Fish finger fossils show the beginnings of hands

xianghua said:

this is because the first tetrapod cant predate the transitional fossil between fish and tetrapod. but this is what we actually find. and what biologists do in such a case? one option is to push back the origin of tetrapods. but we also need to push back the origin of all of these suppose transitional links.

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You're still stuck on a ladder conception of evolution.

You're operating on the assumption that ancestral transitional populations would have had to have gone extinct. That's not necessarily the case, which is why a population of species of the original "transitional forms" can coexist at the same time as off-shoot descendants from the original transitional populations.

It's the same reason you and your cousins can exist at the same time. There is no reason you had to go extinct the minute your cousins were born (or vise-versa).

This is why the fossil record will never be a perfectly linear series of forms one after the other. It's just not how evolution works.

xianghua said:

so what? no one can refute that option and thus any one can solve it by a multiverse.

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It is a pointless question on your part.

pitabread said:

You're still stuck on a ladder conception of evolution.

You're operating on the assumption that ancestral transitional populations would have had to have gone extinct. That's not necessarily the case, which is why a population of species of the original "transitional forms" can coexist at the same time as off-shoot descendants from the original transitional populations.

It's the same reason you and your cousins can exist at the same time. There is no reason you had to go extinct the minute your cousins were born (or vise-versa).

This is why the fossil record will never be a perfectly linear series of forms one after the other. It's just not how evolution works.

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no. in this case its the opposite: the suppose ancestors of tetrapods are actually appearing after the first tetrapod. so we need to believe that the ancestors of tetrapod leave no fossils. this is the reason why they called a ghost lineage.

xianghua said:

no. in this case its the opposite: the suppose ancestors of tetrapods are actually appearing after the first tetrapod.

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That's not what it says.

It helps to understand that "transitional form" does NOT mean direct ancestor. It's simply a representative of species that existed at that particular time.

Just because a fossil is found at an approximate time period doesn't mean that that is when that particular lineage first appeared. Especially so if the ancestral population sizes were smaller, which would make fossilization that much rarer.

xianghua said:

what is the problem? they can say that since we might have infinite number of universe (the multiverse) if it happened it prove that its possible.

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As I said, many things are theoretically possible, but even with an infinite multiverse, the chances of something like happening in any particular universe are still infinitesimally remote. That's probability and statistics for you.

E.T.A. corrected 'particular multiverse' to 'particular universe'.

xianghua said:

if the genome will be identical it will be a cat.

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No; the scientific definition of a cat includes (depends on) its lineage.

It's one of those interesting philosophical 'what if' hypotheticals that can illuminate the way we categorise the world and the constraints on our understanding of identity, but which have no direct relevance to the world.

Further to what I said above, it's interesting to consider how we could ever know that the cat-like dog was part of the canid lineage without the fossil record; until one realises that a further level of improbability is required - that the evolving canine cat lineage did not produce any offshoot species with surviving descendants that would give the game away...

xianghua said:

so what? no one can refute that option and thus any one can solve it by a multiverse.

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Also, purple squids solve Venusian tax problems.
I can make nonsensical claims too.

And no, it doesn't, because there is no evidence that multiverses exist. And the fact that you keep relying on that as an out is... sad.

xianghua said:

so even if we will find a human fossil with a dino its ok according to this.

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It depends whether you regard birds as dinosaurs. There would be nothing anomalous in finding a fossil of Homo habilis together with a fossil of a Pleistocene ostrich, but the discovery of a Homo habilis with an iguanodon would not be 'OK', since iguanodons lived before the appearance of the first primates.

xianghua said:

cars dont have genome. if they had genome then its indeed possible to change one into another.

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This is gold. Bookmarked for the next time you try to use cars, trucks or robot penguins as an argument against evolution. In just 4 words you have shown that you are perfectly aware that any future postings of those claims will be knowingly dishonest.

Subduction Zone said:

Not necessarily. That is a false dichotomy. And why do you keep linking to a site that is all but worthless? You have in effect admitted to no evidence for creationism.

Creation "scientists" tend to be cowards when it comes to their beliefs. Actual scientists form tests that say "If this happens, I am wrong".

And we have observed macroevolution in real time. Macroevolution is by definition anything above the species level and scientists have observed speciation. Of course creationists try to redefine the term,but since they did not invent it they are in no position to redefine it.

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"The main scientific objection to evolution is not about the whether change occurs through time, and neither is it about the size of the change (so use of the terms 'micro-' and 'macro-evolution' should be discouraged). It isn't even about whether natural selection happens. The key issue is the type of change required - to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content. The three billion DNA 'letters' stored in each human nucleus convey a great deal more information than the half a million DNA 'letters' of the simplest self-reproducing organism... all the alleged 'proofs of evolution in action' to date do not show functional new information added to the genes. Rather, they involve sorting and/or loss of information." - Jonathon Sarfati[/QUOTE]

Qwertyui0p said:

"The main scientific objection to evolution is not about the whether change occurs through time, and neither is it about the size of the change (so use of the terms 'micro-' and 'macro-evolution' should be discouraged). It isn't even about whether natural selection happens. The key issue is the type of change required - to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content. The three billion DNA 'letters' stored in each human nucleus convey a great deal more information than the half a million DNA 'letters' of the simplest self-reproducing organism... all the alleged 'proofs of evolution in action' to date do not show functional new information added to the genes. Rather, they involve sorting and/or loss of information." - Jonathon Sarfati

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Creation apologists also try to redefine the term "information." Unfortunately, because (like "theory" or "random") the term has a rather different meaning in scientific usage than in popular speech, they often get away with such underhanded trickery.

pitabread said:

It helps to understand that "transitional form" does NOT mean direct ancestor. It's simply a representative of species that existed at that particular time.

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right. but in this case we are going by the evidence we have base on the fossil record. and base on the fossils we have no evidence for an earlier such transitional forms. thus this case doesnt fit with the evolutionery hierarchy.

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

Further to what I said above, it's interesting to consider how we could ever know that the cat-like dog was part of the canid lineage without the fossil record; until one realises that a further level of improbability is required - that the evolving canine cat lineage did not produce any offshoot species with surviving descendants that would give the game away...

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im not sure that i got all of your points (because of my english probably) but if you agree about the multiverse then anything can happen since we have infinite number of tries.

Astrophile said:

It depends whether you regard birds as dinosaurs. There would be nothing anomalous in finding a fossil of Homo habilis together with a fossil of a Pleistocene ostrich, but the discovery of a Homo habilis with an iguanodon would not be 'OK', since iguanodons lived before the appearance of the first primates.

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no problem. we can push back the evolution of humans or we can claim for convergent evolution (human evolved twice).

Bungle_Bear said:

This is gold. Bookmarked for the next time you try to use cars, trucks or robot penguins as an argument against evolution. In just 4 words you have shown that you are perfectly aware that any future postings of those claims will be knowingly dishonest.

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i was talking about directed process: changing a car genome into another car. like changing a dog genome into a cat genome.

xianghua said:

no problem. we can push back the evolution of humans or we can claim for convergent evolution (human evolved twice).

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No. First, we can't push back the evolution of humans to the Cretaceous period, because the primates that we evolved from had not yet appeared themselves. Second, humans can't have evolved twice, by convergent evolution, because we are primates (and, more specifically, apes) and there were no Cretaceous primates (let alone apes) for an earlier version of humans to evolve from. For humans, anatomically identical with Homo sapiens, to evolve from reptiles, birds (including dinosaurs) or known Cretaceous mammals is so improbable as to amount to an impossibility.

xianghua said:

i was talking about directed process: changing a car genome into another car. like changing a dog genome into a cat genome.

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You've already said cars don't have genomes. So you cannot now argue that they do have genomes, and you cannot argue that cars can evolve, without knowingly telling a lie. I'll point to your own post any time you want to rehash your dishonest claims and remind you that you are well aware that you are telling a lie.

xianghua said:

right. but in this case we are going by the evidence we have base on the fossil record. and base on the fossils we have no evidence for an earlier such transitional forms. thus this case doesnt fit with the evolutionery hierarchy.

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First, there is no violation of the evolutionary hierarchy here. I don't know why you keep claiming that other than you appear stuck on this idea of an evolutionary ladder. You need to start with adjusting your conceptual understanding of evolution and the history of life on Earth.

Second, we need to keep in mind that evidence for ancestral relationships of taxa is based on more than just fossils. There are other lines of evidence that integrate with what we have in the fossil record (e.g. biogeography, developmental biology, genetics, etc). Fossil evidence isn't viewed strictly in isolation.

Third, we know the fossil record is incomplete; we don't expect that we'll have perfect transitional sequences for every single taxa through Earth's history. What we have are snapshots of different periods representative of populations at those points in time. By looking at those snapshots, we can put together a rough picture of the history of life on Earth. As more fossils are discovered, it helps refine that picture.