Are there transitional fossils?

[xianghua]

My view of it is that there is never direct evidence of design in anything.

so if you will find a robot you cant conclude design? ok.

 

[xianghua]

actually the brain size of the homo-erectus get bigger in about 2 times of its original size. but its still was a homo-erectus (actually a variation of a modern man). so its only a variation, not evolution. the same can be said for the H. floresiensis, that had a much smaller brain size. but its still was a regular human. we have other problems too. for instance: from morphological prespective the orangutan may be the closest ape to human and not chimp:

Orangutans May Be Closest Human Relatives, Not Chimps

 

[Speedwell]

so if you will find a robot you cant conclude design? ok.

As I said, it depends on the robot. Design is intention, and intention is not directly detectable. If I'm out camping and pick up a rock to pound in my tent stakes, I have "designed" a hammer. After I move on, you would be hard pressed to find out which rock I had used. Even if I shape the rock for the purpose by banging it against another rock you might have a hard time picking it out--ask any paleontologist who is trying to find man made stone tools in a rockpile. In fact, what he is looking for are traces of human manufacture from which he may infer human design, and when he finds them he may still not be sure of the purpose of the object, what is was designed for. Considering the robot of your example, I would infer an intelligent designer not because of its functionality or its complexity but because it was obviously a product of human manufacture. If I could not conclude that the object was of human manufacture, then I could draw no inference one way or another about the existence of a designer, because functional organization is not, in itself, evidence of intentional organization.

 

[Astrophile]

Nevertheless, we can study evolution without ever addressing origins of life and vice versa.
Or we can do both simultanously - which is exactly what is happening. There are evolutionary biologists who study evolution and there are bio-chemists who study the origins of life.

It's like doing chemistry without knowing where the elements came from, or predicting the weather without knowing where the earth's atmosphere came from.

Alternatively, one can study the origin of the elements without needing to know how they behave in a test-tube, or the origin of the earth's atmosphere without needing to know whether it's going to rain tomorrow.

 

[PsychoSarah]

why? we can claim that maybe some geological process insert this fossil into the wrong layer or something.

-_- sedimentary rock doesn't work that way (the type of rock fossils are found in). Basically, for a fossil to "move" from one rock layer to another, all the surrounding rock would have had to be removed (without damaging the fossil) and the fossil would have to be allowed to once again be buried by sediment and have new rock reform around it. And this would only make the fossil seem more recent than it actually is during the initial dating, when the surrounding rock is used to make an estimate before the fossil is dug out and tested directly.

Furthermore, there is no way for a fossil to even end up in an older rock layer than it belongs without it being hugely obvious. You'd practically have to have the fossil dug up, then take a pickax to a lower sediment level, rebury it in the different rock layer, and try to compact the older sediment on top of it, all without damaging the delicate fossil. And that STILL wouldn't prevent accurate dating using material from the fossil itself.

It would even be difficult to near impossible to sabotage the dating of a fossil on purpose, let alone for it to happen via natural processes.

 

[mark kennedy]

You didn't just claim lucy "has a chimpanzee skull", but that lucy " was a chimpanzee", which is just plain wrong, just as if I said you were a chimpanzee. Aa has many features of upright walking that are obviously different from a chimp - that's why real biologists give Aa's not just a different species name, but a whole different genus. But of course, this isn't a surprise, since we all know you aren't a biologist, and that you disagree with them anyway.

Australopithecus (southern ape) afarensis (of Africa) are ancient apes that lived in southern Africa. Now their descendants live in equatorial Africa. Two species of gorillas live in eastern and western Africa, as well as two species of chimpanzees. Four species of orangutans live in, ’Indonesia and Malaysia, are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra’, (Orangutan, Wikipedia). Since there is no question among evolutionists that they all have a common ancestor. If that original ancestor got of the Ark in modern Eastern Turkey the migration pattern suggests you would find their descendants from that area radiating into Africa and Asia which is exactly what we see. 'A. afarensis also has a relatively small brain size, about 380–430 cm3' (Australopithecus afarensis, Wikipedia)

From southern Russia to southern Africa you see a lot of fossils, gracile and robust. The south African apes, Australopithecus afarensis, are averaging around 400cc and some change. They were semi-bipedal, knuckle dragging, tree dwelling apes that would need a massive overhaul of brain related genes including 60 de novo (brand new) genes. A more reasonable explanation is that their descendants have cranial capacities slightly smaller then their antediluvian ancestors.

Your backpeddling claim of:"Lucy has a chimpanzee skull" is also just plain wrong. As I corrected you before, there are aspects of Aa's skulls that show they were not chimps. Here are some:

Backpeddling? I'm not even getting warmed up yet.

No, you claimed that you knew her cranial capacity, which is not possible to get from the fragments of Lucy's skull. The cranial capacity of Aas is known from some of the over a dozen other fossils. Here it is mark. Hint - the skull fragments are at the top end of the skeleton.

We know the average cranial capacity for Australopithecus (southern ape) afarensis. Connect the dots.

From the other Aa fossils, we see that Aa fits nicely in the gradual, smooth evolution from chimp-like ancestor to human.

hmmm..... Interesting, then, that a simple check on their habitat give this

I'm familiar with the Lucy skeleton and that convoluted scattergram from Pandas Thumb, both are irrelevant to this discussion.

Fit's in nice and neat except for one major problem. Australopithecus afarensis lived about 3 mya and Homo habilis wouldn't appear in the fossil record to right around 2 mya. In the middle ground there is this strange transitional, this is where it get's interesting:

Members of this genus are characterised by robust craniodental anatomy, including gorilla-like sagittal cranial crests…For the most part the Australopithecus species A. afarensis, A. africanus, and A. anamensis either disappeared from the fossil record before the appearance of early humans or seem to have been the ancestors of Homo habilis, yet P. boisei and P. aethiopicus continued to evolve along a separate path distinct and unrelated to early humans. (Paranthropus, Wikipedia)

Slightly larger as far as cranial capacity but now it's developing gorilla characteristics, especially that mohawk looking thing called the, 'sagittal cranial crests'. Australopithecus afarensis gone, Homo habilis hasn't arrived yet and this transitional in the middle.

P. boisei is usually thought to descend from earlier P. aethiopicus (who inhabited the same geographic area just a few hundred thousand years before) and lived alongside several other species of early humans during its 1.1 million year existence. P. boisei belongs to just one of the many side branches of human evolution, which most scientists agree includes all Paranthropus species and did not lead to H. sapiens. (Paranthropus boisei, Smithsonian)​

Sure it has, mark - remember all the past times when myself and others explained that to you? We even mentioned specific mutations and experts on this stuff. Yet another simply false statement.

You've never explained anything, you talk in circles around the molecular cause and beg the question of effect on your hands and knees. Trust me I would remember someone actually addressing the genomic divergence because it's very rare in these discussions.

Of course it doesn't, because it's false. Lucy is dated at 3.2 million years ago, and H. habilis lived from ~2.1 to 1.5 million years ago.

With nothing in the middle except the para (alongside) anthropus (man) in the middle. What is in the middle is something that looks like a transitional into gorilla and chimpanzee representing about a million years of evolution and still almost 1/3 the cranial capacity of modern humans.

Turkana boy lived ~1.5 to 1.6 million years ago - quite different from 3.2 million years ago.

Anatomically human except an unusually small skull that is still within the range of human skulls. Ok Turkana boy is out but the Homo erectus fossils are not much of an issue yet.

Really? Then you must be shocked, because not only did I correct you repeatedly in post #126, but I've shown how you are wrong around a half dozen times in just this post. That's "seriously addressing" your repetitions (over years!) of your false statements.

If your right that Australopithecus afarensis and Homo habilis, notice there's nothing in the middle. Your ability to miss the obvious and still pontificate like an expert is staggering. Unlike you I have done extensive background reading, especially with regards to the Leaky finds and the extraordinary transformation of the Piltdown hoax to the stone age ape man myths. Living species left with no transitionals because every skull dug up in Africa and parts of Asia and Europe are passed off as our ancestors. The only way the gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan have a common ancestor is for there to be a protracted adaptive radiation across Africa and Asia. You have a million year gap, a staggering number of highly conserved brain related genes filled in with nothing but fallacious personal remarks and naturalistic presupposition.

I know the evidence, rather the lack of it. If you want to try an evidencial approach try a little background reading.

May the truth prevail,
Mark

 

[doubtingmerle]

You didn't just claim lucy "has a chimpanzee skull", but that lucy " was a chimpanzee", which is just plain wrong, just as if I said you were a chimpanzee. Aa has many features of upright walking that are obviously different from a chimp - that's why real biologists give Aa's not just a different species name, but a whole different genus. But of course, this isn't a surprise, since we all know you aren't a biologist, and that you disagree with them anyway. 1

Your backpeddling claim of:"Lucy has a chimpanzee skull" is also just plain wrong. As I corrected you before, there are aspects of Aa's skulls that show they were not chimps. 2 Here are some:

No, you claimed that you knew her cranial capacity, which is not possible to get from the fragments of Lucy's skull. 3 The cranial capacity of Aas is known from some of the over a dozen other fossils. Here it is mark. Hint - the skull fragments are at the top end of the skeleton.

From the other Aa fossils, we see that Aa fits nicely in the gradual, smooth evolution from chimp-like ancestor to human.

hmmm..... 4 Interesting, then, that a simple check on their habitat give this:

Common Chimpanzees or Pan troglodytes, are found almost exclusively in the heavily forested regions of Central and West Africa.​

More false statements.



Sure it has, mark - remember all the past times when myself and others explained that to you? We even mentioned specific mutations and experts on this stuff. Yet another simply false statement.



Of course it doesn't, because it's false. Lucy is dated at 3.2 million years ago, and H. habilis lived from ~2.1 to 1.5 million years ago. 5

Turkana boy lived ~1.5 to 1.6 million years ago - quite different from 3.2 million years ago. 6



Really? Then you must be shocked, because not only did I correct you repeatedly in post #126, but I've shown how you are wrong around a half dozen times in just this post. That's "seriously addressing" your repetitions (over years!) of your false statements.

The rest of your post seems to be the typical trash talk and put downs we've seen before, though you haven't talked about "ghosts in the fog", btbopoyhak, nor "shooting fish in a barrel" yet today. Maybe put them in the next post?

In Christ-

Papias

Nice job putting this together, Papias.

The chart on cranial size sums up neatly the claim that there were transitional fossils. It is a simple chart based on something that can be measured numerically, has obvious importance to the capabilities of the species involved, and shows a definite trend in the fossil record.

 

[xianghua]

As I said, it depends on the robot. Design is intention, and intention is not directly detectable. If I'm out camping and pick up a rock to pound in my tent stakes, I have "designed" a hammer. After I move on, you would be hard pressed to find out which rock I had used. Even if I shape the rock for the purpose by banging it against another rock you might have a hard time picking it out--ask any paleontologist who is trying to find man made stone tools in a rockpile. In fact, what he is looking for are traces of human manufacture from which he may infer human design, and when he finds them he may still not be sure of the purpose of the object, what is was designed for. Considering the robot of your example, I would infer an intelligent designer not because of its functionality or its complexity but because it was obviously a product of human manufacture. If I could not conclude that the object was of human manufacture, then I could draw no inference one way or another about the existence of a designer, because functional organization is not, in itself, evidence of intentional organization.

so lest say that we will find such a robot (that made from organic components and have a self replication system) on another far planet. what you will conclude then?

 

[xianghua]

It would even be difficult to near impossible to sabotage the dating of a fossil on purpose, let alone for it to happen via natural processes.

ok. if its true then we have a lots of other possibilities. one of them is convergent evolution, or just pushing back the creature appearance. for instance: if we wil find an ape fossil in a 70 my layer we can claim that apes evolved earlier than we thought.

 

[mark kennedy]

Nice job putting this together, Papias.

The chart on cranial size sums up neatly the claim that there were transitional fossils. It is a simple chart based on something that can be measured numerically, has obvious importance to the capabilities of the species involved, and shows a definite trend in the fossil record.

Oh yea, that scattergram is priceless. It gives this obscure picture of random dots and no specifics which alleviates the evolutionist of any responsibility to the specifics because it has none.

 

[PsychoSarah]

ok. if its true then we have a lots of other possibilities. one of them is convergent evolution, or just pushing back the creature appearance. for instance: if we wil find an ape fossil in a 70 my layer we can claim that apes evolved earlier than we thought.

That pushes too far back, actually. Primates don't even appear until between 50-55 million years ago (primates being the predecessors of apes), so finding a 70 million year old ape fossil would hit the modern evolutionary model hard. Make it 150 million years old and the evolutionary timeline is completely destroyed, along with our understanding of how the process itself works.

However, unless you came up with a model for how species change over time that matches up with reality in a superior way to evolution, the theory itself would likely remain as a placeholder for a while, just because even if shown to be inaccurate, it has some practical uses.

You'd actually have to disprove the idea that species can even change over time to disprove evolution, since that is what the theory outlines. The evolutionary timeline has long since ceased to be the strongest evidence for evolution, so there is certainly some wiggle room with it, but a rabbit fossil from the Precambrian would still disprove the theory entirely. Actually, finding a mammal fossil far older than any reptile would manage that, or a bird before reptiles.

 

[USincognito]

You didn't just claim lucy "has a chimpanzee skull", but that lucy " was a chimpanzee", which is just plain wrong, just as if I said you were a chimpanzee.

Mark's been claiming she was a chimpanzee for over a decade. He's ignored all evidence to the contrary and still trots out tired long debunked "arguments" of his like his HAR1 chew toy and what I refer to as "I can't believe it's not a brain*".



* Lest this reference escape anyone.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!®

 

[USincognito]

Australopithecus (southern ape) afarensis (of Africa) are ancient apes that lived in southern Africa.

Oh my word. You can't even get the most simple stuff right.

Afarensis means from the Afar region so Au. afarensis means Afar southern ape. And Afar is in Ethiopia, which is not southern Africa.

 

[mark kennedy]

Oh my word. You can't even get the most simple stuff right.

Afarensis means from the Afar region so Au. afarensis means Afar southern ape. And Afar is in Ethiopia, which is not southern Africa.

Point taken, Australopithecus, 'from Latin australis, meaning "of the south," and Greek pithekos, meaning "ape".' it's not southern Africa it's just southern. It still characterizes a southern adaptive radiation across Africa and Asia.

 

[mark kennedy]

Mark's been claiming she was a chimpanzee for over a decade. He's ignored all evidence to the contrary and still trots out tired long debunked "arguments" of his like his HAR1 chew toy and what I refer to as "I can't believe it's not a brain*".

View attachment 191723

* Lest this reference escape anyone.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!®

Oh I can believe it, I just don't believe such a highly conserved gene gets 18 substitutions over night just because it would have had to in order for us to have evolved from apes:

The 118-bp HAR1 region showed the most dramatically accelerated change, with an estimated 18 substitutions in the human lineage since the human;chimpanzee ancestor, . Only two bases (out of 118) are changed between chimpanzee and chicken, indicating that the region was present and functional in our ancestor at least 310 million years (Myr) ago.
​

That's getting pretty close to the Cambrian explosion. What's more there is a million years between the A. Afarensis, A. Africanus and the emergence of the Oldovia fossils. In the middle are the Paranthropus (from Greek παρα, para "beside"; άνθρωπος, ánthropos "human"), that isn't consider one of our ancestors and they have a distinctive gorilla-like sagittal cranial crests.

Skull of Paranthropus boisei

A. Afarensis with a cranial capacity of ~430cc lived about 3.5 mya.
A. Africanus with a cranial capacity of ~480cc lived 3.3-2.5 mya.
P. aethiopicus with a cranial capacity of 410cc lived about 2.5 mya.
P. boisei with a cranial capacity of 490-530cc lived between 2.3-1.2 mya.
OH 5 'Zinj" with a cranial capacity of 530cc lived 1.8 mya.
KNM ER 406 with a cranial capacity of 510cc lived 1.7 million years ago.
​

Now it makes sense that a common ancestor would radiate southward adapting into two chimpanzee, two gorilla and four orangutan species. You would expect to find a transitional from robust to gracile, or vise verse in equatorial Africa. What would not make much sense would be for this transitional to be where the ancestor of the hominid line is supposed to be. Then there is the hominid line that nearly triples the cranial capacity taking this unparalleled giant leap of adaptive evolution and to date, there is only one species of human.

I'm not incredulous, I think the evidence is being misrepresented in Darwinian evolution. I think the fossil evidence and the genomic comparisons are perfectly comprehensive and deeply problematic for Darwinians. The jaws and the joints are secondary to the time line and the massive overhaul of highly conserved brain related genes.

In one of the areas of the human genome that would have had to change the most, Human Accelerated Region (HAR), we find a gene that has changed the least over just under 400 million years HAR1F. Just after the Cambrian is would have had to emerge de novo, fully formed, fully functional and permanently fixed along broad taxonomic categories. In all the time since it would allow only two substitutions, then, while the DNA around it is being completely overhauled it allows 18 substitutions in a regulatory gene only 118 nucleotides long. The vital function of this gene cannot be overstated:

The most dramatic of these ‘human accelerated regions’, HAR1, is part of a novel RNA gene (HAR1F) that is expressed specifically in Cajal– Retzius neurons in the developing human neocortex from 7 to 19 gestational weeks, a crucial period for cortical neuron specification and migration. HAR1F is co-expressed with reelin, a product of Cajal–Retzius neurons that is of fundamental importance in specifying the six-layer structure of the human cortex. (An RNA gene expressed during cortical development evolved rapidly in humans, Nature 16 August 2006)​

This all has to occur after the chimpanzee human split, while our ancestors were contemporaries in equatorial Africa, with none of the selective pressures effecting our ancestral cousins. This is in addition to no less then 60 de novo (brand new) brain related genes with no known molecular mechanism to produce them. Selection can explain the survival of the fittest but the arrival of the fittest requires a cause:

The de novo origin of a new protein-coding gene from non-coding DNA is considered to be a very rare occurrence in genomes. Here we identify 60 new protein-coding genes that originated de novo on the human lineage since divergence from the chimpanzee. The functionality of these genes is supported by both transcriptional and proteomic evidence. RNA– seq data indicate that these genes have their highest expression levels in the cerebral cortex and testes, which might suggest that these genes contribute to phenotypic traits that are unique to humans, such as improved cognitive ability. Our results are inconsistent with the traditional view that the de novo origin of new genes is very rare, thus there should be greater appreciation of the importance of the de novo origination of genes…(De Novo Origin of Human Protein-Coding Genes PLoS 2011)​

Whatever you think happened one thing is for sure, random mutations are the worst explanation possible. They cannot produce de novo genes and invariably disrupt functional genes. You can forget about gradual accumulation of, 'slow and gradual accumulation of numerous, slight, yet profitable, variations' (Darwin). That would require virtually no cost and extreme benefit with the molecular cause fabricated from vain imagination and suspended by pure faith.

 

[USincognito]

That's getting pretty close to the Cambrian explosion.

Only a YEC would think that 220 million years is "pretty close".

a distinctive gorilla-like sagittal cranial crests.

Saggital crests are not a qualia of gorillas. They will be found in any vegetarian primate that has large jaw muscles for chewing.

{snip same incredulous crap he's been posting for 11 years}

Spare me Mark. I've seen your shtick a hundred times. I'm not some newbie you're hoping to impress.

 

[mark kennedy]

Only a YEC would think that 220 million years is "pretty close".

When only two substitutions are allowed in 350 million years and then suddenly there are 18, 2 mya that's a dramatic giant leap. Even Darwin could have told you, nature does not make leaps, especially with regard to highly conserved brain related genes.

Saggital crests are not a qualia of gorillas. They will be found in any vegetarian primate that has large jaw muscles for chewing.

Gorillas have them, chimpanzees don't and neither do humans. This change is occupying a million years of evolution and then all of the sudden the early hominids emerge.

Spare me Mark. I've seen your shtick a hundred times. I'm not some newbie you're hoping to impress.

You failed to answer it again, I guess I'm not surprised, since in ten years no one else has managed a substantive response.

 

[pitabread]

Spare me Mark. I've seen your shtick a hundred times. I'm not some newbie you're hoping to impress.

I just noticed he's blatantly copy-pasting his own posts. No wonder his initial reply in my comparative genomics thread was so nonsensical. It was just a copy-paste from this thread.

Wild.

 

[USincognito]

I just noticed he's blatantly copy-pasting his own posts. No wonder his initial reply in my comparative genomics thread was so nonsensical. It was just a copy-paste from this post this thread.

Wild.

It's been his MO for years.

 

[pitabread]

It's been his MO for years.

I do remember he was fixated on human-brain evolution (his so-called "null hypothesis"). I don't remember the copy-paste stuff though. I guess it explains a few things.