Re: Is it even possible for nem to be so wrong all the time?
We have ample that things you think cannot occur do in fact occur. We have ample evidence that what you think logic excludes does in fact happen. This is because the world is not limited by your ignorance or (in)ability to make logical arguments.
Thus when you argue that something cannot occur, chances are good that it did in fact occur.
As for the creationist/ID'ist viewpoint, they might say that it just further supports that large mutational changes act adversely in the wild as aberrations that nature weeds out, rather than fixes in a population.
What do you mean by "large mutational changes" nem? The usual creationist hopeful monster falsehood?
I too have wondered this, supposing that evolution were true, being that all quadra and bipedal animals could certainly make use of something like wings.
Another typical failure of logic and understanding. That any organism could "make use" of a feature is no cause for such development -- there is no directed purpose to evolution (as there would be for ID -- thus this is an indictment of ID rather than evolution).
Furthermore there are flying quadra and bipedal animals, or does your universe of delusion exclude bats and birds (to say nothing of flying fish, snakes, frogs, etc)?
But from the perspective of the design inference, we have to consider that in order for such an extravagance to develop, first there must have been some mutation which nature never intended. A proto-wing or a proto-fin, or what have you, would first have to have been so crude so as to actually impede and inhibit the organisms survival-- so much so that it would hardly make sense that it ever gets from point A to point B, let alone point A to point Z.
The answer, of course, is that it is not critical that a developing feature have no detrimental aspect, but that it has a net beneficial aspect, so that overall it increases the survival\breeding rate of the individuals carrying or improving the feature.
For instance there is a detrimental aspect to having extra skin between front and hind legs on a squirrel, it can catch on parts of the tree, it takes energy to make and maintain, and it increases places where disease and infection can occur. This is offset by the increased ability of the squirrel to jump\glide further than others, and thus increases ability to evade predators.
And surely if such an evolution took place, as surely it would have to have happened for every single creature we see today at some point in pre-history, there should be transitional evidence of such gradations. So much so that laboratories, universities, and natural history museums would be littered with just such creatures in a timely, ordered sequence.
Why? Because you say so (see opening comments)? Or is this just another example of your ignorance (or denial) of the evidence that exists?
Therefore, it seems far more reasonable that organisms stay within a niche because they were created in a specific way, rather than amoeba's being the progenitors of men.
Only if you hide in a box and restrict yourself to ignorance, denial and bad logic.
quote:Prokaryotes (IPA: /prkæritiz/) (from Old Greek pro- before + karyon nut or kernel, referring to the cell nucleus, + suffix -otos, pl. -otes; also spelled "procaryotes") are organisms without a cell nucleus (= karyon), or any other membrane-bound organelles. Most are unicellular, but some prokaryotes are Multicellular organisms.
The prokaryotes are divided into two domains: the bacteria and the archaea. Archaea or Archaebacteria are a newly appointed kingdom of life. These organisms were originally thought to live only in inhospitable conditions such as temperature, pH-extremes, and radiation, but have since been found in all types of habitat.
A distinction between prokaryotes and eukaryotes (meaning true kernel, also spelled "eucaryotes") is that eukaryotes do have "true" nuclei containing their DNA, whereas the genetic material in prokaryotes is not membrane-bound. Eukaryotic organisms, such as humans, may be unicellular or multicellular. The difference between the structure of prokaryotes and eukaryotes is so great that it is considered to be the most important distinction among groups of organisms.
Prokaryotes (cyanobacteria) have existed for at least 3.5 billion years.
quote:Animals, plants, fungi, and protists are eukaryotes (IPA: [jukæ’t]), organisms whose cells are organized into complex structures by internal membranes and a cytoskeleton. The most characteristic membrane bound structure is the nucleus. This feature gives them their name, also spelled "eucaryote", which comes from the Greek , meaning good/true, and , meaning nut, referring to the nucleus. In the nucleus the genetic material, DNA, is arranged in chromosomes. Many eukaryotic cells also contain membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria, chloroplasts and Golgi bodies. Eukaryotes often have unique flagella made of microtubules in a 9+2 arrangement.
The origin of the eukaryotic cell was a milestone in the evolution of life, since they include all complex cells and almost all multi-cellular organisms. The timing of this series of events is hard to determine; Knoll (1992) suggests they developed approximately 1.6 - 2.1 billion years ago. Fossils that are clearly related to modern groups start appearing around 1.2 billion years ago, in the form of a red alga.
Three main explanations for this have been proposed:
Eukaryotes resulted from the complete fusion of two or more cells, the cytoplasm forming from a eubacterium and the nucleus from an archaeon (alternatively a virus).
Eukaryotes developed from Archaea, and acquired their eubacterial characteristics from the proto-mitochondrion.
Eukaryotes and Archaea developed separately from a modified eubacterium.
The final hypothesis is currently the most accepted.
Eukaryotes (red algae) have existed 1.2 billion years.
Essentially what happened is that cells within cells were developed, resulting in features (the nucleus and organelles such as mitochondria, chloroplasts and Golgi bodies) that did not exist before.
(not duplication of body parts)
It could be argued that every single feature we see starts out as a duplication of body parts, certainly at the genetic level, and even at the cellular level. This would hold for the organelles as well: it is just cell wall material and existing DNA\RNA ...
The issue is not where they come from but how they develop into novel features -- from the original duplication of material to the final form.
This gets into the issue of transitions and intermediates in form, and I don't know if you want to take the topic in that direction.
To my knowledge, I don't know of any instances where this has been observed, either directly or indirectly.
Seeing as all documented features have already developed and our "window" of observation is miniscule compared to the timeline of evolution AND the relative rarity in number of really distinct features (as opposed to adaptations of existing features to new uses), observing one is highly unlikely -- given your criteria for new.
Many transitional features are documented in the fossil record, from legs to ears to wings.
Re: Is it even possible for nem to be so wrong all the time?
And you, RAZD, in particular, used to deal with me kindly. That all changed when you flew off the handle with the Deism thread.
You mean when you called me insane? The one where you made a lot of unfounded personal assertions based on your delusions that were (are) unrelated to reality? THAT one? The one where you still have not answered the basic questions left for you because you are unable to think things through (while others could)? THAT one? Here's a clue:
I made a mistake I was wrong to say the things I said I'm sorry
YOU have unfinished business to attend to.
The Hopeful Monster theory was propagated by Dr. Richard Goldshmidt, an evolutionist, not a creationist.
So? Does that make it any more likely? Any more logical based on what we know NOW versus what was known when he proposed it? Any more reason to take it seriously now than it was then (it wasn't after all)?
As for the mutations, there must have been a large number of qualifying mutations, in long sequences, if they were to have been necessary to be fixed in a population. These mutations must have whatever characteristics are necessary for them to represent something beneficial-- at least in theory.
Why? Just saying this does not make it so or give any reason for it being so.
I gave you an example of the development of a feature and related it to flying squirrels and bats: did you have trouble understanding the process? Each stage has a net benefit and only requires minor modification: no major change or long accumulation of change necessary to reach a beneficial result. Your assumption is wrong.
But, the horizontal gene transfer from one species to another is not information newly introduced, right?
What in the world are you babbling about now nem?
Or are you proposing something we should see if ID were involved but not possible with evolution? Any evidence for this kind of development in any fossil you care to document?
How then would such a small allele frequency be fixed? It must have been a considerable mutation, seems to me.
Well you would be wrong again, nem. Not the first or last time. All it takes is a net relative benefit for an allele to increase within a population. This has already been discussed above.
To demonstrate evolution in some appreciable way, shouldn't you at least demonstrate examples of a mutation that can serve as a prototype of those required by the theory? What demonstrable evidence exists in the annals of the evolutionary theory to support this?
Seeing as we have examples of speciation and documented changes in the frequency of alleles in populations from generation to generation there are so many examples that it boggles the mind that anyone who has been here discussing this as long as you have should remain clueless to it.
This is another typical two-step. See, when someone mentions that Coelacanth have changed very little, they say its evidence that nature does what works, even if it is not intentional. But you say that somehow doesn't apply in reverse. If avian somehow made great use of wings, and nature has even produced crude wings for gliding in some mammals, reptiles, and fish, then why didn't other species of the same Kingdom keep these traits as well?
No kidding, which is why my question was asking why all of the proceeding species didn't retain these traits.
Got im himmel you are dense. Keep WHAT traits? The ones that evolved into gliding surfaces and that are retained in all the descendant gliding species? What are you expecting to see nem? Spell it out.
Obviously you don't know. No one does. But I trust that you are seeing that you can't just make grand assumptions only to come to no actual conclusion.
No, obviously YOU are incapable of seeing it, but this doesn't necessarily apply to anyone else (there goes your false logic again). Nor does this incapability of yours inhibit nature in any way from what it can and cannot do.
I have made the argument before, and I see it as insoluble from an evolutionary standpoint, but I echo again.
Even with large populations and millions of years to back its play, there are not enough possible mutations to propel evolution. Think about it. Eventually they will reach a maximum capacity, and that number is far too little to account for the diversity of life here on here.
If a typical gene has approximately 1000 base pairs, how many substitutions of a single base pair for another are there that will cause a change in an amino acid? Even the staunchest of evolutionists concede that generally less than one mutation in a thousand is beneficial, so that about two of these substitutions will be beneficial. That couldn't possibly be enough to account for the diversity.
And your logic has been demonstrated to be faulty with large holes in it due to your particular blindness to reality.
The obvious solution to your petty quandry is that the DNA differences between all existing and past known organisms amounts to enough "change" to demonstrate evolution. There are enough different patterns to account for every single individual organism that ever lived: think about that nem -- every single organism that ever lived had a unique genetic pattern, this easily accounts for all the diversity we see in the world and the fossil record, and it still leaves room for more.
The obvious conclusion is that your "math" and logic are bogus, faulty, wrong, inadequate, silly and pathetically ignorant. Demonstrated to be so by the more than adequate evidence of reality all around you -- all you need to do is ground-truth your conclusions against reality ... AGAIN.
Because this would end the controversy.
In other words you do not have any logical reason for claiming that "... there should be transitional evidence of such gradations. So much so that laboratories, universities, and natural history museums would be littered with just such creatures in a timely, ordered sequence ..." at all and that all this is amounts to bald assertion and an argument from incredulity based on your continued failure\inability to think things through logically.
In other words you have set up a straw man for what you think we should see, in order to delude yourself that evolution is not possible, instead of looking at what is really predicted by the theory.
If you can't substantiate your claim you should withdraw it, as that would be the honest thing to do.
... and I don't say that condescendingly.
Hard to be condescending from such a level of ignorance and lack of understanding nem. Trying to be condescending when you are so wrong just ends up being pathetic.
Here's a suggestion: start with the precept that you don't know what you are talking about.
A Body Part is any part of an organism, such as liver, lungs, stomach, leg, finger, etc.
Just a note: most of these items are soft tissue, parts that don't fossilize except under extraordinary conditions, so tracking them in the fossil record is extremely difficult.
As an example we have the evolution of the mammal ear bones from the reptile jaw and ear bones -- they migrate and change size over the course of millions of years and many many species in small steps, ...
... but I would also say that the feature of the mammal ear that really differentiates it functionally from the reptile ear is the soft tissue, muscle and cartilaginous structure on the outside of the head that is so effective at augmenting hearing in mammals.
The bones would be modification or "duplication of body parts" but the external ear is a "new" structure.
None of these questions can be answered beyond pure speculation because there is zero evidence of any such transition to begin with. At most, they look at bones from therapods, to modern birds, and to Archaeopteryx, and come up with some version of events that makes sense to them.
Speculation PLUS evidence is not just pure speculation, and YOU know it. Of course denial has to deal not only with the speculation, but with the evidence - evidence that increases every day.
No, it isn't. Why do you think they call it a "living fossil"?
The popular press calls it a "living fossil" because they are generally ignorant of the differences between the fossil species (many) and the living species (2).
quote:The living coelacanths, Latimeria chalumnae,and Latimeria menadoensis are possibly the sole remaining representatives of a once widespread family of Sarcopterygian (fleshy-finned) coelacanth fishes (more than 120 species are known from fossils)all but one of which disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago.
The coelacanth appears to be a cousin of Eusthenopteron, the fish once credited with growing legs and coming ashore-360 million years ago. Today, scientists prefer to cite the tongue-twisting fossil candidates: icthyostega, panderichthys, acanthotega, and the newly discovered Tiktaalik roseae (2004), as the ancestor(s) of all tetrapods-amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, including ourselves.
While the living coelacanths retain many ancient features they have also, contrary to their public image, done some evolving along the way. Live bearing, for example, would seem to be a modern feature.
BTW - living coelacanths are in a different genus from prehistoric ones.
Prior to their rediscovery, it was believed that Coelacanth were one of the first aquatic creatures that experimented with walking. The claim (just by looking at its lobbed fins) was that it was essentially a walking fish. But as we unambiguously know now, that's a complete fabrication spawned from little more than guesswork.
Yet curiously, in actual science (as opposed to nem-land), we still look to the coelacanth for evidence of the way walking limbs evolved:
quote:A 400 million-year-old fossilized coelacanth fin is providing insight into how fins evolved into limbs for walking on land because the arrangement of bones within the fin match the patterns found in living ray-finned fishes, not present-day coelacanths.
In other words the pattern in more modern coelacanths has evolved from the ray-finned fish pattern, and this evolved pattern is reflected in other transitionals along the way to tetrapods (like tiktaalik).
quote:“This ends intense debate about the primitive pattern for lobed fins, which involves the ancestry of all limbs, including our own,” said author Michael Coates, Ph.D., associate professor of organismal biology and anatomy at Chicago.
Gosh, looks like coelacanths are still part of our walking history nem. They amply demonstrate intermediate forms between ray-finned fish and tetrapods.
Prior to their rediscovery, it was believed that Coelacanth were one of the first aquatic creatures that experimented with walking.
And we still don't know if shallow water species of coelacanth exhibited any behavior associated with bottom walking. All we know is that the modern deep sea species don't. Thus adaptation for bottom walking is not ruled out.
Steps to a "new" feature ... and back to the topic
Each stage in the evolutionary process needs to be viable. Because of the well understood and observed process of exaptation, you don't need to start with "stump like appendages".
Getting back to the original topic - mutations of new body parts -- what we see in these instances (fish legs and dinosaur wings) is that there is no single mutation that creates a new part, but a series of mutations that change the structure of an existing feature into something different that is then used differently and further adapted for that secondary use.
This is a two-step process, the first one takes variation and diversity within existing populations that provides an opportunity for a secondary use of an existing feature while still providing the primary function, while the second fine tunes the secondary use and turns it into a primary function.
"I'd suggest going the next step and taking a higher-level genetics or biochemistry class if you're interested. It's a lot harder to learn this stuff on your own, trust me."
The way you can use these cool quote boxes to help make the quotes stand out is
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However, I have stumped several of my PhD Biology professors with some of the questions I have brought up on this forum, mostly regarding the mechanism(s) of evolution and the Cambrian Explosion. It sometimes seems like they don't know much more than what they've been taught in their graduate textbooks. I'm just a very curious and inquisitive person who always takes what anyone tells me with a grin of salt. I hope to be able to contribute to some of the fascinating discussions on this board as I learn and grow during my studies in the biological sciences.
You may only be dealing with grad students rather than full professors, but they should take you question and find the answer if they don't know.
This has been a great discussion, although I'm not sure that the original poster's question has been addressed.
Not sure Forever is still around to follow up either.
Because of the timescales involved, we cannot study macroevolution directly. Therefore we must rely on evidence provided by the fossil record, which provides many many examples of new organs and structures developing over millions of years.
Know of any good sequences?
Enjoy.
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It seems that wing development in entomology hasn't been addressed, and this should create a bigger problem to evolution than whatever ornithology could pose.
Actually it has. The insect wing has evolved several times in several different lineages. One of them is discussed here
quote:TO test this hypothesis, Marden and Kramer collected stoneflies from the banks of Bald Eagle Creek, near Julian, Pennsylvania. From January to March, they spent cold afternoons wading thigh-deep through freezing streams, scooping stoneflies into plastic jars. Once back in the lab, the flies were given various challenges to their flapping ability, including lower temperatures to decrease muscle efficiency and smaller wing areas (via scissors). "We couldn't change things like the neural pathways," Marden says, "so we worked with what we could change."
Marden and Kramer discovered that skimming speed increases directly with wing area, temperature, and muscle size. Yet even severely handicapped stoneflies, with wings trimmed to one-fifth their original size and operating at temperatures just above freezing, were able to skim. "They buzzed along quite well," says Marden.
The clipped wings approximated the size of external gills found on species of both living and fossilized aquatic insects. In an effort to find stronger correlations between wings and gills, Kramer has begun studying scanning electron micrographs of wingvein cross-sections, examining the thickness and shape of veins in various species of stonefly wings, which would strengthen his argument that the wings developed from gills.
I don't know much about evolutionary biological development, but I was under the Impression that wings were present in insect ancestory since the beginning of it's divergence from Crustacea. The insects that do not have wings evolved to that stage from winged ancestors (i.e. siphonaptera from mecoptera).
I do know that wings have evolved, been lost and evolved again on certain insects (Walkingsticks for instance), but I'm pretty sure the first insects did not have wings:
quote: They supposedly originated in the Silurian Period, which lasted from 435 to 410 million years ago. The earliest known fossilized insect is said to have lived in the Devonian Period, which began 410 million years ago. Then suddenly, around 300 million years ago, winged insects appear in the fossil record.
quote:The study of insect evolution is hampered by a gigantic gap in the fossil record. Although fossils of early nonflying insects have been found in sediments dating from the Devonian period nearly 400 million years ago, no insect fossils have turned up from the following 75-million-year period.
Marden said that fossil insects reappear in strata 325 million years old, but by then they had evolved greatly, and their increased diversity suggests that at least some species had left the water to colonize land. Many of the fossils of that period look like present-day insects, including grasshoppers.
quote:The oldest insect fossils so far discovered are tiny imprints of wingless insects found in sandstone rocks of the mid-Devonian period (c. 380 million years old). These earliest fossils closely resemble modern springtails (Collembola) and even by this time they show most of the specialised evolutionary features that characterise the present-day members of this insect order (e.g., the reflexed 'tail' used for jumping). This would suggest that the insect-stock from which they arose must have been already very old in Devonian times, and that the first primitive wingless insects probably appeared much earlier, at least in the Silurian, around 410-440 million years ago.
The earliest fossils of winged insects come from the coal-measures of the mid-Carboniferous (c. 320 million years old). These include the remains of cockroaches (Dictyoptera), some of which are little different from present-day species. It would seem that this group have survived more or less unchanged perhaps from Devonian times (i.e., for about 360-400 million years). The same coal deposits also contain the fossils of diverse archaic insects belonging to ancient lines that, unlike the cockroaches, gradually disappeared before the end of the Paleozoic era, leaving no modern descendants. Many of these archaic forms are huge dragonfly-like insects, with a wing-span of 20 cm or more, like the Palaeodictyoptera and Protodonata illustrated below - true 'dinosaurs' of the insect world.
But there is a gap in the fossil record during the time period where wings first evolved.
If your statement
The insect wing has evolved several times in different lineages
is true than why would James Marden be expermenting with wing development when he could be studying the evolutionary development of the stoneflies feet.
Because it is one way wings may have evolved.
Which seems to be very specific to the stonefly. Is it because if the feet were not how they are now the stonefly would have no way to float on the water? It kinda creates an irriducible complexity issue.
Why? Lots of bugs have the ability to walk on water, and a way of creating bubbles with hairs that take advantage of the surface tension of water is not a difficult process: furry foot, bubble, walk on water, "Jesus this is cool."
... such as the Cambrian explosion. Would insect wing development be apart of this explosion?
No, the beginning of the Cambrian period predates insects. This term can be very misleading, as the "explosion" is on a geological time scale covering millions of years. It refers to a sudden (in geological time) diversification of fossilized body types near the beginning of the Cambrian period, around 530 million years ago, and fossils are found in deposits like the Burgess shale.
Part of the issue of the "explosion" was that this is when easy to fossilize hard parts (skeletons) were first developed, while soft bodied predecessors don't fossilize as easily, thus resulting in a bias in the fossil record.
I am still trying to familiarize myself with certain "Evolution terms" ...
That is an important part of the learning process. Keep in mind that you need to use words (like evolution) the way the scientists use them to be talking about the science, so understanding the terms is critical. Keep an open inquisitive yet skeptical mind and you will do fine.
Did you know, that in Roger Morneau's book:A Trip Into the Supernatural, Morneau tells the story of his experiance in the Church of Satan, and, how he was told by one of the Satanic priests that Darwin was PERSONNALY contacted by Satan, where Satan told Darwin the "theory of Evolution". The priest also told him that Evolution was made up so that people would stray away from the story of creation. I am not making this up!
So a church that is set up around intentional deceit is going to tell you the truth? And a book that presents this as a truth on such flimsy evidence is therefore trustworthy?
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