The Great Creationist Fossil Failure

To explain the intermediates, some are, and some are not.Organisms do rapidly adapt. Sometimes a genetically related clade can be proven through DNA, with evidence beyond evolutionary assumptions. Other times the genetic basis is flimsy yet a clade is assumed.Sometimes fossils of various species are merely laid out in a sequence and intermediates claimed, which is laughable logic to a creationist because truly it proves nothing. You can lay a cod next to a coelecanth next to a mudfish next to a frog and assume evolution. But when you lay a fish fossil from an old period next to a coelecanth from a younger period, next to mudfish from an even younger period, they evolved??? This can be highly amusing logic to intelligent creationists.

I'm happy with the evidence of the real scientists. The timeframes and evolutionary assumptions are off, but the evidence itself does not favor evolution over creation, even though it is real mainstream scientists discovering such evidence. Yes rapid adaptation does exist, and so you will have occasional minimal evolution in clades, but there are such huge gaps for most organisms especially around the Cambrian explosion that evolution is nothing more than an interesting idea.

Which are the intermediates showing the evolution of mammals, and what is the reason for your answer?And can you tell us why there is no evidence of mammals until some time after the Flood? So, imaginary things amuse imaginary people ...

Interesting admission. And then all the mammals that had been killed by molten lava would have gotten on board? I don't see how this is meant to help. I know that it was terrestrial some of the time. But it was also underwater some of the time. So, where were the mammals living at that time, and what's your excuse for not being able to find their fossils in those locations?You have not responded to my main point, which is that we can find fossils from pre-Triassic Siberia, whereas your excuse for not finding mammal fossils there was that we can't 'cos of the Siberian Traps. I think you miss my point. Your excuse for not finding lobsters was that almost all of the oceans was too chemically inhospitable for them. But if delicate organisms like corals could survive all over the oceans, then this cannot be the case. What are you suggesting, that they trod water for over a year until the flood waters subsided? Apparently it took them longer than it took many species of dinosaur to actually evolve from more basal reptiles. We are meant to believe that stegosaurids and ankylosaurids and so on managed to evolve and spread through the world sufficiently as to leave fossils before birds became so numerous as to leave a single fossil?And even the first birds to leave fossils were all primitive-looking weirdos like Archaeopteryx which look almost exactly like dinosaurs for reasons which you (but not I) must find deeply puzzling, and which are now all extinct for reasons that must baffle you. (Any ideas? Do tell.)So if we consider modern birds like (say) doves and ravens, which were allegedly on the Ark, we are expected to believe --- really, mindspawn? --- that every single species of dinosaur had time to evolve, spread widely enough to leave its fossils for us to find, and go extinct before these birds had time to leave any evidence of their existence whatsoever. Well, this must be a new usage of the phrase "strong resemblance" with which I was previously unacquainted. Have you ever looked at a triceratops or a stegosaurus?As to your "others" besides the archosaurs, I refer you to post #790. You didn't reply to it before, do you want to have a crack at it now? Science and mainstream geology tells you that there was no global flood at the PT boundary. You ignore this rather than absolutely respecting it. So, I'll ask again, if some other creationist was equally willing to ignore the fact that there was no global flood at the KT boundary either, why should he not do so? and what would you have to reproach him with if he did?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

How were seals, whales, and dolphins confined to the land of the Middle East? How were grasses and flowering plants confined to that region? How were migrating birds kept out of terrestrial Cambrian deposits?Was there some magic air barrier keeping geese from migrating all over the place and being fossilized across the globe?

Hi mindspawn,Let's take a look at your latest howlers; Where on Earth did you get that notion from?

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Trilobites occupied a huge set of habitats and paleolatitudes, from tropical shallows and reefs, to polar depths, and wide-ranging pelagic habitats in between. Their diversity of form suggests a complex ecology with many modes of life, including occupation of a variety of trophic (feeding) guilds. There has been a long history of speculation about the feeding habits of trilobites, ranging from predators, scavengers, filter-feeders, free-swimming planktivores, and even parasites or hosts of chemoautrophic symbionts. Using modern-day crustaceans as an analog, it is reasonable to suggest that the majority of trilobites may have been predator-scavengers, as the majority of marine crustaceans are today. Nonetheless, among today's crustaceans are filter-feeders (such as barnacles), planktivores (the majority of larval crustaceans fall into that category), herbivores (many small shrimp species), and parasites (a few copepods, isopods, and other taxa).

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Fortey and Owens (1999) conducted a review of trilobite feeding habits in which several patterns were highlighted

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Trilobite Feeding HabitsFortey, R.A., & R.M.Owens. 1999. Feeding habits in TrilobitesSeriously, where do you even get this stuff from? It's just bizarre.

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It was once thought that lobsters were scavengers, and ate primarily dead things. However, lobsters are really more opportunists, catching mainly fresh food which includes fish, crabs, clams, mussels, sea urchins. Lobsters are also cannibalistic and sometimes will eat other lobsters.

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Life of the American Lobster - Diet & Digestion, Lobster Institute, University of MaineGiven that you are almost always wrong about the individual details, do you really think that you stand a chance of being right about the big picture? Remember; Garbage In, Garbage Out. No, they bear a superficial resemblance. To you they may look alike, but that's because you, with the best will in the world, know absolutely nothing about archosaurs, reptiles or any other related group. I'm not trying to belittle you or upset you, but given some of the things you've said on this thread, it's plain that you know nothing about this topic. In Message 779 for instance, you describe dicynodonts as archosaurs (there were in fact therapsids) and dimetrodons as "pre-flood reptiles" (they were synapsids). Forgive me mindspawn, but when you get these details wrong, I have difficulty trusting your ability to make meaningful comparisons between these species.Archosaurs, lissamphibians, therapsids and dinosaurs look alike to you because you are not looking at them with a naturalist's eye. You are looking at them with the untrained eye of a layman. Now there's nothing wrong with that; you've never claimed to be anything other than an interested layman. But you are still left ill-equipped to make any kind of judgement on these issues. You lack the training to know what points of difference to look at. If you want to talk about these organisms you need to look at them more closely. You need to look at them in exacting detail, as a professional would look at them. And when you do that, the superficial similarities fall away.I would like to join Dr A in suggesting that you attempt an answer to post Message 790, which deals with these anatomical details. If you do, you will see that early tetrapods are not the free-for-all that you seem to imagine.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

Oh my, I missed the bit about arthropod diets ...

Not sure what you mean by 'gaps'. Are there no gaps in your recounting of the fossil record?Okay, so life diversified by 'adapting'.Can you tell us what Cambrian life form the giraffe adapted from?

Some things evolved, some things were poofed. Mindspawn has yet to give us a definitive ruling on which is which.

Ummmm, no ...That doesn't explain the intermediates. Isn't 'genetically related clade' kind of an oxymoron?How do you prove genetic relation if there is no DNA?So, do you think that a clade is based on no evidence? It's just made up? Well then, it's good that we don't do that. Once again, something that nobody does. Perhaps you can explain this amusement.Perhaps you can explain where you came up with these strawman arguments.

The air barrier was not magic, it was toxic. Birds and mammals are susceptible to oxygen toxicity. Pre-boundary oxygen levels were very high, at or above 30% until the end-Permian. Atmospheric pressure adds to this toxicity, effectively increasing oxygen by 1% for any .1 increase in pressure. Birds and mammals would have been more suitable to highlands where the air pressure was lower and oxygen content lower.Added to this is the competition from huge pre-boundary insects that were larger than many birds, and terrestrial mammals being susceptible to flooding. This would explain the numbers not reflecting in the fossils. Yes there are some gaps, but not as many as the theory of evolution which is missing intermediate fossils for nearly every species over every time-span.

I have answered the question about pre-boundary mammals many times, I referred earlier in this thread to a "boreal cradle". Organisms radiate out from a unique location when world conditions are suitable. We have cycles on the planet during which common organisms become rare, and rare organisms become common. There are always these unique locations which contain rare organisms. They recently found a cave in Bulgaria with a number of unique species. We have the Komodo Dragon, a rare huge terrestrial reptile, but in the past huge reptiles used to dominate terrestrial conditions. We have the bat, a mammal flying creature. given the right conditions its possible that mammals will dominate the air. Organisms that are rare can suddenly become proliferate. This does not indicate evolution, but indicates rare animals suddenly proliferating when conditions become suitable. If we do not find their fossils in earlier ages and do not find their intermediates either, why do we favor the theory of evolution over a radiation from a unique location?The Bulgarian cave:
BBC Earth | Homewhen I referred to gaps, I am referring to a sequence of fossils over time, showing the trilobite evolving from a
LUCA. Then every other organism on earth needs to have a sequence as well. Thus nearly all evidence of evolution does not exist, all you have is a few clades showing accurate signs of adaptation from a recent common ancestor. This is exactly what creationism would predict, clades recently adapting from the original kind.

I admit I didn't research the feeding habits of trilobites and other arthropods well. Possibly only some shrimp eat fish poo. Nevertheless my main point is that organisms radiate out from unknown locations when conditions suit them. There are many subtleties in conditions, temperature, feeding, co2, oxygen, predators. Some organisms need shells to survive, some do not. some can handle sulfuric conditions , others cannot. But what is obvious , is that an organism will proliferate when conditions are suitable.When we find a crayfish suddenly appearing in the fossil record, do we assume that they evolved and the intermediate fossils were too rare to be found. Or do we assume they were in a rare location, and the original fossils were too rare to be found?Please explain why the theory of evolution would have any advantage over the concept of rare locations. I say creationism has an advantage, because we do observe organisms in rare locations that would be difficult to discover thousands of years from now. Yet evolution has far too many missing intermediate fossils to be the preferred theory.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

The "theory of rare locations" is rather obviously an ad hoc excuse.It certainly doesn't explain any of the evidence that the theory of evolution does.It should be obvious that large and diverse groups can inhabit a wide range of conditions, so why should all of them be cooped up in a small area?Why have we found NONE of these "rare locations" ?You said earlier that "evidence is everything" Where is your evidence ?

1) No the rain would have started almost immediately with the volcanic activity. This is common to volcanoes. The combination of the rapidly rising hot air, and seeding air with ash particles creates perfect conditions for torrential downpours. The animals were already on the ark.2) Most of the terrestrial region was covered by the Siberian Traps. Other than the thick layer of rock, the region is very remote. I am sure that discoveries on the edge of the flood basalts are possible, not impossible.My main point regarding lobsters is that all organisms have a preferred environment. Many factors influence this, oxygen, sulfur, predators, protective exoskeletons, diet, air pressure, co2, temperature etc etc. I do not know enough about trilobites and modern crustaceans to be able to compare what conditions favor each grouping. Except to say that trilobites would still be common if widespread conditions continuously favored their fitness.Regarding reptiles surviving the flood, yes these were the equivalent of sea crocodiles. Able to swim indefinitely so they had no problem "treading water for a year". In addition many dinosaurs had signs of feathers, they could have been ark birds also adapted to huge sizes after the flood. So we have convergent evolution where under the new post boundary greenhouse effect, sea crocodiles and other reptiles and birds are arriving onto empty continents and rapidly adapting to fill those ecological niches and achieving a similar body shape. So I do not doubt there was an overlap between the two. This dinosaur to bird theory may soon change to a "bird to dinosaur" theory as scientists analyse the origin of the more bird-like dinosaurs that had no signs of pre-flood ancestry.Regarding a flood at the P-T boundary there are huge signs of flooding. A debate exists in scientific circles if there was a major marine transgression, or a major marine regression at the PT boundary. Maybe you are not in touch with that debate? There are signs of BOTH so you cannot claim no signs of flooding at the PT boundary. There were such signs and I already posted evidence of this on this site. Of course the bible solves the debate, describing a major flood, then a rapid regression. The transgression was first and for not very long in geologic terms. The regression afterwards, and the regression would have wiped out some signs of the transgression.