Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils

Mark, where are the fossils? Where are the thousands of transitional species it would take to evolve a land mammal to a whale?You talk about a small handful of evidence, which at best is questionable, and pretend that can explain away the mountain of evidence not shown, evidence that should exist in the fossil record, but does not.You guys have basically nothing here. A creature, hooved and meat-eating, that has small anamolous ear structure that is a little whale-like.Big deal. That's not much of a confirmation, no matter how hard you guys try to make it out to be. That could be the result of just about anything. Where is the fluke? Where did the whale tails come from?Basically, using an awful lot of human imagination, evos are taking a paltry few potential candidates for the thousands of transitional forms that should exist, and trying to squeeze these extinct species into some sketchy just-so story, all the while studiously avoiding any basic analysis of how many fossilized transitional species should be found, nor of how the vast majority of features arose in whales, and to top that off, evos tend to throw some faked data into the mix like calling vital parts of whales vestigals when in reality, the so-called vestigals are vital to whale reproduction and without those so-called vestigals, whales would go extinct.Sorry, but the evo dog don't hunt.

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where are the fossils?

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A problem only in the minds of those in desperate denial.-

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You talk about a small handful of evidence....

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Handful? The history of vertebrates is filling pretty well. Click on the bold faced links to get more cladograms. The success of the whale discoveries are constantly being repeated in other lineages.-

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that has small anamolous ear structure that is a little whale-like.

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To be more accurate, a significant ear structure that is found only in whales. Not to mention very characteristic teeth. And details in the shape of the skull. If I believed you were capable of understanding what you read, I would accuse you of being dishonest.

That's it? How about some analysis of the number of cetacean families found as fossils vs age of the fossils? Maybe this would show a pattern.

I don't think this necessarily follows at all. Environment is going to play a signficant factor in the chances of fossilation occurring. The marine environment, like all others, can change with time.An example of the non-linearity of fossilisation through time is the coelacanth.Coelocanth fossils have been found with dates ranging from around 350 million years ago to 70 million years ago. There are over 100 species in the fossil record and two known living species. The two living species are different to all those in the fossil record. There is a gap of 70 million years where (so far) there are no transitional fossils linking the extinct and living species.Like I've said before, it seems pretty much blind luck what you do or don't find in the fossil record.

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Oops! Wrong Planet

Please take the issues about chances of fossilization to the "fossilization process" thread.Then when we have settled what we think the number and type of whale fossils should be like we can return here. Meanwhile I'm going to close this one.

Let's keep the fossilization issues as a separate topic. It deserves to be.

Sorry, Ned, but could I ask you to clarify your position? In his OP, randman seems to be claiming that if evolution were true we should see a detailed history of whale evoltution in the fossil record. The discussion of fossilization is, I think, an attempt to explain why we should not necessarily expect such a detailed history.

Fossilization is, of course, pertinent to this topic. However, it has gone off into generalized taphonomy issues. To allow this topic room to discuss things specific to whales (e.g., what is a cetatcean) I think the fossilization discussion can be spun off.Taphonomy is, on it's own, an important topic to separate for future reference too and I don't think it should be hidden under the whales.

randman,You have provided no analysis of the evidence worth rebutting. This is typical creationist denial writ large.Three different datasets have been presented that show an overall phylogenetic congruence. There is no reason whatsoever that amino-acid sequences taken from milk caseins should return similar cladograms to nucleotide sequences taken from long & short interspersed elements, which in turn has no reason to show an overall congruence with morphological data unless evolution were indicative of reality. Your first denial.A corollary of this is that there should be fossils that possess intermediate characters between ancient artiodactyls & modern cetacea, they exist. There should also be a "phasing" of morphs leading to modern cetaceans. There are.Evolutionary predictions are spectacularly borne out, requiring creationists to stick their heads in the sand & claim it's a "small handful of evidence". You actually came here claiming you were honestly assessing the evidence & found against evolution. It is clear you haven't a scooby of how to assess congruence as a statistical artifact, which is why getting three cladograms which show an overall congruence is dismissed out of hand. Three very unlikely things pointing to the same conclusion are not the same as three everyday mundane things pointing to nothing in particular.As far as cetacean/artiodactyl fossils are concerned, there are now four lines of evidence for you to ignore.This may be new behaviour to you, but we've seen it all before.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Hey Ned, don't close the thread. I've been out and am only here for a minute and can't respond substantively until later, but will do so.

NosyNed, how can you separate randman's OP claims about the fossil record's bearing on cetacean evolution from this thread? I'm puzzled.Anyway...randman linked to: "For the most part, this is the case with the entire fossil record. It would appear that the fossil record is very complete, yet there are few, if any possible transitional forms." (quoted text appearing with the graph in the original link...citing this to support his assertion that 90% of the fossil species that will ever be found have been found.I can't find any data points on this curve, randman. Not 90, not 80, not 70...Where did you come up with 90%?This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 08-07-2005 05:52 PM

the shape of the curve since it is near to making a straight lineNow, if you want to claim the curve is wrong, fine. \Where's your data?You guys keep wanting more details on my analysis, but no one is providing any data on the other side, for the most part, and the point of the OP is to find out what data is out there, in terms of numbers and the numbers that should be.I agree that fossilization is an integral part of this thread, but we can dismiss with it, if evos would offer up hard numbers estimates of how many fossils of whale transitionals there should be.It's not like I am trying to challenge the specific numbers. All I am getting are vague claims. I am trying to estimate, and I tend to think Douglas Dewars claims of thousands of transitionals that would be needed is correct, but we don't see them.We do see 100% of known whale families in the fossil record, but we don't see the thousands of transitionals, and I cannot even find one evo that has estimated anywhere the number of transitionals that would be needed. It seems like evos have dodged the analysis altogether, and claim, even with or without the transitionals, that whales evolved from land mammals.Well, why are they not providing estimates? We should have estimates of numbers of transitionals that should occur, then numbers estimated to fossilize and be discovered, and then we can extend a rigorous scientific analysis on whether the data fits the theory.Evos have the theory first, proven in their minds, and then the slightest seeming confirmation of their scenarios, they claim as strong evidence.Well, let's just back up. Where are the thousands of transitional forms that would have to had evolved to create the land mammal to whale transition?Specifically, every single whale-like quality, not just one or 2 iffy examples, should be shown somewhere in the fossil record as gradually occuring. This happened over millions of years, right?It happened very gradually, right?So where are the gradual transitions?Why do we have 100% of whale families fossilized, but nearly (statistially speaking) no fossilization of these transitional forms?

Mark, where are the transitional forms in the fossil record?Every single whale-like feature would have to evolve, very slowly, over millions and millions of years.But you guys cannot show these features evolving.Why?You make a mountain out of the slightest seeming evidence, an ear in a pseudo-canine, that has some whale-like properties.When did he lose the hooves? When did he develop a tail? When he did begin giving birth underwater? etc, etc,...I mean come on. You guys can call Pakicetus a whale and draw pictures suggesting he is whale-like all you want, but he has no similarities with every major whale feature common to cetaceans.Where are the transitionals?Isn't it just a bit more logical to consider that maybe we don't see the transitionals because they never existed?

randman, I'm not one of "you guys"--I'm this guy.There are no data points on that curve, yet you claimed it supported your notion that 90% of fossil species had already been found.But all it illustates is that the more you find of a finite quantity, the less of it there is to find: it is a conceptual graphic, not a data function. Either you have no understanding of the graphic representation of data, or you are debating in bad faith.You asserted that you possessed specific data to support your assertion that we cannot reasonably expect to find additional fossils.You have none.When we plot discoveries of cetacean ancestors, at least there are some data points--in my opinion, more than enough to trace the arc of cetacean evolution. I expect the intervals to be filled as fossil collection moves beyond the readily at hand fields of N. Ameica and Europe to S. America, Africa, Australia, etc.In fact, there is currently a flood of new fossilized species from China and Australia, the former yielding a magnificent proof of avian ancestry, the latter yielding many large mammalian species. S. America is yielding previously unknown 'dinosaur' species.This is not niggling detail. This is a question of your intentional misrepresentation of cited data.I always wondered why people cheat at cards: do they really feel like winners?