How paleontology really works

In a thread on the flood a while back we briefly discussed my recent readings on paleontology but we didn't get very far (in fact some posters said they would answer it after I answered some of their questions which I think I attempted to?). I am hoping that this thread might even attract some professional paleontologists (and anyone else interested of course).From reading a series of reseach level 1990s monographs on invertebrate and vertebrate evolution (Benton, Chaline, Enay for example) I was able to get a good impression of how paleontology really works. The short answer is that fossils of most Linnean families are distributed vertically through quite large segements of the fossil record and that it is anatomical similarity, not the fossil order, that is used to piece the trees together. In addition to there being very few transitional links between families the ordering in the record is simply made consistent with the trees of life via dotted lines (that frequently end up non-dotted even in university text books).The usual sort of diagrams I've come across in good paleontology texts include 'balloon' diagrams showing the occurrance of fossils in time/strata vertically and in abundance horizontally. Picture it as a whole bunch of funny shaped elongated balloons at different heights. I'm not talking about the idealized diagrams we've all seen. I'm talking about dozens of detailed diagrams showing the actual quantitative distribution of each Linnean family throughout the geological column. Creationists interpret this ecologically, biogeographically, via flood escape/survival issues and via hydrodynamic sorting during phases of the flood. Evolutionists of course interpret it as evoltuion through time.The fascinating thing for me was that in reading these research level paleontological monographs I got to see, almost first hand, how one goes from these raw data fossil distribution distribution diagrams to the sensible, but not necessarily evoltuionary, diagrams in university textbooks with links drawn in:1. You take quantitative geometrical anatomical measures from all of the fossil skeltons. So you get lots of numbers.
2. You feed these into a simple computer program which generates cladograms (tree similarity diagrams) based on these numbers.
3. You get the raw fossil distribtuion data (ie vertically through the column).
4. You rearrange the order of the species horizontally according to the cladogram.
5. You draw dotted lines on the fossil distribution diagram that correspond with those from the computer cladogram (tree).
6. In most popular and many university textbooks the dotted lines are often merged with the 'balloons' and it becomes a continuous flow.My key points about this are:
(i) That there are almost always no transitional forms, or even occurances of the organism, along the dotted line.
(ii) The fossil record itself did not suggest what was related to what - the length of the dotted lines is near random.It was the cladograms derived from anatomical similarity that achieved the ordering. On many occasions the dotted lines suggested by the cladogrmas have to dot through 100s of millions of years of geological time even though there are no known transitonal forms or examples of that species across this time.We must remeber that evoltuion is most deficient in explaining the thousands of family level transitions. Almost every family to family gap is completely empty and there are only a handful of famous, very tired looking, examples of transitions. This is what we, and the recently departed Gould, mean when we talk about a 'systematic' lack of transitiaonals.The quote by the evoltuionist Ridley below also demonstartes that paleontogy works this way. The fossil record doesn't itself allow the trees of life to be drawn, rather it is from the hierarchical taxonomic similarities and biogeography achieved indpendently of the fossil record:

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"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.This does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven. So just what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the "fossil evidence", that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy."

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Mark Ridley, Who Doubts Evolution?, New Scientist, 25 June 1981, p.831

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I believe he was able to say this becasue he knows that the way the fossil record is used is as descibed in my points 1-6 above. Can anybody disagree with my points 1-6?Ridley's 'observed evidence of evolution' is IMO extremely poor - they are all within family variations: finches, moths and viruses. We have no problem with these.This means that evoltuion is primarily based on homology and biogeography, not on ordered sequences in the fossil record as I always suspected. Creationists interpret homology as the signature of a common designer, not common descent.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-18-2002]

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Ridley's 'observed evidence of evolution' is IMO extremely poor - they are all within family variations: finches, moths and viruses. We have no problem with these.

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What is the barrier to evolution which, given enough time, would prevent enough small "within family" changes to take place for changes beyond family?What stops evolution from occurring, IOW?------------------
"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply
close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands
of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow-
minded."-Steve Allen, from "Dumbth"

I had, as it were, been almost unable to see the ‘forest’ through Mark's metastatic phylogenetic trees and other microbiological ‘phylogenetic pollutions’ of the Linnean taxa. I’ve always recognized these fallacies from a physiological and biomechanical perspective. It’s refreshing for a geologist to spell out the cladistic transitional fallacies afresh.
I’ll probably cite references to your thread, as my own geological arguments are a joke.

Scraf, evolution of new protein folds is a prohibitative barrier to macroevoltuion. Whenever we see the optimization of a trait, even after millions of generations of bacteria, it is invariably due to mutations in pre-existing genes.

Philip,I'm gald you found my explanation easy to understand becasue I tried hard to make it understandable after I too had always wondered how it really works. But I of course am not a geologist, I'm a structrual biologist and ex-physicist! I've just read about a dozen paleontology and geology books. However, I can assure you that my description is an accurate representation of how modern paleontology works.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Scraf, evolution of new protein folds is a prohibitative barrier to macroevoltuion. Whenever we see the optimization of a trait, even after millions of generations of bacteria, it is invariably due to mutations in pre-existing genes.

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Scientific paper that concludes this please.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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Originally posted by Philip:
I had, as it were, been almost unable to see the ‘forest’ through Mark's metastatic phylogenetic trees and other microbiological ‘phylogenetic pollutions’ of the Linnean taxa. I’ve always recognized these fallacies from a physiological and biomechanical perspective. It’s refreshing for a geologist to spell out the cladistic transitional fallacies afresh.
I’ll probably cite references to your thread, as my own geological arguments are a joke.

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http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=page&f=5&t=33&p=6 mess 80[If you put "#80" on the end of the URL, clicking on the link will bring you directly to the message. --Admin]Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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[This message has been edited by Admin, 06-19-2002]

Okay TB. I have a bit more understanding here than I do in geology, so perhaps we can kick off a discussion. Let's start with this:1. Common Descent and Special Creation both make testable predictions.1a. Special Creation predicts the spontaneous emergence of all taxonomic groups in the fossil record.1b. Common Descent predicts the progressive emergence of gradually more derived groups in the fossil record.2. Since these two sets of predictions are basically diametrically opposite, it should be fairly easy to examine the evidence from the fossil record and determine which is falsified or verified.If you agree with this synthesis as a basis for discussion, we can proceed. If not, then please provide your basis for comparison - and I'll respond as appropriate.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
In a thread on the flood a while back we briefly discussed my recent readings on paleontology but we didn't get very far (in fact some posters said they would answer it after I answered some of their questions which I think I attempted to?). I am hoping that this thread might even attract some professional paleontologists (and anyone else interested of course).

​

From reading a series of reseach level 1990s monographs on invertebrate and vertebrate evolution (Benton, Chaline, Enay for example) I was able to get a good impression of how paleontology really works. The short answer is that fossils of most Linnean families are distributed vertically through quite large segements of the fossil record and that it is anatomical similarity, not the fossil order, that is used to piece the trees together.

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If I’m understanding you correctly, paleontology is bunk because anatomical changes do not correlate with time? Firstly cladograms do not show anagenesis, but cladogenesis, therefore absolute lineages will NEVER be shown because the cladogenetic organism itself isn’t represented in the fossil record. Groups of organisms are inferred to be related by these cladograms, & successive traits of these clades DO change with time.For example: (Impossible to show the cladogram properly in this format. Groups are separate & labelled, showing their appearances & groupings based on morphology, note how this DOES correlates with time. In the actual cladogram (Origin & Evolution of Tetrapods- Gaining Ground. J.Clack 2002. pp272) all examples are linked in a tree.Devonian------Early Carboniferous----Late Carboniferous---Permian(Osteolepiforms- but NOT tetrapoda)Euthenopteron
Panderichthys
..Elginerpeton
Metaxygnathius
Ventastega
..Acanthostega
Ichyostega
Hynerpeton(Osteolepiforms Tetrapoda Bactrapomorpha)..Greerepeton
Eryops
..Balanerpeton
.Saxonerpeton(Tetrapoda Reptiliomorpha)Tulerpeton
..Whatcheria
..Weslothiana
..Crassigyrinus
..Proterogyinus
.ArcheriaAlso, http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/therapsd.htmThe mammals are believed to have evolved from a class of Permian and Triassic reptiles known as therapsids. Taxonomically, mammals are distinguished by a number of features, the most obvious of which are hair (even such aquatic mammals as whales and dolphins still retain bristly hairs in their skin), and the presence of mammary glands which secrete milk, used to nourish the young. Neither of these structures is preserved in the fossil record, but fortunately, mammals can also be distinguished by a number of skeletal characteristics (particularly in the skull and teeth). In particular, mammals are distinguished from reptiles by a number of skeletal traits. Reptiles have a much larger number of individual bones in their skulls than do mammals. In reptiles, the teeth are all of the same shape, and although they vary slightly in size, they all have the same simple cone-shaped form. Mammals, however, possess a number of different types of teeth in their jaws, from the flat, multi-cusped molar teeth to the sharp cone-shaped canines. In reptiles, the lower jaw is made up of a number of different bones, and the jaw joint is formed between the quadrate bone in the skull and the angular bone in the jaw. In mammals, by contrast, the lower jaw is made up of a single bone, the dentary, which articulates with the squamosal bone in the skull to form the jaw joint. Reptiles also have a single bone in the middle ear, the stapes. In mammals, there are three bones in the middle ear, the malleus, incus and stapes (also known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup). At the top of the skull, reptiles have a small hole through which the pineal body, or "third eye", extends--this is absent in mammals. Finally, the reptilian skull is attached to the spine by a single point of contact, the occipital condyle. In mammals, the occipital condyle is double-faced.Reptile Mammal transitions using the above criteria to infer cladogramsPelycosaurs- Late carboniferous- early Permian
Therapsids- Late Permian to very early triassic
Cynodonts- Early Triassic
Crown Group Mammalia- TriassicPhylogenetic analysis also shows the mammal-reptile relationship.So, here we have a high taxa transition OVER TIME.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

In addition to there being very few transitional links between families the ordering in the record is simply made consistent with the trees of life via dotted lines (that frequently end up non-dotted even in university text books).

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Does this mean you accept the higher taxa transitionals? But are instead concentrating on family level transitions where you know there is a paucity of fossils? Do you deny the stratigraphic & morphological transition of fishes-amphibians-reptiles-mammals/birds? It seems to me that you can only make this work in areas with poor fossil evidence, where larger transitions occur over larger periods of time, the fossil evidence becomes better, with fish to amphibian, amphibian to reptile, etc. the morphological change over time becomes obvious.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

The usual sort of diagrams I've come across in good paleontology texts include 'balloon' diagrams showing the occurrance of fossils in time/strata vertically and in abundance horizontally. Picture it as a whole bunch of funny shaped elongated balloons at different heights. I'm not talking about the idealized diagrams we've all seen. I'm talking about dozens of detailed diagrams showing the actual quantitative distribution of each Linnean family throughout the geological column. Creationists interpret this ecologically, biogeographically, via flood escape/survival issues and via hydrodynamic sorting during phases of the flood. Evolutionists of course interpret it as evoltuion through time.

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You’re picking on families again, aren’t you! The class transitions exist, but we could do with better, if you think family transitions are going to exist in abundance, you may be asking for more than the fossil record has. If you think the fossil record is so good, then it should be EASY to identify the pre-flood rocks because they will be jammed with fossil forests. Remember? Rooted trees can remain in place in catastrophic turbulence/deposition? Your words. You can’t have it both ways. The fossil record is poor, face it.I’ve yet to see an internally consistent explanation of the fossil record with ecologically, biogeographically, via flood escape/survival issues and via hydrodynamic sorting during phases of the flood. Please provide one.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

The fascinating thing for me was that in reading these research level paleontological monographs I got to see, almost first hand, how one goes from these raw data fossil distribution distribution diagrams to the sensible, but not necessarily evoltuionary, diagrams in university textbooks with links drawn in:

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1. You take quantitative geometrical anatomical measures from all of the fossil skeltons. So you get lots of numbers.
2. You feed these into a simple computer program which generates cladograms (tree similarity diagrams) based on these numbers.
3. You get the raw fossil distribtuion data (ie vertically through the column).
4. You rearrange the order of the species horizontally according to the cladogram.
5. You draw dotted lines on the fossil distribution diagram that correspond with those from the computer cladogram (tree).
6. In most popular and many university textbooks the dotted lines are often merged with the 'balloons' and it becomes a continuous flow.

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My key points about this are:
(i) That there are almost always no transitional forms, or even occurances of the organism, along the dotted line.
(ii) The fossil record itself did not suggest what was related to what - the length of the dotted lines is near random.

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If there were a transitional form on the dotted line, then there wouldn’t be a dotted line at that point, would there? So saying that dotted lines exist without transitional forms is a bit silly. Try concentrating on what DOES exist, mate.Furthermore, if no intermediate is found on the dotted line, so what? Wouldn’t you be better served by looking at what DOES exist, rather than by what doesn’t. This is classic God-of-the-gaps argument, that is, all those dotted lines that don’t exist because there ARE intermediate fossils taking their place, i.e. balloons.If there were a balloon between Agnathans & Placoderms, you would then be bemoaning the fact that there were two dotted lines without intermediates! Arthur N. Strahler call this effect the Gish number.Fossil A---------Fossil B --------Fossil CGish- See! There are no intermediate fossils between A,B,& C!!! Evolution is bunk. 2 expected undiscovered intermediates.Fossil A-----Fossil X-------Fossil B------Fossil Y-------Fossil ZGish- See!! There are no expected intermediates between A,X,B,Y,& Z. FOUR expected undiscovered intermediates!! Evolution is bunk.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

It was the cladograms derived from anatomical similarity that achieved the ordering. On many occasions the dotted lines suggested by the cladogrmas have to dot through 100s of millions of years of geological time even though there are no known transitonal forms or examples of that species across this time.

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God of the gaps. Argue with existing data.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

We must remeber that evoltuion is most deficient in explaining the thousands of family level transitions. Almost every family to family gap is completely empty and there are only a handful of famous, very tired looking, examples of transitions. This is what we, and the recently departed Gould, mean when we talk about a 'systematic' lack of transitiaonals.

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God of the gaps. Argue with existing data.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

The quote by the evoltuionist Ridley below also demonstartes that paleontogy works this way. The fossil record doesn't itself allow the trees of life to be drawn, rather it is from the hierarchical taxonomic similarities and biogeography achieved indpendently of the fossil record:

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Nonsense, how can data be taken from fossils & the phylogenies be independent of it?

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

I believe he was able to say this becasue he knows that the way the fossil record is used is as descibed in my points 1-6 above. Can anybody disagree with my points 1-6?

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Ridley's 'observed evidence of evolution' is IMO extremely poor - they are all within family variations: finches, moths and viruses. We have no problem with these.

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This means that evoltuion is primarily based on homology and biogeography, not on ordered sequences in the fossil record as I always suspected. Creationists interpret homology as the signature of a common designer, not common descent.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-18-2002]

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Evolution is based on evidence of different organisms existing at different times, with major transitions in existence. These major transitions are backed up by congruent morphological & molecular phylogenetic trees, the consensus of these trees represent colossal odds of the ToE not being indicative of reality.In summary, you seem to be displaying the usual creationist tactic of the evidence doesn’t exist, it isn’t true, the ol’ God-of the-gaps tactic, whilst ignoring the well studied data which doesn’t support your stance.I must have said this a million times, absent evidence is evidence of nothing. You can only infer with what you have, not what you don’t. Paleontology ALONE shows all the major vertebrate transitions.If only creationists could provide anywhere near the positive evidence that evolution couldn’t occur, that paleontology has presented that it did.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

There you have it TB, much better explained by marck24 than I ever could.
A cladogram is not a phylogenetic tree. Is a summary of separated lineages that diverged from a node.
This node is, simply, a hypothetical state, with the characteristics inferred from those shared by the studied clades. It doesn't say anything about time.
What it's deducible from a cladogram is a vision (a pattern) of the relative relationship among the clades.

QuetzalI agree with your preamble. What will make it not as easy as you expect is that our model is a creation/flood model not just a creation model. What the flood would do precisely is anybody's guess. Preliminary work suggests that some of the major features of the fossil record do coincide with flood expectations (marine/wetlands/mobile animals). In addition, we also expect families measured to be homologous to also be found in similar parts of the flood record (they would often share similar habitats, mobilities and morphologies). So it wont be quite as easy as you suspect. But I'll be the first to admit that there is no all-encompassing flood model that explains why every fossil is found where it is.My main point is that evoltuiuonary relationships primarily come from cladistics which is nothing more than anatomical and molecular similarity. The fossil record is made consistent with homology via dotted lines. Almost anything can be achieved because the dotted lines often dot far below the actual fossil distribution! I'm not kidding. It is an extremely logical procedure if evoltuion occurred but does not prove evolution.

MarkYour comment that I am saying that 'paleontology is bunk because anatomical changes do not correlate with time' is not quite right. There is some agreement wbetween cladistics and stratigraphy but the trees derived from fossil data do not systematically agree with those derived from homology: http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/cladestrat/introduction.html
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/2001Treeoflife.pdfBenton (one of my favaourite evolutionary paleontologists) has systematically applied the SCI parameter to 1000 cladograms. SCI measures the correlation between cladistics and stratigrpahy (SCI = consistent nodes/inconsistent nodes). He gets, on average around an SCI of 0.5 meaning that 2/3rds of the nodes are inconsistent.So I agree that animals are approximately distributed in the fossil record by homology but not to the extent that anyone could say that 'this evolved from that' with any sort of surity. 2/3rds of the orderings are wrong on average.But I agreee this is not necessarily evidence against evoltuion. There are a host of reasons why this could be the case. The incompleteness of the fossil record is always a possibility although Bentons' recent work (published in Nature) demonstrates that the record is quite complete and at low stratigraphic resolution it doesn't degrade as we go down the column.As I mentioned flood creationists expect homologous animals to be buried at similar stages of the flood since homology is by definition similarity. Of course no-one would expect this to be perfect and that is why, in our opinions, there is the discrepancy between cladistics, whether morphologivcal or moleculr, and stratigraphy.I do accept some of your higher taxa transtionals as created animals with mixed features. I sounds like a cop out but why shouldn't God have created animals with mixed reptilian and mammalian characteristics? The point is that the gaps betwen families are huge in size and number.I'll agree that it is a difficult issue to nail down because you guys appeal to punctuated equilibrium. Whatever the case there is almost no evidence for gradual evoltuion of the thousands of family to family transitions that must have occured. If you want to appeal to puctuated equilibrium in faith feel free.I agree that a non-dotted line would be in there if there were transitionals. The point I was making was that the dotted lines often have to traverse very long geological times which stretches believability.I'll tell you the biggest point to come out of my reading. There are (almost?) no family to family transitionals! I read these paleontology monogrpahs and it 99.9% reads as if a creationist wrote it! A modern paleontology text is a list of kinds. There is a complete lack of transitionals.The balloons are not transitions. They are distibutions of families. We have seen how poorly the horse story works. The horse balloon is simply the distribution of horses throughout the fossil record, there is no evidence of evolution at all.As Benton says the point of his research (see pdf above) is that, the possibilities of bias aside, the stratigrpahy is independnt of cladsitics. Of course the specimens come from the fossil record but it is the anatomical measurements ('character states') which go into the cladistics software, not the stratigraphic age.One proviso - there are hybrid methods whcih Benton generally doesn't like where the cladistics is biased by the stratigrphic age. I can see Benton's POV butI also agree with the hybridists. Benton wants to use the dat to test cladistics and the fossil record. The hybridists want the best tree!Creationists have no problem with there being a small subset of life on earth in the present due to the flood. The partial agreement between stratigraphy and cladistics we expect due to cladistics being based on homology.I think you'll find my POV is a little more subtle than you thought and that I understand the paelontology and I am a fan of it actually.

Long time no see Andor. As I showed in the above post paleontoloogists have finally decided to start systematically comparing their cladograms with stratigrphy. The node order should be the same.And of course the molecular clock approaches do give cladograms with time via calibrations (I lecture on this stuff). There is currently a major 50 million year discrepency between stratigraphy and molecular cladistics in terms of the origin of mammals and birds last time I read about it. The molecular sequences of birds are more divergent than expected. But there are a host of mainstream possibilities for this so I wouldn't give up on evoltuion soley on that evidence.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-19-2002]

Hey TB. Hmmm, from your post I'd say you in fact don't accept my initial constraints on the discussion. It sounds, honestly, like you're trying to create wiggle room before we even start. However, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt. Help me to understand why you are unable to decouple the Flood (which is the mechanism by which the YECs claim the fossils record was created), and the actual record itself. I was more interested in examining the bones and their placement without getting in to the "hows" - at least at the beginning. Sort of look at the "logic of the bones", as a writer once put it, and see if we can arrive at a conclusion.By the same token, I don't want to be accused of setting up a strawman to argue against. That being said, perhaps you could re-write prediction 1a. above to reflect what YOU feel special creation should show in the record.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Mark

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Your comment that I am saying that 'paleontology is bunk because anatomical changes do not correlate with time' is not quite right. There is some agreement wbetween cladistics and stratigraphy but the trees derived from fossil data do not systematically agree with those derived from homology:

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http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/cladestrat/introduction.html
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/2001Treeoflife.pdf

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Benton (one of my favaourite evolutionary paleontologists) has systematically applied the SCI parameter to 1000 cladograms. SCI measures the correlation between cladistics and stratigrpahy (SCI = consistent nodes/inconsistent nodes). He gets, on average around an SCI of 0.5 meaning that 2/3rds of the nodes are inconsistent.

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So I agree that animals are approximately distributed in the fossil record by homology but not to the extent that anyone could say that 'this evolved from that' with any sort of surity. 2/3rds of the orderings are wrong on average.

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http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/2001Treeoflife.pdf

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Benton:

A major criticism of the approach adopted here is that
it can only work when the fossil record is relatively
complete: if there are many gaps, then there is no
evidence that the correct tree will t stratigraphy any
better or worse than any of the numerous incorrect trees
(Fortey & Jeeries 1982; Wagner 2000b).With signicant
missing fossils, the recorded order of origination of groups
could easily be the exact opposite to that implied by the
`correct’ tree. So, hanging over any comparisons between
stratigraphy and phylogeny is the concern that modest
changes in the degree of congruence may say nothing
about improvements in the quality of the cladogram.

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That is, the less complete, & fewer instances of character data to form data sets, the less reliable the inferred phylogeny. The more instances of fossils, the better the inferred phylogeny. Moreover, as the fossil evidence gets better, & therefore the derived phylogeny, the correlation between stratigraphy & phylogeny improves.

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Benton:

Contrary to these ndings is that a number of studies
have shown congruence between trees and stratigraphy
for a wide range of organisms (Norell & Novacek 1992a,b;
Benton & Storrs 1994; Smith & Littlewood 1994; Benton
& Hitchin 1996; Benton et al. 1999, 2000). Admittedly,
many of the assessed trees cover groups with accepted
`good’ fossil records

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No surprise here, then, better data sets infer better phylogeny. What Benton is telling us, is that when the evidence is good enough, the phylogenies/cladograms ARE congruent with the fossil record.A good example of poor congruency due to poor sampling is found in the same text.

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Benton:

The very low negative value for RCI in 1997 (gure 1b)
is something of an anomaly, the result of including 10
cladograms of basal land plants (Kenrick & Crane 1997)
that cover long spans of time, but have a poor fossil
record (hence giving relatively large amounts of ghost
range).Without those 10 cladograms, the 1997 RCI value
recovers to 27.15 8.04, close to the values for neighbouring
publication years.

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Namely, the data isn’t very good, & the congruency of the cladogram/phylogeny/stratigraphy suffers as a result.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

But I agreee this is not necessarily evidence against evoltuion. There are a host of reasons why this could be the case. The incompleteness of the fossil record is always a possibility although Bentons' recent work (published in Nature) demonstrates that the record is quite complete and at low stratigraphic resolution it doesn't degrade as we go down the column.

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No, Bentons work shows the fossil record is well sampled, not complete.

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Benton:

There is growing evidence that the fossil record is well sampled.
For example, in a study of the quality of the
fossil record of tetrapods from 1967 to 1993, there was a
statistically signicant improvement in the quality of t to
a xed set of cladograms (Benton 1994; Benton & Storrs
1994): new discoveries were lling predicted gaps, not
creating new gaps. If, on the other hand, new fossil nds
created gaps more often than they lled them,
palaeontologists would have to retire from the discussion
until they could demonstrate some stability in their
knowledge of the fossil record. Indeed, Weishampel
(1996) found, in comparing the addition of new taxa to
trees of dinosaurs, horses, and hominids through the past
120 years, that many new nds did extend trees, and add
gaps. However, this eect was seen only for dinosaurs and
horses, and the pattern is one of uctuation, with highest
mean ghost range measures in 1900 and 1916, respectively,
and lower values since. For hominids, mean ghost ranges
have declined from1920 onwards.

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A complete fossil record would show no dotted lines, using the same criteria that Benton et al came to the above conclusions. He goes on.

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Benton:

The discovery of constant, or declining mean ghost
range (i.e. gaps remaining constant, or being lled by
new nds) is borne out by further studies of the eects of
new fossil nds on knowledge of the fossil record:
Maxwell & Benton (1990) and Sepkoski (1993) found
essentially no change in the broad shape of diversication
curves computed from 1900 to 1987 for tetrapods and
from1982 to 1992 for marine animals, respectively.

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Meaning the sampling is improving as we find new fossils, even if this better sampling improvement is in certain areas, but not others.There is a world of difference in how well the tree of life is sampled in the fossil record, compared to the completeness (a fossil of every living organism) of it.Furthermore,

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Benton:

The proposal that metazoans originated and diversied
some 1000 million years ago, 400 million years before the
rst fossils (Wray et al. 1996; Gu 1998; Wang et al. 1999;
Cutler 2000), raises the possibility that the rst half of
the history of most animal phyla was not represented by
fossils.

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If this is true, and most molecular divergence estimates place cladogenesis beyond (significantly in some cases) the observed fossil divergences, then the early history of life isn’t just incomplete to the point of non-existence, but it is sampled to the point of non-existence too.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

As I mentioned flood creationists expect homologous animals to be buried at similar stages of the flood since homology is by definition similarity. Of course no-one would expect this to be perfect and that is why, in our opinions, there is the discrepancy between cladistics, whether morphologivcal or moleculr, and stratigraphy.

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I do accept some of your higher taxa transtionals as created animals with mixed features. I sounds like a cop out but why shouldn't God have created animals with mixed reptilian and mammalian characteristics?

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The point is that the gaps betwen families are huge in size and number.

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The point is that the gaps between order & class are not so huge in size & number, & more, & better data is available. This is why congruent phylogenies/cladistic stratigraphy can be inferred.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

I'll agree that it is a difficult issue to nail down because you guys appeal to punctuated equilibrium. Whatever the case there is almost no evidence for gradual evoltuion of the thousands of family to family transitions that must have occured. If you want to appeal to puctuated equilibrium in faith feel free.

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Will you ever let those poor families alone?! PE, poor fossil record aside, the absence of evidence is evidence of nothing. I could just as easily say that transitional gaps are evidence of the Galactic Goat eating all the transitionals, bar small breeding colonies. It’s no more bizarre than inferring special creation from no evidence.There aren’t many familial intermediates, what POSITIVE evidence do you have to infer anything?Once again, please deal with existing data.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

I agree that a non-dotted line would be in there if there were transitionals. The point I was making was that the dotted lines often have to traverse very long geological times which stretches believability.

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I'll tell you the biggest point to come out of my reading. There are (almost?) no family to family transitionals! I read these paleontology monogrpahs and it 99.9% reads as if a creationist wrote it! A modern paleontology text is a list of kinds. There is a complete lack of transitionals.

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Not the families again?! see above.It occurred to me that you have admitted to some familial transitions, but obviously rejected them as being indicative of evolution, not to mention Bentons references to good fossil record cladistic/stratigraphic congruences of higher taxa. This begs the question, what would your stand be if there was a lot of good familial transitions? I have to say, I rather think you wouldn't be convinced in any case.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

The balloons are not transitions. They are distibutions of families. We have seen how poorly the horse story works. The horse balloon is simply the distribution of horses throughout the fossil record, there is no evidence of evolution at all.

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You went off the deep end here. No evidence of evolution?Firstly, find me a modern horse with Hyracotherium, simply distribution of horses throughout the fossil record? This seriously smacks of hand waving the evidence away.Here is an inferred phylogeny of Equidae showing (mainly) genera. Based on shared derived characters on over 200 species (After MacFadden 1992). Note the stratigraphy.Here’s another, Apart from some clades being transposed, I think you’ll find the congruence remarkable. The shared, derived traits used to infer these phylogenies are ; Overall skeletal size and morphology, morphology number, and arrangement of teeth, shape of the skull and brain case size, structure of the legs, structure of the feet and toes. Note, there are several traits in each of the above characters that can be used, eg cusp arrangement on teeth etc.Additionally, horses have THREE toes as foetuses, & even occasionally as adult horses, giving an independent corobboration of horses evolving from multi-toed ancestors.The horse balloon is the distribution of horses throughout the fossil record, & shared derived characters change with stratigraphy, allowing a phylogenetic tree to be inferred.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

As Benton says the point of his research (see pdf above) is that, the possibilities of bias aside, the stratigrpahy is independnt of cladsitics. Of course the specimens come from the fossil record but it is the anatomical measurements ('character states') which go into the cladistics software, not the stratigraphic age.

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But Benton actually says good sampling produces congruent cladogram/phylogenies/stratigraphy. See above. What Benton is actually saying is that the two schools shouldn’t be shoehorned together in the hybrids you mention, not that they don’t agree.In summary, you are still using poor to no data to demonstrate your point. This is still God-of-the-gaps-stuff. When the evidence is good, stratigraphy & cladistics are congruent. Your own cite said so. You need positive evidence that taxa are unrelated, the good evidence shows otherwise.I found the cite very interesting, btw.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.