Neanderthals, Dinosaurs?

[The Righterzpen]

I only wrote a simplified way of presenting the leading mainstream physics theories of today (and of many decades) about the 'big bang' and 'inflation'.

While scientists and science writers try to communicate in a very simplified way by calling it an "explosion", my main point to you was simply that's it's not an 'explosion' that destroys order. This so-called 'explosion' (the word used sometimes when talking to the public that has not much understanding of physics), this "big bang" , doesn't prevent order -- instead it leads inevitably to order, since it itself is merely the physics we know of and hypothesize about in action, and that same physics leads to order as we see it all around us.

Put into a different wording (instead of 'big bang' or 'explosion':, let's call it instead a "sudden expansion of astounding rapidity but with underlying order". This sudden expansion as simply physics in action we think: it happened instantly once the physics existed. So, therefore it's built on physics that apparently is very strongly leading to a highly ordered and stable universe, as we can see.

You are right; that is not the usual interpretation of "big bang".

 

[Brightmoon]

. ( snip)

A disabled gene?

I looked up this language. The other terminology they used is for a gene to be turned on or off. (If it's turned off its "disabled". Like you'd disable a car by unplugging the battery.) It doesn't say that "disabled" means "missing".

. Genes can be turned on or off . A disabled gene has mutations that prevent it from forming a functional protein . It MIGHT form a string of amino acids if the mutated dysfunctional gene were turned on but this string would most likely get tagged as “trash” and the string would just get dismantled. This is how some pseudogenes work.

By the way FYI , humans societies don’t always build cities either

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Wrong. The Ediacaran is long before the Cambrian your source claims was the sudden appearance of all phyla. And we see organisms there that are partially-formed examples of later organisms your guy assumed to have appeared in the Cambrian.

Show me a certifiable example of a "half formed" organism;

Spriggina.

This Ediacaran organism was transitional between bilaterans and unsymmetical organisms. It exhibited glide reflection rather than bilateral symmetry. It had uncalcified protective plates, had a forward shield, and is partially tri-lobed.

Compared to the Cambrian trilobites, it's partially-formed. There's a transition between them, too:

Naraoia spinosa, Spinose Arthropod from Chengjiang
Naraoia spinosa, Soft Bodied Trilobite

Now, clearly an arthropod, but still not quite fully-formed trilobite.

I'm assuming that by fully-formed, you mean having all the characteristics of the Cambrian creature. If you mean "having all the features needed to live", then all taxa are fully-formed.

"Desert fossils" or fossils found in deserts?

Desert fossils. Such as Protoceratops.

In 1971, a fossil was found that captured a Velociraptor mongoliensis clutched around a Protoceratops andrewsi in Mongolia. It is believed that they died simultaneously, while fighting, when they were either surprised by a sand storm or buried when a sand dune collapsed on top of them.
Protoceratops - Wikipedia

There is a difference. Things under certain conditions that die in deserts tend to become mummified. That's different than fossilization.

See above. Lots more of these, if you want more examples.

Fossils are found in deserts because at one point, obviously that area had been subject to vast quantities of water to form those fossils in the first place.

Only sometimes. The American West has areas like that. But in the above case, the fossils are formed in desert deposits. There are layers of the Grand Canyon with desert fossils as well.

Grand Canyon, AZ - An international team of paleontologists has united to study important fossil footprints recently discovered in a remote location within Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. A large sandstone boulder contains several exceptionally well-preserved trackways of primitive tetrapods (four-footed animals) which inhabited an ancient desert environment. The 280-million-year-old fossil tracks date to almost the beginning of the Permian Period, prior to the appearance of the earliest dinosaurs.
...
The paleontologists immediately recognized the fossil tracks were produced by a long-extinct relative of very early reptiles and were similar to tracks known from Europe referred to as Ichniotherium (ICK-nee-oh-thay-ree-um). This new discovery at Grand Canyon is the first occurrence of Ichniotherium from the Coconino Sandstone and from a desert environment. The Coconino Sandstone is an eolian (wind-deposited) rock formation that exhibits cross-bedding and other sedimentary features indicating a desert / dune environment of deposition. In addition, these tracks represent the geologically youngest record of this fossil track type from anywhere in the world.
Newly Discovered Fossil Footprints from Grand Canyon National Park Force Paleontologists to Rethink Early Inhabitants of Ancient Deserts - Grand Canyon National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

How did they go from an oxygenated environment

Fell into the water.

There would have to be a reason for them getting there

Like being ill or very old, dying, and falling into the water.

and some sort of cataclysmic event that buried them.

No, they were buried in very fine silt, deposited very slowly, such that even the impressions of feathers remain. Completely incompatible with a cataclysm.

 

[RTP76]

No, they were buried in very fine silt, deposited very slowly, such that even the impressions of feathers remain. Completely incompatible with a cataclysm.

CC: @The Righterzpen

Hi Barbarian, you don't know that. Detailed impressions of feathers is not at all incompatible with rapid burial caused by flooding. 'Rapid' does not have to entail complete demolition/destruction of life - life can simply be caught/trapped and be swept under or be among life forms not on the ark and run out of energy and fall into the water.

You're also using an example of one fossil with little evidence of disturbance as if this is representative of the entire fossil record... which is untrue. There are many fossils showing animals in a state of panic / positions of fleeing and everything in between. There have also been fossils where various parts of the body of large dinosaurs are separated by long distances as would be consistent with something of massive force or 'cataclysmic' in scale. From the brief description of the flood account in Genesis it suggests an event not constant in force but of periods of intensity with periods of subsiding.

 

[The Barbarian]

CC: @The Righterzpen
Hi Barbarian, you don't know that.

I do know that. It's pretty simple to take a look at deposits that are being slowly accumulated, and those that were laid down by catastrophic events, and realize that they are noticably different. Geologists are quite capable of using observed differences to know under what conditions older ones occurred.

Detailed impressions of feathers is not at all incompatible with rapid burial caused by flooding.

That's wrong. Geologists understand the differences very well.

You're also using an example of one fossil with little evidence of disturbance as if this is representative of the entire fossil record...

No. I was referring to only one case. We do indeed have evidence from catastrophic floods, such as that caused when an ice dam suddenly gave way at the end of the last ice age, and caused a huge regional flood that created the scablands. No such fossils therein.

There are many fossils showing animals in a state of panic / positions of fleeing and everything in between.

I've read the stories. About birds and dinosaurs with their heads held back in terror. But it's just projection; the result of connective tissue shortening after death.

There have also been fossils where various parts of the body of large dinosaurs are separated by long distances as would be consistent with something of massive force or 'cataclysmic' in scale.

Which happens after the soft tissue decays and the bones are separated. Then floods can move them around. That happens today.

From the brief description of the flood account in Genesis it suggests an event not constant in force but of periods of intensity with periods of subsiding.

A belief that can fit anything is not a theory.

 

[The Righterzpen]

. Genes can be turned on or off . A disabled gene has mutations that prevent it from forming a functional protein . It MIGHT form a string of amino acids if the mutated dysfunctional gene were turned on but this string would most likely get tagged as “trash” and the string would just get dismantled. This is how some pseudogenes work.

By the way FYI , humans societies don’t always build cities either

Now THAT makes more sense. (What you're saying about the genes.) Yet the only thing that proves is that the mutation is harmful and in that case, obviously it would be beneficial to the organism that the gene gets "shut off".

Also in the genome there are genes that only turn on and then shut off at certain times for very specific reasons and that usually has to do with development. So, when the developmental task of a gene is past time; are there other genes that turn on to "empty" that gene so it doesn't get in the way of further development? (Who knows? I don't have that level of detail of knowledge of genetics.)

As per "cities"; maybe it would be helpful to define "city" more loosely.

All humans do build communities and when you have a large enough population, you have a "city". Human communities obviously though are still built on the foundation of language and communication of ideas through the medium of language. Humans have the ability to not only problem solve on a rudimentary level; but to invent. Apes have rudimentary problem solving capacity; but so do dogs, cats, prairie dogs and octopus.

You want to see some astounding displays of brain power in the animal kingdom; look at birds. Birds are highly intelligent for the size of their brains.

 

[The Barbarian]

Now THAT makes more sense. (What you're saying about the genes.) Yet the only thing that proves is that the mutation is harmful and in that case, obviously it would be beneficial to the organism that the gene gets "shut off".

No. Most mutations do nothing much of anything. Since proteins are so large, changing one amino acid in them usually has no observable effect. Occasionally, one is harmful, and tends to be removed from the population by natural selection. Very occasionally, one is useful and tends to be increased in the population.

 

[JackRT]

I once had a battle of wits with an egg stealing magpie. Took me a week to outsmart that dang bird.

 

[The Righterzpen]

This Ediacaran organism was transitional between bilaterans and unsymmetical organisms. It exhibited glide reflection rather than bilateral symmetry. It had uncalcified protective plates, had a forward shield, and is partially tri-lobed.

Compared to the Cambrian trilobites, it's partially-formed. There's a transition between them, too:

This Ediacaran organism was transitional between bilaterans and unsymmetical organisms. It exhibited glide reflection rather than bilateral symmetry. It had uncalcified protective plates, had a forward shield, and is partially tri-lobed.

Compared to the Cambrian trilobites, it's partially-formed. There's a transition between them, too:

Is a Basset Hound a "transitional life form" between a Tea Cup Poodle and a St. Barnard? (I'd hope (and expect) you'd say "no" to that. LOL)

Who's to say that what you have here; and what they label as a "transitional life form" is not just another variant within a string of species of a particular phyla or even a variant of a particular species?

If you were to take a city pound of 50 different dogs and fossilize them; would you automatically think you have 50 different species or "transitional life forms" between species?

We all know that Tea Cup Poodles and St. Barnards are all the same species. (Domesticated dogs and wolves are genetically the same species; even though they are classified differently.) Multiple types of "dog type creatures" live in the same environment. (fox, wolf, coyote, hyena, domesticated dog)

Yet look at all the variations of domesticated dogs. You have Basset Hounds with short legs. Weiner dogs with long bodies. Pugs with pushed in faces. Newfounlands with domed heads. Bulldogs with muscular bodies. There's even really interesting dogs that look like mops and dogs that even look like cats! (Yikes!) All these different breeds of dogs were mostly created only in the past 150 years! That's not evolution; that's eugenics!

Now if you can do that to the species "domestic dog" in 150 years; you don't need "millions of years" of "evolution". All the variety of these different breeds of dogs that we have today; were all found in the genome of "canine" from the get go. The ability to adapt to quickly changing environments is the reason there is so much "junk DNA" in any given organism. Just because we don't know what a gene is for, or what it does; does not mean it's "broken", "deleted", "mutated", "throw back to some other era" (or what ever).

Now obviously we know of genes that are mutated. The vast majority of them are the cause of disease, deformations or disabilities. Many of these mutations are spontaneous because the parent organisms don't have them and aren't carriers.

We also see environmental insults create mutations in fully developed organisms that affect whole populations of offspring.

For example, a high percentage of kids with spina bifida are born to Vietnam veterans because of Agent Orange. We have a pocket of kids born in the 1950's who are deformed because of Thalidomide. Would you conclude based in their deformed limbs that these kids were "transitional life forms" between humans and seals?

Just because you see something in the fossil record that looks like a cross between A and B does not mean that it is.

I'm assuming that by fully-formed, you mean having all the characteristics of the Cambrian creature. If you mean "having all the features needed to live", then all taxa are fully-formed.

No, an organism that has a fully functioning body. (Or as far as we can tell by possibly only just a skeleton.) We don't see examples of organisms that have half developed flipper feet, fishes tales and wings.

In 1971, a fossil was found that captured a Velociraptor mongoliensis clutched around a Protoceratops andrewsi in Mongolia.

You'd have to cite the article of the find for me to assess what you mean by "desert fossil".

Only sometimes. The American West has areas like that. But in the above case, the fossils are formed in desert deposits. There are layers of the Grand Canyon with desert fossils as well.

The article you cite here has a picture of animal tracks that were obviously made when the sand / or dirt was mud. (You would not have been able to see the animal's tracks if it wasn't walking through mud. Need evidence; go walk through beach sand that's not wet.) In order to preserve those tracks as you see them; they had to be covered by another layer of sentiment very quickly. You don't get preservation like that over the course of time. That was a catastrophic event that preserved those footprints.

No, they were buried in very fine silt, deposited very slowly, such that even the impressions of feathers remain. Completely incompatible with a cataclysm.

If you were to take a deceased sparrow and bury it at the beach; what would happen? Would you get a fossil, or would it just decompose?

 

[The Righterzpen]

No. Most mutations do nothing much of anything. Since proteins are so large, changing one amino acid in them usually has no observable effect. Occasionally, one is harmful, and tends to be removed from the population by natural selection. Very occasionally, one is useful and tends to be increased in the population.

This all depends on what that mutation is; what the gene does and when it turns on or off. A mutation in a protein that develops into a foot with bone spurs has a very different impact than a mutation in brain cells that develop epilepsy.

Go look through a data base of all the diseases and disabilities that are caused by genetic mutations and than tell me they aren't a big deal!

 

[ViaCrucis]

Show me a certifiable example of a "half formed" organism; that did not emerge as the result of some fluke of nature (like Siamese twins today).

I suspect that what Barbarian meant by "half-formed" is that what we see in the Ediacaran biota appear to be transitional to the phyla of the Cambrian.

Not that the organisms were, in fact, "half-formed".

I'm sure Barbarian will correct me if I'm wrong.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Righterzpen]

I once had a battle of wits with an egg stealing magpie. Took me a week to outsmart that dang bird.

Birds are amazingly intelligent! I was watching this program about city dwelling crows in Japan. There was a particular type of nut that was abundant but the crows could not eat it because they could not crack it with their beaks. Apparently though, they knew they were edible.

Well one bird (somehow) figured out that: If I drop these nuts in the road where the cars will run them over; I can eat them. Well one bird started to do that and before long all his crow friends were doing it too.

They figured out how to time the dropping of these seeds into the cross walk so after the cars ran them over and when the traffic stopped for the people to cross; the birds would fly down and eat the crushed nuts. Once they heard the noise of the crosswalk warning that it was going to turn red; they'd fly away.

Absolutely genius! And humans did not aide their learning process. These birds figured this out all on their own!

Crows and parrots are extremely smart!

When I first saw this; I had a hard time believing these noises were coming out of this bird. Amazing recall and impersonation to be able to copy all these sounds. And no one taught this bird to do this.

YouTube is full of these kinds of videos!

 

[JackRT]

I was in a large pet store once and was having a conversation with a person in the next aisle over. It was a myna bird. I realized something was wrong when it didn't know what binding energy of a nucleus referred to.

 

[Brightmoon]

Now THAT makes more sense. (What you're saying about the genes.) Yet the only thing that proves is that the mutation is harmful and in that case, obviously it would be beneficial to the organism that the gene gets "shut off".

Also in the genome there are genes that only turn on and then shut off at certain times for very specific reasons and that usually has to do with development. So, when the developmental task of a gene is past time; are there other genes that turn on to "empty" that gene so it doesn't get in the way of further development? (Who knows? I don't have that level of detail of knowledge of genetics.)

As per "cities"; maybe it would be helpful to define "city" more loosely.

All humans do build communities and when you have a large enough population, you have a "city". Human communities obviously though are still built on the foundation of language and communication of ideas through the medium of language. Humans have the ability to not only problem solve on a rudimentary level; but to invent. Apes have rudimentary problem solving capacity; but so do dogs, cats, prairie dogs and octopus.

You want to see some astounding displays of brain power in the animal kingdom; look at birds. Birds are highly intelligent for the size of their brains.

if the gene were making a protein that benefited the organism it might or might not get shut off . Depends on what the protein is doing and how other genes interact with it . The gene to make lactase comes to mind here . In most mammals the gene shuts off as the animal grows up .

A mutated gene that is beneficial might or might not be able to be switched on or off . If its beneficial and it’s off another generation might be able switch it on .

 

[Brightmoon]

Birds are amazingly intelligent! I was watching this program about city dwelling crows in Japan. There was a particular type of nut that was abundant but the crows could not eat it because they could not crack it with their beaks. Apparently though, they knew they were edible.

Well one bird (somehow) figured out that: If I drop these nuts in the road where the cars will run them over; I can eat them. Well one bird started to do that and before long all his crow friends were doing it too.

They figured out how to time the dropping of these seeds into the cross walk so after the cars ran them over and when the traffic stopped for the people to cross; the birds would fly down and eat the crushed nuts. Once they heard the noise of the crosswalk warning that it was going to turn red; they'd fly away.

Absolutely genius! And humans did not aide their learning process. These birds figured this out all on their own!

Crows and parrots are extremely smart!

When I first saw this; I had a hard time believing these noises were coming out of this bird. Amazing recall and impersonation to be able to copy all these sounds. And no one taught this bird to do this.

YouTube is full of these kinds of videos!

. People continually get surprised by animal intelligence because we’ve mostly been told since childhood that animals are “ dumb” and for Christians we’re also told that we’re somehow in charge of them because they’re lesser beings. It continually suprises people that animals do think if they were raised to believe that animals can’t think.

 

[Brightmoon]

CC: @The Righterzpen

Hi Barbarian, you don't know that. Detailed impressions of feathers is not at all incompatible with rapid burial caused by flooding. 'Rapid' does not have to entail complete demolition/destruction of life - life can simply be caught/trapped and be swept under or be among life forms not on the ark and run out of energy and fall into the water.

You're also using an example of one fossil with little evidence of disturbance as if this is representative of the entire fossil record... which is untrue. There are many fossils showing animals in a state of panic / positions of fleeing and everything in between. There have also been fossils where various parts of the body of large dinosaurs are separated by long distances as would be consistent with something of massive force or 'cataclysmic' in scale. From the brief description of the flood account in Genesis it suggests an event not constant in force but of periods of intensity with periods of subsiding.

with archaeopteryx we actually do know that the bird was either drowned or the body was buried in anoxic water soon after death . The animal’s gastralia ( belly ribs) were pushed out by the guts decaying and exploding after death .Even laymen can see this in pictures of the fossils. This caused the body to sink into the anoxic water that delayed decaying further . By the way birds don’t have gastralia , dinosaurs do . You’d be better off thinking of Archie as a Dino-bird because it has the traits of a birds as well as the ancestral traits of a dinosaur (teeth and gastralia )

 

[Brightmoon]

Is a Basset Hound a "transitional life form" between a Tea Cup Poodle and a St. Barnard? (I'd hope (and expect) you'd say "no" to that. LOL)

Who's to say that what you have here; and what they label as a "transitional life form" is not just another variant within a string of species of a particular phyla or even a variant of a particular species?

If you were to take a city pound of 50 different dogs and fossilize them; would you automatically think you have 50 different species or "transitional life forms" between species?

We all know that Tea Cup Poodles and St. Barnards are all the same species. (Domesticated dogs and wolves are genetically the same species; even though they are classified differently.) Multiple types of "dog type creatures" live in the same environment. (fox, wolf, coyote, hyena, domesticated dog)

Yet look at all the variations of domesticated dogs. You have Basset Hounds with short legs. Weiner dogs with long bodies. Pugs with pushed in faces. Newfounlands with domed heads. Bulldogs with muscular bodies. There's even really interesting dogs that look like mops and dogs that even look like cats! (Yikes!) All these different breeds of dogs were mostly created only in the past 150 years! That's not evolution; that's eugenics!

Now if you can do that to the species "domestic dog" in 150 years; you don't need "millions of years" of "evolution". All the variety of these different breeds of dogs that we have today; were all found in the genome of "canine" from the get go. The ability to adapt to quickly changing environments is the reason there is so much "junk DNA" in any given organism. Just because we don't know what a gene is for, or what it does; does not mean it's "broken", "deleted", "mutated", "throw back to some other era" (or what ever).

Now obviously we know of genes that are mutated. The vast majority of them are the cause of disease, deformations or disabilities. Many of these mutations are spontaneous because the parent organisms don't have them and aren't carriers.

We also see environmental insults create mutations in fully developed organisms that affect whole populations of offspring.

For example, a high percentage of kids with spina bifida are born to Vietnam veterans because of Agent Orange. We have a pocket of kids born in the 1950's who are deformed because of Thalidomide. Would you conclude based in their deformed limbs that these kids were "transitional life forms" between humans and seals?

Just because you see something in the fossil record that looks like a cross between A and B does not mean that it is.



No, an organism that has a fully functioning body. (Or as far as we can tell by possibly only just a skeleton.) We don't see examples of organisms that have half developed flipper feet, fishes tales and wings.



You'd have to cite the article of the find for me to assess what you mean by "desert fossil".



The article you cite here has a picture of animal tracks that were obviously made when the sand / or dirt was mud. (You would not have been able to see the animal's tracks if it wasn't walking through mud. Need evidence; go walk through beach sand that's not wet.) In order to preserve those tracks as you see them; they had to be covered by another layer of sentiment very quickly. You don't get preservation like that over the course of time. That was a catastrophic event that preserved those footprints.

I bolded the part of you post that I answered . Yes you do see half developed features in the fossil record . Just in whales alone( that’s obvious to a layman, )you’ll see this. The whale blowhole moving from the tip of the mouth to the top of the head over time and the front walking leg gradually turning into a flipper. These changes , and others, happened gradually over many different species .

As far as that second issue what would happen to that sparrow depends on the chemical and mineralogical type of sediment it gets buried in, the bacterial and fungal life in the sediment and the subsequent geological history of the area. This is why fossils are rare.

 

[The Barbarian]

Is a Basset Hound a "transitional life form" between a Tea Cup Poodle and a St. Barnard? (I'd hope (and expect) you'd say "no" to that. LOL)

They are both the same species, hence merely variations.

Who's to say that what you have here; and what they label as a "transitional life form" is not just another variant within a string of species of a particular phyla or even a variant of a particular species?

A transitional form has apomorphic characters of two distinct taxa. For example Archaeopteryx has mostly dinosaur characteristics. But it also has a number of features found only in birds. It's not quite a bird, but it's very close to the line that gave rise to birds.

By drastically changing the environment (artificially, in the case of dogs) you can get some extreme results. Eventually, there can be reproductive isolation and speciation. But you don't see that in dogs.

Now obviously we know of genes that are mutated. The vast majority of them are the cause of disease, deformations or disabilities.

No. The vast majority of them do nothing. A few are harmful, and a very few are useful. Natural selection sorts them out.

Many of these mutations are spontaneous

What are non-spontaneous mutations?

because the parent organisms don't have them and aren't carriers.

You have dozens of mutations in your genome that weren't present in either parent. But they all were present in either the egg or the sperm of your parents. That's how it works. Somatic mutations, such as tumors, aren't in your genome,and aren't passed on. Is that what you mean?

We also see environmental insults create mutations in fully developed organisms that affect whole populations of offspring.

There are mutagens. Generally, this is bad for a species, because for most populations, the general mutation rate is optimal for them.

For example, a high percentage of kids with spina bifida are born to Vietnam veterans because of Agent Orange. We have a pocket of kids born in the 1950's who are deformed because of Thalidomide. Would you conclude based in their deformed limbs that these kids were "transitional life forms" between humans and seals?

See above. Do those kids have apomorphic characters of primates and pinnipeds? No, they just have a malformation caused by a teratogen; they don't have genes for very short limbs.

Just because you see something in the fossil record that looks like a cross between A and B does not mean that it is.

It comes down to evidence. You look for homologous organs, not analogous ones. Hence, birds and bats may look very similar, but when you examine them closely, bats show mammalian homologues, and birds show archosaurian ones. Would you like to talk about those?

No, an organism that has a fully functioning body. (Or as far as we can tell by possibly only just a skeleton.)

Then every transitional form, such as archaeopteryx, is a fully formed organism. It's one of Darwin's secondary points; evolution can't do everything, because you have to have fully-functional transitional forms to get from A to B.

We don't see examples of organisms that have half developed flipper feet,

[ quote]fishes tales[/quote]

and wings.

You'd have to cite the article of the find for me to assess what you mean by "desert fossil".

Fossils of organisms that lived in deserts, such as Protoceratops.
The Paleoenvironments of Tugrikin-Shireh (Gobi Desert, Mongolia) and Aspects of the Taphonomy and Paleoecology of Protoceratops (Dinosauria: Ornithishichia)

David E. Fastovsky, Demchig Badamgarav, Hideki Ishimoto, Mahito Watabe and David B. Weishampel

PALAIOS

Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1997), pp. 59-70

The article you cite here has a picture of animal tracks that were obviously made when the sand / or dirt was mud. (You would not have been able to see the animal's tracks if it wasn't walking through mud.

Yes, it does rain in the desert, and there are places in deserts where there is water. This is why the tracks of those animals are so rare; they lived in arid conditions.

In order to preserve those tracks as you see them; they had to be covered by another layer of sentiment very quickly.

Or just dry out and slowly get covered by wind-blown deposits.

If you were to take a deceased sparrow and bury it at the beach; what would happen? Would you get a fossil, or would it just decompose?

Almost all organisms buried anywhere, decay. Only rarely do they get preserved as fossils. But once covered in dry sand, bones of organisms persist for a very long time, occasionally becoming fossils.

 

[The Righterzpen]

if the gene were making a protein that benefited the organism it might or might not get shut off . Depends on what the protein is doing and how other genes interact with it . The gene to make lactase comes to mind here . In most mammals the gene shuts off as the animal grows up .

A mutated gene that is beneficial might or might not be able to be switched on or off . If its beneficial and it’s off another generation might be able switch it on .

What you've said here is an example of: could be "yes", with "and", "if" or "but". Genes turn on and off all the time and through the course of an organism's life and we may witness that happen and not know why.

Here's an example. If doing an EEG on a child (which is a test for epilepsy that's looking at brain waves); when they are sleeping, you will see an "artifact" on the EEG called "spindles". "Spindles" are normal. The younger the child, the more "spindles" you will see in their sleep. Doctors don't know really what "spindles" are, what causes them, why they are there, or what they do.

BUT, they do know that if "spindles" show up when a kid is awake, something's wrong. If "spindles" show up in an adult; that's not normal either. "Spindles" obviously have something to do with brain development. Brain development is obviously controlled by genes that turn on and off at certain stages of development that do "X","Y"&"Z" to the body and brain.

Now gene "D","E"&"F" which may not even be for brain development but are telling body to produce protein "P","Q"&"R" for heart liver and lungs, certain of those proteins end up on the brain where they are not suppose to be. And maybe this happens because gene "L" is suppose to turn on to stop protein "Q" from getting into the brain. Well maybe "L" is turning on, but gene "N" is telling the immune system to attack the production of enzyme "E" which is what actually stops "Q" from getting into the brain. Well, then genes "J"&"K" are back up in the feed back loop that produces enzyme "I" which disables "Q" from causing brain damage, shunting off all the excess "Q" to a particular location that shows up on an MRI as a benign tumor between the brain and the menages. Yet if too much "Q" gets in one place it pushes on the brain and causes other neurological problems.

So this is a common problem in geographical location "G" because of lack of certain minerals. So a second feed back system fires up to convert "Q" to a different protein the brain can actually use; but that feed back system is only seen in people of this ethnic background because that gene was turned on 4 thousand years ago because of environmental factor "M" which only happens in that part of the world. But only certain people in geographical location "Q" have the enzyme to convert "Q" to a useable brain protein; because 5000 years earlier, they came from an island 10,000 miles north of "G". And they have that enzyme because the island they left had vegetable...... (and on and on).

Now that is a complicated interplay between a lot of different factors; yet all the genetic code to deal with these changing conditions is in the genome of (say what ever species) and happens constantly all over the world.

Sometimes the environmental factors change so quickly so drastically that entire species die off.

Sometimes (more often than not) it's the influence of other species that cause the extinction of species due to hunting or crowding the environment.

Sometimes the genetic code in what humans may think is a "different species of" (pick an animal) is suppressed and then wha-la environmental factors change and a once thought extinct "species" is "back from the dead".

Now enter mathematical probability and all this has to come about by "something" other than random chance.

 

[Brightmoon]

What you've said here is an example of: could be "yes", with "and", "if" or "but". Genes turn on and off all the time and through the course of an organism's life and we may witness that happen and not know why.

Here's an example. If doing an EEG on a child (which is a test for epilepsy that's looking at brain waves); when they are sleeping, you will see an "artifact" on the EEG called "spindles". "Spindles" are normal. The younger the child, the more "spindles" you will see in their sleep. Doctors don't know really what "spindles" are, what causes them, why they are there, or what they do.

BUT, they do know that if "spindles" show up when a kid is awake, something's wrong. If "spindles" show up in an adult; that's not normal either. "Spindles" obviously have something to do with brain development. Brain development is obviously controlled by genes that turn on and off at certain stages of development that do "X","Y"&"Z" to the body and brain.

Now gene "D","E"&"F" which may not even be for brain development but are telling body to produce protein "P","Q"&"R" for heart liver and lungs, certain of those proteins end up on the brain where they are not suppose to be. And maybe this happens because gene "L" is suppose to turn on to stop protein "Q" from getting into the brain. Well maybe "L" is turning on, but gene "N" is telling the immune system to attack the production of enzyme "E" which is what actually stops "Q" from getting into the brain. Well, then genes "J"&"K" are back up in the feed back loop that produces enzyme "I" which disables "Q" from causing brain damage, shunting off all the excess "Q" to a particular location that shows up on an MRI as a benign tumor between the brain and the menages. Yet if too much "Q" gets in one place it pushes on the brain and causes other neurological problems.

So this is a common problem in geographical location "G" because of lack of certain minerals. So a second feed back system fires up to convert "Q" to a different protein the brain can actually use; but that feed back system is only seen in people of this ethnic background because that gene was turned on 4 thousand years ago because of environmental factor "M" which only happens in that part of the world. But only certain people in geographical location "Q" have the enzyme to convert "Q" to a useable brain protein; because 5000 years earlier, they came from an island 10,000 miles north of "G". And they have that enzyme because the island they left had vegetable...... (and on and on).

Now that is a complicated interplay between a lot of different factors; yet all the genetic code to deal with these changing conditions is in the genome of (say what ever species) and happens constantly all over the world.

Sometimes the environmental factors change so quickly so drastically that entire species die off.

Sometimes (more often than not) it's the influence of other species that cause the extinction of species due to hunting or crowding the environment.

Sometimes the genetic code in what humans may think is a "different species of" (pick an animal) is suppressed and then wha-la environmental factors change and a once thought extinct "species" is "back from the dead".

Now enter mathematical probability and all this has to come about by "something" other than random chance.

. How? I gave you specific examples that a layman could see.

When that happens it’s because we weren’t as observant as we should have been and made an assumption that the Clade or organism was extinct when it wasn’t. It’s actually not a big deal just a hint that we need to be more observant.
That’s spelled voila( with an accent mark over the a ) by the way . it’s french