Gorilla Genome

[Oncedeceived]

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?

Geeze, I need to post when I can pay attention to what I am writing. Yes.

 

[JacksBratt]

Good thing too, since that's not a claim of evolution.

Let me be more precise then. There is no evidence that the creatures that owned these skulls were of a species that changed AT ALL. These creatures could have lived and died and then their species may have became extinct and there is no evidence that one is the ancestor of the other.

Having children is not a requirement for a fossil to be classified as a transitional.

The species would have had to reproduce to do so....

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.

First, show me the paper that states such a fact

Second, I agree that the majority of "educated" people now follow this belief. However, truth is not a democracy.

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.

That these skulls are evidence of transition is not something that would stand in any court as proof of any evolving. They are static examples of creatures that once lived.

That is the reality.

 

[JacksBratt]

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.

Or ever have.

 

[Loudmouth]

Let me be more precise then. There is no evidence that the creatures that owned these skulls were of a species that changed AT ALL.

The transitional morphology of the fossils is exactly that evidence. If humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with other apes, then the theory of evolution predicts that there should have been individuals in the past with a mixture of modern human features and traits common to other apes. This is a testable hypothesis. The fossils are used to test that hypothesis. When the observations match the predictions, they are evidence for that hypothesis.

Every time a creationist claims that there are no transitional fossils it is a tacit admission that if transitional fossils were found that they would be evidence for evolution. It is creationists who continually try to claim that gaps in the fossil record is evidence against evolution, yet when those gaps are filled they no longer think the fossil record should be looked at.

That these skulls are evidence of transition is not something that would stand in any court as proof of any evolving. They are static examples of creatures that once lived.

Using your logic, no forensic evidence would stand in court. You would argue that no one can prove that those little sworls of oil found at the crime scene actually came from a finger. You would argue that no one can prove that the DNA at the crime scene actually came from the defendant. Afterall, any similarity between the DNA at the crime scene and the defendant could be caused by a common designer. No one can prove that the marks running down a bullet came from the rifling of a gun. No one can prove that the foot shaped blood patterns around the murder victim came from a shoe.

Your level of denial would make us throw out every fact in the universe.

 

[Loudmouth]

Geeze, I need to post when I can pay attention to what I am writing. Yes.

Reading between the lines, your intent was clear enough. I am sure that I have made silly mistakes as well.

We really should revisit exactly what the scientists said about Tiktaalik, and how they described the fish with respect to ancestry. There may be other papers, but these seem to be two of the important ones, both published on 06 April 2006.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/nature04639.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/nature04637.html

A quick words search for "ancestor" doesn't turn up a single conclusion stating that Tiktaalik is a direct ancestor or direct descendant of any other species. Tiktaalik and other transitional species are consistently described as a side branch to the direct lineage.

Elpistostegalia (= Panderichthyida17) has generally been used to unite Elpistostege and Panderichthys to the exclusion of other sarcopterygians5, 18. Most of the features used to support this grouping, however, are also seen in early tetrapods such as Acanthostega19, 20, 21, 22, Ichthyostega23 and Ventastega24, 25. Accordingly, a flattened skull with dorsally placed eyes, an elongate snout including paired frontal bones, enlarged prefrontal bone, marginal nares, enlarged spiracle, dorsoventrally flattened body, and loss of the anterior dorsal fin are all attributes of the tetrapod stem lineage and do not unite Elpistostege and Panderichthys unambiguously26, 27. Consequently, we use Elpistostegalia as the name of the node along the tetrapod stem lineage that includes the common ancestor of Panderichthys, Elpistostege and tetrapods and is diagnosed by the characters above. We use the term 'elpistostegalian fish' for the paraphyletic grade of flat-headed, finned sarcopterygians that lie along the tetrapod stem lineage.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/nature04639.html
​

Even the figures in the two papers show Tiktaalik as a side branch.

Figure 4 : The pectoral fin of : Tiktaalik roseae: and the origin of the tetrapod limb : Nature

Just to stress this again, these are the first papers written on Tiktaalik in 2006. The tetrapod tracks found in Poland were discovered in 2010, 4 years after these papers. Unless you think someone travelled back in time and redacted those papers, it would seem to me that Tiktaalik was always considered a side branch.

This also gets back to the platypus. The monotreme clade sits between the placental mammals and our common ancestor shared with reptiles. Living monotremes still have transitional features, such as egg laying, cloaca, and rudimentary mammary glands/structures. Those transitional features were passed down to monotremes from the common ancestor that they share with us. If we find a 30 million year old placental mammal fossil, does this falsify the evolutionary transition since we have a living creature with transitional features that should predate that 30 million year old placental mammal fossil?

 

[PsychoSarah]

You just implicitly admitted here that the discovery of Tiktaalik was lucky. If there is a "degree of error of 20 million years", then how could Shubin have possibly have known to hone in on the precise rock layer? When, according to yourself, a Tiktaalik-like body-plan could have just as easily been found 20 million years earlier, or 20 million years later.. that's practically the entire Devonian period!

Sarah you have to really sit back and think about your reasoning here, because it is a trainwreck of flawed logic.

It gets even worse for you. You say a 20 million year difference is "not significant"... okay, if 20 MY is negligible, why not 30 MY, or 40, or 50 million years? Is being 50 million years off significant? You have no idea.. you have no standard, you're just making things up.

Again proving my point. Evolution theory is just a wishy-washy fog with no robust constraints or significant predictive power. You yourself demonstrate that, while groping around for some solid internal structure to the theory, you find nothing but vapors.

A single rock layer can span millions of years, so even if a fossil is 20 million years older than expected, it could still be found in the same rock layer as a fossil that much younger than it. This is compounded on the fact that they were hoping to find an ancestor of modern species, which they probably did not.

The only real luck involved is in the fact that a specimen fossilized at all: chances are, the majority of species that have lived on earth have left behind not a single identifiable trace of their existence, and the farther back we go, the more and more this is the case, thanks to events exposing the fossils to the elements and destroying them, and that certain body types just don't make for good fossil formation.

I am not making things up, and I detest the accusation. If you are going to say things like that, back it up with some evidence that I am wrong, heck, if that degree of error was unacceptable, don't you think the people who found the fossil would comment on it? Additionally, I was more talking about the date assigned to the fossil rather than its actual age. You try to predict how fast evolution occurs when every species and environment changes its speed. The farther back you go, the less accurate you will be. Sucks to be a paleontologist sometimes.

Think of it like burning calories. I might be able to estimate how many calories you burned over the course of the day if you tell me what you did and for how long, but I would be hard pressed to tell you how many you had burned by 10 am if you never told me when you woke up. Worse, you wouldn't be doing the same activity the whole day, so your calorie burning would vary in speed.

But, knowing what you did the rest of the day would help, and narrow it down, but my prediction for earlier in your day would be bound to have more error than later.

 

[lifepsyop]

This also gets back to the platypus. The monotreme clade sits between the placental mammals and our common ancestor shared with reptiles. Living monotremes still have transitional features, such as egg laying, cloaca, and rudimentary mammary glands/structures. Those transitional features were passed down to monotremes from the common ancestor that they share with us.

 

[Loudmouth]

img deleted

I see that you have conceded.

 

[Oncedeceived]

From the 1800's? We have learned a lot about vertebrate anatomy since then. We are talking about the modern theory, afterall.

Right, and we will learn more and more by the year 4000 too.

 

[mark kennedy]

Again, you asked for an example of speciation at the very beginning, not 5 million years worth of evolution.

This is not some random conversation that has been all over the road. I have been clear that what I care about is the evolution of humans from apes and specifically human brain evolution. You make it clear that substantive arguments will be ignored.

I just gave you the evidence of it happening in real time. That evidence is the genetic divergence of the two populations of apple maggot flies.

Classic example

We have the evidence that humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor. You just refuse to address it.

That's just it, you have none. That's not even the worst of it, when you do have a good argument you don't make it. What you want to do is argue in circles around real issues and it sad. If the evolutionist made a substantive argument now based on real world genetic and paleontological evidence it would make it less likely they are going to fade to black.

The pendulum will swing, I'm sure of it. I'm sorry you did not learn more in these exchanges because genetics has been the most fascinating field I have encountered in these debates. The saddest part of the whole experience is that the people who could have really taught you the most left you to your own ignorance. I blame them.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Let me be more precise then. There is no evidence that the creatures that owned these skulls were of a species that changed AT ALL. These creatures could have lived and died and then their species may have became extinct and there is no evidence that one is the ancestor of the other.

The species would have had to reproduce to do so....

Populations evolve, not individuals.
Your objection to the idea of "transitional fossils" is completely baseless and exhibits a clear misunderstanding of what a transitional actually is.

Second, I agree that the majority of "educated" people now follow this belief.

It's not a belief. It's a scientific theory. Which is not the same.
Scientific theories are not to be "believed". Rather, they are to be accepted or rejected through an intellectually honest evaluation of the evidence, its uses, its explanatory power.

Evolution is accepted by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community.

However, truth is not a democracy.

Correct. And "truth" is also not science's business. "truth" implies things that are certain, proven.

Science is about zero-ing in on "truth" and never assuming that you have arrived.

That these skulls are evidence of transition is not something that would stand in any court as proof of any evolving. They are static examples of creatures that once lived.
That is the reality.

What features should a fossil have before you would accept it as a transitional fossil?

 

[JacksBratt]

Populations evolve, not individuals.
Your objection to the idea of "transitional fossils" is completely baseless and exhibits a clear misunderstanding of what a transitional actually is.

The idea of populations evolving, to me, is much more difficult than an individual. I say this because it is far more conceivable for an individual to mutate but to have a whole population do the same? Not buying that.

It's not a belief. It's a scientific theory. Which is not the same.
Scientific theories are not to be "believed". Rather, they are to be accepted or rejected through an intellectually honest evaluation of the evidence, its uses, its explanatory power.

To accept an idea or statement I would have to believe it. This is just double talk. Some say evolution is a fact. Others say "science cannot prove anything". It's a theory, now it's not, it's proven, but science proves nothing... what is the definition of "this word or that word".....round and round it goes.

Evolution is accepted by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community.

Yep, it is. And, all these scientists went to and accredited institution of post secondary education that force the TOE down the students throats. From young children we are inundated with this farce and if.....if anyone goes against this sacred cow of a religion they may be refused a passing grade, refused accreditation, refused a degree, removed from a position of employment, chastised by their peers, have papers and presentations severely attacked...face it, the TOE is a strong brick wall of intellectual and educational strong holds that control the "truth".

And, once again, truth is not a democracy. Neither is it right because some council refuses someones observations that contradict the TOE farce.

Correct. And "truth" is also not science's business. "truth" implies things that are certain, proven.

Unless they contradict the status quo and the TOE.

Science is about zero-ing in on "truth" and never assuming that you have arrived.

Again, unless it is rocking the boat, causes the TOE to be questioned, backs up the biblical account, shows that their is some force outside the natural realm of the science of today.

What features should a fossil have before you would accept it as a transitional fossil?

That's my point. You cannot show transition with a dead fossilized bone. It is "static" it shows one point in time. It can never tell you about it's father, it's mother and even more it's great grandfather or great grand daughter

The animal or creature existed. That's it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The idea of populations evolving, to me, is much more difficult than an individual. I say this because it is far more conceivable for an individual to mutate but to have a whole population do the same? Not buying that.

You mean to say that you do not understand that. As you said mutations occur in individuals. And they are more common than you think. You have roughly 175 mutations of the DNA that you inherited from your parents. Most mutations are neutral, and considering the number of mutations that all of us have that is a good thing. Some are negative. Those will be filtered out sooner or later by selection. And considering that roughly half of fertilized ova die before birth, most of the time the mother does not even know that she was "successful" when this happens may be caused by a particularly harmful mutation. I don't know of any study of very early failed fertilizations that have been done genetically so this would be rather speculative on my part. At any rate back to the topic. And very few mutations are positive. These mutations are more apt to be passed on and become part of the genome of the species because they are a plus.

I once calculated the fraction of mutations that would have to have been positive and fixed in the genome of man and chimpanzee for them to have separated roughly 8 million years ago and it was on the order of only one mutation in a million being positive for evolution to have occurred. The species draws upon the positive mutations of the entire population. That is why the saying is "species evolve, not individuals". If you only had one line of descent to draw from evolution would be all but impossible.

To accept an idea or statement I would have to believe it. This is just double talk. Some say evolution is a fact. Others say "science cannot prove anything". It's a theory, now it's not, it's proven, but science proves nothing... what is the definition of "this word or that word".....round and round it goes.

You do not seem to understand what others are saying. Evolution is a fact. If you accept that your body is made up of atoms of elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, then by the same standard you should accept evolution as a fact. Theories themselves are never "proved" in fact theories are always undergoing corrections and minor tweaks. The Theory of Evolution will never be proved in that sense. It will be constantly adjusted as people find minor flaws in it and correct them. Darwin was not a prophet and there were errors in his original theory. But overall he is still correct today. Theories explain facts and those explanations continually improve. So we know more about atoms today than we did 50 years ago, that does not mean that the fact that your body was made of atoms was in doubt 50 years ago nor is it in doubt today. Atomic theory has improved. We know more about evolution than we did 50 years ago. That does not mean that there was any doubt that people evolved 50 years ago nor is there any doubt today. The theory of evolution has improved. Changes in theories do not change the facts that those theories explain. The facts are the same, only the explanation is better.

Yep, it is. And, all these scientists went to and accredited institution of post secondary education that force the TOE down the students throats. From young children we are inundated with this farce and if.....if anyone goes against this sacred cow of a religion they may be refused a passing grade, refused accreditation, refused a degree, removed from a position of employment, chastised by their peers, have papers and presentations severely attacked...face it, the TOE is a strong brick wall of intellectual and educational strong holds that control the "truth".

It is no more a matter of force that the teaching that you are made up of atoms. Is that believe a "farce" because it is taught to everyone? Seriously we know it is not a farce because of the terrible failures of those opposed to the theory. Most of them are not wrong, they are amazingly wrong. The science of even very bright scientists that have positive works in other areas turn out work that is trash when they attack the theory of evolution. Quite often the work of creation "scientist" can be refuted with simple high school level science.

And it looks like you bought the nonsense from "Expelled". How that movie was a farce can be addressed elsewhere. But trust me, I can show you the work of people that showed the supposed bias in that movie did not exist.

And, once again, truth is not a democracy. Neither is it right because some council refuses someones observations that contradict the TOE farce.

You are repeating your nonsense now.

Unless they contradict the status quo and the TOE.



Again, unless it is rocking the boat, causes the TOE to be questioned, backs up the biblical account, shows that their is some force outside the natural realm of the science of today.

More of the same. This sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense on your part.

That's my point. You cannot show transition with a dead fossilized bone. It is "static" it shows one point in time. It can never tell you about it's father, it's mother and even more it's great grandfather or great grand daughter

The animal or creature existed. That's it.

All this shows is that you have no idea of what a transitional species is. Transitional does not mean ancestral. Many transitional species may not have gone extinct and have no descendants to day. Think of it this way, you may have an uncle that has no children, he is still "transitional" between you and your grandfather.

 

[Loudmouth]

Stalin tried it. It never worked.

Horses and Donkey's produce mules and Hinny's. In all these years we do not have a new species of mules, it is just a dead end. Such is the case. Humans and apes cannot even start the process. It's even more of a dead end.

Humans can not produce fertile offspring together? Really?

 

[Loudmouth]

The idea of populations evolving, to me, is much more difficult than an individual. I say this because it is far more conceivable for an individual to mutate but to have a whole population do the same? Not buying that.

Then how do you explain the fact that millions and millions of humans can share the same mutation? It would seem that reality proves you wrong.

To accept an idea or statement I would have to believe it. This is just double talk. Some say evolution is a fact. Others say "science cannot prove anything". It's a theory, now it's not, it's proven, but science proves nothing... what is the definition of "this word or that word".....round and round it goes.

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

Yep, it is. And, all these scientists went to and accredited institution of post secondary education that force the TOE down the students throats. From young children we are inundated with this farce and if.....if anyone goes against this sacred cow of a religion they may be refused a passing grade, refused accreditation, refused a degree, removed from a position of employment, chastised by their peers, have papers and presentations severely attacked...face it, the TOE is a strong brick wall of intellectual and educational strong holds that control the "truth".

I still find it hilarious that creationists try to disprove evolution by making it look like their own religious beliefs. Not only that, but they have to rely on stories of fake persecution.

And, once again, truth is not a democracy. Neither is it right because some council refuses someones observations that contradict the TOE farce.

What observations?

That's my point. You cannot show transition with a dead fossilized bone.

Yes, you can.

"A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossil

All you need is the morphology of the fossil and living species.

It is "static" it shows one point in time. It can never tell you about it's father, it's mother and even more it's great grandfather or great grand daughter

All we need is the morphology in order to test the theory of evolution. The theory makes predictions about what mixtures of features you should and shouldn't see, and it is those predicts that we test with fossils.

 

[JacksBratt]

Humans can not produce fertile offspring together? Really?

Where in my quote below did I say that Humans cannot produce fertile offspring together????

JacksBratt said: ↑
Stalin tried it. It never worked.

Horses and Donkey's produce mules and Hinny's. In all these years we do not have a new species of mules, it is just a dead end. Such is the case. Humans and apes cannot even start the process. It's even more of a dead end.

 

[Loudmouth]

Where in my quote below did I say that Humans cannot produce fertile offspring together????

JacksBratt said: ↑
Stalin tried it. It never worked.

Horses and Donkey's produce mules and Hinny's. In all these years we do not have a new species of mules, it is just a dead end. Such is the case. Humans and apes cannot even start the process. It's even more of a dead end.

Where did the horses and donkeys come from? If they came from horses, then donkeys are a new species since they can no longer produce fertile offspring with horses. If they came from donkeys, then horses are the new separate species. If they came from a common ancestor that was neither a horse nor a donkey, then we have two new species.

 

[JacksBratt]

Where did the horses and donkeys come from? If they came from horses, then donkeys are a new species since they can no longer produce fertile offspring with horses. If they came from donkeys, then horses are the new separate species. If they came from a common ancestor that was neither a horse nor a donkey, then we have two new species.

Horses are horses, donkey's are donkeys. Two different "kinds" of animals. They are close enough to produce offspring, which are mules but the mule is not capable of any further offspring....

God made horses, God made donkeys.

 

[Loudmouth]

Horses are horses, donkey's are donkeys. Two different "kinds" of animals.

Then how are they able to have offspring?

They are close enough to produce offspring, which are mules but the mule is not capable of any further offspring....

How is that possible? Are you saying that golden retrievers and huskies could be two differently created kinds? Afterall, you are now saying that different kinds can produce offspring.

God made horses, God made donkeys.

Evidence?

 

[JacksBratt]

Then how are they able to have offspring?



How is that possible? Are you saying that golden retrievers and huskies could be two differently created kinds? Afterall, you are now saying that different kinds can produce offspring.



Evidence?

Yes, your favorite word....."evidence".

Farmers have known for years as well as others who breed animals to produce hybrids that may be better for a certain purpose, that you will come to a wall. Sooner or later, your interbreeding of animals that can produce offspring together, will come to a point where the offspring are infertile, a dead end.

All dogs can breed with each other, to my knowledge any way. I don't know the lineage of horses and donkey's but I do know that there is no further hybrid possible with the breeding of these two as you get a mule which is not capable of producing any more further hybrid.

Golden Retrievers can mate with husky's because they are the same "kind".... they are dogs......