Cambrian explosion: Burgess Shale: punctuated equilibrium

[Jazer]

Jazer, your claim was, I quote, that "you have many proteins assemble in identical ways despite the fact that there is no common ancestor."

What proteins do you mean, and where is your evidence that there is no common ancestor?

"At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved."

"Proteins are coils of several hundred amino acids. Take a typical protein to be a chain of 300 amino acids. There are 20 commonly occurring amino acids in life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein is 20 to the power of 300 (that is 20 multiplied by itself 300 times) or in the more usual ten-based system of numbers, 10 to the power of 390 ( Ten multipled by itself 390 times or more simply said a one with 390 zeroes after it!!!!!) . Nature has the option of choosing among the possible 10 to the power of 390 proteins, the the 1.5 x (10 to power of 12) proteins of which all viable life is composed. Can this have happened by random mutations of the genome? Not if our understanding of statistics is correct. It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion proteins and pulled out the one that worked and then repeated this trick a million million times. But this impossibility of randomness producing order is not different from the attempt to produce Shakespeare or any meaningful string of letters more than a few words in length by a random letter generator. Gibberish is always the result. This is simply because the number of meaningless letter combinations vastly exceeds the number of meaningful combinations. With life it was and is lethal gibberish."http://geraldschroeder.com/Evolution.aspx

 

[juvenissun]

Part of the idea. Yes, some genes/proteins are shared by (nearly) everything alive (cytochrome c is a well-known example). And it's not just that some genes are shared - when you compare their similarities and differences, they are not random but fall onto a tree of life. All organisms also use nearly the same genetic code to translate their genes into proteins.

Does the rate of this change also match with the idea of punctuated equilibrium?

 

[Valkhorn]

"At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved."

"Suddenly" in geologic time is not very sudden. The Cambrian Explosion happened over the course of 70 to 80 million years. To put that in some relevance, the Chuxulub event was 65 million years ago and since then plenty of new species have evolved including us.

 

[Jazer]

since then plenty of new species have evolved including us.

We are not talking about sense then, we are talking about before then. Evolutionists want to start with modern phyla which I suppose is ok to do. They just have a lot of missing links when they go to look for this mythical common ancestor that the phyla is said to have come from. A lot of Goulds work deals with the explosion at this time and speculation on how the phyla formed.

 

[RickG]

We are not talking about sense then, we are talking about before then. Evolutionists want to start with modern phyla which I suppose is ok to do. They just have a lot of missing links when they go to look for this mythical common ancestor that the phyla is said to have come from. A lot of Goulds work deals with the explosion at this time and speculation on how the phyla formed.

Jazer, you seem to be working from the idea that all live evolved from one single individual life form. Evolution doesn't state that. And sure there are a lot of missing links, so what. Explain the fossil record throughout geologic time with out evolution. How did all those different species just pop into existence over billions of years.

 

[Valkhorn]

We are not talking about sense then, we are talking about before then. Evolutionists want to start with modern phyla which I suppose is ok to do. They just have a lot of missing links when they go to look for this mythical common ancestor that the phyla is said to have come from. A lot of Goulds work deals with the explosion at this time and speculation on how the phyla formed.

No they don't. There's been a lot of study regarding pre-cambrian life:

http://www.csun.edu/~dgray/Evol322/Chapter17.pdf

 

[Valkhorn]

Jazer, you seem to be working from the idea that all live evolved from one single individual life form. Evolution doesn't state that. And sure there are a lot of missing links, so what. Explain the fossil record throughout geologic time with out evolution. How did all those different species just pop into existence over billions of years.

They also don't realize (creationists) that we have ample evidence of fossils going back to a time of heavy bombardment. Heavy bombardment in the sense that there is evidence of many large extinction level events for the first 750 million years of the Earth's history. Yet, life was able to begin on Earth and hold out, and it possibly began a few times as some of those events could have sterilized the surface of the Earth.

In fact, one of my favorite evidences against a young Earth is all of the evidence for heavy bombardment and all of the very large impact craters we found which couldn't possibly have occurred within 6,000 years.

 

[sfs]

Has anyone bothered to point out that PE has next to nothing to do with the Cambrian Explosion; it does not explain (and was not intended to explain) such large-scale features as that.

 

[Naraoia]

"At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved."

Source of the quote...?

How many phyla you recognise depends on your personal preferences as much as anything else. Besides, as Valkhorn pointed out, the Cambrian explosion lasted tens of millions of years even by the most conservative estimates.

"Proteins are coils of several hundred amino acids. Take a typical protein to be a chain of 300 amino acids. There are 20 commonly occurring amino acids in life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein is 20 to the power of 300 (that is 20 multiplied by itself 300 times) or in the more usual ten-based system of numbers, 10 to the power of 390 ( Ten multipled by itself 390 times or more simply said a one with 390 zeroes after it!!!!!) . Nature has the option of choosing among the possible 10 to the power of 390 proteins, the the 1.5 x (10 to power of 12) proteins of which all viable life is composed. Can this have happened by random mutations of the genome? Not if our understanding of statistics is correct. It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion proteins and pulled out the one that worked and then repeated this trick a million million times. But this impossibility of randomness producing order is not different from the attempt to produce Shakespeare or any meaningful string of letters more than a few words in length by a random letter generator. Gibberish is always the result. This is simply because the number of meaningless letter combinations vastly exceeds the number of meaningful combinations. With life it was and is lethal gibberish."http://geraldschroeder.com/Evolution.aspx

Selection is not random, no one says 300-AA long proteins just popped out of the primordial soup, and this once again has nothing to do with your original point, which was that "you have many proteins assemble in identical ways despite the fact that there is no common ancestor."Which proteins that don't have common ancestors assemble in identical ways?

(What does "assemble in identical ways" even mean? Same sequence? Same structural folds/domains? What? That you use such vague terms is a big hint that you have no idea what you're talking about.)

Does the rate of this change also match with the idea of punctuated equilibrium?

Punctuated equilibrium is just one mode of evolution. Sometimes things evolve in fits and starts, sometimes change is distributed more evenly.

(There's a paper I've been meaning to read that argues that the appearance of PE can even be an artefact of using molecular phylogenies to estimate when changes happened.)

I'm not sure how often PE is observed in molecular evolution. It was intended mainly as an explanation of the fossil record.

"Suddenly" in geologic time is not very sudden. The Cambrian Explosion happened over the course of 70 to 80 million years. To put that in some relevance, the Chuxulub event was 65 million years ago and since then plenty of new species have evolved including us.

That. While I'll happily agree that the CE is exceptional, there is nothing "sudden" about it in the conventional sense of the word.

Has anyone bothered to point out that PE has next to nothing to do with the Cambrian Explosion; it does not explain (and was not intended to explain) such large-scale features as that.

Indeed. Major oversight on our part, and it definitely bears a QFT.

Do people mix them up because Gould was big on both?

 

[Jazer]

Source of the quote...?

It's at the end of the quote: Gerald Schroeder - Articles - Evolution

the Cambrian explosion lasted tens of millions of years even by the most conservative estimates.

Nothing changed nothing evolved in that amount of time.

Which proteins that don't have common ancestors

I already answered that in another thread so how about if I give you something better: "Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

If you want I can start to work on the evidence for a lack of common ancestor. You do know that there are two theorys of evolution don't you? One says that if you were to start all over again you would end up with total different results. The other theory says the elements are the same so you can go anywhere in the universe and the results will end up all the same.

no idea what you're talking about

We are talking about common ancestors. You say you have lots of evidence for common ancestor, but you fail to present your evidence. Then you try to cover for yourself by saying I do not know what I am talking about. Swing and a miss, nice try though.

 

[Naraoia]

It's at the end of the quote: Gerald Schroeder - Articles - Evolution

Sorry, my bad, didn't realise it was one quote.

Nothing changed nothing evolved in that amount of time.

Denial is denial. You can start comparing the contents of the Ediacara biota, the small shelly faunas of the earliest Cambrian, and the Burgess Shale.

That's a lot of nothing going on between those...

I already answered that in another thread...

Would it be too much trouble to copy-paste the answer or give me a link? I must have been absent from that conversation. You certainly didn't answer it in response to me.

...so how about if I give you something better: "Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight." Convergent evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What exactly is this supposed to prove? Bird and bat (and pterosaur) wings are quite different despite having evolved from the same basic tetrapod forelimb. Let's reiterate that:

(1) They are not the same
(2) Despite having a common ancestor

... which is the exact opposite of the claim you were trying to make...

If you want I can start to work on the evidence for a lack of common ancestor.

Please do. I'm intrigued.

You do know that there are two theorys of evolution don't you? One says that if you were to start all over again you would end up with total different results. The other theory says the elements are the same so you can go anywhere in the universe and the results will end up all the same.

So what? What does the degree to which evolution is deterministic have to do with the existence of a common ancestor? We're not debating whether life on earth and life on Tatooine had a common ancestor, are we?

We are talking about common ancestors. You say you have lots of evidence for common ancestor, but you fail to present your evidence.

What level of common ancestor do you wish to discuss? For the universal common ancestry of all life, we have

- the tree of life
- the near-universal genetic code
- all of life using the same basic molecules and sharing certain biochemical pathways.

All of the above are detailed here, but you can pick one and I'll put the argument in my own words.

Then you try to cover for yourself by saying I do not know what I am talking about. Swing and a miss, nice try though.

*snort* You can start proving that you know what you are talking about by showing me those proteins you keep harping on

 

[Valkhorn]

Nothing changed nothing evolved in that amount of time.

The fossil record completely disagrees with you. So do paleontologists.

Evolution: Library: The Cambrian Explosion

For most of the nearly 4 billion years that life has existed on Earth, evolution produced little beyond bacteria, plankton, and multi-celled algae. But beginning about 600 million years ago in the Precambrian, the fossil record speaks of more rapid change. First, there was the rise and fall of mysterious creatures of the Ediacaran fauna, named for the fossil site in Australia where they were first discovered. Some of these animals may have belonged to groups that survive today, but others don't seem at all related to animals we know.

Then, between about 570 and 530 million years ago, another burst of diversification occurred, with the eventual appearance of the lineages of almost all animals living today. This stunning and unique evolutionary flowering is termed the "Cambrian explosion," taking the name of the geological age in whose early part it occurred. But it was not as rapid as an explosion: the changes seems to have happened in a range of about 30 million years, and some stages took 5 to 10 million years.

Emphasis mine...

It seems you are dead wrong about at least three things in recent posts:

* Man existed long before some 'Adam and Eve' 6,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence proves this. So do cave paintings.
* Evolution happened for a long time during the pre-cambrian era. The fossil record shows this. We have fossils dating back over 3.5 billion years.
* Evolution still happened during the cambrian explosion, and did not miraculously appear in the fossil record. Evolution is still supported by the cambrian explosion because it was just a burst in diversity thanks to new mutations that enhanced the ability for organisms to survive. Evolution even predicts this and explains this perfectly.

It seems no matter how much evidence we show that you are wrong, you won't dare correct yourself.

 

[Jazer]

Would it be too much trouble to copy-paste the answer or give me a link?

I will see if I can find it. But the basic argument has to do with Convergent & Parallel evolution. These are cases where there was no common ancestor. In the case of the protein you had it evolve in at least 25 independent organisms. Again no common ancestor. Although this is considered to be a example of Convergent evolution.

You are the evo, so go ahead and explain it away as to how you can have evolution without common ancestors that you find in Convergent and Parallel evolution. Because like the Cambrian Explosion they like to try and hide this information away. Until Gould came along and blew the lid off of it.

 

[Jazer]

It seems you are wrong

You do not understand what you are reading. There was no change during that period of time. The change was from the way things were before the explosion began.

* Man existed long before some 'Adam and Eve' 6,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence proves this. So do cave paintings.

I have no problem with out of Africa time magazine science Adam and Eve. That does not change the fact that the Adam and Eve we read about in our Bible were Historical people that lived in the Middle East in the Euphrates River valley 6,000 years ago. This was very furtile farmland then, and very fertile farmland still today. The generations in the Bible are accurate and true. The Bible is filled with amazing stores about the decendents of Adam. Take Obed for example. He married Ruth, one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible. She was devoted to her mother in law even after her husband died. Then there was the story of Joseph and his multi colored coat. There was the story about Joseph when Potomers wife was interested in him. Of course we all know the story of David and the Giant. We now the story of Noah. All the stories we teach our children during their sunday school classes.

3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (5752) (as was supposed ) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
3:24 Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph,
3:25 Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge,
3:26 Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda,
3:27 Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri,
3:28 Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er,
3:29 Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi,
3:30 Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim,
3:31 Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David,
3:32 Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson,
3:33 Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda,
3:34 Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor,
3:35 Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala,
3:36 Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech,
3:37 Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan,
3:38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

you won't dare correct yourself.

What is to correct. BTW, I am not really that much against evolution. It makes no difference as far as the Bible is concerned. The Bible is just a history of the last 6,000 years. The Bible really has very little to say about what happened before Adam and Eve showed up in the Garden 6,000 years ago. In fact I have shown again and again that the theory of evolution proves that the Bible is true. But it gets boring if I do not debate with the evos to try and show them how weak their theory really is. I am sure you would all agree that the last thing you would want would be for me to argue a case FOR evolution. Although I could just as easily do that.

 

[Jazer]

What level of common ancestor do you wish to discuss?

I thought it was clear that we were talking about the common ancestor for the animal phyla that showed up in the Cambrian explosion. There were perhaps 50 of them and around 30 were said to have survived.

So what?

So what? There are two theories and they can not both be true. Does that mean anything goes? Do evolutionists even know what they believe in? You must have more confidence then I do that you can somehow blend opposites. Maybe we can get you a job as a marriage counselor if your so good to bring reconciliation between extreme viewpoints.

 

[RickG]

Has anyone bothered to point out that PE has next to nothing to do with the Cambrian Explosion; it does not explain (and not intended to explain) such large-scale features as that.

I think the main thing overlooked in the Cambrian explosion is the basic mechanism driving it, which were significant changes in atmospheric and oceanic chemistry. Prior to that there were several significant and long snowball earth periods. Otherwise, the Cambrian explosion could have occurred a billion or so years earlier.

 

[RickG]

I thought it was clear that we were talking about the common ancestor for the animal phyla that showed up in the Cambrian explosion. There were perhaps 50 of them and around 30 were said to have survived.

I do hope you realize that there is a huge difference between phyla and species. This involves millions of different types of fauna and flora. Also understand that this diversification begin in the ocean, not land.

 

[JanetReed]

What is to correct. BTW, I am not really that much against evolution. It makes no difference as far as the Bible is concerned. The Bible is just a history of the last 6,000 years. The Bible really has very little to say about what happened before Adam and Eve showed up in the Garden 6,000 years ago. In fact I have shown again and again that the theory of evolution proves that the Bible is true. But it gets boring if I do not debate with the evos to try and show them how weak their theory really is. I am sure you would all agree that the last thing you would want would be for me to argue a case FOR evolution. Although I could just as easily do that.

I'm sorry but from where I'm sitting it seems that your brain is addled, you want a story to be true and you're prepared to say and believe anything in order to make it true, Adam and Eve were not real living people they were conjured up in someones mind, if there were as you say other people alive before Adam and Eve where did they come from? and if they had evolved why would God make two more people?

I'm sorry if I come across as patronising but it's getting to the point where creationists must be treated and spoken to as if they were children.

 

[AV1611VET]

I'm sorry if I come across as patronising but it's getting to the point where creationists must be treated and spoken to as if they were children.

If and when you decide to do that, I'll be waiting --

 

[Valkhorn]

So what? There are two theories and they can not both be true. Does that mean anything goes? Do evolutionists even know what they believe in? You must have more confidence then I do that you can somehow blend opposites. Maybe we can get you a job as a marriage counselor if your so good to bring reconciliation between extreme viewpoints.

Judging by the ample mistakes that you make in terms of archaeology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology all the time you have no room to talk about what 'evolutionists' 'believe in'. Why? Because you don't really seem to know what evidence is really out there, that much about evolution, or that much about biology or the fossil record. If you keep getting fundamental things wrong like mixing phyla with individual species, or PE with the Cambrian Explosion, or say that it happened suddenly when it really happened over tens of millions of years, or say there was no life before the CE even though the fossil record shows there was, I don't know what to tell you.

Do your research first, then open your mouth. Otherwise you won't look like you know an awful lot.