Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils Part II

Percy, we're not going to get anywhere until you guys deal with some issues.First, the spectrum analogy is dumb because it is a straight-line progression, i.e..no branches.Why is that so hard for to grasp, after YOU'VE been told so many times? Where did the small population come from? This is offensive to have to debate this after so much time, but let's get this clear, evolution is not just a straight-line progression, a linear single group path of small populations. We have proof some populations are in fact quite large.Got it?In terms of your analysis, the error in your logic is that while it is true certain changes affect the likelihood of speciation, over very long geologic time periods, these changes are averaged out. Considering the aquatic habitat that whale evolution would have occurred in, there is very little reason to think that most of these transitions would not have left fossils that we discovered by now.Listing all the ways an individual species could not escape fossilization does little to advance your argument unless you are arguing that this evolutionary process somehow magically created only a handful of larfer populations via the incredible distance of morphological and behavioural changes that would need to be adapted.Basically, you are then arguing that the vast majority of the transitionals were barely functional in terms of survival and stayed extremely small in numbers, but kept on morphing right from land mammals to whales.It's absurd frankly, and you have offer not one whit of quantitative analysis to back up your just-so story here. I can imagine a reasonably likelihood of an exception to fossilization as you posit, even though it's just based on imagination and not factual record, but for one or two speciation events yielding new smaller grouped species, that can be likely, but you are essentially claiming this had to have happened for 90% plus of the process since literally the vast majority of changes are not seen developing. The stages are not seen in the fossil record.That's straining the data on your part, imo, to fit into a preconceived and previously held belief, which is why I think of ToE as more faith-based than science based.

Aquatic environments are better at presevation than dry land; yes. Which aquatic environments are you talking about? Which fossils exactly do you think are missing? Could you list the ones we have and show what is missing between them?

When you think people are being particularly stupid you might consider the possibility that perhaps you've misinterpreted some aspect of what they're saying. If in the end you still decide they're being stupid, be polite anyway, because that way you can remain within the Forum Guidelines.In this case there are two things you're missing. First, you're misapplying the spectrum analogy. It was only intended to illustrate that change is a continuum and is not sudden. It was an analogy to the nature of the small scale of evolutionary change across a single generation, and not as an analogy to evolution itself. Second, if a 1D spectrum is such a significant problem for you then you need only say so. Here's 2D spectrum with a branching tree superimposed: The next time you think you see something dumb, it might do you well to give it a more critical examination to see if perhaps they're saying something different than what you thought. Jumping to conclusions and thinking everyone is dumber than you makes it very difficult to converse with you. Where does any small population come from? The world abounds with species of small populations. Where do you think they came from? Obviously, some evolved from species that also had small populations and so they have always had small populations. Others used to have large populations but now have small populations. Bison once roamed the American west in vast herds then almost went extinct, dwindling, I think, to only a few hundred at one point. Passenger pigeons used to fly in flocks so thick they blotted out the sun, now they're gone.Obviously, large populations can become small populations, and even no population at all. The fate of most species over geological time is extinction, so quite obviously even the most numerous of species, from trilobites to triceratops, from brachiopods to brontosauri, must have reached a point where their populations became very small, and ultimately zero. No one is disputing that evolution is not a straight-line progression, or that some populations are large (our own, for example). Once again you didn't quote anything, so I can't imagine where you picked up this misimpression that anyone was saying this. I again encourage you to give things a second look when you think they sound stupid. You can average out the changes as a mathematical exercise, but that doesn't mean anything about the reality of when speciation actually occurred. You are again restating your conclusion without any rationale. It has been explained that evolution occurs most rapidly in small populations, and that small populations are, because of their size, less likely to leave fossil representatives, and that fossilization is serendipitous anyway. Until you start rebutting the specifics of what we're telling you instead of merely repeating your conclusions, the discussion cannot move forward. I think the first "not" in your paragraph should probably not be there, but even reading it without the "not" I'm not able to make any sense out of this. It doesn't appear to resemble anything I believe or ever said. I never said that the transitionals were barely functional. You must be thinking of where I said that small populations under environmental stress can evolve quickly, for example, into a new species in just some thousands of years, perhaps less. I also provided a number of other reasons that expected fossils might not be found. As we've been telling you, fossilization is not common, and it is not predictable. Jumping ahead to your conclusions is not going to help the discussion until we reach agreement about fossilization.--Percy

Concession #1, thanks. It would be interesting to go back to Arnold and Parker and see if they have data on the numbers of each species and be able to compare the ones during the rapid diversity period with the others in the more static\steady development. Then you could look at the ratio of total members in a short-lived (as a species) small number transitional group (SST) with those in a long-lived (as a species) large number mature population group (LLM), and then you could begin to get an idea of an approximation of an estimate of the relative possibility of finding a fossil from an SST population compared to a LLM population. Without that you don't have any reason to expect finding any fossils from an SST group, because we don't even have any reason to expect finding any fossils from a specific LLM group (due to the very small proportion of specimens that become fossils).⁽¹⁾But there is some additional inferences that can be made from the data presented: 330 different species in over 65 million years, with "just about all the free-floating forams that ever existed" being represented in a record that "clearly reveals a robust, highly branched evolutionary tree, complete with Darwin's predicted 'dead ends' -- varieties that lead nowhere -- and a profusion of variability in sizes and body shapes" and this clearly refutes your claim that: Because it is a longer period than the one you were concerned with and there were only 330 total found. While I would not presume to say that whales must also have only 330 species, you have not shown any conditions that would require a massive increase in a shorter length of time and in the same environment.Furthermore note that the Cretaceous Extinction Event 65 mya affected: Cretaceous Period End (click)
The large marine dinosaurs went extinct, leaving the {eco-nitch\opportunity} for large marine organisms (other than sharks and fishes) open for newcomers. This continued until the whale ancestors moved in and became the first species able to expand to fill this nitch. One could say that it is surprising that it didn't happen sooner (It is also possible that it did happen sooner and they just haven't been found yet).Enjoy.⁽¹⁾ paragraph edited. Recovered original wording after rebooting from lock-up.This message has been edited by RAZD, 08*19*2005 09:05 PM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I look at a tree in my yard. Every branch of that tree started as a small twig. I can't find a single instance where an already large branch managed to transform itself into a different branchI wouldn't expect evolution to be that much different. A small group might find itself in a slightly different ecological niche from the main group of the species. This group starts a line which will either die out (just as most small twigs eventually die), or it will manage to survive and could be the founder group for a new species.

Perhaps you need to get out more ... As I recall there are trees (Pacific NW esp) that have fallen and branches become trees in their own right (what -- macro branching???). What was a branch with a horizontal orientation becomes a tree with a vertical orientation and grows new branches going in directions that would not happen on the original branch (horz orientation). Over time the original {branch} character is buried in the new {tree} character to an unrecognizable extent.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

And it does, especially with quanta of light (photons) of different energies being like individuals in the course of evolution. But that's as far as this analogy can go. So you used as an analogy something you don't (fully) understand? Evolution is quatasized in individuals of species. Careful, I'm a card carrying equine necro-sadist ... Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I'm not going to search through 500 posts to see if this was said, butHere's some more evidence of lineage between whales and aritodactyls:

quote:

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A number of cellular specializations can be recognized in the mammalian cereberal cortex using simple cytoarchitectural or chemoarchitectural analysis to define specific neuronal sublcasses... ...comparable patterns of expression can be found in members of the same clade. Whales and closely related artioactyls share patterns of neocortical expression of calbindin and calretinin

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In other words, whales and artiodactyls share some cellular specializations in the brain that are not shared with other mammals.Harrison, Hof, Wang. 2002. "Scaling laws in the mammalian neocortex: Does form provide clues to function?" Journal of Neurocytology 31, 289-298. (free)

Don't know where else to put this, but it does tie in to randmans rants on the {existence\non-existence} of fossils in the record ...Reasons for lack of fossils, from: How Complete Is The Fossil Record? (click)
"specific transitions" links to
Smooth Change in the Fossil Record
in the original article.This has the article on the foraminifera transitions that I was looking for a while ago (old link broken), so this is a good find for me .Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Just today I read in "The Diversity of Life" ( I'll update this if I need to when I have the book at hand) that we have been finding a new species of LIVING cetacean at the rate of about 1 per decade since about 1900.In other words somewhere around 20% of living whales were not known from the fossil record or any kind of record at all 100 years ago.

All species and all fossils are transitional so this question is not valid..

It's funny because I have argued before with evos that they claim all fossils are transitional be definition, thus making their claims of transitionals completely unfalsifiable and meaningless, but the evos just argue they aren't saying that, and then when you respond to their bogus claims of "superb transitionals" with more detail, you get someone like you saying they are all transitional again.So let's quit with the semantics. The actual transitions are not shown, period.

The fact some habitats don't have good fossilazation rates is why I chose whales to look at. They have excellent fossilization rates due to their habitat and so should their ancestors, and some ancient whales or aquatic creatures have excellent fossilzation rates, but we still don't see the transitions where every major feature gradually emerged.So imo, the article supports my position here, not the evo position, because we should expect to see the whale transitions, but we do not.What we do see looks more like what we would expect form looking at the career of an artist. We see the earlier works share certain characteristics and later works certain characteristics, but we don't see the works themselves evolving one into another.This message has been edited by randman, 12-29-2005 12:59 PM

I guess it depends how you think of a transitional. Technically all species are transitional: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1I think the way people often use the word transitional here is to refer to a fossil that appears to be a link between two known species. For examples of this definition look here:Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQHowever, it doesn't really matter. Keep in mind that the term SPECIES is just a definition created by biologists. What REALLY happens in evolution is that POPULATION GROUPS change over time. There is no magical Species X suddenly becoming Species Y. In fact all we have are population groups. If we start with population group A all creatures directly descended from that population group will be able to trace there lineage back to population group A. Now, group A may certainly split into multiple groups, but if we concentrate on a chaine instead of a tree we can pick out one distinct population group. This group changes over time and WITHIN THIS GROUP ALL MEMBERS ARE ALWAYS OF THE SAME SPECIES. There is no change from one species to another within a population group! (biologists, please correct me if I am off-base slightly here). So in effect, not only ever species, but EVERY creature that has ever existed is transitional (unless you want to throw out those creatures that died before reproducing).The term transitional is simply a human construct that helps us understand the process of evolution. We may say, "wow species 2 is a transition from species 1 to species 3"... but in realiaty that is just a human term to help us understand the process. The term transitional is not relevant to the process of evolution. A population group changes over time.... when we look back we can classify the changes into species, but again this is JUST TO HELP US UNDERSTAND. It is actually irrelevant to the group in question as they reproduce from generation to generation.You, randman... believe it or not.... are a transitional life form.The question of how many transitionals there should be seems like a red herring. How could we possibly know every single change that occurred within population group over time. All we can see are the high level results of millions of years of change.Imagine you are driving from the east coast to California. If you stop and buy a postcard every so often we will have some idea of the route you took. The postcards are just like us finding fossils. However, we can't know the EXACT route you took.What we do know is that you started somewhere on the east coast... exactly where you stopped along the way and where you ended up.This message has been edited by Mini_Ditka, 12-29-2005 01:17 PM

First off, in order to know the fossilazation rate, don't we have to know the total population? I mean, if the only giant ground sloth to ever live fell into the La Brea tarpits, we'd have a total of 1 fossil, but the fossilazation rate would be 100%.So, saying that we expect to see X, Y or Z based on rates that we can't possibly know seems a little disingenuous.Secondly, you're going under the assumption that all evolution is multiregional and at a constant rate.Let's take a scenario:Prehistoric Whale species A is worldwide. A small subset of the species moves into the arctic waters and begins to adapt to the colder environment - eventually becoming an entirely seperate species.For 50 million years, species A lives in 90% of the ocean waters while B lives in 10%.We'd expect to find fossils from species A, given the wide range. We'd expect to find fossils of species B if the artic region was conducive to fossilization. However, if the arctic is not a good "fossil zone" we'd have almost no representation of species B during this period.At the end of the 50 million year period, the world slips into an Ice Age. The "arctic" zone increases to 75% of the world's waters in just a few thousand years.In the fossil record we would not see a "gradual" change in species A. We'd see replacement. The water cools down, species A can't handle it. They swim off, species B moves in and takes over.Your assumption in your post is that evolution happens gradually and multiregionally. There are some scientists that agree with that. However, a different view is that isolated species evolve more rapidly then break out from isolation and replace the individual groups.Just because the fossil record doesn't demonstrate your theory of evolution, doesn't mean that it doesn't support any theory.The fossil record, even as you describe it, fits quite well with isolated evolution and species replacement.