Are there transitional fossils?

PsychoSarah · Jun 28, 2017

xianghua said:
ok. but how that skull is so similar to a bird if this is a 210 my fossil (even a mix of fossils)?

To be very blunt, the picture that I can find is so small and of meh quality that I'm not entirely sure that the "skull" is a skull, much less assess how birdlike it is. Recreations of the skeleton don't even look like the fossil at all, so much so that I can only infer that the "beak" of the "skull" is a shape that resulted from the upper and lower jaws being crushed and compacted together, if that even is a skull. There doesn't seem to be a clear orbit for the eye, and that's usually one of the easiest features to spot on a skull.

I'll need a better picture to evaluate this, but I can't seem to find any. I even Google image searched the one I posted, and I can't even find it in a bigger size. Perhaps you can. Honestly, I understand the skepticism about this fossil, it's a mess, but I am unwilling to say if I think it is or is not real with the limited information I have to go on.

xianghua said:
do you have any reference that they dont found this near other fossils? thanks.

Near other fossils of different species you mean (although, I can't think of any other species that would have foot arches like that which wasn't either our species or some other bipedal ape, and again, the toe proportions don't match up with our species at all). Sure, I can provide that. The foot was discovered at the AL 333 site, which is also the site at which 13 different A. afarensis bodies were discovered. The bodies of that site are of the same species and all died at the same time, though the cause of death is currently unknown. One of the reasons this particular site is so important is that the fossils do not have much wear on them (compared to Lucy, which was actually beginning to be exposed to the elements thanks to erosion and was on the brink of crumbling and had to be handled with extreme care). There are no other fossil species noted to be present at the AL 333 site, and all the bodies are at close proximity to each other and occupy the same stratum. Feel free to check up on that for yourself.

xianghua said:
ok. its easy: if we will find a mammal that date about 300my it will not falsified evolution at all.

That's 100 million years before mammals actually appear in the geological column and 15 million years after the first reptile fossils appear, and 25 million years before therapsids existed (the reptiles from which mammals are descended). That's going to entirely disprove mammalian evolution. Your empty statements about evolution being this "insurmountable theory that can adjust to whatever is found" are nonsense. They will always be nonsense. I am getting tired of you constantly posting these incorrect statements. What do I have to do to demonstrate to you that evolution could be disproven via a fossil?

xianghua said:
we can claim that this fossils somehow get into the wrong layer or we can claim for convergent evolution.

Fossils that end up in the wrong stratum of rock don't date the same as the rock that surrounds them... which is part of why we can tell that they aren't in the correct stratum in the first place.

xianghua said:
some of the most similar creatures on earth are actually appeared in a different layers.

Similar yet not the same, and also sometimes the same when it comes to species that existed for a very long time. What even is your point here? Since evolution doesn't occur at the same rate with every species throughout all of time and convergent evolution has always existed, there are bound to be similar yet distinct species which didn't live at the same time as each other. Yet, you never find an organism with lungs from the Precambrian. You never find a mammal before the first reptiles. However, an organism similar to Tiktaalik being found as a fossil younger than Tiktaalik wouldn't even be all that interesting. After all, Tiktaalik exists, so why shouldn't species similar to it also exist in younger strata? Have you ever noticed that my points about how a fossil could disprove evolution always have the fossil species being too OLD to match up with evolution? This is because there is no such thing as "too young" for the fossil record. Heck, there is even at least 1 organism alive today, the horseshoe crab, that has origins from 450 million years ago. Is it the exact same species as the ones that lived at that time? No, but the resemblance is undeniable
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Sites/solnhofen/Mesolimulus-walchi/AAF513F.jpg
https://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/nature/files/2014/10/HorseshoeCrab-Main.jpg

xianghua said:
we can also claim that the date is wrong because of contamination, or just push back the evolution of mammals. anything is possible.

-_- you have to DEMONSTRATE that a given date is wrong because of contamination or faulty equipment, etc. If there is no indication of faulty dating, then the date stands, regardless of the evolutionary implications. You seem to assume that fossils like a rabbit dating from the Cambrian have actually been discovered, but deemed fakes or incorrect in their dating solely by the fact that a rabbit fossil from the Cambrian would clash with evolution. NO ONE would pass up the opportunity to make the most significant fossil discovery in the history of paleontology just to maintain evolution. There are people that dedicate their lives to disproving evolution just for the shear fact that doing so would mean instant fame and fortune.

Job 33:6 · Jun 28, 2017

The fossil succession is like a staff of music. Two people can hear a note and dispute whether the note is slightly sharp or if it's just right. The fossil succession is like an entire staff of music. There is order to it from the lowest notes to the highest.
If mammalian fossils were discovered prior to reptiles, it would be like changing the order of keys on your piano. Or changing strings around on a guitar. But when you propose that tetrapods appeared 20 my before other tetrapods, what you're doing is not swapping keys or strings. What you're doing is, you're fine tuning the instrument.

Job 33:6 · Jun 28, 2017

Hence why predictions can and still are made. Because the staff of music is still in order, even if you're fine tuning the strings and your sound.

doubtingmerle · Jun 28, 2017

xianghua said:
im talking about a car that made from organic components like dna and proteins that can produce other cars. like a living thing. do you think that such a car isnt evidence for design?

Again, impossible.

If a car's engine block is made of proteins, it will burn up the first time you start it.

I think it is impossible for proteins to make copper wire or electric motors.

I think it is impossible to make efficient, growing gearboxes and camshafts and all the other things cars need out of proteins.

And I don't think it would be possible to make functioning wheels out of proteins that can survive with all that wear, with no possible blood source to keep them healthy. It is very unlikely that any animal would need wheels-- see Rotating locomotion in living systems - Wikipedia .

But let's say our "car" eats grass, walks with four short legs, and has two seats to sit on. It would be more like a short camel than a car. Why not call it a camel?

Got a few million years to spare? We might be able to evolve a camel for shorter legs, wider body, comfortable seats, etc. and you might then call it a car.

Would that then be proof of a design? No, it would be proof of selection.

not realy. the eye for instance contain about 40 different parts. during embryo development they arent functional till we get a full vision system. who is talking about embryo anyway? we are talking about a mature form that need to evolve.

The embryo needs to remain viable throughout its existence. At first it lives off the mother's blood, but soon it needs to develop its own heart, veins and other components. All through its development it remains viable while adding proteins and features step by step. The point is that this is an illustration of what evolution does, add features step by step. None of these exist in the fertilized egg. But the embryo remains viable while adding all those features.

Subduction Zone · Jun 28, 2017

AV1611VET said:
Corroboration.

Look how many tries it took to get the moondust right.

Now they backtrack and facepalm anyone who brings it up.

The moondust pwns the idea that the moon has been around for ages and ages.

Nope, it took about two tries to "get the moondust right". The first attempt was wildly off. NASA already new that it was shallow before Apollo 11. And since the Bible gets so much wrong you really are not in a position to complain.

pshun2404 · Jun 28, 2017

PsychoSarah said:
-_- there are laws in place for all the curriculum of public schools for any country. Math and history are just as legally required as science is. Furthermore, the public outrage at what is taught in schools is not even exclusive to science. In some states of the US, for example, the law states that the value of pi is 3. I am not kidding. Currently, people tend to ignore these various laws promoting ignorance. When evidence suggested the Earth was old, people were outraged, banging their bibles. Whenever ANY subject can be construed to go against religious teachings, people threw a huge fit. Sometimes ignorance won out, sometimes it lost.

You personally think that. However, as a person that has experienced public schooling, your assertions about evolution (as it is taught in schools) are incorrect. In middle school, it was OPTIONAL. I took AP biology in high school, and it BARELY got a mention. Most of my knowledge about evolution prior to college was because I pursued it out of personal interest. You think so many people can manage to be ignorant about the most basic evolutionary concepts in a society that pushed it down their throats? Don't be ridiculous. A large portion of public schools don't even follow the law, and don't teach it EVEN THOUGH LEGALLY, THEY HAVE TO. My fiance is from North Carolina. When instructors did bother to teach anything about evolution, they constantly followed it up with "but it's all wrong and the bible is true". So, what is actually being pushed down their throats is Christianity.

-_- taxonomy is not evidence for evolution, and predates it. The founder of what would eventually become the modern taxonomy system was an astute creationist. In fact, he even denied the existence of carnivorous plants, because he viewed them as an abomination that would defy god's divine design. Additionally, the original kingdoms of classification were Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral. Freaking rocks were classified alongside living organisms in the past, and there was no kingdom level for prokaryotic organisms at all. That we classify living organisms on this planet is independent of evolution, though classifications of specific animals have changed due to DNA comparisons. Likewise, we wouldn't stop classifying organisms as species if evolution was disproven.

1. assuming that I am a materialist. I am entirely open to the prospect that there are aspects of the universe we cannot currently measure, and some which we might never be able to measure. I just don't make assumptions about what those things are, since by virtue of not being measurable, we can't determine that.

2. What "actual reality" is only extends, from our perspective, as far as what we can measure. While I do personally view that there is plenty we have yet to measure, and plenty we currently can't, it is pragmatic to consider that which measurably exists to be "real", and that which doesn't measurably exist "not real", since we can't determine the qualities of what we cannot observe. Anything we can't observe or measure is just conjecture at best, and pure fantasy at worst.

I wasn't denying that Darwin himself was racist. I kinda assume that by default for anyone that died prior to WWII. However, his writings on evolution don't mention human evolution very much, and the use of "races" in Origin of Species is never used to refer to humans (it's used roughly like species would be). You do realize that Darwin having racist roots doesn't make his theory inherently racist, right? Are you going to say that cell theory has racist roots too?

1. demonstrate that Thomas Huxley WASN'T racist prior to being exposed to evolutionary theory.
2. demonstrate that evolutionary theory was what caused him to become racist.

You do realize that if evolution implied racism, that it STILL WOULD, right? So where's the modern evolutionary racist? Why hasn't racism become more prevalent over time as evolution became more prevalent? The easy thing to realize is that racism and supporting evolution aren't correlated. Rather, these are independent from each other. Racist people that support evolution will often try to use it to justify their racism. Same goes with racists that are Christian creationists; they'll claim the bible supports their racism.

Again, no shock that Darwin was racist, but you have to demonstrate that evolution made these people racist for your issue with evolution to be valid. People will abuse what they have to promote their ideology. People have always done this.

Yes, eugenics, you know, that thing I keep mentioning sprouted up via misunderstanding evolution. Survival of the "fittest" just means that whatever lives to reproduce viable offspring is what ends up in a population. As long as a person is capable of surviving and reproducing, they meet all the basic requirements necessary to contribute POSITIVELY to the survival of our species. Those that are physically unable to reproduce simply won't, so there's no reason to kill them to remove them from the gene pool. They already aren't going to contribute to it.

Thanks to this lack of fundamental understanding of how evolution works, supporters of eugenics inadvertently harmed the gene pool by excluding some people the right to reproduce (until Hitler's actions in WWII came to light, and no one ever wanted to be associated with eugenics again).

Again, misunderstanding evolution. Mixed race babies actually tend to be healthier than people purely descending from specific regions, as it reduces the risk of inheriting recessive diseases associated with being from a specific region, such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia.

Did you ever stop and think, "perhaps it is their racism creating bias in their scientific interpretations rather than the science contributing to their racism"?

And all the people that were racist in the 1950's were evolution supporters... oh wait, they weren't, it was just a common thing in the population during that time period in general.

I hope you aren't suggesting that Ernst Haeckel liked Adolf Hitler, seeing as Haekel died in 1919. Hitler wasn't even notable in terms of politics until a year or two later. Furthermore, Haeckel's drawings are irrelevant, since we use actual pictures of embryos and fetuses now. Additionally, his proposal that human and other animal embryos developed similarly is demonstrably correct. Were his methods flawed and biased? Absolutely. As it were, his basic conclusions ended up being correct despite that. It's an atypical sequence of events, but it is what it is. His drawings aren't used in up-to-date text books (we've had decent pictures of embryos in the womb since 1997), so why do people keep bringing him up? Are you foolishly assuming that the later evidence that confirmed Haeckel's suspicions was derived through as bad of a method as Haeckel used?

Thanks to you not providing a first name, I can't even look up who Pleotz is. I'm not familiar with the name.

Hitler was also Time magazine's man of the year in 1938, since he turned around Germany's failing economy during the Great Depression. People often forget that Hitler was extremely charismatic and well-spoken. It wasn't until the concentration camps began to be liberated that people outside of Germany realized what a monster he was. By the way, are you unaware that Planned Parenthood began to perform abortions 4 years after Margaret Sanger's death?

Additionally, as I read up on Margaret Sanger more, she actually REJECTED race and ethnicity as relevant in terms of eugenics. So, she was a supporter of eugenics THAT WASN'T RACIST. Furthermore, she never supported killing people for the sake of eugenics, and reacted negatively to what Hitler had done. She was also anti-Nazi, and I can't find any reliable sources that state she ever published an article by Hitler or Mengele. It seems highly unlikely that she would have published any work in regards to Mengele, since his work in no way stood out and was unrelated to her personal goals at the time.

Are their aspects to her ideology I find detestable? Absolutely, such as her support of the sterilization of the mentally challenged. However, I can find no connection to her ideology and evolution at all. In fact, she joint up with the eugenics crowd due to overlaping ideals that she had with them, such as that birth control should be available to anyone that could want it free of charge.

Of course "Science" is required and it should be (nice twist though)...

the use of "races" in Origin of Species is never used to refer to humans (it's used roughly
like species would be).

No he uses both terms and in fact uses "species" very often in the same way I use it (its real meaning which at that time had not been changed)

perhaps it is their racism creating bias in their scientific interpretations rather than the science contributing to their racism

Exactly! Only some of those interpretations were foundational and the effect lingers even to this day.

his proposal that human and other animal embryos developed similarly is demonstrably correct

I agree! Its phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny that was required to be memorized by 1000s and 1000s that was WRONG!

Dr. Alfred Ploetz, one of the principal founders of the journal, Archiv fur Rassen und Gesellschaftsbiologie in Germany. Among the editors he employed were future Nazi scientists Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz, but also he hired Ludwig Plate (a close colleague of Ernst Haeckel and, a member of the Monist League). Ploetz (a friend of Heackel’s prodigy Eugene Dubois) was successor to Haeckel’s chair in zoology at the University of Jena. The first issue of the Archiv was dedicated to Haeckel and Weismann.

In the articles of the journal, Haeckel’s name was constantly referred to; it is clear that the contributors regarded him as one of Germany’s major prophet of political biology, and one cannot avoid noticing the great weight which at all times was attached to his scientific authority, and to his ideas on politics and evolution. The Archiv, which continued to be published right up through the Nazi period (until 1944), became one of the chief organs in Germany for the dissemination of eugenic ideas and provided a respectable scientific framework for other Nazi writers.

Also I researched and read trough three lists of burned books and one on forbidden authors and Origin of Species was NOT one of them and Darwin was not on the list.

Subduction Zone · Jun 28, 2017

xianghua said:
but the fossils showing us something else. where is the prediction then? by the way: creation model also predict transitional objects to be found. a jeep for instance is a transitional between a car and a truck.

What "creation model"? To be a scientific model it must be reasonably testable and in my experience those on the creationist side have always been afraid to put their ideas to the test. That is why, be definition, there is no evidence for creationism.

And no, a jeep is not transitional in the same sense that life is. This has been explained to you multiple times.

AV1611VET · Jun 28, 2017

Subduction Zone said:
NASA already new that it was shallow before Apollo 11.

That's right.

If I remember correctly, they flew a satellite around the moon in 1965 and discovered their mistake.

After how many decades of saying the moondust would be deep?

Astrophile · Jun 28, 2017

pshun2404 said:
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world...The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." — Charles Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man, 1st edition, pages 168 -169.

"The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world" (Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I, 1888. New York D. Appleton and Company, pp.285-286)…

Darwin also wrote,

The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans are as different from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Fuegians on board the "Beagle", with their many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened to be intimate

The Descent of Man, p. 178.

He also wrote about

'a negro lived in Edinburgh, who had travelled with Waterton and gained his livelihood by stuffing birds, which he did excellently; he gave me lessons for payment, and I often used to sit with him, for he was a very pleasant and intelligent man'.

A. Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin's Sacred Cause, p. 18.

How many white men in Britain or the United States during the 19th century, or the first half of the 20th, would have said that they had been intimate with a full-blooded negro, or would say that he was a very pleasant and intelligent man whom they often used to sit with?

Now compare Darwin's words with Charles Carroll's book http://www.biblical-truth.info/In the$20Image$20of$20God - by Charles Carroll.pdf

"The Negro A Beast" ... or "In the Image of God" ... 'The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master - the White man'.
'Published by American Book and Bible House. St. Louis. Mo. 1900'

Chapter I. The Formation of the Negro and other beasts - then the Negro on the sixth day.
Chapter II. Biblical and scientific facts demonstrating that the Negro is not an offspring of the Adamic family.
Chapter III. The theory of evolution exploded; man was created a man, and did not develop from an ape.
Chapter IV. Convincing Biblical and scientific evidence that the Negro is not of the human family.
Chapter VI. Red, yellow and brown skin denotes amalgamation of the human family with the Beast - the Negro.
Chapter X. The Bible and Divine Revelation, as well as reason, all teach that the Negro is not human.

Who do you think was more racist, Charles Darwin, or Charles Carroll and the American Book and Bible House, which published this disgusting work? By the way, I feel physically nauseated at reading and copying out this trash, but I think that it is necessary in order to show what some Christians and anti-evolutionists were capable of saying about people of other races.

Subduction Zone · Jun 29, 2017

AV1611VET said:
That's right.

If I remember correctly, they flew a satellite around the moon in 1965 and discovered their mistake.

After how many decades of saying the moondust would be deep?

Please pay attention. It was not "their mistake". One person made a bad measurement and dishonest creationists won't let go of it.

If you harped on the countless errors in the Bible in the same way that you attack science you would probably be the most obnoxious atheist ever.

Jimmy D · Jun 29, 2017

I see the scientific argument against transitionals has been lost so we've moved on to.....

evolution = rascism / sexism / evil

:sleep:

AV1611VET · Jun 29, 2017

Subduction Zone said:
One person made a bad measurement ...

Is there any evidence that NASA was worried about deep lunar dust?

Jimmy D · Jun 29, 2017

AV1611VET said:
Is there any evidence that NASA was worried about deep lunar dust?

Have you got anything interesting to say regarding the topic of the thread?

xianghua · Jun 29, 2017

KomatiiteBIF said:
You have already been answered. Did you read my guitar analogy? Youre using a pro evolution source and you think you have discredited the fossil succession.

You really don't see how your thinking is incorrect on this one?

again: by this logic we can push back humans to 20-30 my.

Subduction Zone · Jun 29, 2017

AV1611VET said:
Is there any evidence that NASA was worried about deep lunar dust?

If you read and understood that the answer was "No". You just refuted yourself.

xianghua · Jun 29, 2017

KomatiiteBIF said:
Also, does this gar also have wrist bones and a flat head with eyes on top? No...

does tiktaalik have a tetrapod-like spine? no. but gar do have such a spine.

Jimmy D · Jun 29, 2017

xianghua said:
again: by this logic we can push back humans to 20-30 my.

No we can't.

If we push back the date of the earliest tertrapods from 400 million to 420 million years ago we were only out by about 5%.

Modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years so it would actually be like pushing human origins back by 10,000 years.

xianghua · Jun 29, 2017

Subduction Zone said:
What "creation model"? To be a scientific model it must be reasonably testable and in my experience those on the creationist side have always been afraid to put their ideas to the test. That is why, be definition, there is no evidence for creationism.

And no, a jeep is not transitional in the same sense that life is. This has been explained to you multiple times.

creation (without evolution) is testable because we know that there is no functional stepwise to evolve a complex system and we know that motors cant be the r esult of a natural process but design.

in the other hands: how evolution is testable?

Jimmy D · Jun 29, 2017

xianghua said:
we know that there is no functional stepwise to evolve a complex system

Wrong, you might claim it but that isn't the same thing.

xianghua said:
we know that motors cant be the r esult of a natural process but design.

There you go equating a biological structure with a man made one again.

It's as foolish as saying that we know that designed electric motors have metallic components, the flagellum has no metallic components.... therefore it's not designed.

Subduction Zone · Jun 29, 2017

xianghua said:
creation (without evolution) is testable because we know that there is no functional stepwise to evolve a complex system and we know that motors cant be the r esult of a natural process but design.

in the other hands: how evolution is testable?

That is not an answer to my question. I am sure that you have been told how evolution is testable. I will tell you once you explain how the creation model is testable. We are not talking about "motors" here. And if you are talking about the rotator flagellum then your model has already failed that test.

Are there transitional fossils?

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SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

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