fossilization processes

The above is all I see as input information. You then move this to: Why? Unless you think the transition took place multiple times we would expect the founder population to be much smaller than the diverged populations some 10's of millions of year later. How did you get from "relatively common" to "an abundance". We are supposed to be looking at numbers and you haven't found any numeric values yet. Now it has gone from an abundance to "massive". How did you get
there?Note that you are jumping around between species and families. That is careless too. It is much easier to represent a family than each species in it.You're not being intellectually honest here. Even if that were true, and there are obvious reasons for thinking it is not, what percentage of fish are fossilized? The article itself comments on reasons for different levels of fossilization.What this article is telling us is that the diversity of different groups appears to be reasonably well representated. That our older understanding of the nature of the evolutionary pathways was pretty good and that what we have now is enough to suggest there will not be any surprises in the future.As far as whales go you don't have enough information of any kind to draw conclusions yet.In fact you have darned little information at all.

Ned, you are still not looking at the date. For example, If the transition were one or 2 speciation events, or let's say families of species arising, you might have a point, but the differences between land mammal and whales would suggest numerous such events, imo, hundreds, and each new family of species would undoubtedly be evolving, according to ToE, into different branches, etc,...So there is no reason to think the "founder species" would be smaller than the current group of whale species since in reality, there would be dozens if not hundreds of families of species needed to arise in order to create the transition, and there is absolutely no reason to assume they would all be small, and a good bit of reason to think they should have thrived long enough to continue to evolve, and in so doing have created far larger numbers than the species of whales we see today.In other words, you have it backwards. With such a long transition in terms of so many traits needing to arise, we should expect larger numbers and greater diversity in the extinct transitionals that spread out in bushes, which should have created many groupings of creatures similar to the Order of cetaceans, irrardless of calling them cetaceans by evos.It takes many dead-ends presumably of transitionals that go extinct in leading to a form existing today.

TalkOrigins backs up all of their information by including direct quotes from the original scientific studies. So why wouldn't you trust them? Are you saying you don't trust scientific studies? What do you trust, then?

How so?

As noted several times but you have ignored there may well be NO speciaion "events" involved. Zero, zip, nada and none you have not discussed that further and don't seem to have read the discussions on that issue. In the few snapshots we have there is no suggestion that I see that there had to be any clearly deliminated "events". We have never defined event carefully. I am useing the word the way you have previously.Many of the early changes needed to get to fully or nearly fully aquatic may have happened in a small, localized population (and for changes to fix in a population we know that there must be significant selective pressure and/or smaller populations).Now to get this back on topic (fossilization). If there has been a smallish (1,000's of individuals), localized (one area and niche in the world) population that has undergone evolutionary change with no sudden (less than 100's of generations) speciation "events" then we will not have as many potential individuals to fossilize as you seem to think.In addition, I just realize, you have been mixing two very different numbers (or we all have): one is the number of fossils that should have been formed the other the number that we should have found. They are very, very far from the same thing.The number of fossils formed and intact depends on things like the number of individuals that every exisited, the type of environment they lived in, the extent of their geographic spread and what has happened geologically since they would have been laid down.The number found depends on how much effort has been expended and the geologic changes that have happened (to expose or not expose the sediments for example).You have not yet developed anything like a reasonable numberical estimate of what we should expect to find. This does not follow. What stops several of the changes needed to make the transition happening in one small population, in one area together.That is, as has already been noted to you, you can change the location of the nostril, have a more flexibile backbone, make feet more paddle like, reduce the external ear all within individuals in one population at about the same time. This could all happen with one or a few species extant at anyone time without specific speciation events occuring just a gradual change in a population over time. I don't see how this follows.

Ned, that's clearly wrong. New species would need to emerge. It would not be one long gradual change, such as with a spectrum. That's not what evolutionists teach. In fact, evos teach that a speciation event can occur and both the parent species and the new species coexist at the same time.You are proposing a different theory of evolution than presented by mainstream evolutionists. Maybe some changes, but are you claiming that the entire history of whale evolution consisted of changes in small, localized populations?can you cite some evidence for that? I don't follow you here. Individual members of species do not evolve. I haven't been mixing them up. Have you been reading my posts? I clearly state we need to determine estimates of how many fossils occur, and then estimate what percentage of those should be found.The way I propose to do that is to compare whale species, or actually I have revised it now for whale families, that are represented in the fossil record, and consider a similar percentage of transitional forms, represented at the family level, should be evident.One reason I draw the line at families is that some cetacean genera have been known to breed, even in the wild, across genera, and therefore considering we are trying to assess the process, and not definitions, it might be better to look for groups of species, families, that are transitional.I would still expect there to be hundreds of these transitional forms at the family level.My evidence for that is to compare, say, the differences in the Suborders of living whales and whale families. There are differences, such as some toothed and some not toothed, but overall, they are remarkably similar.The range of differences is quite small. So expanding that range just a little should produce a corresponding jump in intermediate families and corresponding species, and as we continue to look at a wider range of change, there should be a wider range of transitionals.This effect should be multiplied by the many auxiallary branches that would have spun off from the transitionals in direct ancestry.We see absolutely none of this though in the fossil record.

So, where's the 90%? Let's see the data and analysis.

That's precisely what they teach, and a spectrum is a good analogy. Remember that evolution holds that change occurs gradually through the accumulation of many small changes. There is no one single change that turns one species into another. Yes, of course this is a possibility. A population becomes separated into two segregated populations, perhaps because the course of a river changed after a flood. Different ecological pressures on the two sides of the river cause the two populations to diverge. The divergence happens gradually. If the two populations were brought back together after a thousand years, perhaps most of the individuals could interbreed, meaning they'd still considered be the same species by most biologists. After five thousand years maybe only half the individuals could interbreed. Are they still the same species? You could argue it either way. Probably it would be best to just characterize them as very similar species that can often interbreed. After ten thousand years probably very few of the individuals could interbreed. Most biologists would consider them two distinct species.Which population represents the parent species? Well, if one of them changed a little while the other changed a lot then the one that changed only a little could be considered the parent species. If both populations changed significantly then neither could be considered the parent species. The parent species hasn't gone extinct, it has merely evolved into a different species, two different species, actually. If you mean evidence of precisely how whales evolved, then I doubt sufficient evidence exists. Someone else perhaps knows with more certainty. Ned was only explaining that we know that evolution is much more likely in small populations (particularly under stress) than in large populations. In large populations, a mutation or rare collection of alleles can be quickly swamped. But in small populations they can have a significant impact. Think of it as the difference between throwing a boulder into the ocean versus into the fish pool in your backyard. Small changes can have an impact on a small population that they couldn't have in a large population.And so it is speculated that whale evolution may have followed this model. But it may not have. Just because we've figured out that evolution happens more quickly in small populations doesn't mean that that's the only way that speciation occurs. This is an area of ongoing research. Ned isn't saying here that individuals evolve. He's talking about a small population, which is why he says "1,000's of individuals". It is the population that evolves. The evolution of the population is measured by the changing frequency of alleles in the population's gene pool. You're going to end up confusing yourself if you seek both whale species and whale transitional forms. All species are transitional. Keep in mind that evolution is gradual. It does not proceed in large steps. The species we know of on the planet today are just a snapshot of what they look like right now. 100,000 years ago many of them appeared different, and 100,000 years from now many of them will also have changed from their current forms. The fact that the change is usually far too slow to see over a few human lifetimes does not mean the change is not happening.Fossilization is a serendipitous process. The law of averages would seem to tell us that the population size and the duration over time of a species would govern how many fossils of a species we should find, but it is nowhere near that simple. The biggest problem is that enormous regions of space and time of geologic layers have been lost forever because of subduction of the sea floor (no sea floor is older than 200 million years) and erosion on the continents. Sometimes on the continents you can deduce what has been eroded away because it has been preserved elsewhere, and this would help with the analysis you would like to perform, but just this one factor alone is making what you propose difficult, and this is only one factor. A creatures habits and habitat also play a significant role, and finding these details for an extinct species is understandably problematic.So I think you need to rethink the analysis you want to do by recognizing that all species are transitional, that fossilization is serendipitous, and that many fossils have been lost forever. So what you're saying is that the fossil record for whales doesn't look like what you would expect if evolution were responsible. Kuhn said that tearing down one paradigm without proposing a replacement is the antithesis of science. What process do you think explains the whale fossil record?--Percy

Well, it looks like I've turned TB's recolonization thread into a "fossilization process" thread...and randman has turned my "fossilization process" thread into...well, i'm not sure what...I guess a thread about deriving actual number of species from current and fossilized species or something like that. Are you talking about the "evolution" from pakicetus to the modern whale?If pakicetus didn't give rise to whales, then pakicetus is not part of the whale fossil record.What evidence is there that "pakicetus" gave rise to the whales? (I mean besides the fact that somebody decided to put the "cetus" suffix on the creature's latin name).--Jason

Actually, I wasn't asking about evolution at all. Since Randman doesn't accept evolution as the process responsible for the distribution of fossils, in this case for whale fossils, I was asking him what process he thought was responsible. That's why I paraphrased Kuhn. If he wants to abandon evolution, what is he proposing in it's place?But your initial comment about the topic is accurate. This discussion is taking the thread off-topic and should be picked up somewhere else. So Randman, please don't reply about alternatives to the TOE in this thread.--Percy

Percy, come on. That is not a good analogy at all. The spectrum of light does not evolve up and down the spectrum. It's a wave so that the whole thing encompasses one single thing. In other words, the causal effect of light proceeds not from one of the spectrum to the other, but upon the entire spectrum at once.To view evolutionary processes in this manner is a horrible distortion of what ToE claims in terms of macro-evolution.If the spectrum analogy were true, you would have no missing links, and more importantly no branches at all. The fact that changes occur slowly accumulating gradually according to standard ToE models does not equate a spectrum at all.Specifically, the changes in mammals have to occur within groups of creatures that can interbreed. Let's call such groups "species" although we know modern definitions of species can sometimes interbreed.The species or part of it has to evolve. It is a distinct and narrowly defined group. It is true scientists sometimes have difficulty classifying species, but that does not change that sexually reproducing mammals can only mate with a narrowly defined, discrete group of creatures. Those creatures, called a species here, are not part of some giant spectrum of species that can all interbreed. The "species" is the quanta, if you would, of evolution.So what actually occurs is a part of the species, generally, or theoritically the whole species (less likely), is considered to evolve into a new group that can interbreed with itself but does not interbreed with the prior group, and thus a speciation event takes place.That is what ToE teached. Individuals creatures don't evolve. Groups of creatures evolve. With mammals, they evolve only within a context of creatures that can sexually reproduce. It's not a spectrum. It's a distinct and discrete group that can sexually mate and produce fertile off-spring that enables evolution. End of story.Anyone using a spectrum analogy is highly ignorant of the claims of evolutionary theory, imo, or they just haven't thought it through. I agree that this is the theory, but the fact we don't see anything but leaps to the moon (extremely large steps) with land mammals to whales in the fossil record is not adequately explained. It's not that there are "gaps." There is just not even a tiny percentage of "steps" shown to even be able to verify the process occurred or the theorized steps are steps at all. But then why do we see the same families of whale species millions and millions of years ago. In fact, whales haven't really evolved that much in something like 30 million years. We see new whale species, but no new orders, no new suborders, and no new families really. Considering whales are sometimes known to breed across genera, it is arguable that defining species as groups that interbreed, which is the relevant aspect for this discussion in evolutionary theory, we may well not have seen any new species for millions and millions of years. So we see a great deal of stasis with whales.But evos claim that prior to seeing what I would call genuine whales, fully aquatic, blubbery creatures like the whales today, evos posit a fairly rapid evolution from land mammals to whales that essentially left nary a fossil trace, except theoritically a few transtional forms defined so, not because of a massive number of whale similarities, but for Pakicetus, with very slight similarities, very, very slight, which could just as easily be explained by common design, convergent evolution, etc,..So despite all of the whale families represented back in the Miocene era with whale fossils, we see nearly none of the transitionals prior to that. Yep. I could care less what Kuhn said. I am interested in truth. If science, as Kuhn's quote suggests, means clinging to a paradigm even when the data is against it, then science needs to readjust it's definition of itself and realize admitting the data does not agree with a paradigm because you think you have nothing better is infinitely more reasonable than trying to ignore the data to cling to a false paradigm just because you cannot yet explain the data. Deliberately clinging to a falsehood out of some theory about science is just plain ignorant. It suggests that we have perfect technology and thus should be able to hold forth a viable hypothesis on every subject when that may not be the case.In clinging to that principle, evos are just resigning themselves to overstatements, selective use of data, etc,...because they are "going with the best one" and thus have to drum up the data, misrepresent it, etc,...in order not to appear foolish. Claiming the fossil record supports land mammal to whale evolution without evne bothering to make predictions of the numbers of transitionals that should be expected is strong evidence of their avoiding doing the factual analysis prior to insisting that the data supports their model.Moreover, even with Kuhn's principle, that does not justify the dogmatic attitude of evos when the data is inconsistent with the theory. I can think of several alternative hypotheses, but imo, the mechanisms posited by evos are insufficient to explain the process. If whales evolved from land mammals, it would appear they had some help in speeding up the process in an unnatural manner and thus creating such a quick process that no fossils were left behind.Another alternative is that we don't see the transitions in the fossil record because whales did not evolve from land mammals, but were created as whales, perhaps via a single proto-whale group.There is also the possibility that we are misreading the data altogether on the past by assuming the past is non-static. General relativity would paint a picture of the earth as not so much a ball in space, but as a streak through space-time. Maybe the object as a whole, the streak not just the sphere, can be affected as a whole. Maybe it can wobble for instance. This is a crude example, but if we have a pole, and we hit the pole at one spot, the whole pole would be affected by the event.Well, the earth can be thought of as that pole. Maybe there are events that can impact the earth as a whole in space-time with the net effect being a vibration in the earth's time-line, causing some things to appear and other's to disappear, or maybe there are other means for causal effects from the present and future upon the past, either expanding or contracting the past.Some concepts in QM and relativity suggest this is likely, one being the transverse wave theory, and another being the very credible work by Vedral and Brukner showing particles can become entangled over segments of time.Those are some of the possibilities.This message has been edited by randman, 08-09-2005 03:14 PM

We have all of the whale families represented in the fossil record, dating back to the Miocene period, or that is the suggesting of the evo links I linked to.So why do we not have the transitional whale-like families well-represented.Btw, whales over the last 30 million years have not evolved into anything but whales, aquatic, blubbery species, not really changing that much from the typical whale format.But somehow in the preceding 10-15 million years, land mammals underwent massive evolution all the way into whales, leaving no evidence in the fossil record, except a couple of highly debatable theoritical transitionals with thousands not seen at all, and then whale evolution essentially just stopped.Nice creation myth.

Message 14Is the reply since it is off topic in this thread.Please do not ignore it I have given you a warning about using QM mumbo-jumbo there which is both off topic and nonsense.

Nosy, first off, you seem to have no idea what you are talking about in claiming QM stuff I discuss is mumbo-jumbo. Take some time to read a little on the following thread, which although does not discuss these things in detail, ought to give you some concept on the physics of these issues.http://EvC Forum: What is Time and Space -->EvC Forum: What is Time and SpaceOn the issue or being off-topic, Percy asked me to speculate on alternative hypothesis, and these comments were in reference to potential alternative hypotheses or explanations, and thus on-topic. Note the comments were in large part auxilliary to the main comments that, imo, fully addressed Percy's post.

Hi Randman,You probably missed my Message 55. TheLiteralist brought the topic drift to my attention and I agreed, so I requested that you not reply about TOE alternatives in this thread. I should have posted an additional message directly to you.If you think you have some strong alternatives to the TOE that you'd like to discuss, why don't you repost that part of your message in an appropriate thread, or perhaps propose a new thread.All the whale stuff looks pretty much off-topic, too. It's an interesting discussion, though. I'll spin it off into the whale evolution thread, if that looks appropriate.Oh, one more thing. Keeping threads on topic takes a lot of work on the part of moderators. Everyone gets cautioned about staying on topic, including me. It's no big deal and certainly not worth arguing with moderators about.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 08-09-2005 09:05 PM