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Author | Topic: On Transitional Species (SUMMATION MESSAGES ONLY) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
There has been an awful lot of definition splitting going on -- so I hope I don't stir it all up again
The initial post talked about 'Transitional Species' and then asked if every organism could be considered'Transitional'. I think the answer is: 1. Not every organism can be considered an example of a 'Transitional Species'. 2. Every organism represents a transition from something into something else -- even if it's only a ,generation'. To be recognised as a 'Transitional Species' surely an organism would have to show traits of a pre-existing species AND of a post-existing or contempory species. Since one could, theoretically, have a species that represents a change from an older form to a contempory form then there might be some species living today which could be viewed as transitional. I'm evening starting to think that pre-existing or contempory would be closer to the mark -- all three species could coincide in time and yet be related in a 'transitional species' sense.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
That was kind-of the point ...
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
True.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
There was a comment/question (which can be found by tracing back in the message links):
"Do you have an example of an organism that doesn't fit this criteria? Every species has traits from a pre-existing species and the species after it will have traits from it too so...." Which somewhat elaborated the point that (I think) I was attempting to make -- i.e. that any species could, in some respect, be considered a transitional one.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I've been away for a while too ... but I'm not any kind of Creationist.
You say that the transitional nature of species is a matter of interpretation ... which is true ... as is the statement that they are NOT transitional features. It's whether our interpretations stand up to much scrutiny that counts. I would say that the notion that species flow from one to another over expanses of time is one whic DOES stand up to scrutiny ... which is probably why it's been around for so long.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Dead-ends/extinctions are not transitional ... so not every organism can be considered to be involved in transitional species.
However, all extant species could be considered transitional except that we don't know into what yet.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
A notion ain't evidence. This got pretty well covered by others.
in fact in order to discover species flowing into/out of each other over time is founded not on biology but presumptions that geology shows this time too have taken place. It's based, in part, on biological observations of time-ordered, preserved remains. The time-ordering part is (I suppose) geology if we are talking about fossils, the observations of structure etc. are biology.
there is not biological evidence for evolution. That's odd ... I could have sworn there was a few gigatonnes of biological evidence cited on THIS site. Maybe I'm just interpretting it differently.
This is a flaw in the thinking. Perhaps you could ellaborate and explain the flaw through (perhaps) commonly used examples of evidence for evolution ... just a thought.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I thought to be transitional was to be be 'between' in a chronological sense ... if that's not the case then I retract the 'extinction' comment that I made.
But, if transitional is NOT about the chronology of species then it's not really a useful concept in evolution -- is it?
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I see what you mean about 'extinctions' ... I would think there are huge numbers of extinct transitionals
I chose the word 'could' very carefully.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Someone else pointed that out ... I should have stopped at 'dead end'.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Robert Byers writes:
in fact in order to discover species flowing into/out of each other over time is founded not on biology but presumptions that geology shows this time too have taken place. It's based, in part, on biological observations of time-ordered, preserved remains. The time-ordering part is (I suppose) geology if we are talking about fossils, the observations of structure etc. are biology.
there is not biological evidence for evolution. This is a flaw in the thinking. Perhaps you could ellaborate and explain the flaw through (perhaps) commonly used examples of evidence for evolution ... just a thought. the flaw is that that a biological claim is based not on biology but geology.
The biological claim is made on biological remains, and, indeed, on living species. Darwin developed the core of his ideas from observations of living creatures rather than any analysis of fossil remnains. without the geology saying there has been great time the biology claim of evolution fails.
Evolution does not require there to be a long time invovled (necessarily) ... although there seems to have been. Equally to arbitraily dispute the whole field of Geology without at least a little evidence would be fool hardy. The observation of the casts of bodies is not demonstrating evolution .They could easily be seen as simply a diverse speciation. Like today in the amazon or with seals or cichlid fishes. 'Diverse Speciation'? Ah. So are you accepting 'speciation' but rejecting 'evolution' i.e. accepting that species change over time, but rejecting the idea that (say) some forms of reptilian could have (over many generations) become (say) some form of mammal? In studying the fossils there is very little biology going on.
Depends what attribute of the fossil you are studying. If you are studying the rock itself -- that's geology. If you are study the structures captured in the rock, and those structures are of biological origin, the you are studying biology. Biology is about living/or recently living tissue and delicate instruments to handle it.
I disagree. Biology is the study of living things, and it matters little how long they have been dead for. In what sense is a two-hour old carcass different from a 2 million year old one except for level of decay and how bad it smells? Pick axes and dynamite ain't biology.
I haven't seen many fossil hunters using pck axes and dynamite (well not recently anyway) -- too much paperwork nowadays
The extraction of the fossils is not anything to do with how/why they are studied.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Wounded King writes: That's some pretty confusing formatting you've got there. Thanks -- I try to be as obtuse as possible at every opportunity TTFN, WK
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