About fossils

[Truth in Faith]

If there are billions of fossils, and everything was supposed to have evolved over millions of years, why aren't there billions of transitional fossils? 1 or 2 fossils which might be interpreted as transitionals wouldn't matter because there would have to be "billions" of transitionals. It is more likely to assume that the 1 or 2 supposed transitionals were diseased or a mistaken transitional.

Any thoughts on this, supporting/elaborating or counter to it.

 

[Arikay]

Im pretty uneducated about fossils compared to other people around here, but I can give a couple bits of info.

First off, there are quite a few more than 1 or 2 transitional fossils. Really you need to specify what you think a transitional fossil is. As many creationist groups keep the definition of a transitional fossil floating. so quite often they dismiss a transitional fossil for not being transitional enough.

Second, there are quite a few animals that never become fossils. It takes specific things to come together to fossilize an animal and to keep them intact enough to be of any use to scientists.

Im sure there will be someone better to answer your questions though.

 

[Truth in Faith]

Shouldn't we see clear pathways of evolution? Shouldn't everything be plainly layed out in terms of things transitioning?

 

[Arikay]

I believe we do for some animals.

Remember, every fossil must be dug up and researched, so we dont have it all layed out infront of us. It takes some pretty hard work to find all of these fossils and to keep them intact. The fact that we are finding new ones still quite often, means that there is a mass amount of fossil evidence out there that hasnt been seen yet.

However, we have found a lot of evidence already.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

In my opinion YECs try to attack the fossil record and the supposed absence of transitional fossils in an attempt to cover up the fact that Young Earth Creationism can't explain the existence of an ordered fossil record.

http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/ff.htm

There are of couse some well known transitions. The reptile mammal transition has been worked out in detail

http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_05.htm

Here are a few pages with more on transitional fossils. There are far more than just 1 or 2.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.html
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/fossils.html


Of course, on a tiny fraction of the fossils in the fossil record have actually been dug up and examined as Arikay pointed out.  Recently a lot of new whale fossils have been discovered

http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/2001/Sep01/r091701c.html
http://www.findarticles.com/m1200/12_160/79196961/p1/article.jhtml
http://darla.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/ANAT/Pakicetidnew.html

as well as the feathered dinosaur fossils that have been in the news lately.

These are the ones that make news. New fossils in less publicized sequences are also discovered regularly.


If you are a "flood believing" YEC, can you explain how the alleged worldwide flood could have buried organisms of all sizes, shapes and habitats from diatoms to dinosaurs in ordered sequences that just happen to look like evolution over time?  Don't feel too bad if you can't.  No one else can either.

Regards

The Frumious Bandersnatch

 

[Truth in Faith]

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."
Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 06:09 AM Truth in Faith said this in Post #1

If there are billions of fossils, and everything was supposed to have evolved over millions of years, why aren't there billions of transitional fossils? 1 or 2 fossils which might be interpreted as transitionals wouldn't matter because there would have to be "billions" of transitionals. It is more likely to assume that the 1 or 2 supposed transitionals were diseased or a mistaken transitional.

Any thoughts on this, supporting/elaborating or counter to it.

There are series of transitional fossils of individuals linking species to species across genera, family, order, and even class (mammals are a class).  At the end of the post you can find a list of some of these.  You'll note that many of these were done decades ago and are in books that are not easy to find.  But they are there.

Now, Arikay and Frumious noted a couple of reasons for the lack of "billions of transitionals", but the two most important reasons are:

1. Transformation does not occur in large populations.  Instead, most speciation is in small, isolated populations -- allopatric.  This makes it hard to find.  When Eldredge found a transtional from one species to another of trilobite, it was in only one quarry in all of New, York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.  So it is very unlikely that that particular area is going to be exposed on the surface and actually looked at by paleontologists.

2. Transformation takes place faster than most sediments are deposited.  For instance, Stebbins has calculated that a directional change that increased the mean size of a mouse-sized mammal just 0.01% -- far too small to detect -- would change that mouse sized animal to an elephant sized animal in just 60,000 years.  Since most bedding planes represent 60,000 years, you would find the mouse in one and the elephant in the other, with all the transitionals omitted because the sediment layers weren't fine enough to detect it.

But, as I say, it is not true that transitionals are not known. And, if even one of them is known, then creationism is falsified because creationism would say there are no, none, zip transitionals.

5.  PR Sheldon, Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites.  Nature 330: 561-563, 1987.  Rigourous biometric study of the pygidial ribs of 3458 specimens of 8 generic lineages in 7 stratgraphic layers covering about 3 million years.  Gradual evolution where at any given time the population was intermediate between the samples before it and after it. 
6.  PD Gingerich, Paleontology and phylogeny: patterns of evolution of the species level in early Tertiary mammals.  American J. of Science, 276: 407-424, 1980.  Transitional series between species of early horses linking "higher" taxa.  web site for horse evolution: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/

Transitional series
Transitional individuals from one class to another
1.  Principles of Paleontology by DM Raup and SM Stanley, 1971, there are transitional series between classes.  (mammals and reptiles are examples of a class)
2.  HK Erben, Uber den Ursprung der Ammonoidea. Biol. Rev. 41: 641-658, 1966.

Transitional individuals from one order to another
1. C Teichert "Nautiloidea-Discorsorida"  and "Actinoceratoidea" in Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology ed RC Moore, 1964
2.   PR Sheldon, Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites.  Nature 330: 561-563, 1987.  Rigourous biometric study of the pygidial ribs of 3458 specimens of 8 generic lineages in 7 stratgraphic layers covering about 3 million years.  Gradual evolution where at any given time the population was intermediate between the samples before it and after it. 

Transitional individuals in hominid lineage
1. CS Coon, The Origin of Races, 1962.
2. Wolpoff, 1984, Paleobiol., 10: 389-406 

Speciation in the fossil record
1.  McNamara KJ, Heterochrony and the evolution of echinoids. In CRC Paul and AB Smith (eds) Echinoderm Phylogeny and Evolutionary Biology, pp149-163, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988 pg 140 of Futuyma.
2. Kellogg DE and Hays JD Microevolutionary patterns in Late Cenozoic Radiolara. Paleobiology 1: 150-160, 1975.

Whale transition:
1.  http://www.neoucom.edu/Depts/ANAT/whaleorigins.htm
2.  http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v413/n6853/full/413277a0_fs.html

Transitional websites:
http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_04.htm
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/transitionals.htm
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.html

 

[lucaspa]

There is one other, more prosaic reason, that many transitional series aren't published: it simply isn't worth it. Truth, journals don't publish the 50th or 100th article that sees the same thing. Scientists try to find new knowledge, not simply repeat old knowledge. So transitional series don't get published unless they are in a previously unknown and puzzling lineage.

"In many instances, transitional individuals exist but are not reported explicitly as evolutionary lineages, for several reasons. Fully documenting such complete sequences is rather expensive in both research effort and publication cost; thus, many remain unpublished (Berry & Boucot, 1970, p 30-3`). Moreover, the practicing paleontologist sees little need to repeatedly reprove well-established concepts, especially when his primary concern is with other matters such as biostratigraphic dating (Berry, 1960, p 9)." pg 265. Cuffey, R.J in Science and Creationsim, pp 255-281. He has 10 pages of primary references

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 09:20 AM Truth in Faith said this in Post #6

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."
Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127

This is a quote out of context.  Gould is discussing Punctuated Equilibria, which is that speciation occurs in small, geographically limited populations.

Here is a more extended quote from Gould clarifying what he meant, done in the same year as the quote above.  Shame on you for the out-of-context.  False witness.

"Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument.  We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study [Note:  almost never, not never.  Again, cases of fine transitions of one species to another are known.].
"For several years, Niles Eldredge ... and I have been advocating a resolution of this uncomfortable paradox.  We believe Huxley was right in his warning.  The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change.  In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield *exactly* what we see in the fossil record.  [emphasis mine]  It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism.
"The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1.  Stasis.  Most species exhibit no directional change duing their tenure on earth.  They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2.  Sudden appearance.  In any *local* area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.'  [Note, emphasis mine, but the key here is the local area where you did for fossils.]
"Evolution proceeds in two major modes.  In the first, phyletic transformation, an entire population changes from one state to another.  If all evolutionary change occurred in this mode, life would not persist for long.   Phyletic evolution yields no increase in diversity, only a transformation of one thing into another.  Since extinction (by extirpation, not by evolution into something else) is so common, a biota with no mechanism for increasing diversity would soon be wiped out.  The second mode, speciation, replenishes the earth.  New species branch off from a persisting parental stock.
"Darwin, to be sure, acknowledged and discussed the process of speciation.  But he cast his discussion of evolutionary change almost totally in the mold of phyletic transformation.  ...
"Eldredge and I believe that speciation is responsible for almost all evolutionary change.  Moreover, the way in which it occurs virtually guarantees that sudden appearance and stasis shall dominate the fossil record.
"All major theories of speciation maintain that splitting takes place rapidly in very small populations.  The theory of geographic, or allopatric, speciation is preferred by most evolutionists for most situations (allopatric means 'in another place').  A new species can arise when a small segment of the ancestral population is isolated at the periphery of the ancestral range.  Large, stable central populations exert a strong homogenizing influence.  New and favorable mutations are diluted by the sheer bulk of the population through which they must spread.  They may build slowly in frequency, but changing environments usually cancel their selective value long before they reach fixation.  Thus, phyletic transformation in large populations should be very rare - as the fossil record proclaims.
"But small, peripherally isolated groups are cut off from their parental stock. They live as tiny populations in geographic corners of the ancestral range. Selective pressures are usually intense because peripheries mark the edge of ecological tolerance for ancestral forms.  Favorable variations spread quickly.  Small, peripheral isolates are a laboratory of evolutionary change.
"What should the fossil record include if most evolution occurs by speciation in peripheral isolates?  Species should be static through their range because our fossils are the remains of large central populations.  In any local area inhabited by ancestors, a descendent species should appear suddenly by migration from the peripheral region in which it evolved.  In the peripheral region itself, we might find direct evidence of speciation, but such good fortune would be rare indeed because the event occurs so rapidly in such a small population.  Thus, the fossil record is a faithful rendering of what evolutionary theory predicts, not a pitiful vestige of a once bountiful tale."  SJ Gould, The episodic nature of evolutionary change.  In The Panda's Thumb, 1980, pp.179-185.

 

[Late_Cretaceous]

lucaspa, thank you for your tireless and exhaustive efforts.

 

[Zadok001]

lucaspa:

Ditto Late_Cretaceous. Your work on these forums is admirable.

On Topic:

If I'm not mistaken, aren't almost all fossils trasitional by definition, excluding the Gish Gallop? Every species evolved FROM something else, and most evolved INTO something else. Hence, transitional. Truth in Faith, would you be kind enough to provide me with a detailed definition of 'transitional,' so that it is possible to evaluate different fossils for that trait?

 

[Cantuar]

It is more likely to assume that the 1 or 2 supposed transitionals were diseased or a mistaken transitional.

Um, what disease would account for the presence of feathers on a dinosaur? Or the presence of cetacean-type echolocation in a land vertebrate?

 

[webboffin]

If humans are supposed to be a spin off from apes, and both human and apes exist still.
Is there an ancient species and it's spin off both existing today?

 

[lucaspa]

20th March 2003 at 10:04 AM Late_Cretaceous said this in Post #10

lucaspa, thank you for your tireless and exhaustive efforts.

You're welcome.  Busman's holiday. 

 

[lucaspa]

20th March 2003 at 12:03 PM Zadok001 said this in Post #11

lucaspa:

Ditto Late_Cretaceous. Your work on these forums is admirable.

On Topic:

If I'm not mistaken, aren't almost all fossils trasitional by definition, excluding the Gish Gallop? Every species evolved FROM something else, and most evolved INTO something else. Hence, transitional. Truth in Faith, would you be kind enough to provide me with a detailed definition of 'transitional,' so that it is possible to evaluate different fossils for that trait?

Well, you guys are all welcome to use the material.  After all, science is knowledge in the public domain.  Then I can take a vacation. 

That all fossils are transisitional was one idea put forward.  There is obviously some truth to that but it isn't all true.  Not all fossils are transitional. Remember stasis.  Once a population is very large, stabilizing selection takes effect and the population doesn't change.  Also, some species go extinct without leaving any descendents, remember.  There were several species of hominids 2 million years ago: P bosie, P. zijanthropus, H. hablis, A. africanus and probably others we haven't found.  Only H. habilis produced descendents so the others aren't "transitional" to anything.

 

[Mihaela]

HEllo, guys. I just wanted to say that anything that has to do wiht fossils or dinosaurs or Jurassic PArk, I love.

 

[Mihaela]

Sorry, if I interrupted your conversation!

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 09:26 AM webboffin said this in Post #13

If humans are supposed to be a spin off from apes, and both human and apes exist still.
Is there an ancient species and it's spin off both existing today?

In the hominid lineage? No. That species was driven to extinction by its descendents or went extinct due to change in the environment. (well, the daughter species are a change in the environment, aren't they?)

In any lineage?  Yes. Absolutely. In fact, hundreds or thousands.  I know of only a few.

7.  MLJ Stiassny and A Meyer, Cichlids of the rift lakes.  Scientific American 280: 64-69, Feb. 1999.  These fish have all evolved from a common ancestor in the last 12,000 years.  Hundreds of species.  The original fish species is still in the lakes.

9. Double dose of DNA.  Science 285: 195, 2 July 1999.  A rat species, visach rat,  has 51 chromosomes instead of the 26 of other rat species. All chromosomes are doubled except the sex chromosome.  The original rat species rattus rattus, is still around.
6.  B Wuethrich, Speciation:  Mexican pairs show geography's role. Science 285: 1190, Aug. 20, 1999.  Discusses allopatric speciation. Debate with ecological speciation on which is most prevalent.
11. P. S. Soltis, G. M. Plunkett, S. J. Novak, D. E. Soltis, Am. J. Bot. 82,1329 (1995).
12. N Barton Ecology: the rapid origin of reproductive isolation Science 290:462-463, Oct. 20, 2000. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5491/462 Natural selection of reproductive isolation observed in two cases. Full papers are:  AP Hendry, JK Wenburg, P Bentzen, EC Volk, TP Quinn, Rapid evolution of reproductive isolation in the wild: evidence from introduced salmon. Science 290: 516-519, Oct. 20, 2000. and M Higgie, S Chenoweth, MWBlows, Natural selection and the reinforcement of mate recognition. Science290: 519-521, Oct. 20, 2000

1. ME Heliberg, DP Balch, K Roy, Climate-driven range expansion and morphological evolution in a marine gastropod.  Science 292: 1707-1710, June1, 2001. Documents mrorphological change due to disruptive selection over time.  Northerna and southern populations of A spirata off California from Pleistocene to present.




 

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 12:10 PM Mihaela said this in Post #17

Sorry, if I interrupted your conversation!

You didn't. Science had a special paper on Dinosaur evolution as part of its section on evolution a couple of years back.

3. Science issue on evolution  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol284/issue5423/index.shtml

If the link doesn't work for you, let me know and I'll either get the PDF of the article or at least the paper reference so you can find it in your public library.

You do know, don't you, that the cloning of dinos a la Jurassic Park can't happen?  While it appears that dino DNA can possibly survive, the bases on the sequences have undergone chemical reactions that make it impossible for sequencers to sequence or amplify the DNA.

 

[larkspur]

One question I have is how can the science community come up with a species that links other species together from one bone or tooth?