Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils Part II

Can you back that up? Specifically, although "hostile" may be accurate for shorter time periods, one might could say for much longer periods, the environment is conducive for preservation of mammal remains.How can you reconcile your claim or qualify it with the fact of thousands of Baisolaurus fossils, and whale fossils?

Define rarity. I used this example before, but it is rare for an individual to win the lottery.Is fossilization that rare for a species or family of species?If someone won the lottery thousands of times, would it still be rare?How about if a whole lot of people won it thousands of times?I challenge you to back up your claim, in terms of whale fossils. If some species of whales or families of species of whales have numerous fossils that have been found, then "rare" is a very relative term, and we could just as easily say fossilization is "common."

You noted, of course, that I said it was simplified and later stated that the real situation was more complex including splits.However, I also said that the extra complexity is not important to this point. Why do you think it is? It is not important to this specific point because the continuity without any break in the interbreeding crosses the splits in populations. That is why, for the most part, geographic barriers must hold for long enough to give time for full speciation to occur.Do you agree that an event is localized and specfic or not?What about the rest of the post you are replying to?

For purposes of this discussion, it really doesn't matter where you draw the line on hypotheticals because the point is the transitions, the slow development of all whale traits, would have to be there, but we don't see that, not even anything close to it.This is one reason it has been frustrating talking with you. I can't tell if it is sophistry or you don't get the point. In the example above, which is woefully incomplete in ignoring the branching effect, we could estimate 100 speciation events whether we draw the "event" in one place or not.Let's don't debate the semantics. No matter how you do it, there would be specific numbers of creatures showing specific traits, and all we have is a bare few candidates by evos.

A very good point. Your lottery analogy is also useful here.It is rare for an individual organisim to fossilize. This point has been made, very indirectly before. This has been shown through taphonomic tests some of which have been refered to for you. Have you refered to any such tests? Even one? Have you suppied any quantification that you haven't just made up?So, as has been noted to you before, to determine if a fossil might be found one of the things you need to estimate is the overall population size and geographic breadth of the population.Thus a large population may have enough individuals in it that some will win the lottery. However, this is just the sort of population that will surpress the fixation of new genes and thus be more resistant to speciation other than very gradually over time under ongoing selective pressures. Thus the mathematics of gene flow supports the fact that rapid change will tend to happen more often in small populations.

Because we should not only see direct ancestors, but the many branches. We see barely anything comparitive to what would need to have occurred.

We don't have to calculate all the variables; just do a wide enough comparitive study of creatures which live in the same set of variables roughly.

As has been noted before you have not yet shown why we should expect any particular number of speciation events. You have still not been clearn on what such an 'event' is.You seem to think that each individual small change equals a 'speciation event'. Why is that? It has been pointed out that multiple changes could (and there is every reason to think that they would) happen at the same time in a population. Why does it appear that you have ignored that?

But fossils are what this thread is about. If you don't want to discuss the fossils, then don't.Trying to divert the topic is not helpful.In terms of fossils, they may not be the only evidence, but they are strong data. if they indicate the opposite of current ToE models based on the lack of transitionals seen, then I consider the fossil evidence to counter any other evidence out there.Now, it could be just a change in the model is needed, or the ToE is incorrect, but imo, ToE needs to account for the fossil record overall, not just certain individual finds.

You have not yet, in 100's of post demonstrated just how you calculate what we should see. I think you should do that before you keep harping on this.

No, I actually offerred a method to comparitive analysis on whale and land mammal species and families to come up with a percentage of similar traits and differences to produce a range of how many such changes should exist on average between species, but suggested it would probably be more appropiate to use families of species, and compare the differences between say the whale families in the 2 whale suborders.

Will we are discussing fossils the fact that there is strong morphological evidence and genetic evidence supporting the evolution of whales from particular land animals is certainly something that can not be totally disregarded. They do NOT, in any way indicate the opposite of anything. There are transitionals! All we are discussing is how many there are and how many there "should" be.You have yet to offer any significant support for your estimates of how many there should be. In fact, the only quantification I can recall is your 90% number which you have yet to support or retract.Have you abandoned that number or not? What other numbers do you have?You have been given references that suggest that fossilization is rare and that we should expect gaps in the detailed record.What record of fossils that we do have fits in perfectly well with ALL the other data supporting the idea that whales are the descendants of land animals. It simply isn't as detailed as we might like it is not opposite anything.Evolutionary models say something rather different from what you are saying. This has, in bits and pieces been pointed out to you several times. You seem to be having trouble putting together all the details that are presented to you.

Mick, that paper does indeed discuss different methods for trying to arrive at analyses I have mentioned.Can you point to an area in the article where it offers some conclusions on expected transitional forms concerning this debate, or extract some data you consider useful and put forward your own conclusions on how it might be applied to land mammal to whale transitions?

Then do the analysis. It has been pointed out to you that your suggestions do not seem to be based on any understanding of evolutionary theory.Why, by the way, do you think it is more appropriate to use families since that is a change, IIRC, from your intial claims.ABEBut have you supplied some suggested objective criteria to pick the "changes"? How many occur in one population in parallel? How much genetic change produces just how much morphological change?( I can answer that last one in a rough way -- it is possible to have rather a lot of change with limited genetic change. This is determinable by comparing extant species.)This message has been edited by NosyNed, 08-13-2005 02:00 AM

Is this a scientific observation? I'm not confused and am addressing the posts factually on this thread, as requested beginning back early on to make sure everyone here that makes a claim backs it up.