Are there transitional fossils?

PsychoSarah · May 22, 2017

Justatruthseeker said:
More cognitive dissonance at work. Let me see if I got this correct. Colecanth is not transitional in the way they believed, but even though you haven't any clue how or to what they are transitional to they are still transitional?

No, that is not what I said. Ancient coelacanths broke off from the evolutionary line of tetrapods before lungfish, and after every other type of fish. The previous conception was that coelacanths were the closest fish group to tetrapods based on their anatomy. However, DNA is a more accurate means of determining relatedness than anatomical comparison is, and thus once coelacanth and lungfish DNA was sequenced, it was found that lungfish were genetically more similar to tetrapods than coelacanths. Small adjustments to the evolutionary timeline are fairly common.

Ancient coelacanths are, of course, transitional to the modern species of coelacanths. I think you made an internal mistake, however, in thinking that transitional species are inherently part of specific evolutionary lines. Lungfish being the closest modern fish group to tetrapods doesn't mean that tetrapods evolved from an ancient lungfish, only that they shared a more recent ancestor than any other fish does to tetrapods. Likewise, tetrapods still share ancestry with coelacanths, it's just a bit farther back in time than with lungfish.

Justatruthseeker said:
Sure making a lot of statements of fact for so many unknowns. But that's common in evolutionary religion.

They are not "unknowns", they are conclusions considered to be the most accurate representation of reality based upon the evidence to be had at the time. Furthermore, theories continuously become more reliable over time. A theory from the 1700s is not equal to a theory from today, and a theory today will be marginally less reliable then the theories of the future. True, theories likely will never be perfectly accurate, but treating 99.999% accuracy as if it's just a bunch of unknowns is intellectually dishonest.

Justatruthseeker said:
I've got no problem at all with what you call transitional. Just as the Cocker Spaniel went through many transitional forms to get to its present state. It just remains the same species as its predecessor and all the transitionals is all.

-_- ancient coelacanths are not the same species as the two modern ones I know of. There are multiple fossil species as well
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/35/58/dd/3558dd402e7d0e04a8dcf477448b8b66.jpg
http://assets.bwbx.io/images/im.h018YFicM/v1/640x-1.jpg
http://www.humanfossil.se/coelacant-80.jpg

and here's a modern coelacanth http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/images/coelacanth3.jpg
Seems pretty obvious to me that this is not the same species as all those fossils, and that those fossils aren't all the same species. A skeleton for comparison purposes, sorry about the watermarks, couldn't find a picture without them. http://c8.alamy.com/comp/EHP836/ske...a-chalumnae-natural-history-museum-EHP836.jpg

Also, some basic comparisons of the two living coelacanth species (two bottom drawings) and the ancient ones, in terms of body shape, with their size written on the drawings.
https://ecologicablog.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/coelacanth-phylogeny.png

-_- also, we invented the distinction of species, and the definition of species isn't even the same between the different Kingdom classes of life, because life doesn't conform to the categorical boxes we make for it.

PsychoSarah · May 22, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
If there were only 2 dogs on the ark, how can all those breeds of dogs evolve from 2 dogs in 4000 years?

Probably a bad example, since dog breeds are the result of artificial selection by humans, and thus change over time much faster than species which evolve through natural selection. Also, because evidence of distinct dog "breeds" actually dates from a bit over 4,000 years ago, and there are quite a few dog breeds that are only a few centuries old.

Thing is, though, artificial selection doesn't apply to most species on Earth, so your general point is valid.

doubtingmerle · May 22, 2017

PsychoSarah said:
Probably a bad example, since dog breeds are the result of artificial selection by humans, and thus change over time much faster than species which evolve through natural selection. Also, because evidence of distinct dog "breeds" actually dates from a bit over 4,000 years ago, and there are quite a few dog breeds that are only a few centuries old.

Thing is, though, artificial selection doesn't apply to most species on Earth, so your general point is valid.

Understood, dogs breeds can change quite quickly due to artificial selection, but I think the process is sped up by existing genetic material. Dogs and wolves have been around for millions of years so there is plenty of variety in the dog genome. So if somebody wants a particular characteristic, he needs only to breed for that characteristic, and there is a good change that dogs already have some alleles in the genome to help in that direction.

I think the world would have been quite different if there had only been two dogs coming off the ark 4000 years ago. Then there would be at most 4 alleles for any spot on the dog genome. It would have been hard to breed a lot of variety.

I don't know, but I imagine dogs today have hundreds of major allele variations for each spot on the genome. That makes it much easier to find something close to the traits one wants just by selecting for the genes closest to your goal. If you had been starting with dogs that are nearly carbon copies of each other, the task is much more difficult.

doubtingmerle · May 22, 2017

Justatruthseeker said:
What common ancestor? You don't have a common ancestor for any of your claimed evolutionary lineages.

What we have is many fossils that are either common ancestors, or cousins of common ancestors. I have posted pictures of many of them throughout this thread.

I know you truly want to believe the canine species came from the same species that led to the mink, but you have nothing but supposition and leaps of faith in effort to try to sustain that fantasy belief.

I have many evidences for evolution. See 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent .

doubtingmerle · May 22, 2017

Justatruthseeker,

So it looks like you think 2 finches came out of the ark sometime in the last 6000 years, and from those 2 finches all the varieties of finch on the Galapagos descended. Can you please answer? Yes or no? Is this what you believe?

If so, you are claiming evolution occurred at a fantastic rate to produce all that diversity.

Justatruthseeker said:
But I like how you argued there should be trillions, then when I point out the fallacy of that argument change your stance 180 degrees and now try to imply there couldn't be a couple dozen breeds. I'm not quite sure what you want to argue, that there should be trillions or there can't be but a dozen different forms because of time constraints.

No sir, I never said there would be trillions of species descended quickly from the descendants of the ark. The post that mentioned trillions was saying the exact opposite. It was saying that since AV believed 2 Equus evolved into all the horses, zebras and donkeys in 4000 years, then he was believing in a rate of change that was far faster than evolutionists claim.

But since they had just left the Ark, they were not spread out yet and so had more contact and so diversified faster than they do today in the wild due to the vast distances separating each breed. And so what was two became three, and the three became five, and the five became seven, and as they began to spread each remained with its own and the vast distances led to isolation and the lines began to set. There really isn't any reason to wonder at it at all.

That is the exact opposite of what happens. A species that is close together tends to stay homogenous. A species that is spread out tends to divide into different species.

doubtingmerle · May 22, 2017

Justatruthseeker said:
What part of interbreeding right in front of their noses did you find to be a "grey" area?

The part about there being many instances of occasional gene transfer between species, and about it being gray as to what amount of gene transfer constitutes a common species. I have given you several sources verifying that scientists see this as a gray area.

And supposedly the diversified due to the reproductive isolation that DNA tests showed never happened.

The finches on the Galapagos diversified. They are very different.

How did so much variation possibly come from 2 ancestor finches 6000 years ago?

But I have asked repeatedly for you all to tell me which one of the seven processes of speciation led to their speciation,

Can you explain why that has anything to do with the topic of this thread?

Here is an irrelevant question for you. How many hairs are on Trump's head. If you will answer my totally irrelevant question, I will answer yours.

Diversification of varied forms is nothing but the simple exchange of genomes as we have emperical ly discovered through the canine species. They too are all one species, have always been one species and will always be one species.

How can there be an exchange of genes if the animals are virtually identical, with all finches coming from a single pair?

I will ask again, what grey area did you find about their interbreeding right in front of their noses when that is the exact definition of species that you yourself posted as what you believe species to be?

No, the definition I posted did not say that any two animals that have had gene transfer in their ancestors are the same species. That is your claim. That is not what scientists say. You simply made that up and claim that scientists say that.

Jimmy D · May 23, 2017

Justatruthseeker said:
But since they had just left the Ark, they were not spread out yet and so had more contact and so diversified faster than they do today in the wild due to the vast distances separating each breed. And so what was two became three, and the three became five, and the five became seven, and as they began to spread each remained with its own and the vast distances led to isolation and the lines began to set.

I'm not sure how you can post ad-hoc, unevidenced explanations like this whilst arguing that the vast body of scientific knowledge we have on the diversity of species is wrong.

Are you suggesting that the distribution and variety of frogs, for example, that we see worldwide can be explained using your hypothesis?

doubtingmerle · May 23, 2017

xianghua said:
thanks. so a 70 my fossil of ape will not make any problem for evolution. as i said.

Why do you pretend I said that? You are responding to a paragraph that said this would be an enormous conflict with what we know from the fossil record. If we were to find a 70 million year old ape fossil, then we would want to know how it is that, in spite of all the existing evidence for evolution, here is an ape that fits in with none of it. And I gave you several hypotheses that we might propose that did not involve evolution. But all that is conditioned on you first finding this ape. You keep making up evidence and asking what we would do if the things you make up were true. If the things you are making up are true, then we would set out to find out how this new evidence squares with all the evidence we already have. It is that simple.

You can ask "What if?" all day. What if you find evidence that solid iron cannon balls float? If you found such evidence, we would try to understand why all the evidence up until now indicated that they sink, and yet this new evidence shows they float.

What if you find evidence that water is actually H3O instead of H2O? What if you find evidence that the sun is closer than the moon? What if you found evidence that ants have baby elephants? What if you find evidence that E =mc cubed? What if you find evidence that apes lived 70 million years ago? If you find any such evidence we would be startled, in light of all the previous evidence. And we would set out to find why this new evidence is so different from all the evidence we had in the past.

But again all that is based on you actually finding evidence.

In the meantime, I hope you don't mind if I stay in the real world, and try to make sense of the evidence that actually exists, rather than deal with endless hypotheticals of what would happen if we found differing evidence.

but it will falsified a natural evolution. right?

Yes, by definition, if it is true that a designer was involved in creation, then the statement that no designer was involved would be false. That is simple logic. But first you must find evidence that a designer was involved.

xianghua · May 23, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Why do you pretend I said that? You are responding to a paragraph that said this would be an enormous conflict with what we know from the fossil record.

and you said that we can solve this by " that either means that apes and mammals evolved a lot earlier than expected", or "fell down a hole and ended up in an older layer, etc."

so evolution will still be ok with this kind of fossil.

doubtingmerle said:
But all that is conditioned on you first finding this ape.

the same can be said for the tetrapod tracks case. they can just said that tetrapods evolved earlier than expected or evolved twice.

doubtingmerle said:
Yes, by definition, if it is true that a designer was involved in creation, then the statement that no designer was involved would be false. That is simple logic. But first you must find evidence that a designer was involved.

thanks. so here is my evidence: we have found a spinning motor (flagellum) in nature. we know that a spinning motor need a designer- therefore nature was designed. do you agree or disagree?

Warden_of_the_Storm · May 23, 2017

xianghua said:
and you said that we can solve this by " that either means that apes and mammals evolved a lot earlier than expected", or "fell down a hole and ended up in an older layer, etc."

He never said that that would solve the issue though. It would be an explanation, but it wouldn't solve it.

Justatruthseeker · May 23, 2017

PsychoSarah said:
No, that is not what I said. Ancient coelacanths broke off from the evolutionary line of tetrapods before lungfish, and after every other type of fish. The previous conception was that coelacanths were the closest fish group to tetrapods based on their anatomy. However, DNA is a more accurate means of determining relatedness than anatomical comparison is, and thus once coelacanth and lungfish DNA was sequenced, it was found that lungfish were genetically more similar to tetrapods than coelacanths. Small adjustments to the evolutionary timeline are fairly common.

Ancient coelacanths are, of course, transitional to the modern species of coelacanths. I think you made an internal mistake, however, in thinking that transitional species are inherently part of specific evolutionary lines. Lungfish being the closest modern fish group to tetrapods doesn't mean that tetrapods evolved from an ancient lungfish, only that they shared a more recent ancestor than any other fish does to tetrapods. Likewise, tetrapods still share ancestry with coelacanths, it's just a bit farther back in time than with lungfish.

They are not "unknowns", they are conclusions considered to be the most accurate representation of reality based upon the evidence to be had at the time. Furthermore, theories continuously become more reliable over time. A theory from the 1700s is not equal to a theory from today, and a theory today will be marginally less reliable then the theories of the future. True, theories likely will never be perfectly accurate, but treating 99.999% accuracy as if it's just a bunch of unknowns is intellectually dishonest.

-_- ancient coelacanths are not the same species as the two modern ones I know of. There are multiple fossil species as well
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/35/58/dd/3558dd402e7d0e04a8dcf477448b8b66.jpg
http://assets.bwbx.io/images/im.h018YFicM/v1/640x-1.jpg
http://www.humanfossil.se/coelacant-80.jpg

and here's a modern coelacanth http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/images/coelacanth3.jpg
Seems pretty obvious to me that this is not the same species as all those fossils, and that those fossils aren't all the same species. A skeleton for comparison purposes, sorry about the watermarks, couldn't find a picture without them. http://c8.alamy.com/comp/EHP836/ske...a-chalumnae-natural-history-museum-EHP836.jpg

Also, some basic comparisons of the two living coelacanth species (two bottom drawings) and the ancient ones, in terms of body shape, with their size written on the drawings.
https://ecologicablog.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/coelacanth-phylogeny.png

-_- also, we invented the distinction of species, and the definition of species isn't even the same between the different Kingdom classes of life, because life doesn't conform to the categorical boxes we make for it.

So let me see if I got it right this time. They thought for close to 50 years it was transitional to tetrapods based on extensive anotomical research. But when one was actually found alive and its DNA tested that belief from extensive anotomical research turned out to be flawed?

But I am now to assume that all other claimed transitional creatures are correct because of extensive anotomical research? The same extensive anotomical research that led them to believe incorrect assumptions?

Its only too bad we don't have all of their DNA too so we could dispell the rest of the incorrect assumptions!

Justatruthseeker · May 23, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Understood, dogs breeds can change quite quickly due to artificial selection, but I think the process is sped up by existing genetic material. Dogs and wolves have been around for millions of years so there is plenty of variety in the dog genome. So if somebody wants a particular characteristic, he needs only to breed for that characteristic, and there is a good change that dogs already have some alleles in the genome to help in that direction.

I think the world would have been quite different if there had only been two dogs coming off the ark 4000 years ago. Then there would be at most 4 alleles for any spot on the dog genome. It would have been hard to breed a lot of variety.

I don't know, but I imagine dogs today have hundreds of major allele variations for each spot on the genome. That makes it much easier to find something close to the traits one wants just by selecting for the genes closest to your goal. If you had been starting with dogs that are nearly carbon copies of each other, the task is much more difficult.

Its your starting point which is flawed. You can't imagine two becoming many because you start with the incorrect assumption that the genome was imperfect at the start.

The genome is degrading over time, not evolving. Man now has 98% of his genome as junk DNA from errors over time. Becoming more and more prone to genetic errors.

Just as the dog is becoming even more prone to genetic errors because of that selective breeding. The same selective breeding every animal including man participates in. Most animals including man until the transportation age bred only within their own race.

But just as with dogs when an Asian is bred with an African we get a new subspecies Afro-Asian.

Alleles isn't your problem since they are simply transcription of what already exists into new patterns. The same thing that occurs when the Asian and African mate or the Husky and Mastiff mate.

Your problem is new DNA that never existed before, since not once has DNA come into existence that didn't already exist.

Justatruthseeker · May 23, 2017

Jimmy D said:
I'm not sure how you can post ad-hoc, unevidenced explanations like this whilst arguing that the vast body of scientific knowledge we have on the diversity of species is wrong.

Are you suggesting that the distribution and variety of frogs, for example, that we see worldwide can be explained using your hypothesis?

Everything can be including the diversity of humans.

Asian mates with African and produces an Afro-Asian. Why lookee see, diversification within the species with no evolution needed to explain it at all... and it took a whole nine months.....

Astrophile · May 23, 2017

Justatruthseeker said:
But just as with dogs when an Asian is bred with an African we get a new subspecies Afro-Asian.

Let me see if I've got this right. If an Iraqi marries a Japanese, a Malaysian or a Filipino, their children will be Asians, and therefore of the same subspecies as both their parents. Likewise, if a Libyan marries a Zairean or a Xhosa, their children will be Africans, and again of the same subspecies as both their parents. However, if an Iraqi marries a Libyan, their children will be Afro-Asians, and therefore members of a new subspecies. Is this correct?

PsychoSarah · May 23, 2017

Justatruthseeker said:
So let me see if I got it right this time. They thought for close to 50 years it was transitional to tetrapods based on extensive anotomical research. But when one was actually found alive and its DNA tested that belief from extensive anotomical research turned out to be flawed?

There's some bits here that are correct, and others that are a bit off. I'll list off what you got correct first:
1. The evolutionary relationship between coelacanths and tetrapods used to be primarily determined via comparing the anatomy of coelacanth fossils and the living species to fossil and living tetrapods. Via this method, it was concluded that coelacanths were more closely related to tetrapods than lungfish.
2. Once living coelacanth and lungfish DNA was sequenced, it was found that lungfish are genetically closer to tetrapods than coelacanths. Thus, the evolutionary timeline was tweaked accordingly.

What's incorrect:
1. The implication that coelacanths are somehow no longer relevant as a transitional to tetrapods.

Tetrapods and coelacanths still share ancestry. Coelacanth fossils still depict important fin structure developments. That's what distinguishes them as transitional in the first place, the presence of structurally significant developments.

Justatruthseeker said:
But I am now to assume that all other claimed transitional creatures are correct because of extensive anotomical research? The same extensive anotomical research that led them to believe incorrect assumptions?

-_- transitional fossils don't literally belong to a direct line of decent to any living organisms. What makes them significant is that they depict when specific structures, such as lungs, began to appear on Earth. Since the majority of species go extinct without leaving behind any species descendants, and since plenty of the ones that did wouldn't have left behind fossils at all, most transitional fossils are depictions of concept. There's very few fossils that we have complete enough DNA of to actually establish their relatedness to modern species, so the importance of them is a matter of evolutionary order to the timeline, not a line of descent.

Also, consider all of the portions of the evolutionary timeline that were CONFIRMED by DNA comparisons, as well as what a small change switching the places of coelacanths and lungfish actually is.

I'll give a sort of example to clarify. Humans and many other animals on this planet are vertebrates. The earliest vertebrate fossil is about 450 million years old. Thus, that is likely around the time that the evolutionary lines of vertebrates and non-vertebrates split from each other. Thus, if paleontologists wish to find vertebrate fossils, they'll know to look in rock layers 450 million years old or less. The place the oldest fossil with a specific feature is found also narrows down where to look.

However, the significance of fossils has greatly dwindled in terms of determining evolutionary relationships. In fact, it is so surpassed by DNA that we actually use DNA comparisons to determine what rock layers we are liable to find transitional fossils in.

Justatruthseeker said:
Its only too bad we don't have all of their DNA too so we could dispell the rest of the incorrect assumptions!

Ugh, again, acting as if the conclusions made through anatomical comparison had no use. You also act as if the only significance of fossils is how they relate to evolution, but they are so much more than that. In any case, so many species have gone extinct without leaving behind modern descendants such as to make DNA comparisons impossible. Since transitional is a matter of structure more than DNA, it's not really relevant to that distinction. DNA would be nice, but we have to work with what we have. Utilizing anatomical comparisons has far more accurate results than making connections at random or just asserting that it's impossible to be certain so why bother. The latter mentality is the antithesis to progress. Having doubts is fine, but throwing all science out is not helpful.

PsychoSarah · May 23, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Understood, dogs breeds can change quite quickly due to artificial selection, but I think the process is sped up by existing genetic material. Dogs and wolves have been around for millions of years so there is plenty of variety in the dog genome. So if somebody wants a particular characteristic, he needs only to breed for that characteristic, and there is a good change that dogs already have some alleles in the genome to help in that direction.

I think the world would have been quite different if there had only been two dogs coming off the ark 4000 years ago. Then there would be at most 4 alleles for any spot on the dog genome. It would have been hard to breed a lot of variety.

I don't know, but I imagine dogs today have hundreds of major allele variations for each spot on the genome. That makes it much easier to find something close to the traits one wants just by selecting for the genes closest to your goal. If you had been starting with dogs that are nearly carbon copies of each other, the task is much more difficult.

Those are fair points for sure. I'd say the most damning evidence against the idea that 2 individuals could give rise to the diversity we see in any particular genus or species is the cheetah (a species that actually experienced a genetic bottleneck about as extreme as the biblical flood would inflict, albeit farther in the past). They are all still so genetically similar that they are all pretty much tissue matches for each other.

doubtingmerle · May 23, 2017

xianghua said:
and you said that we can solve this by " that either means that apes and mammals evolved a lot earlier than expected", or "fell down a hole and ended up in an older layer, etc."

so evolution will still be ok with this kind of fossil.

Finding a 70 million year old ape would be like a scientist finding evidence that water was H30 or that the sun was between the earth and the moon. Finding that water is H30 of finding a 70 million year old ape would be a shock. But we would then try to understand how that happened, when all the evidence says it never happened.

the same can be said for the tetrapod tracks case. they can just said that tetrapods evolved earlier than expected or evolved twice.

It could be that tetrapods did indeed evolve earlier than expected. What do you want us to do if we find tetrapod fossils earlier than expected?

And you too think there was a time when each species began, yes? What happens if you find fossils earlier than you expected? You would adjust your view to match the new information, yes? So if we would both adjust our views to match the new information, why are we endlessly going back repeating that we would adjust our views to match the new information.

thanks. so here is my evidence: we have found a spinning motor (flagellum) in nature. we know that a spinning motor need a designer- therefore nature was designed. do you agree or disagree?

Please prove that a spinning motor needs a designer.

doubtingmerle · May 23, 2017

PsychoSarah said:
Those are fair points for sure. I'd say the most damning evidence against the idea that 2 individuals could give rise to the diversity we see in any particular genus or species is the cheetah (a species that actually experienced a genetic bottleneck about as extreme as the biblical flood would inflict, albeit farther in the past). They are all still so genetically similar that they are all pretty much tissue matches for each other.

Right. If there were 2 dogs 4000 years ago, the species would have bottlenecked with a limited gene pool. At that point it would have taken a long time for them to start diverging significantly.

doubtingmerle · May 23, 2017

Justatruthseeker,

I see you have no answer to the fossil record.

We find fossils that are millions of years old. You have no explanation for why this is so, do you?

Horse fossils appear in a sequence in the fossil record from Eohippus to zebras. You would expect it to be zebras, horses and donkeys all the way down to 6000 years or so, and then nothing else, yes? And yet we find this progression. How do you explain it?

Justatruthseeker said:
Its your starting point which is flawed. You can't imagine two becoming many because you start with the incorrect assumption that the genome was imperfect at the start.

Where is the new genetic information coming from? If every species goes from 4 alleles at each spot to hundreds in a few century, where did the new information come from to create these new alleles?

The genome is degrading over time, not evolving. Man now has 98% of his genome as junk DNA from errors over time. Becoming more and more prone to genetic errors.

Junk DNA does not come from good DNA degrading. It comes from junk being inserted.

Your problem is new DNA that never existed before, since not once has DNA come into existence that didn't already exist.

How do you know new DNA never came into existance?

Justatruthseeker · May 23, 2017

Astrophile said:
Let me see if I've got this right. If an Iraqi marries a Japanese, a Malaysian or a Filipino, their children will be Asians, and therefore of the same subspecies as both their parents. Likewise, if a Libyan marries a Zairean or a Xhosa, their children will be Africans, and again of the same subspecies as both their parents. However, if an Iraqi marries a Libyan, their children will be Afro-Asians, and therefore members of a new subspecies. Is this correct?

You all are the ones that classified them, not me. So tell me, is it correct?

Afro-Asians - Wikipedia

Are there transitional fossils?

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