Gorilla Genome

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DerelictJunction

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There is no proof that any of these started as one and over time changed into the other.
Good thing too, since that's not a claim of evolution.

You have a bunch of different skulls of different beings. Of which you cannot prove if it even had children and if it did, how long they survived.
Having children is not a requirement for a fossil to be classified as a transitional.

This is all speculation, extrapolation, assumption and faith. You believe it because someone told you that it was true, and someone told them.
Your classification of 99% of all biologists and geologists as storytellers and liars, or stupid, doesn't carry much weight when we consider your lack of knowledge of what the theory of evolution entails.

Nobody has any evidence or proof that these evolved from one to the other.

This is proof of only one thing... each of the owners of these skulls lived once.... that's it.
The display of the skulls is not the entirety of evidence garnered from the discovery, unearthing and study of the skulls and the locations from which they came. That you don't seem to know this, is evidence enough that your opinion on the matter cannot be trusted to come close to reality.
 
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Papias

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Originally Posted by Papias View Post
First - as PS is pointing out, there is a lot more to it than that.

Second - it included the type of mammal, such as the fact that rodents will only be found in the last 80 of those 400. Multiply that by group after group, and the level of specificity is even more powerful.



Ok good. Now you can be the first evolutionist ever to explain how Evolution predicts when rodents will evolve in the history of life on earth. (or any other mammal groups for that matter.)


Watch those goalposts move! I never said it would predict when rodents will evolve. As we know, a priori, we can't know any group will or won't evolve.


Evolution theory simply adapted to the fossil record ad hoc. It does not predict anything specific.

I just showed in the section quoted above that it is incredibly specific. You did read that, right? After all, you did quote, above, the clear answer, then ask the same question again.

In Christ-

Papias
 
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Oncedeceived

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When did they ever think that Tiktaalik was a direct ancestor? Even in the original publication they have Tiktaalik as an offshoot.

"Here we describe the pectoral appendage of a member of the sister group of tetrapods, Tiktaalik roseae, which is morphologically and functionally transitional between a fin and a limb."
The pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb : Nature

It was predicted to be an intermediate between lobed-fin fish and the first tetrapods. The whole prediction was about finding the link between the two.
 
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lifepsyop

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Papers from the 1800's are not my criteria.

You are grasping at straws.

Are you incapable of following a simple discussion? The time period is irrelevant. If you'd like to explain why the time period is of importance, then go ahead, but you won't. You can't logically explain any of your positions, that's what I've noticed about you. You just wave your hands as usual.

Again, you assert that a "mixture of traits" establishes a "transitional sequence". I show you prior "transitional sequences" based on the same criteria that completely contradict present evolutionary models. Yet if you lived in Huxley's time, you could assert with just as much confidence that those character traits were "evidence" of the amphibian-mammal transition excluding reptiles.

Evolution theory simply conforms itself to whatever data patterns are present. Whatever creatures share the most appearance of a mosaic of traits (which will inevitably emerge whether or not universal common descent is true) will be accommodated into the narrative.


The transitional sequence does have to be in phylogenetic order, which it is.


Now we're back to my original point. There is no phylogenetic order predicted by Evolution, not in any specific sense.

If Birds had been initially discovered to have more mammalian traits, then they would be placed closer to mammals phylogenetically. And that would be the Evolution story.

Now, what you wish you could say is that the fossils match the phylogenetic ordering. But we know that isn't true. The fossils don't have to be in order, as we see in the case of fish-tetrapods and dino-bird model.


The platypus is transitional in that it has a mixture of reptilian and mammalian features.

Every organism has some kind of "mixture of traits". You're just proving how equivocal and ambiguous your definition is. What a joke.

However, no one expects it to be a direct ancestor, nor would we expect to find platypus fossils in the same sediments as mammal-like reptiles that mark the beginning of mammalian evolution.

Uh huh... just like nobody expects to find evidence of tetrapods in sediment predating the proposed fish-tetrapod transition right? Oops.

Once again your argument has imploded. But you're either too dense to realize it, or you're playing dumb.
 
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Loudmouth

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Are you incapable of following a simple discussion? The time period is irrelevant.

No, it isn't. Things like knowledge increase with time, as has our knowledge of how life evolved.

Again, you assert that a "mixture of traits" establishes a "transitional sequence". I show you prior "transitional sequences" based on the same criteria that completely contradict present evolutionary models.

And yet you didn't. Sorry, but papers from the 1800's are not valid for modern biology.

Evolution theory simply conforms itself to whatever data patterns are present.

Projection.

Now we're back to my original point. There is no phylogenetic order predicted by Evolution, not in any specific sense.

We are right back to you misrepresenting the theory. Until you can honestly portray the theory, there is no need for further discussion. When you are ready to be honest, let us know.
 
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Loudmouth

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I'm sorry I should have said direct transitional rather than direct ancestor.

There is no such thing as a direct transitional since a transitional is never assumed to be a direct ancestor or a direct lineal descandant of any prior fossil species, any subsequent fossil species, or any living species.
 
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Oncedeceived

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There is no such thing as a direct transitional since a transitional is never assumed to be a direct ancestor or a direct lineal descandant of any prior fossil species, any subsequent fossil species, or any living species.

It seems this falsifies your claim:

But it is their age that makes these tracks so special: 18 million years older than the earliest known tetrapod body fossils, and 10 million years older than the oldest elpistostegids — Tiktaalik , Panderichthys and their relatives, seen as transitional forms between fishes and tetrapods. The finds suggests that the elpistostegids that we know were late-surviving relics rather than direct transitional forms, and they highlight just how little we know of the earliest history of land vertebrates. Emphasis mine.

Four feet in the past: trackways pre-date earliest body fossils : Nature
 
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Loudmouth

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It seems this falsifies your claim:

But it is their age that makes these tracks so special: 18 million years older than the earliest known tetrapod body fossils, and 10 million years older than the oldest elpistostegids — Tiktaalik , Panderichthys and their relatives, seen as transitional forms between fishes and tetrapods. The finds suggests that the elpistostegids that we know were late-surviving relics rather than direct transitional forms, and they highlight just how little we know of the earliest history of land vertebrates. Emphasis mine.

Four feet in the past: trackways pre-date earliest body fossils : Nature

It is a poor choice of words on their part. Tiktaalik is still a transitional form, as they discuss. Even Darwin described how collateral groups can preserve transitional features.

"In looking for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same original parent-form, in order to see what gradations are possible, and for the chance of some gradations having been transmitted from the earlier stages of descent, in an unaltered or little altered condition. "--Charles Darwin, "Origin of Species"
 
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Loudmouth

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Now, what you wish you could say is that the fossils match the phylogenetic ordering. But we know that isn't true. The fossils don't have to be in order, as we see in the case of fish-tetrapods and dino-bird model.

Let's start with this misrepresentation.

This misrepresents what a transitional form is. A transitional form is never assumed to be a direct ancestor. Never. There is no need for a transitional feature to disappear in all sister groups. As we see with the platypus, transitional features can hang around for a long time in a lineage. Finding a living platypus and a fossil placental mammal in no way falsifies the evolution of placental mammals from egg laying mammals.

What the theory does predict is that the mixture of features will produce the predicted nested hierarchy, and they do.
 
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sfs

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No one NOW thinks Tiktaalik was a direct ancestor of lobed-fin fish. The first known tetrapod.
No one ever thought Tiktaalik was any kind of ancestor of lobed-fin fish. Lobed-fin fish aren't tetrapods. What are you talking about?
 
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Oncedeceived

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Let's start with this misrepresentation.

This misrepresents what a transitional form is. A transitional form is never assumed to be a direct ancestor. Never. There is no need for a transitional feature to disappear in all sister groups. As we see with the platypus, transitional features can hang around for a long time in a lineage. Finding a living platypus and a fossil placental mammal in no way falsifies the evolution of placental mammals from egg laying mammals.

What the theory does predict is that the mixture of features will produce the predicted nested hierarchy, and they do.

You didn't address his example given by Huxley.
 
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Loudmouth

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What do you mean? They believed it was a lobed-fin fish in transition to a Tetrapod.

You may have mispoken earlier:

"No one NOW thinks Tiktaalik was a direct ancestor of lobed-fin fish."--Oncedeceived

Did you mean to say tetrapods instead of lobed-fin fish?
 
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