Whale evolution without fossils.

[USincognito]

The Duck-billed Platypus appears to have a mixture of characteristics,

They do, just not the mix Creationists think they do. They're no longer called "duck-billed" because their "bill" is nothing like a duck's bill. It's actually a leathery, skin-covered extension of the maxilary bone.

Further their mix of characteristics is that of mammals (fur, mammary glands, jawbones/ear bones) and reptile (egg laying, cloaca) making them a perfect, living example of a transitional form, something Creationists claim don't exist.

Alan Feduccia, an evolutionary scientist and bird expert.

Creationists love citing Alan Feduccia. Of course they don't realize that he's a maverick and a lot of his opinions aren't accepted, oh and that he that he thinks birds evolved, but from basal archosaurs, not theropods.

It's like they're just parroting quote mines without doing any research.

 

[USincognito]

If you're not sure what a hoax is, just look at any evolutionary claim and you've found a hoax.

I realize this sort of vacuous rhetoric is popular among Creationists for the purpose of chest thumping and back slapping, but if you want to be taken seriously, you're need to bring some actual substance to the table.

That means actually addressing the evidence presented supporting evolution rather than spamming PRATTs, repeating mantras and spouting vacuous rhetoric.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

They do, just not the mix Creationists think they do. They're no longer called "duck-billed" because their "bill" is nothing like a duck's bill. It's actually a leathery, skin-covered extension of the maxilary bone.

Further their mix of characteristics is that of mammals (fur, mammary glands, jawbones/ear bones) and reptile (egg laying, cloaca) making them a perfect, living example of a transitional form, something Creationists claim don't exist.



Creationists love citing Alan Feduccia. Of course they don't realize that he's a maverick and a lot of his opinions aren't accepted, oh and that he that he thinks birds evolved, but from basal archosaurs, not theropods.

It's like they're just parroting quote mines without doing any research.

I'll assume that Alan Feduccia did his research since he is the bird expert. And nothing wrong with quote mining, especially when the anti-evolution quotes come from evolutionists. Only hardcore evolutionists, like Dawkins, won't accept comments from A. Feduccia. I can remember when Dawkins was upset with Stephen J. Gould because he didn't believe in gradualism, and Gould and N. Eldredge concocted their punctuated equilibrium hypothesis. Evolutionists can't agree on many things, which only proves how flimsy their evidence is. They can't even agree on the Big Bang "theory", the "M" "theory", and few others, and, what land animal evolved into a whale. Everything is speculation.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

I really appreciate all the hard work with the copying and pasting from TalkOrigins. com. A lot of imagination and speculation put into it. It's a good way to save wear and tear on your brain. But all of that hard work does not trump the comments from paleornithologist, Alan Feduccia, whom specializes in the origins and phylogeny of birds...
"Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that." - Alan Feduccia, an evolutionary scientist and bird expert.

"Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in a modern sense, a bird."- Alan Feduccia, an evolutionary scientist and bird expert.

Well then, it's a lucky thing then that Science doesn't operate from Authority like religion does. - That, and Archaeopteryx, while classified as a Bird, is classified so because of the features it has in common with the unique traits of birds. The fact still remains though, that the Archaeopteryx has more in common with the Reptiles it was diverging from.

You have yet to explain that.

The fact is... birds have feathers... dinosaurs don't... therefore, the Archaeopteryx was a bird.

Sure they do! The Velociraptor had feathers, T-Rex had feathers too...

Tyrannosaurus - Wikipedia
New Fossil Reveals Velociraptor Sported Feathers​

are they Birds?

The best way to prove the Archaeopteryx was evolved from a reptile is to SHOW the transitional fossils, so that we can OBSERVE the incremental, step-by-step transition of the reptile becoming the Archaeopteryx. You'll only need a hundred transitional fossils to prove it, maybe.

What traits would the Archaeopteryx, or for that matter, any transitional fossil require in common with Reptiles to satisfy your request? You can start by addressing what the Archaeopteryx already shares with Reptiles, and go from there.

 

[dad]

I present four evidences for whale evolution, two genetic, one physiological and one embryological.

1. If whales evolved from land mammals we would expect them to have numerous physical characteristics including a mammalian jaw. We indeed find those characteristics one of which is the up and down movement characteristic of mammals in contrast with the side to side movement of reptiles and fish. if whales were specially created they could just as easily move side to side and have a vertical tail fluke as opposed to a horizontal one (see Ichthyosaurs).

I suppose if they first were created, and then evolved TO land animals (or both land and water creatures) and then they evolved back to the water, we would expect the same thing. Your belief holds no monopoly.

2. Cetacean embryos develop hind limb buds that are absorbed (except in cases of atavisms) during fetal development. This is due the interaction of two genes that normally would grow hind limbs (see below). If cetaceans never lived on the land, why do they develop limb buds during the embryonic stage?

See above.

3. The sleek, hydrodynamic bodies of whales are due to a broken interaction between the genes Sonic Hedgehog and Hand2. Hand2 normally grows hind limbs in terrestrial mammals. If cetaceans didn't evolve from terrestrial mammals, why do they have the Hand2 gene?
05 » How ancient whales lost their legs, got sleek and conquered the oceans » University of Florida

From your link

"More than 50 million years ago the ancestors of whales and dolphins were four-footed land animals, not unlike large dogs. They became the sleek swimmers we recognize today during the next 15 million years, losing their hind limbs in a dramatic example of evolutionary change."

The way that they determine the creature they cited was the ancestor is purely belief based.

4. The evolution of cetacean forelimbs into flippers is controlled by two genes - Hoxd12 and Hoxd13.
Adaptive evolution of 5'HoxD genes in the origin and diversification of the cetacean flipper. - PubMed - NCBI

From your link


" We reconstructed the phylogeny of digit patterning in mammals and inferred that digit number has changed twice in the evolution of the cetacean forelimb"

Seems to me this is suggesting that they basically assume DNA and genes worked the same always. I guess they are welcome to believe what they like.

These are just 4 of the many evidences making whale evolution one of the most compelling and supported lineages we can look at.

The only way they might look like evidence of any kind to anyone is if they are immersed in the belief system you preach.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

Well then, it's a lucky thing then that Science doesn't operate from Authority like religion does. - That, and Archaeopteryx, while classified as a Bird, is classified so because of the features it has in common with the unique traits of birds. The fact still remains though, that the Archaeopteryx has more in common with the Reptiles it was diverging from.

You have yet to explain that.

Sure they do! The Velociraptor had feathers, T-Rex had feathers too...

Tyrannosaurus - Wikipedia
New Fossil Reveals Velociraptor Sported Feathers​

are they Birds?

What traits would the Archaeopteryx, or for that matter, any transitional fossil require in common with Reptiles to satisfy your request? You can start by addressing what the Archaeopteryx already shares with Reptiles, and go from there.

Unfortunately for you, evolution isn't based on science, but pseudoscience. Evidently, evolution only requires IMAGINATION and SPECULATION. No observation required.
The T-Rex had feathers? LOL! Now I've heard it all... more IMAGINATION and SPECULATION. Evolutionists should stick to sci-fi movies and novels.

 

[USincognito]

Unfortunately for you, evolution isn't based on science, but pseudoscience. Evidently, evolution only requires IMAGINATION and SPECULATION. No observation required.
The T-Rex had feathers? LOL! Now I've heard it all... more IMAGINATION and SPECULATION. Evolutionists should stick to sci-fi movies and novels.

^^^ There's that vacuous rhetoric and failing to actually address the evidence again.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

^^^ There's that vacuous rhetoric and failing to actually address the evidence again.

You're showing no evidence. This truly is like debating whether or not Star Trek is real or not.

 

[pitabread]

The Archaeopteryx has feathers, so that makes it a bird, nothing more.

This has been boilerplate creationist response for ages when it came to anything with feather; simply that "feathers = bird".

However, as more feathered dinosaurs began emerging creationist sites like AiG and ICR have begun including qualifiers in their articles that suggest that it would be perfectly acceptable for dinosaurs to have been created with feathers (just as long as they didn't evolve, amirite?).

It's fascinating to watch as creationism evolves.

Alan Feduccia, an evolutionary scientist and bird expert.

Alan Feduccia's views on bird evolution tend to be controversial and fringe in the scientific community. Cherry picking a couple quotes from a single scientist as though the matter is settled isn't how things work.

Plus he still accepts that birds evolved, so quoting him for an argument against bird evolution is silly.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

This has been boilerplate creationist response for ages when it came to anything with feather; simply that "feathers = bird".

However, as more feathered dinosaurs began emerging creationist sites like AiG and ICR have begun including qualifiers in their articles that suggest that it would be perfectly acceptable for dinosaurs to have been created with feathers (just as long as they didn't evolve, amirite?).

It's fascinating to watch as creationism evolves.



Alan Feduccia's views on bird evolution tend to be controversial and fringe in the scientific community. Cherry picking a couple quotes from a single scientist as though the matter is settled isn't how things work.

Plus he still accepts that birds evolved, so quoting him for an argument against bird evolution is silly.

As for what's controversial and fringe... evolution is fringe and not science. Otherwise, SHOW all the transitional fossils so we can OBSERVE the step-by-step transition from a reptile into an Archaeopteryx. You'll likely need at least a hundred fossils to SHOW the transition. Here's an article from ICR which does NOT promote the idea that dinosaurs had feathers, and says, none have been discovered... Did Some Dinosaurs Really Have Feathers?

The problem for the idea of feathered dinosaurs doesn't get any better at Answers in Genesis... Feathered Dinosaurs?

 

[pitabread]

evolution is fringe and not science.

That's nice. You go on believing that.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

That's nice. You go on believing that.

I have no choice in believing that. Science is based on what's OBSERVABLE, so I want to see the T-Rex with feathers, and the hundreds of transitional fossils that prove a reptile evolved into the Archaeopteryx. Is that too much to ask for?
Otherwise, evolution is a religion based on atheism.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

They do, just not the mix Creationists think they do. They're no longer called "duck-billed" because their "bill" is nothing like a duck's bill. It's actually a leathery, skin-covered extension of the maxilary bone.

Further their mix of characteristics is that of mammals (fur, mammary glands, jawbones/ear bones) and reptile (egg laying, cloaca) making them a perfect, living example of a transitional form, something Creationists claim don't exist.



Creationists love citing Alan Feduccia. Of course they don't realize that he's a maverick and a lot of his opinions aren't accepted, oh and that he that he thinks birds evolved, but from basal archosaurs, not theropods.

It's like they're just parroting quote mines without doing any research.

There are a lot of mavericks in evolutionary circles. Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge says, there are no transitional fossils, so they invented Punctuated Equilibrium, so that started an argument between Gould and Dawkins... evolutionists can't agree on the Big Bang "theory", the "M" theory, or some other theory. There are hundreds of comments from mavericks that put a huge question mark on evolution.

 

[USincognito]

You're showing no evidence. This truly is like debating whether or not Star Trek is real or not.

Again, you're making my point for me. This retort is more vacuous rhetoric and a failure to actually address the evidence presented. Simply saying, "that's not evidence" is feeble hand waving. It's actually addressing the evidence or even showing that it's not evidence.

 

[Darwin's Myth]

Again, you're making my point for me. This retort is more vacuous rhetoric and a failure to actually address the evidence presented. Simply saying, "that's not evidence" is feeble hand waving. It's actually addressing the evidence or even showing that it's not evidence.

I'm still waiting for those transitional fossils that prove a reptile evolved into the Archaeopteryx. Why is it that not a single evolutionist can provide them? I know why... but I'm waiting for one of you guys to admit... they don't exist.

 

[USincognito]

If I had to guess, I say, those skulls are what evolutionists call the Australopithecus, or possibly Homo habilis... probably some chimp.

This response:
1. Doesn't answer my question. I didn't ask you to take wild guesses about the species. I asked you to tell me if it was "fully ape" or "fully human".
2. Tells me you didn't notice that it's a single skull from three different angles.
3. Tells me you paleontological acumen is non-existent and your "show me the fossils" bluster is more vacuous rhetoric because you wouldn't even know what you're at if presented the fossils.

Now... all you need to do is prove that those skulls aren't the product of another evolutionary hoax, like the Nebraska Man, Peking Man, Orce Man, Lucy, and Piltdown Man... and the list seems endless. Evolutionists are very handy with plaster, animal parts, and metal files.

Aww, it's so cute when Creationists who are in over their head trot out the "hoax" laundry list and then immediately trip on their own feet by listing Nebraska "man", Peking man, Orce "man" and Lucy - not a single one of which was a hoax - in addition to the one single hominid hoax, Piltdown, perpetrated in the last 175 years.

- Nebraska "man" was an misidentification and was never claimed to be anything other than an anthropoid ape.
- Peking man is Homo erectus. Where did you get the crazy idea it was a hoax?
- Orce "man" is still unidentified to this day and if it's not a hominid, it would be another misidentification, not a hoax.
- Lucy is Australopithecus Afarensis. Where did you get the crazy idea she was a hoax?

Cont.

 

[Jimmy D]

This response:
1. Doesn't answer my question. I didn't ask you to take wild guesses about the species. I asked you to tell me if it was "fully ape" or "fully human".
2. Tells me you didn't notice that it's a single skull from three different angles.
3. Tells me you paleontological acumen is non-existent and your "show me the fossils" bluster is more vacuous rhetoric because you wouldn't even know what you're at if presented the fossils.



Aww, it's so cute when Creationists who are in over their head trot out the "hoax" laundry list and then immediately trip on their own feet by listing Nebraska "man", Peking man, Orce "man" and Lucy - not a single one of which was a hoax - in addition to the one single hominid hoax, Piltdown, perpetrated in the last 175 years.

- Nebraska "man" was an misidentification and was never claimed to be anything other than an anthropoid ape.
- Peking man is Homo erectus. Where did you get the crazy idea it was a hoax?
- Orce "man" is still unidentified to this day and if it's not a hominid, it would be another misidentification, not a hoax.
- Lucy is Australopithecus Afarensis. Where did you get the crazy idea she was a hoax?

Cont.

Come on mate, wake up. Every paleontologist in the world, over the last hundred or so years have teamed up with the worlds biologists and geologists in a grand conspiracy to fool us into believing evilution.

They just want God out of the picture don't you know.

(I apologize in advance for giving Darwin's Myth something else to focus on rather than the facts in your post but I couldn't resist.)

 

[USincognito]

As for ignoring your "evidence" with the embryology, genetics, and physiology, I just don't need it since you don't have the transitional fossils. Without those, you have nothing.

It appears that you haven't been keeping up with biology lately. With the molecular and genetic evidence alone we can recreate the entire history of life on earth. At this point the fossils are just a bonus which allow for the construction of a twin nested hierarchy using both morphological and genetic data.

Now I could be being charitable by assuming that you are unfamiliar with how genetics has become the most powerful evidence for evolution (and that's why you didn't respond to the evidences in my OP), but it's possible that you simply couldn't address them or I need to express them in simpler terms. Here they are again:
- If whales evolved from land mammals, they would have mammalian jaw and ear bones and move in a way that land mammals do (up and down) as opposed to fish and marine reptiles (side to side).
- The fact that whale embryos develop hind limb buds is evidence that they once had hind limbs when their ancestors walked on land.
- The reason whales embryos develop those limb buds and why they don't form hind limbs is because they have the same gene pathway for hind limbs as terrestrial animals, but it broke after they returned to the oceans.
- Scientists have identified the genes responsible for changing the terrestrial forelimbs of whale ancestors into their flippers.

If you're really that hot for whale fossils though, here's some information for you to hand wave away.
The evolution of whales
Before you predictably respond with "those are drawings" all you have to do is take the name of the species which is clearly written for all of them and do an image search in Google.

And here's some full body reconstructions. As I mentioned earlier, I don't why know you're demanding to see protocetid fossils because you couldn't even recognize a famous hominid skull, but here you go.

But, as for embryology... if that is anything like the Ernst Haeckel embryo hoax from the early 1900s, it's not worth considering. I've noticed, some of today's biology books are still shoving that fraud down our throats.

Yeah, first off, embryology has moved far beyond anything that Haeckel or Darwin knew about in the 1800s. Perhaps you could join the rest of us if not at least in the 21st Century then in the 20th. Second, there are no biology textbooks with Haeckel's drawings in them which use them as evidence for evolution. The Discovery Institute has a breathless page touting all the editions that supposedly used Haeckel's embryo drawings, but each of their examples is using them in a historical context, not as evidence. Third, your red herring is obviously a desperate attempt to avoid addressing the evidence of embryonic cetacean hind limb buds which was provided to you with a modern color photograph, not a drawing. Finally, the claim that Haeckel's drawings were fraudulent has reached mythological proportions. I'd recommend actually reading this paper by Robert Richards were he discusses the supposed hoax and then does comparisons of Haeckel's drawings with photos of embryos.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Haeckel--fraud not proven.pdf

BTW... If I were given the legal right to do it... I could take 20 random adult skulls of people whom have died in the last 100 years and make a really believable evolution chart.

Yeah, this is just empty bluster. You couldn't even identify whether the skull I showed you was "fully ape" or "fully human" so there's no way you could fulfill this boast. You must not know that modern Homo sapiens skulls are all so similar that we can discern them from archaic Homo sapiens, so if you think you could line up skull from the last 100 years like this you're delusional:

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

Unfortunately for you, evolution isn't based on science, but pseudoscience.

Well that isn't borne out in the data and facts now, is it? For example, if it were a pseudoscience like Creationism or Religion, then there Would be unquestionable authorities - but there isn't any unquestionable authorities in actual science that's practically applied despite all your protestations otherwise.

So, how about addressing that Evidence now?

 

[USincognito]

The Haeckel is something I've known about for years...
Haeckel fraud proven - creation.com
Haeckel was a huge promoter for Darwin and he did anything to promote the fraud. In this blog, Stephen J. Gould admits that Haeckel's drawings were known to be a fraud from the beginning... https://evolutionnews.org/2007/06/lessons_learned_from_haeckel_a/

If you're not sure what a hoax is, just look at any evolutionary claim and you've found a hoax.

It's hilarious seeing Creationists rant and rave about Haeckel's "hoax" from 140 years ago...


... all the while repeating Creationist porkies in 2018.