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Author Topic:   fossilization processes
randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 31 of 66 (230855)
08-08-2005 12:34 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by AdminNosy
08-08-2005 12:21 AM


Re: support
Oops, I didn't realize it was proposed new topics and that was why I could not respond.
Sorry.
This message has been edited by randman, 08-08-2005 12:41 AM

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 32 of 66 (230856)
08-08-2005 12:38 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by AdminNosy
08-08-2005 12:21 AM


Re: support
I have already supported it by showing in respect to whales that all whale families, and perhaps all whale species, that are alive today have fossilized remains, at least according to the evolutionist web-site I linked to.
Did you not read that?
As far as all fossils, I would not be willing to predict numbers of bacteria, plants, sharks (have no bones, just teeth), and a wide variety of species.
My point is applying the .1%, which I assumed you got from the analysis on the other thread of ALL SPECIES was invalid since large creatures like mammals with bones that fossilize relatively easy compared to the soft tissue of many creatures are different, and moreover, there is such a high rate of whale fossils.
What part of this analysis do you disagree with?

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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 33 of 66 (230857)
08-08-2005 12:48 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by randman
08-08-2005 12:29 AM


Two different approaches.
You are confused. The curve should be built from real numbers, comparing actual numbers of fossils found with the number of new species found. The idea is there is a law of diminishing returns, that with more and more new fossils we find less and less, eventually, new species.
I'm sorry I was a bit unclear. There are two different things being discussed. The estimates from biodiversity are not numbers to be put in to the collector's curve. They are separate ways of attempting to arrive at an estimate of the number of species left to be found.
Moreover, since you have no problem estimating the number of species it toto, why could you not estimate the number of transitionals needed to evolve a whale from a land mammal?
Why avoid totally that question?
I have, based on your rough idea of what each step would be agreed that something like 1,000's isn't too bad a number.
However, any such estimate is very dodgey at best. It is entirely possible that two or 3 changes occured together in one population so it isn't clear if we call those 1 step (only one 'speciation') or 3.
Some of the changes are simply "more of". That is, when a limb is being used as a paddle it may become more paddle-like in very, very small steps. These may spread through a population rapidly or slowly. The population with slightly longer paddles may be able to interbreed (in fact are pretty much sure to be able to interbreed) with those with shorter. There has been no speciation yet. The long paddle form may dominate or be 100% in the population but still there has been no barrier to interbreeding (if the others were still around). The same can be said for many of the changes needed. (blow hole position, backbone flexibility, rib arrangement, ear structure and so on).
You are asking questions which don't seem to be very sensible with any understanding of the processes involved. That is one reason why there is not firm number. It is also, for reasons given, not an number that you can be sure of pining down with any certainty.
What we do know from taphonomy is that very, very few individuals fossilize (none if they live in a habitate that is really hard on bones -- like rain forests). We also know that some land forms have been eroded to sand and dust -- including any fossils in them. In other words there are a ton of good reasons for expecting fossilization to be rare.
So far you haven't given any good reasons (and no numbers) as to why it should be otherwise.
On younger species, presumably the current number of species have an lived on average, at best considering the extinction and depopulation rate due to man particularly with whale hunting, only half of their "normal" geologic time as a species on earth.
...
So even if some species are far older, they will in general have lived out their complete geologic time on the earth.
So let's say we estimate due to erosion, etc,...that fossils from 120 million to 30 million years ago have been reduced in half via erosion, but had on average twice the life-span of species from 30 million to the present.
Is that reasonable?
If that was the case, then we should expect equal numbers of fossils for ancient pre-whales that we would expect for the crop of current whales.
Right?
I don't get this? I need more detail of what you are getting at.
The comment about man's effect is irrelevant I think. The major impact on whales is only over the last century. I don't see how it ties in?

This message is a reply to:
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MangyTiger
Member (Idle past 6353 days)
Posts: 989
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 07-30-2004


Message 34 of 66 (230858)
08-08-2005 12:52 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by randman
08-08-2005 12:09 AM


A quantative analysis of the fossil record
It would seem like before evolutionists could draw any definite conclusions on whether the fossil record supports creationist claims (lack of transitionals) or their claims, acceptable level of discovered transitionals, that such an analysis would have been done and the subject of much discussion and research, decades ago.
I have found a quantitive analysis for the quality of the fosssil record - at least for vertebrates.
It's heavy reading (especially for a non-expert in both paleontology and hard sums like me) but it seems like there are good grounds for saying the fossil record is pretty good.
You should look at Figures 8 and 9. Figure 8 is a collectors curve like the one in your IDEA link - just an illustration of what one might look like. Figure 9 actually contains a pair of collectors curves, one for dinosaur fossils in Europe and a corresponding one for China (both stop in the 1990s). I suspect the China one will no longer show the possible flattening given the rate of fossil finds in China in the last decade.
A fascinating conclusion of the analysis is that despite the fact there are loads more marine fossils than terrestial ones the overall quality of the fossil record is the same for both.

Oops! Wrong Planet

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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 35 of 66 (230859)
08-08-2005 1:07 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by randman
08-08-2005 12:11 AM


Re: taphonomy
I'll do some work on backing it up when you have caught up with backing up your 90% for whales. My opinion there is based on the bit of reading in taphonomy that I have done (not a lot). Also others have pointed out to you that we have examples in bison and the passenger pigeon where millions and even billions of individuals left very few (1,000's for bison toward zero for passenger pigeons).
I did read, quickly, your reference but can't find it right now. Could you both re suppy it and show how you got from specific items in it to 90% please. I am pretty darn sure that you number is a guess with no back up of any kind but I'm waiting to see otherwise.

This message is a reply to:
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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 36 of 66 (230860)
08-08-2005 1:07 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by NosyNed
08-08-2005 12:48 AM


Re: Two different approaches.
They are separate ways of attempting to arrive at an estimate of the number of species left to be found.
Well, it would be useful for evolutionists to predict how many species, particularly in areas more narrow, such as how many land mammal to whale transitionals they predict.
I asked for estimates, and I not find any evolutionist that had made such estimates in formal studies that I know of.
But in my mind, in terms of determining how many species are left to be found, based on evolutionist assumptions, and then comparing that to numbers of actual fossils to determine fossilization rates would be highly fallacious reasoning.
I don't think you can do that to accurately determine fossilization rates. But it is useful because it could help show the predictions of ToE for fossilization rates, but it would still need to be revised per type of species, vertibrate versus non-vertibrates for example.
A more proper approach is to use numbers we can verify with observed facts. For example, comparing new fossil finds to new species find (the collector's curve) is somewhat valid.
An even better approach for certain types of species would be to compare known the numbers of fossils for mammals among current known species. That should give us an approximation of what we should expect to find with older species.
Do you agree on that?
I have, based on your rough idea of what each step would be agreed that something like 1,000's isn't too bad a number.
Well, now we're getting somewhere. I agree by the way that the range here is somewhat broad, but 1,000's is a good start.
What we do know from taphonomy is that very, very few individuals fossilize (none if they live in a habitate that is really hard on bones -- like rain forests).
Can you substantiate that? For example, are fish from the Amazonian rain forest known not to fossilize well? How about other aquatic and semi-aquatic creatures.
Furthermore, isn't Pakicetus considered to have lived in a dry climate overall, but near a stream?
We also know that some land forms have been eroded to sand and dust -- including any fossils in them.
But is the rate of fossil destruction greater than half per the time period of land mammal to whale evolution, compared to the time period where all whales have fossilized remains?
In other words there are a ton of good reasons for expecting fossilization to be rare
Maybe, but can you back that up? More to the point, you need to define "rare" here and have never done that.
To what degree is fossilization rare?
For example, and I mentioned this before, it is very rare on any given day for a specific individual to be getting married, but it's not rare at all, given the life-span of the individual, for he or she to be getting married on one of those days.
So an event can be both "rare" and common at the same time depending on the time period involved.
If fossilization is so rare, why do we often have multiple specimens of one species, sometimes millions of years apart?
If you say it has to do with their eco-system, then would not most semi-aquatic larger animals share a similar eco-system in many regards?
You haven't answered these questions at all.
In what sense is fossilization "rare"?

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 37 of 66 (230861)
08-08-2005 1:13 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by NosyNed
08-08-2005 1:07 AM


Re: taphonomy
Ned, before I seemingly waste a lot of time reposting the same arguments and same site, can we come to an agreement on interpretion of the data?
Specifically, would you accept the fact of fossilized remains of every whale family known today, so much so we can tell when those families emerged in the geologic column, as evidence that similar aquatic species should that evolved into whales should be well-represented?
Or, are you just asking me to take time to provide a link I already provided before, and you are going to ignore the reasoning again, and I have wasted my time?
In other words, do you care what the data says here?
I write somewhat harshly here because you have been very "vocal" in claiming I am not backing things up, but it seems every time I spend a lot of time providing such data only to have it ignored, and evos here try to move the goalposts to something else, and dodge the point.
So is a very high incidence of whale fossils compared to known whale species evidence, that for whale-like creatures, fossilization is not that rare?

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 38 of 66 (230862)
08-08-2005 1:15 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by NosyNed
08-08-2005 1:07 AM


Re: taphonomy
I am pretty darn sure that you number is a guess with no back up of any kind but I'm waiting to see otherwise.
How sure is "pretty sure"? Care to wager something, or actually commit to changing your views if I can show you that my data is correct?

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 39 of 66 (230863)
08-08-2005 1:15 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by MangyTiger
08-08-2005 12:52 AM


Re: A quantative analysis of the fossil record
It appears that this is telling us something useful. I'd interpret it as saying that we have found all the species that we are going to find not that we have found all the species that every were. Which is their interpretation too.
So how does this help us arrive at the number of species that were there? It seems it doesn't help with that.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 40 of 66 (230864)
08-08-2005 1:18 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by MangyTiger
08-08-2005 12:52 AM


Re: A quantative analysis of the fossil record
Very interesting. Thank you MangyTiger. That took some effort and I appreciate your willingness to post it very much.
Maybe all evos aren't so bad at science after all.
I say that jokingly, but you're posting that does restore some faith in the value of discussion on this subject.
Thanks again.

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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 41 of 66 (230865)
08-08-2005 1:20 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by randman
08-08-2005 1:15 AM


changing of views.
I'm prepared to change views when shown something that requires that.
I think you are saying that there are a lot of missing whale fossils -- if whale evolution occured as hypothosized --- and that there should be many more of those fossils there.
I think that there are a lot of gaps with fossils missing and I think that it is not surprising that they have not (and maybe won't be ) been found.
If you can convince me that they should be there then I would have to wonder why they are missing. One possibility is that the evolution of whales did not take place as hypothosized. I would then be interested in how you do think that modern whales arose.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 42 of 66 (230868)
08-08-2005 1:56 AM
Reply to: Message 41 by NosyNed
08-08-2005 1:20 AM


Re: changing of views.
Well, looking at Mangy's link.
The finding that continental vertebrates have a fossil record of similar quality to marine echinoderms and fishes suggests two observations.
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Essays/vertfr/default.html
I have not read in my quick scan anything yet on whales, but it seems like whales and fish would most likely have similar aspects of fossilization. If that is true, then we should have found a corresponding percentage of whale fossils that we find of land mammals, particularly the land mammals that evolved into whales.
Accepting the 1000's numbers we agreed was a good start, we don't see a good percentage of those 1000's.
We should see about the same percentage of these transitional semi-aquatic and land mammal fossils that we do see of whales.
Now, here is some incidental evidence that whale fossils are "relatively common fossils in marine sediments."
By the Miocene, whales of both lineages are relatively common fossils in many marine deposits. A number of modern-day families of both toothed and baleen whales are known to have evolved by the late Miocene. These include the baleen whale families Balaenopteridae (rorqual whales, including the blue whale) and Balaenidae (right whales), and the toothed whale families Delphinidae (dolphins and killer whales), Physeteridae (sperm whales), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Phocaenidae (porpoises), and Ziphiidae (beaked whales).
Cetaceans
Modern Cetacea fall in two categories, called suborders: the Odontoceti (toothed whales) and Mysticeti (baleen whales). There are about 10 modern species of baleen whales, including the right whale, blue whale, and humpback whale. ....The oldest mysticetes are about 40 million years old and are derived from Eocene cetaceans.
The largest odontocete is the sperm whale. The oldest odontocete is approximately 40 million years old
http://www.neoucom.edu/...Thewissen/whale_origins/index.html\
So we don't have a problem finding an abundance of whale fossils of existing species and species in the same family that have gone extinct. My impression from reading the literature is that there is a quite a massive number of whale fossils in fact, and that they go back 40 million years, according to evo-dating methods.
But we don't have massive numbers of the transitionals?
That, to me, can only be reasonably explained by assuming that:
1. The theorized transitionals are not there because they never existed,
Or:
2. The theorized transitional and/or creative process was not purely accomplished by the current naturalistic means hyothesized by evolutionists and processes observed today, which would have left a trail of transitionals. In other words, maybe there could be some force as yet unknown causing hyper-evolution and thus less likely to leave any fossils, or creating via special creation, or a combination of the 2.
Possibly, there are unknowns about earth history as well and metaphysics that somehow play a role here.
But in terms of the data, the fossil record's lack of transitional forms is strong evidence, imo, that whales did not evolve as evolutionists posit, and perhaps that biblical creation of distinct groups of species, "kinds", or whatever you want to call it is the real explanation.
Clearly, the fossil record does not show whales evolving, at least not prior to being aquatic creatures.
This message has been edited by randman, 08-08-2005 02:00 AM
This message has been edited by randman, 08-08-2005 02:17 AM

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 43 of 66 (230870)
08-08-2005 2:37 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by randman
08-08-2005 1:56 AM


Re: changing of views.
So we don't have a problem finding an abundance of whale fossils of existing species and species in the same family that have gone extinct.
None of your quotes actually mention fossils of currently extant species. I'm quite prepared to believe some exist but your quotes don't mention them.
TTFN,
WK

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 44 of 66 (230871)
08-08-2005 2:47 AM
Reply to: Message 43 by Wounded King
08-08-2005 2:37 AM


Re: changing of views.
WK, it's hard to find percentages of whale species living that have fossils because they mostly discuss fossils that indicate how far back that whale family and/or suborder existed.
These include the baleen whale families Balaenopteridae (rorqual whales, including the blue whale) and Balaenidae (right whales), and the toothed whale families Delphinidae (dolphins and killer whales), Physeteridae (sperm whales), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Phocaenidae (porpoises), and Ziphiidae (beaked whales).
But from what we see above, specific families of modern whales are found millions and millions of years ago. It is not clear, you are correct, on whether these are identical to current whale species, or current whale families, but if the families are well-represented, imo, that works fairly well for this discussion since generally, evos are discussing creatures like Pakecitus as representing a family. I did not actually realize that initially, but it probably makes sense since there is not a massive variety within the same family, and with whales as well, there are examples of breeding fertile offspring between genera. So families for this discussion is a valid place to draw the line so to speak.
Regardless, the literature I read suggests that we do see whales very well-represented in the fossil record, sometimes many whales at one site.
If you can find anything more specific along those lines, it would be appreciated.
This message has been edited by randman, 08-08-2005 02:50 AM

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AdminJar
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Message 45 of 66 (230975)
08-08-2005 12:11 PM


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