern bats are.
I think this graph should be reposted repeatedly until Calypsis at least engages the point. So far, this is all Calypsis has said on the matter:
Calypsis4, msg # writes:
Question: Are they 'bats'?
Yes/no
If your answer is 'yes' then I rest my case.
The evolutionist viewpoint is that defining things into categories is only for convenience in research and communication, not as an accurate assessment of reality.
As soon as you understand that evolutionists accept that things cannot be defined in terms of distinct "kinds," you will understand why your question is a complete, vacuous strawman.
Onychonycteris is related to such animals as Pipistrellus pipistrellus (the common pipistrelle bat) and Dyacopterus brooksi (the Brooks' Dyak fruit bat). The exact nature of the relationship, and of its relationship to any other organisms, is not well understood.
That is the proper statement of the evolutionist viewpoint. As a creationist, you will insist that this means Onychonycteris is a member of the "bat" kind. But, as soon as you begin arguing that our calling it a "bat" somehow supports creationism, you are only arguing semantics.
What if all scientists in the world agreed to call Onychonycteris something other than "bat"? What would your argument be then? Wouldn't you say something along the lines of, "But it is a 'bat'! See? It has (list diagnostic characters here), so it can't be anything but a bat! And, it's nothing like any other 'kind' of animal because (list diagnostic characters here)."
Why don't you just start with this? Tell us, in detail, all the exact characteristic that makes Onychonycteris a relative of bats, and of nothing else? As Jacortina showed you, our side is doing our part to support our argument that Onychonycteris is related to not only bats, but to other mammals as well.
You're right that we still have a long way to go to make it completely certain, but you're still stuck on, "it looks a lot like a modern bat," so it's a little hypocritical of you to criticize the amount of work that we've accomplished.
Please, give me some strong support for creationism: I am a Christian myself, and you would certainly give me great peace of mind and help me restore my faith in my religion if you could prove to me that ToE is false. But, you're going to have to do better than, "it looks a lot like a modern bat."
Edited by Bluejay, : parenthetical statement about Onychonycteris graph.
Edited by Bluejay, : "cannot" is more accurate than "can"

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 360 by Archangel, posted 10-02-2009 8:24 PM Archangel has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 371 by Archangel, posted 10-03-2009 7:41 AM Blue Jay has replied
 Message 377 by Calypsis4, posted 10-04-2009 8:07 AM Blue Jay has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(5)
Message 365 of 416 (527870)
10-03-2009 12:39 AM
Reply to: Message 363 by Arphy
10-02-2009 10:21 PM


Re: Still No Argument
Hi, Arphy.
Arphy writes:
You guys seem to want to have it both ways. Evolution is change over time. So when presented with evidence that things don't change over time, you say that this is evidence for evolution. WHAT THE...????
You are mistaken: the evidence does not show that things are not changing over time. Every example so far brought to this thread supports the model of things changing over time: it's just that creationists don't want to acknowledge that they don't get to dictate which changes should occur under the evolutionary model (only evolution itself is afforded that luxury).
For example, Calypsis feels that Onychonycteris, which is not like modern bats, can be used to prove that change is not happening over time, even after a number of major differences between that bat and modern bats have been pointed out to him. Do you acknowledge that these changes have occurred?
Furthermore, nearly every species in the fossil record is only found in a very small range of time, rarely exceeding several million years.
So I ask you, how is it that you think the fossil record shows stasis, when it actually shows rapid turnover of species in a period of just a few million years? This is not stasis: this is change over time.
-----
Arphy writes:
So you think in the real world that an environment could exist unchanged over millions of years? Note i said in the real world.
It need not be the entire environment that exists without change over millions of years... it could be simply an environmental feature that persists across a long succession of environments.
For instance, the environment in Africa has turned over a lot in 150 million years. But, all the environments that have existed in Africa thoughout the ages have included rivers and coastal habitats, where all kinds of fish live and all kinds of animals come to drink. And, as long as animals come to riversides to drink, their will always be a niche available for crocodilians.
It isn't about evolution being able to explain both sides of a dichotomy... it's about creationists not understanding that this dichotomy does not touch on what ToE actually says. There is nothing in ToE that dictates that large-scale changes must occur, nor that they must occur the same for all species, so there is no contradiction when some things change less than others.
There are hundreds of reasons why one thing would change much less than something else:
  • slower reproductive rates allowing fewer opportunities for mutations in the same time period (e.g. elephants)
  • ability to weather short calamities via hardened cysts or hibernation/aestivation (e.g. seed plants and plasmodial slime molds)
  • continuity in the resource base selecting for continuity in adaptations to exploit the resource base (e.g. crocodilians)
  • a pre-exising ability to adapt behaviorally or exploit a wide resource base, such that morphological change is not necessary (e.g. rodents)
And, there are hundreds of reasons why one thing would change a lot:
  • intense competition for a single resource, favoring extreme specializations (e.g. wingless parasitic flies, "bee lice")
  • rapid reproduction rates, allowing many opportunities for mutations to occur (e.g, fruit flies)
  • unstable environments demanding rapid changes (e.g. mosquitos in vernal pools)
  • runaway sexual selection (e.g. diopsid flies)
ToE acknowledges and incorporates all of these possibilities within itself. Remember that ToE consists of many distinct mechanisms that are collectively referred to as "natural selection," so we shouldn't expect everything to show the same patterns of change and diversity.
-----
(To Admin: I realize that this doesn't focus entirely on the bat example, but it does address the broader concept of living fossils. If you think this is detracting from the focal topic of the thread, I can stop.)

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 363 by Arphy, posted 10-02-2009 10:21 PM Arphy has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 390 by Calypsis4, posted 10-04-2009 1:23 PM Blue Jay has replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(1)
Message 373 of 416 (527989)
10-03-2009 7:10 PM
Reply to: Message 371 by Archangel
10-03-2009 7:41 AM


Hi, Archangel.
Archangel writes:
Here's the problem Bluejay, only in the minds of evolutionists will this chart be considered evidence at all. I want to see the quality and completeness of the fossils used to come to these conclusions. Conclusions I submit are fallacious since you can't prove your fossil record is accurate, nor can you prove the ages of these fossils are accurate.
The accuracy of the fossil record has nothing to do with this graph.
Here is the graph again:
The chart compares the ratio of arm length to leg length ("intermembral index") to the ratio of arm length to arm width ("brachial index").
The organisms used in this chart are not fossils (a number of Eocene bats are included, though: black dots). Most of them are living animals for which these measurements are quite certainly accurate. They include living sloths, squirrels, bats, apes, tree shrews, carnivorans and a colugo (which spans the range of known limb proportions in mammals).
It is clear that Onychonycteris, which is known from a superb, complete fossil skeleton, has limb measurements more like non-volant (non-flying) mammals than it does like other bats.
There is no assumption here: there is only data on limb measurements.
-----
Archangel writes:
Bluejay writes:
The evolutionist viewpoint is that defining things into categories is only for convenience in research and communication, not as an accurate assessment of reality.
As soon as you understand that evolutionists accept that things cannot be defined in terms of distinct "kinds," you will understand why your question is a complete, vacuous strawman.
Great, thanks for agreeing with me that you can't really prove anything you claim, yet you promote it as assumed facts anyway.
Please don't put words in my mouth, Archangel. What you claim that I said bears absolutely no relationship to what I actually did say.
I said that "species" and "kinds" categories are used as means to facilitate communication and understanding among scientists, and not as a device for explaining perfect evolutionary relationships.
I also did not claim that anything was either "assumed" or a "fact": I would not promote it as a fact (which was the point of what I write), and it is only libel on your part to call it an assumption.
I'm sorry if my wording somehow misled you, but as it stands, it seems to me that what you read is not what I actually wrote. How can I debate with you if you don't read my arguments for what they are?

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 371 by Archangel, posted 10-03-2009 7:41 AM Archangel has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 375 by Dr Jack, posted 10-04-2009 3:20 AM Blue Jay has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 398 of 416 (528114)
10-04-2009 2:26 PM
Reply to: Message 390 by Calypsis4
10-04-2009 1:23 PM


Bat Evolution
Hi, Calypsis.
Calypsis4 writes:
You can't show us ANY change from one organism into another.
I know of a fair number of changes that happened between my parents and myself, and a fair number that occurred between the winged and wingless fruit fly colonies in my lab, and between brussel sprouts and broccoli (which are the same species of plant), so your statement is obviously far too broad.
These patterns of trait distribution between generations mesh seemlessly with larger patterns of trait distribution between species and higher groups of organisms, leading me to suspect that they are caused by the same phenomenon.
That, good sir, is why you need to clarify it more.
As evolutionary biologists, we dedicate our entire careers to clarifying our position and gathering more evidence to support it. Why is it too much to ask of you to do the same?
-----
Calypsis4 writes:
The truth is you don't know what the fossil bat evolved from and you have no clue if bats branched off into another different organism.
I didn't claim otherwise.
Though, I will now claim otherwise by saying that I'm reasonably confident that bats did not branch off into another different organism.
But, you can't base your argument on what I don't know: you have to base it on what you do know.
-----
Calypsis4 writes:
All you are talking about are identified by everyone as bats.
And I just got done telling Archangel why I think this is a meaningless observation. You obviously missed it, so I'll attach it here:
Bluejay writes:
Onychonycteris is related to such animals as Pipistrellus pipistrellus (the common pipistrelle bat) and Dyacopterus brooksi (the Brooks' Dyak fruit bat). The exact nature of the relationship, and of its relationship to any other organisms, is not well understood.
That is the proper statement of the evolutionist viewpoint. As a creationist, you will insist that this means Onychonycteris is a member of the "bat" kind. But, as soon as you begin arguing that our calling it a "bat" somehow supports creationism, you are only arguing semantics.
What if all scientists in the world agreed to call Onychonycteris something other than "bat"? What would your argument be then?
Source: Message 362
And, from the message you responded to:
Bluejay writes:
I said that "species" and "kinds" categories are used as means to facilitate communication and understanding among scientists, and not as a device for explaining perfect evolutionary relationships.
Source: Message 373
Will you please now explain to me (and to everyone else) why you think everybody identifying Onychonycteris as a "bat" is a meaningful observation, rather than assert, once again, that it is so.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 390 by Calypsis4, posted 10-04-2009 1:23 PM Calypsis4 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 399 by Calypsis4, posted 10-04-2009 3:04 PM Blue Jay has not replied

Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(3)
Message 408 of 416 (528154)
10-04-2009 8:27 PM


Kinds
I share the frustration of most others on this thread in trying to explain the point to Calypsis4. Let me add a simple summation here.
Calypsis claimed that I can't produce evidence of any change from organism to organism. I told him that I have seen many changes along genealogical lines, and showed him that greater changes between larger groups of organisms fit a hereditary, genealogical explanation.
Here was the response:
Calypsis4 writes:
Hmm. Were you humans during that change? Are you still human?
This has been the level of his and Archangel's contribution on this and other threads since their separate arrivals. Even if I could argue that I am somehow a different type of organism from my parents, he could still make his argument by simply sliding his criteria back a notch.
But, there is a disconcerting level of subjectivity involved, as well. It seems, the more distantly related an organism is to humans, the broader the kinds get. We have heard, on this one thread, arguments that humans (an individual species) are a distinct kind, that equids (a Linnaean family) are a distinct kind, that dragonflies (a Linnaean order) are a distinct kind, and that birds (a Linnaean class) are a distinct kind. I think there was even a Linnaean genus in there somewhere.
It seems that any artificial grouping of organisms can be a kind, no matter the diversity within the group. Calypsis has no problem referring to a bat kind, a scorpionfly kind or a clubtail dragonfly kind, even though these groups comprise hundreds of distinct species that a semi-professional taxonomist or entomologist can recognize! It's nothing more than shear ignorance that makes a creationist say two bats or two dragonflies are identical when anyone who's had a general entomology course in college can see that they are not.
One can draw distinctions at whatever level one wants, based on whatever features or reasoning one cares to use. And, Calypsis has shown us that one can draw distinctions at literally every possible level simultaneously for pretty much no reason at all. What does this mean? It means that creationists accept evolution between species of equids, families of bats and orders of birds, doesn’t it?
So, why do some kinds allow greater amounts of evolution than others?

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024