What would a transitional fossil look like?

Obviously you understand nothing. You can't get a fish from a cow by microevolution. Duh. Microevolution is just another word for the variation that occurs in a given genome over the generations. The cow genome does not have any genetic stuff for making fish, it is all variation on the cow kind and nothing else. The only way macroevolution, or anything that would change its genetic makeup in the direction of a fish, or anything not-cow for that matter, is massive mutations of some very unlikely sort, and they'd have to change the structural genetic stuff for a cow along with the usual variations on superficial traits such as fur color. You guys really understand absolutely nothing about the processes required. You cannot get variation beyond the genome. Not only is it limited to the genetic makeup for the particular creature that possesses it, but as the variations occur in any particular direction they eventually run into the situation of fixed loci or homozygosity for the trait, beyond which further evolution is not possible on that line of variation. I'm rignt about this. Macroevolution or the ToE is simply impossible by the nature of genetics.Fossils are simply not a record of evolution, they are just dead creatures of their own particular kind.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Of course he was being sarcastic, but to be sarcastic about microevolution in the way he was shows he doesn't have a clue. And neither do you. None of you will ever see what is really going on because you are glued into your ToE expectations. They are impossible because you have no grasp of the processes involved to bring it about, none. You cannot get from the built in variation of the genome of any given species or kind to any other species or kind. Within the genome all the genetic stuff of the species or kind is present. To get something entirely different, that is a characteristic of a wholly different species, requires changes to the genome that would take so many trials and errors it is as good as impossible. It's like the route I imagined some time back from the fossil reptile ear to the fossil mammal ear. The genetic stuff is not present for the mammal ear, the layout is entirely different. To get to the mammal ear requires mutations of such a complex sort it can't happen. Millions of mutations that produce useless deformities would have to happen before you got anything like one part of the mammal ear. Same with any of your putative changes from one species to another. The genome already has all the stuff of one species, you don't get the stuff for a new species out of that.Consider the species or kind called dog. ALL dogs have the same basic physical structure or skeletal form or shape. All of them, even where there are some distortions to it due to insane breeding practices. You will never get a structural change that makes that basic skeletal form into anything else. It's there in the dog genome.Of course you will go on with the verbal abuse and the certainty that you are right nevertheless. No I never demonstrated macroevolution. What you are talking about is my description of how you get to "speciation" and YOU call that macroevolution. That's a ridiculous claim since the genetic condition of the "new species" is depleted to the point that further evolution is impossible, and that depleted condition is in most cases most likely the reason why breeding with the parent population is no longer possible. To call it macroevolution is simply to indulge in the usual self deception of evos. It's all a definitional game.ABE: I don't remember the cat examples, but there is no doubt in my mind that Panthera and Felidae are the same kind since they have the same body structure. Loss of ability to breed with each other, as a I say above, most likely has to do with varying in different directions until there are too many differences between their respective genomes for fertility. /ABEThe whole idea of transitional fossils is another self deception.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You're welcome, I'm sure, but if you want humorless stupid me to get your point you need to do a little more explaining. Far as I can see, my point is good. The genome of any given creature has the genetic stuff for making that particular creature, and if you want to get from that creature to some other creature for which the genetic instructions do not exist in the genome in question, something really genetically drastic has to happen to change that genome, so drastic that it is really impossible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I did spell out some time ago the differences that have to be navigated to get from the reptilian ear to the mammalian ear, which is a much more limited project than getting from a cow to a fish but I may try that one two. Remove legs from genome. Add fins and fish tail and fish breathing apparatus. This is silly. Just to make those two changes would require millions of years of mutations and still you wouldn't get them.

If the changes are teeny and weeny which I suppose they would be, getting any one of them in the right place for the new genme would take millions or billions of years of mutations and there is no reason whatever to think any of it would come together in a coherent new creature.

Well, the personal judgment makes sense because the genome of every creature has everything it needs for all the characteristics and variations of the creature's physical and behavioral makeup, all right there. Every reprductive event recapitulates all the characteristics to make a new version of it. When you imagine that the genome simply eventually goes on to make something entirely different, even by teeny weeny changes, you have to imagine something new happening in the genome that doesn't already exist. That means there are no guidelines for it of any sort, it just appears for no reason, through a mutation I suppose, an accident of replication that changes something in the genome into something that has nothing whatever to do with the creature that genome constructs. Mutations upon mutations would have to occur, all of them totally accidental, without any guidelines whatever, millions of trials and errors then before any of it amounts to anything coherent at all, and there is in fact no reason at that level of probability why anything coherent would ever emerge. Justg escrescences growing on excrescences, like a cancer though they might be benigh, just utterly useless. Mutations that change a given gene into another version of the gene may do something to the creature that is benign, neutral or even occasionally "beneficial" if you aren't thinking too big, but usually deleterious. Now macroevolution requires a change that changes something in the creature into something that is not related to the creature in order to get an entirely new kind of creature.Nobody is really thinking about what such changes to a genome would involve along these lines if you continue to think it's feasible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Gosh you're all so good at tit for tat. Not much else I fear.

"Due to the mechanisms of evolution" doesn't describe what has to happen to get macroevolution from a given genome. Perhaps you could explain it in some detail?

Randomn variation plus selection gets you a version of the same creature, it's nothing but microevolution or standard variation. You can't get macroevolution out of any such events. The reason it doesn't work is that macroevolution requires something completely new to be formed. All those mechanisms do is rearrange what already exists.

It really doesn't matter what you want to descend from what. It's impossible unless the genetic stuff is already present for the completely new creature. For instance getting a human being from a chimpanzee is equally impossible. Each has its own genome that makes the given creature and nothing else. To get from the chimpanzee to the human being requires a whole slew of changes into something altogether different from the chimpanzee, things that don't exist in the chimpanzee genome and that makes any such transformation impossible because mutation has to invent something completely new rather than simply changing something that already exists into another version of it which is already potential in the genome anyway.. You all imagine it's possible because of some similarities between them and that's the extent of the whole story. Your imagination.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Something you CALL "macroevolution" happens. It's all word magic, semantics, nothing in physical reality that deserves the name at all. Something you CALL "speciation" occurs. The whole ToE is fantasy. "Speciation" is wishful thinking, it is not speciation at all that you are calling by that name. It is a variation on the genetic stuff built into a creature's genome that occurs at a point in a series of variations where a lot of homozygosity has occurred, making breeding very iffy with the new variation. That's all it is. If you examined the DNA of every "speciation" event I'm very sure you'd find out that it has less rather than more ability to vary further, which is hardly a precondition for bringing about a new species. I don't trust science to do this honestly of course. Nope. The "speciation" has produced something that has much LESS ability to go on evolving, so it isn't going to "continue to microevolve" except in the fevered imagination of evos. You assume it. Except for short time when the variation may play out to the very end of its capacity to vary you've never actually seen this. It's all theory. You imagine it happens because the theory says it happens. The most likely end result of the event you call speciation is extinction though it may survive for a while without any further evolution at all or just a couple of changes before the end comes. That's the thing. You can't GET any truly novel variations. All you can get is variations on whatever already exists. You may get something that is novel in that context just because it's already fairly depleted, but you won't get anything truly novel, merely a variation on whatever exists in the genome. Anything that isn't already in the stock of variations of the genome. Something the particular gene doesn't code for. Say a human shaped nose with human skin color for the chimpanzee's flat black nose or something like that. Something that is not in the creature's genome. Or an extra chamber to get from the reptile ear to the mammalian ear, and in the right place. Yes you have to have that kind of newness or you can't get a new creature. And that sort of newness isn't going to happen. But that sort of variation is within the existing genetic stuff of the genome. It is not truly novel, it is just another variation on an existing trait. You cannot get a new creature with this sort of variation even if you have millions of them over millions of years. You will only get variations on the same creature. The genome itself has to be changed.
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Another version would be a different eye color from the eye color gene or genes, a different texture of fur from the fur texture gene or genes. Something completely new would be scales instead of fur perhaps, or a completely different kind of eye.Sorry have to take a break.

Natural Selection, Genetic Drift, Mutations and Gene Flow are the four mechanisms of evolution. I've discussed them many times on former threads. It's really a silly list in a way. Natural Selection, or simple geographic isolation of a portion of a population, which is a kind of selection, produces the changes that can produce a population with new characteristics. Genetic drift, understood as a form of selection, does the same thing. Mutations have to be selected or they're dead in the water as far as changing a population goes, and gene flow just interferes with selection and reproductive isolation which is necessary for selection to be effective, so it muddies up any population with new characteristics that might develop through selection. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It would be nice if anyone would actually think for a change.Back later.

But the conclusion you draw is purely imaginary.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.