What would a transitional fossil look like?

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The concept of Kind does not assume speciation and I can't even grasp where you would get such an idea.

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Of course it does. The whole point of proposing Kinds is to say that groups of modern species are descended from a single species which was on Noah’s Ark. That is how they reduce the number of species that had to be there. The term was only invented because YECs needed a name for groups of evolutionarily related species.

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All variation occurs within the Kind, even when a particular variation turns out to be unable to breed with the parent population, that's a complete rejection of the idea of speciation.

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Sounds much more like acceptance to me. Where is the rejection ?

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Speciation is a bogus definition evos believe in, not creationists.

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But you refuse to really reject it.

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resulting in two reproductively isolated populations of crows, which is not speciation

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When they are morphologically distinct (they already are) and when interbreeding where they overlap becomes virtually non-existent (it’s rare now, and the hybrids have little breeding success) I’d say a definite yes.

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Or would you call a population of human beings isolated on an island for a couple hundred years speciation? I thought not.

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Note the obvious strawman.I will note that morphological differences are not required (cryptic species) and sometimes reproductive isolation is only due to geographical distance. But I am not aware of any case where isolation through geographic distance or barriers is considered adequate in itself.

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But they don't. The differences are much greater than those between cats and dogs: I described the differences that define their respective genomes. The chimp's extra long muscular arms, muscular torso and short legs with hand-like feet, plus skull shape etc etc etc, amount to greater differences in body structure than those between cats and dogs.

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Don’t forget that there are multiple species between humans and their common ancestor with the chimps. And is the difference between the arms of a chimpanzee and a human really that much greater than the difference between a dachshund’s legs and thoseof a cheetah ?

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It's just that there's a lot less time in the fossil record between the very different body structures of the reptiles and the mammals than between the very similar trilobite groups. A LOT less. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of years less.

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Really ? Aside from the usual refusal to admit the variety of trilobites they were only around for 300 million years while it took about 150 million years to get from the first synapsids to the first eutherian mammals.

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However I've also mused that to get the mammalian ear from the reptilian ear is impossible anyway.

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The evidence shows that it is possible. We have the intermediates.

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You are not reading the right statement. But that one is true too. The structure remains as described, it's the superficial parts that vary, and if the ToE were true the structure would change too.

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Your original claim was that the “basic body plan” was unchanged. That allows for a lot more variation than you are admitting here.Indeed, all tetrapods have the same basic body plan so you should understand why we find that a very unimpressive piece of evidence for your ideas.Now do you have anything better than vague and dubious assertions ? Some actual serious analysis of trilobite differences for instance ? You know the sort of thing you should have provided when you started making that argument ?

And just a little quote from Wikipedia on trilobite evolution. I’ll grant that a lot of that uses complex terms but “new types of eyes” seems simple and significant enough.Edited by PaulK, : Added link

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All those phenomena are what I'm calling "superficial, that is they are not structural.

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Please explain your difference between “superficial” and “structural” and how you can make this determination. Start with new kinds of eyes.

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I'm talking about body build, skeleton, not organs.

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So you just happened to arbitrarily exclude the lead example without mentioning it. And implicitly admit that you have no answer to it.And you don’t seem able to explain your criteria either.What a surprise.

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Problem is YOU don't seem able to follow a simple argument.

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That is hardly likely to make you forget to mention that you are excluding organs. Especially when explaining why new types of eyes should not be considered a significant change.Nor is it a good reason for you to avoid explaining the distinction you made.The REAL problem of course is that you are bluffing because you don’t know what you are talking about. But you’re too dishonest to admit that.

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Sometimes. Do try to get the general drift. ALL the dog breeds are illustrated with heads high. MOST cat skeletons are illustrated with heads down in a walking gait. Dogs do NOT stalk the way cats do.

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But is it an anatomical difference and if it is, is it big enough to count as structural? - when you exclude quite big differences in trilobite forms. That really isn’t settled by looking at the usual pose for skeletons.After all, cats are usually ambush hunters so stalking would be common behaviour. But behavioural differences aren’t structural.

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Not by MY logic, by YOUR twisted logic

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If “the same basic body plan” is the criterion as you said, then it is your logic. If it isn’t then you need to provide far more explanation and support.

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You simply refuse to get the whole picture.

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If you are using a consistent standard for trilobites and tetrapods you haven’t made it at all clear. Nor have you provided the level of analysis necessary to justify your claims. And on the face of it it looks like you are bluffing at best - you have no real standard at all. The arbitrary - and suddenly introduced - exclusion of organs being a rather obvious piece of evidence for that conclusion - but not the only evidence.

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All you and everybody else is doing is refusing to consider a different way of putting the facts together out of sheer prejudice in favor of the ToE.

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In reality there is a distinct shortage of facts in your argument, your criteria are unclear and seem to have more to do with your bias than anything else. If that is not the case it is up to you to clear it up by providing the necessary details. Yet you refuse to do that.

Behaviour is hardly classifiable as “skeleton, basic build, basic structure”. And this certainly looks like behaviour - and dog’s tail-wagging is certainly behaviour.So why include behaviour and not organs ? It makes no sense.

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I already counted dogs' tailwagging among other things. You really do need to pay attention

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You listed it as one of the fundamental characteristics identifying dogs. But you gave no indication that you consider it “superficial”.But this is just part of the extreme lack of clarity in your argument. Which isn’t much of an argument at all. If you have a proper argument then make it instead of attacking everyone who fails to be convinced by something you have yet to properly present - and doesn’t look to have any real merit.

To be fair we don’t have trilobite genomes.To make her argument Faith needs clear, justifiable and consistent criteria and to show the application of them to tetrapods and to trilobites.Her criteria are not clear, seem to be made up as she goes along and don’t seem to be applied consistently at all. And we have no real examples of actual application - nothing that gets into the anatomical details. But apparently she’d rather attack anyone that doesn’t agree with her argument rather than make a real case. As usual.

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Yeah this is a fairly new angle for me on this subject.

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I think you’ve been wrong about trilobites for quite a while.

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I'm still big on the argument that you have to run out of genetic variability with strong selection that produces dramatic new gene frequencies in a reproductively isolated population,

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Oh look, you are misrepresenting your own argument to try to make it look reasonable. I guess that if you had really strong selection on every variable locus that might even happen. But if that ever happens it’s rare and it certainly doesn’t go on all the time for every species - you would have to be insane to believe that. So your real argument is still dead in the water.

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...and recognizing that the basic structure doesn't change (HOX genes) while many other changes occur from generation to generation and all the more so under selection pressure and the formation of reproductively isolated populations, similarly points to a built in limit to evolution.

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That’s rarely changes, not never changes. And there is plenty of evolution within that limit that you don’t accept.

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Once you've got fixed loci for the main characteristics you just don't have enough variability for the population to keep on changing.

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Even if that ever happened (and you haven’t shown that it has) new variations could come along. Or maybe environmental changes make other genes important.

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You can talk about it from the point of view of the genome or from the point of view of the phenotype. The evo bias is hard to overcome of course.

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Oh look we’re so biased that repeating debunked arguments again and again - accompanied by personal attacks - doesn’t work. That doesn’t exactly sound like bias to me.

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You know, the evo bias that says microevolution just continues and continues until you have a completely new species. Now that IS hilarious.

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Except that it is consistent with the actual evidence which is more than your arguments usually manage.For real humour your posts are the best. There’s plenty of raving lunacy. Even in this thread we have your craziness over Kinds and speciation - how can you possibly endorse a concept that relies on speciation occurring and try to deny speciation. Oh you call it a semantic game but that only seems to mean telling a truth you don’t like.

That’s your usual reaction to the truth.But tell me how you can seriously expect us to take “sharper claws” as a major difference between cats and dogs while denying any similarly “impressive” difference between trilobite species ?How about the proboscis on this fellow ? Walliserops trifurcatisWhy doesn’t that count if “sharper claws” does ?