Hypermacroevolution? Hypermicroevolution

Isn't there supposedly some amazing number of new species that crop up every year? What is that number?

Good question. And for a change something that can't be blamed on creationists since we aren't the ones out there identifying new species.Oh well, so much for that line of thought.

I have argued the same thing as mjfloresta is arguing, that all cats came from one. I do, however, consider it possible that there was more than one representative of the cat kind on the ark, perhaps because the previous 1500 or so years from Adam had already differentiated the original kind into new species that couldn't interbreed. This is a possibility I think, but even in Noah's time there may still have been enough genetic potential from one representative cat to produce all that we now see. But at least the original cat kind in Adam's time certainly had the genetic capacity for all known cats to descend from it, from lions and sabre-toothed tigers to today's housecat. It's a matter of the capacity of the genome, nothing else.As for the deification of cats in Egypt I haven't been able to find out just what type or how large a cat we are talking about. One site I found, that wouldn't let me copy from it, mentioned a picture of a priest bowing before "a very large cat" adorned with jewelry, but not apparently a lion or tiger; and another site mentioned the lynx. Possibly not a typical little housecat tabby in any case.

The genome is decreased in allelic potentials with each new speciation event. The original cat had enormous potential for the breeding of everything now seen; but today's cats are the end product of the playing out of those potentials, and their potentials, while still apparently large enough to produce new varieties, are greatly reduced from the original.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It isn't even nothing in the present though, except for the cheetah. But none of this is hyper-anything. It is as mjfloresta has been arguing, simply the playing out of the genome; and the model of the rapidity of great change brought about in domestic breeding demonstrates that there needn't be anything but genetics as usual going on, nothing hyper. No, because the genome would still have been huge by comparison with today's. At most I would suppose there might have been two, possibly three cats on the ark. I do think one might have been enough even in Noah's time, however, because of the stupendous original genetic richness. But all this is guesswork. I wouldn't know how to begin to make the necessary calculations.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not if there were a great many allelic possibilities for the different sizes in the original genome. The housecat and the lion are not necessarily from the same branch, as mjf has said. One set of offspring went the housecat direction, another went the lion direction.

OK, there is some confusion here. And I'm going to take back my thought that there might have been more than one cat on the ark. Nope, just one, or that is, two. From which came all cats we know today.What would have happened is, yes, there would have been many varieties of cats from Adam to Noah, just as there would have been many varieties of everything else, and that would include human beings. Just as humanity was focused through the bottleneck of Noah and his family, losing who knows how many genetic lines that preceded that time, so also the cat kind and all other kinds were focused through the bottleneck of whatever representative was on the ark. That means that many varieties of cat from Adam to Noah were lost to posterity, many alleles for interesting variations lost that is. The happenstance of the preservation of the sabre-toothed tiger demonstrates one direction that enormous variety took.So, you've worded this wrongly when you say that "at least 80% of the present species would have already existed in Noah's time." It's more like some great percentage of all species existed in Noah's time and a great deal was lost to the lines that came down to the present. I wouldn't take a guess at the percentage myself. However, the genome being so large and all that, alleles for many of the same developments could easily still have been present in the genome of whatever cat type was on the ark. .Edited by Faith, : Had to change 7 to 2 as cats are unclean animals

I appreciate your arguments and am glad to support them. You have a somewhat different angle than mine, a better grasp of the scientific terminology for sure, but we seem to be working the same territory and two heads are better than one.

What sort of evidence would you expect to see? It is only in relatively recent times that naturalists came into being, and for most of the history of the world human beings have been isolated from each other and the animals in their vicinity either deified or mythified or at least not naturalistically described.

Why does it matter? Whatever it is, either it or an ancestor was on the ark.

No KIND became extinct if that is what you mean? Just as humankind went on after the Flood, so did all animal kinds go on after the Flood; but just as humankind only went on from the genes in Noah's family, so did the animals go on from those in their ancestors on the ark. CERTAINLY whole branches of the human race became extinct in the Flood; likewise animal branches. What's the problem?

Yes!! I agree about taxonomy and current genetics, but I don't get what you are saying about hybridization and viable offspring as indicators of a kind. Seems to me pretty obvious that some members of the same kind are no longer able to interbreed.

Funny how you guys take your wild guesses as gospel truth.

But that does not follow from what has been said. For one thing I've denied the term "hyper" so attributing that to me is false.I've already said that the genome is no longer as rich in potentials as it used to be for probably all species. What we see now is much slowed down from previous evolution rates. Nevertheless, certainly speciation continues, and a devotee of the ToE ought to know that as well as I do. Many examples have been given on this forum. The phenomenon of "ring species" for instance has come up a few times -- clear changes in a number of different populations from an original population in a short period of time caused by geographic isolation. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But there was. There is pretty great variation in "races" throughout the world just from Noah's family. I think you must be confusing a few things here. I was talking about branches of humanity as well as animals that died in the flood. Humans still exist, and so do representatives of all the animals that died in the flood. Of course they survive today. Cats today are still cats etc. It follows from what we know of genetics that if bazillions of individuals of every species died in the Flood, then whole branches of variations were wiped out. Not kinds, but "races" if you will. And yes, it is very possible that nothing like them would ever exist again. OR, as I also said, it is possible that there was still so much genetic potential in the genome in Noah's day that alleles for much of what died in the Flood did get expressed in further variations after the FLood. But obvfiously some didn't. The sabre-toothed tiger never came back. The dinosaurs never came back. Archaeopteryx hasn't been back. Many things in the fossil record are absolutely extinct. Yet modern relatives of most of them continue to exist.