The Great Creationist Fossil Failure

Many species radiated out from a specific location, yet appeared fully formed without any sign of an evolutionary sequence since a LUCA. Trilobites are one example:http://publish-www-ufl.wcm.osg.ufl.edu/...o-animal-life.html
"Trilobites, the primitive shelled creatures considered by many to be among the first animals to appear in the fossil record, may have originated in a place known today largely for its barren lifelessness: Siberia."Page not found - Plant Index
Stebbins (1974, 1984) thought that alpine biomes of northern latitudes might have been the center of early radiation of angiosperms. A similar idea, the eastern Asian centers hypothesis, was put forth by G. Sun et al. (2001). Based on the recovery and study of fossil pollen casings (palynomorphs) recovered from deep-sea drill holes, Hochuli and Feist-Burkhardt (2004) suggested that early flowering plants might have evolved in a boreal cradle.Many of these fossils were extraordinarily well-preserved, and they were mysterious. They included strange forms like Anomalocaris, Opabinia, Wiwaxia, and Hallucigenia. These fossils revealed a mystery: like other Cambrian fauna, these strange soft-bodied fossils appeared in the fossil record abruptly, without evolutionary precursors.Cambrian Fossils Still a Dilemma for Darwinism 100 Years After Discovery of Burgess Shale | Evolution News
"Darwin himself was aware of this problem in his own day, writing that the lack of fossil evidence for the evolution of Cambrian trilobites "must at present remain inexplicable; and may be truely urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." Nearly 150 years after Darwin penned those words, biology textbooks are still observing things like, "Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear, 'fully formed,' in the Cambrian." Indeed, the striking appearance of animals in the Cambrian explosion is captured in a recent article in Nature article commemorating the 100th anniversary of Wolcott's discovery, stating that "virtually all animal groups alive today were present in Cambrian seas."Most animal phyla appear fully formed. Many of these do not appear suddenly all over earth, but radiate out from an early location.

The bible describes this flood during historic times, about 4,350 years ago not some 250+ million years ago.All your musings and mutterings and what-ifs are worthless because you fail to address this one issue.And indeed, the evidence is so overwhelming that there were no humans or any of their recent ancestors around 250+ million years ago that your efforts to compress all that time into a few thousand years are laughable.

Perhaps the lesson you should learn from this is that you do not have sufficient knowledge or understanding of biology to get away with making stuff up. You understand that this is one of the central predictions of the ToE, right? No, because that's not what we find. Fossil decapods pre-date the emergence of modern crayfish. This is a blatant excuse. This is one of the most glaring errors in your style of argument; you have no evidence to present, so you make excuses for why you can't provide it. You have no pre-flood humans, so you make an excuse, hiding them away in locations that you (wrongly) imagine to be inaccessible. You have no pre-flood whales, so you conjure up dome "inland sea" where they might hide. You have no Cambrian lobsters, so you grope for excuses about sulphur and CO². All of this to avoid the fact that you have no positive evidence for your position. Ad hoc excuses are a poor substitute for evidence. Because the ToE matches the evidence of the fossil record (as well as in numerous other lines of evidence). The ToE makes clear predictions and these have been vindicated by all subsequent evidence. Your theory is a shameless exercise in excuse-making, backed up by zero evidence. Remember, implausible excuses for why you don't have any fossils to back up your position are not equivalent to hard, positive evidence. Pointing to a cave system with a handful of unusual species is by no means comparable to your suggestion that most of the life forms on Earth spent hundreds of millions of years co-existing in a conveniently hidden lost world.If you could point to a single such location or a single suitably anachronistic fossil, you would have some evidence. Instead you have nothing but half-baked speculation and excuse-making. Really? To me, that looks like quite a few. More than zero at any rate.Mutate and Survive

What kept birds from flying from one highland to another?How were oxygen levels toxic to flowering plants and grasses which didn't show up in the fossil record until much later? How are dolphins susceptible to flooding?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Mindspawn has to be a POE. Nobody, even a creationist, could really be so stupid as to put forward the utterly ridiculous bullshit (s)he has posted so far.Edited by jar, : learn to tipe dubmy.

But let me quote you this again. "The Cambrian of the Siberian Craton is famous for the variety and preservation of its fossils". But none of them are mammals. Well, we do find that where corals can live, lobsters can live. So, let me get this straight, some dinosaurs were descended from sea-crocodiles, others from birds. By convergent evolution. And yet there is no sign of either crocodiles or birds in the Pre-Triassic, and no sign of the family Crocodylidae until after the extinction of all the dinosaurs, and no sign of birds until after the evolution of such major groups of dinosaurs as ankylosaurids and stegosaurids, and no sign of modern birds such as ravens and doves (supposedly on the ark) until after the evolution and extinction of all the dinosaurs.Do you see why we think you have a problem? There is no scientific debate as to whether there was a global flood. That is settled. You are ignoring this.

Well, it's not like we're completely without candidates for the ancestors of trilobites.Origins of TrilobitesBut you, mindspawn, are completely without candidates for pre-Triassic mammals, birds, crocodiles, lobsters, flowering plants, teleost fish, scleratinian corals ... do we have to go through this again? I think I'll just repeat what I said in post #765.---Don't you think there's a bit of a double standard here? Look, in the world according to mindspawn:(1) The Earth a mere 5000 years ago was inhabited by great big organisms with hard parts: elephants, rhinos, whales, ichthyosaurs, etc.
(2) And yet not one, none, zero of these has been discovered in fossil form in the present day.
(3) But this is not a big problem for your "theory", tralalala, no big deal.And yet when we come and tell you that we've only found a few dozen or hundred species (WHICH IS STILL MORE THAN ZERO, MINDSPAWN) of the small, soft-bodied creatures from 540,000,000 years ago, you act like it's a major problem.Could you not try to apply a single standard for your expectation of the preservation and discovery of fossils?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Your hypothesis was that modern mammals - and many other species - existed from the Precambrian in limited areas.I think that we can safely say that your "evidence" falls far short of providing any real support for such a claim.And I would go further and suggest that all of it is better explained by evolution.The reasoning is simple. If evolution is true every group must originate in a limited area (which need not be the case if Creationism is true). So the distinction between evolution and your "theory of rare locations" comes down to where and when the diversity appears. "Rare locations" postulates that the diversity mostly appeared all at once, out of sight, while evolution - at least when dealing with higher taxonomic ranks - is happy with early divisions happening in one single location but much of the diversification would occur much later. And I suggest that both your examples fit the evolutionary pattern better.

Alfred Russel Wallace, the "other Darwin" in the process of deducing his theory of evolution first published his "The Law of Sarawak in (wait for it) ... 1855:

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Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.

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Every species linked by time and location to a pre-existing closely allied species. Over and over and over again:

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9. As generally in geography no species or genus occurs in two very distant localities without being also found in intermediate places, so in geology the life of a species or genus has not been interrupted. In other words, no group or species has come into existence twice.

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Linked only by time and location to pre-existing closely allied species.For more on this see Alfred Russel Wallace and Biogeography.Enjoy

Isolated populations are part of the theory of evolution. I don't know what you are talking about here, other than the obvious fact that you are not well-versed in evolutionary theory. Again, an understanding within the evolutionary community. Just how many do you need? Are you saying that we should just ignore the transitionals that we do have?

So, you expect to have a complete lineage in every case. Do you have any idea how fossils are preserved and then discovered? Once again, I ask: what 'pre-boundary' creature did the giraffe adapt from?And you are one to talk about missing evidence. You say that it is all buried under the Siberian traps. Double standard much? Except that you do not have an original kind. You complain about our LUCA and yet you have nothing in its place.

Literally impossible. The theory of POE is that a deliberate satire is indistinguishable from actual Creationism because of the latter's complete idiocy. It is possible that he is a Poe, but he's going to have to tell us!

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Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

How many times must I say that the missing pre-boundary fossils are in Siberia. Of all the pre-boundary locations on earth, climate and oxygen levels and elevation and signs of angiosperms point to a northern biome more suitable to the common modern life-forms. This is where earlier marine organisms like the trilobite radiated out from, and when oxygen levels dropped this is where later terrestrial organisms would have also radiated out from.This area is remote and largely covered by flood basalts and so has been neglected re fossils. Which aside from our debate is sad due to its unique far northern location which would indicate a different climate and therefore different terrestrial organisms to that found commonly in the pre-boundary terrestrial world. Even from an evolutionary perspective one would expect a strong interest and expectation for new species to be discovered in the fossil record in a terrestrial region known to be of unique northern latitudes during the pre-boundary world. I await the research to come, it shall be fascinating to watch.

That was a fair and well written statement. Yes I acknowledge that the radiation out from rare locations would also fit evolution, the unique advantage of some alleged mutation occurring at a specific location and radiating out from there. It is the sudden appearance of these organisms that points to creationism rather than evolution, not the unique locations themselves. My problem with evolutionary theory is that other than the "clades" one would expect from creationism, there are not enough intermediates to be sure of the theory. Sure fossilisation is a rare occurrence, but even so we get numerous fossils of one species that just "appear" in the fossil record, and nothing to show where they came from. Even if I excuse the lack of fossils by postulating a unique burgeoning population of the new species in a unique location non-conducive to fossilisation, even so the lack is astounding. Across EVERY species through EVERY geologic period we are missing fossils other than some adaptation into clades that one would expect from creationism.Those on this site can mock as you will. Deride. Insult. Yet the facts are there for all to see. It would take a unique non-conformist mind-set that searches for truth rather than respect from peers to acknowledge the truth of what I say. I am reasonably sure none such exist on this site, maybe one of the visitors will see the truth of what I say.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

Dolphins breathe oxygen. They would have battled at sea level and were most likely confined to pre-boundary lakes at higher altitude where the oxygen was not toxic. After the flood they would have battled to survive in sea level oceans outside the ark until oxygen levels later dropped.Sure birds could fly to other highlands, but what are the chances of fossilisation if one did not make the crossing? Very small. Its unlikely we will ever find those one or two that did not make it. Other pre-boundary highlands? The Appalachian heights were completely eroded away since and so its difficult to find fossils that clearly originate from those highland sediments. Highlands were not as common in the pre-boundary world.