Transitional Fossils Show Evolution in Process

But, is it possible that only ONE thing can undo an entire theory? I mean, is there an instance where there is ONE finding that destroys a whole theory? Or would it take multiple discoveries of something similarly destructive to undo it?If it could, how many hack jobbed fakes could be created to fool enough people long enough? Some people, I'm sure, WOULD go to such lengths to do so.Edited by hooah212002, : sp

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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl SaganFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

It's usually not left at one discovery. There is the first report of a finding, and then there is the mad rush to verify and expand on that finding.As it pertains to fossils, there is the signal to noise ratio. Finding a single rabbit fossil in the Cambrian will not rock the establishment being that thousands upon thousands of mammal fossils are found well after the Cambrian (including, I would assume, rabbit fossils). There is a strong signal and very, very little noise. I would hazard a guess that a single discovery of a Cambrian rabbit would be explained as a redeposition, that the fossil was moved after formation. Now a thousand Cambrian rabbits would be a different thing altogether.Think of it this way. As you move around in your day to day life you will come upon many clocks and watches. From experience you know that the vast, vast majority of these clocks and watches give the correct time to within a few minutes. Then one day you come upon a clock that is 3.5 hours different than every other clock. Do you a) declare that all time pieces don't work, b) this one clock is broken in a way that does not invalidate all clocks.

Oh, I completely agree that it should not. My concern is that there is an open possibility for ONE shard of evidence, be it fake or legitimate, that could rock the establishment, as you say.I think my main concern IS the sway creationists DO have and how a good portion of the unknowing public just gobbles it up (mainly because they use laymanese and scientists use technical jargon)We see these transitionals that WE see as sufficient in the light of the other evidence around them, but does joe blow churchgoer who is on the edge? he may not be a creo, but he doesnt quite buy evolution. There,as we have have seen time and time again, are plenty of false accusations, false reports and outright LIES "discovered" by the creationists that are gobbled up. I would hate to see them find one thing that actually DOES a disservice to science: legitimately and successfully.

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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl SaganFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

Boy some people are really seriuos about their convictions and so am I. Proof and or facts about the existence of GOD and or scientific theories and or ideas are as the words go in the eye of the beholder. Your experiances are not mine and my experiances are not yours yet I say let us have peace in our GOD given right to choose our own paths and we may become friends and or buddies at it were. I will say this scientific discoveries as to time, space and continuumes are as I am concerned all relavent to what I personally believe as a believer in GOD. It may not be written Biblially that this world is 4 billion years old or so yet it is written that this world was here before water, plants and animals were made by GOD and or natural selection. For my money intelligent organization ( GOD ) has had and will continue to have a sway in the order of things whether present or not present to the ones who believe and or do not believe.

Hi Sailorstide,I don't think anyone is much concerned about people's personal beliefs, even if they involve science. It's only when people advocate teaching Bible-based views as science that controversy erupts.So if one of your convictions is that transitional fossils comprise a scientific argument against evolution that should be taught to students in science class, then you're not just choosing our own path, you're trying to choose other people's paths, too.--Percy

All theories are tentative, based on the current evidence. A theory is not a conviction, a theory is the result of a tested hypothesis or hypotheses. It is accepted or rejected based on the evidence. Science does not deal in proofs. Any theory has to falsifiable, that is what the role of science is, searching for evidence.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since 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

Hi again sailorstide, Curiously, this has nothing to do with the existence of transitional fossils and whether or not they show evolution in process.Interestingly, there are people that are really serious about talking about the topic of this thread and the factual evidence of reality that exists, whether you believe the evidence or not.Fascinatingly, your opinion has no ability to affect reality in any way.As I noted in reply to your first post, Message 11, this topic is about transitional fossils:

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The intent is to discuss the evidence that shows intermediate forms in the fossil record. This is done in Message 3, where clear examples of transitional fossils are presented.

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The logical conclusions are (a) that transitional fossils exist, (b) they show the same kind of change in hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation as we see in life around us today, and (c) they show the same kind of division of parent populations into non-interbreeding daughter populations as we see in life around us today.

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They are intermediate.

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They validate evolution and speciation as being sufficient to explain the diversity seen in the course of their fossil record.

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Now if you want to discuss transitional fossils then by all means participate in this thread.However, if you are going to provide us with the depth of your theological\philosophical comments on any other topic then please start a new thread.Go to Proposed New Topics to post new topics. Please note that there are many people that are believers in GOD and that have no problem whatsoever reconciling their belief with science in general and evolution in particular. I'm one (see signature).Thus talking about GOD is irrelevant to discussing the reality of transitional fossils, the age of the earth and the geology of the fossil record.So are you going to talk about the topic or start a new thread?Enjoy.

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Weights, measurements and theories are suppose to lead us into true belief not the other way around. Micro-biological, multi-celled and evolutionary developement are only investigated by intelligent beings. It would be for naught in and through out all existance if that science did not consider the more than evidential psycological theories and beliefs that there can be a ruling God, Lord and or being who infact can place and or create plants and animals and even beings that look like him here and there through out the universe at his own discretion and will.

AND YOU ARE STILL OFF TOPICEdited by RAZD, : subtitle

Note the subtitle of your message: "On the Absence of Fossils." That doesn't mean references to fossils are supposed to be absent from your messages.Get on topic.--Percy

(Lots of good stuff removed for being off topic.)But none of this is on topic. The topic is fossils. And just as a note, in human evolution we have a pretty good line of fossils going back several million years (this line is supported by genetics as well). The only ones denying that sequence of fossils are doing so for religious reasons.Do you have anything to say about fossils?Edited by Coyote, : editEdited by Coyote, : remove great off-topic material

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Please start a new thread to discuss this.Sailorsides comments have nada to do with the evidence for transitions in the fossil record. Replying to him only makes the off topic ramble worse.

I was not the one who started the off topic discussion and if you check back on all the replies you will see that however lets go back to the topic of transitional fossils and continue this thread as it was once and see were it may lead. Is it not so that evidence suggests that all living things have a linking DNA and or RNA make up ? Is it not so that all fossils whether 1 million years ago as so indentified and or 100 million years ago as so indentified can have a linking DNA and or RNA link ?

Thanks for the reply sailorside, Sorry but the evidence is against you. Your first post was a reply to Briterican, Message 6, and Briterican was on topic, but your reply glanced at the topic and then drifted off into non-topic issues as you stated your personal belief\opinion, and replies to those non-topic issues you introduced went further off-topic, including all of your following replies.Thus if we follow the common descent of replies we find your post Message 7 at the node where they diverge from the topic.But this is relatively irrelevant if we can get back on track and discuss the evidence that transitional fossils show evolution is process. It is extraordinarily easy to diverge from topics when one uses words or phrases that start side discussions so I am not blaming you, just trying to get back on topic. Yes, that is the genetic evidence of common ancestry, evidence that links hereditary lineages in the same way that the morphological evidence in the fossil record links hereditary lineages. This is secondary evidence that the transitional fossils do indeed show evolution in process, as they confirm the pattern of common descent. Technically yes, however we don't currently have DNA of ancient fossils so this is difficult to confirm for fossils.What we do know is that DNA\RNA evidence shows a pattern of hereditary traits that can be used to develop a pattern of common descent that explains all the evidence. We also know that there is no known reason for this pattern to match and mimic the pattern determined from morphological evaluation of all the fossil evidence, unless common descent is the correct/proper/valid explanation: common descent would predict both patterns.However, genetic evidence is not relevant to the actual pattern of evolution seen in the fossil record - that evidence stands on it's own as a test of the theory of evolution and as noted in Message 11 (my first reply to you):

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The intent is to discuss the evidence that shows intermediate forms in the fossil record. This is done in Message 3, where clear examples of transitional fossils are presented.

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The logical conclusions are (a) that transitional fossils exist, (b) they show the same kind of change in hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation as we see in life around us today, and (c) they show the same kind of division of parent populations into non-interbreeding daughter populations as we see in life around us today.

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They are intermediate.

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They validate evolution and speciation as being sufficient to explain the diversity seen in the course of their fossil record.

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So we do see validation for common descent and evolution in the transitional fossils that exist in the fossil record.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : addEdited by RAZD, : link

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Ah, RAZD.You have saved me the trouble of establishing a new thread. I have been planning to discuss Foraminfera for some time.Versatile little critters. Here's a few that are around these days: Notice how they differ markedly in relation to their environment. That's because they are ecophynotypic. That should have sounded a warning bell for Tony Arnold and Bill Parker but it obviously didn't. However, fortunately there are more professional scientists around:

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The diversity and distribution of modern benthic foraminifera has been extensively studied in order to aid the paleoecological interpretation of their fossil record. Traditionally, foraminiferal species are identified based on morphological characters of their organic, agglutinated or calcareous tests. Recently, however, new molecular techniques based on analysis of DNA sequences have been introduced to study the genetic variation in foraminifera. Although the number of species for which DNA sequence data exist is still very limited, it appears that morphology-based studies largely underestimated foraminiferal diversity.(Pawlowski and Holzmann, 2007) Emphasis added.

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Morphology-based studies, RAZD. Like microphotographic studies. Like that of Tony Arnold and Bill Parker. They underestimated diversity. They got it wrong. They thought they were looking at different critters, when they were the same critters wearing different coats. Ecophenotypes, RAZD. Not evolutionary successors.You come up with one example of an unbroken evolutionary sequence. One. Out of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of species that exist and have existed. One.And it turns out to be wrong.Doesn't that tell you something, RAZD?Edited by Kaichos Man, : imageEdited by Admin, : Reduce image width.Edited by Kaichos Man, : wrong graph

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin