Cambrian Explosion

Oncedeceived said:

That is the trouble with these long threads, so much is lost in the time from beginnning to end.

What I said is that I held two theories of how plants and trees being in the order they were in Genesis. 1. That the beginning of all plant/tree linage was established in the very beginning with blue algae. 2. That plant/trees evolved in the precambrian and were destroyed or that they were present but we don't have evidence for them now.

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but you have been claiming that the evidence we have does not falsify the claim that grasses existed in the precambrian, right?

Jet Black said:

I just wanted to be clear. thankyou. So is there anything in your scenario that would falsify it, while not falsifying evolution? (I may have asked this already, but forgotten, sorry if that's the case)

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For the first scenerio: I think that the way it stands, it is unfalsifible. There is no way that we can say whether or not the precambrian had plants, grass or trees. It might someday be proven correct but it probably would not be proven incorrect. Anyway I can't think of anything that could.

The second: I think that if it could be proven that plant life could not live without the sun, that it would falsify this scenero.

As far as "without falsifing evolution"; how is that really relative?

caravelair said:

but you have been claiming that the evidence we have does not falsify the claim that grasses existed in the precambrian, right?

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Correct.

Oncedeceived said:

For the first scenerio: I think that the way it stands, it is unfalsifible. There is no way that we can say whether or not the precambrian had plants, grass or trees. It might someday be proven correct but it probably would not be proven incorrect. Anyway I can't think of anything that could.

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what woud the impetus for grass and trees to evolve in the precambrian be, without things like mammals to eat them (resisting being eaten is why grasses have developed as they are) and insects to pollinate them be? Where did these grasses and trees disappear to for several hundred million years, and why did they reemerge in the order expected through evolution? how would they have lived through at least one snowball earth?

The second: I think that if it could be proven that plant life could not live without the sun, that it would falsify this scenero.

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ok. A couple of questions than. How long do you think that plant life was around for before the sun, and how do you think plant life survived wouthout the sun? where was its light source and so on? we know that plants require a source of light in order to survive.

As far as "without falsifing evolution"; how is that really relative?

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well many of the things you have brought up so far are things like "finding a cow in the cambrian". Perhaps it would be better for me to ask what empirically differentiates your theory from the theory of evolution?

Jet Black said:

what woud the impetus for grass and trees to evolve in the precambrian be, without things like mammals to eat them (resisting being eaten is why grasses have developed as they are) and insects to pollinate them be?

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We now know that grasses had diversified by at least 80 million years ago maybe longer. Mammals were not the impetus for them then, so why would it be a stretch for them to occur earlier without the aid of mammals? Not only that, but bees were around long before the first angiosperms, so bees may not have been the driving force on them either.

Where did these grasses and trees disappear to for several hundred million years, and why did they reemerge in the order expected through evolution? how would they have lived through at least one snowball earth?

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It is very plausible for them to be destroyed by the bombardment of the earth or some other major climatic event. The order we expect is only because we are looking back as to how the plants, tree and grasses are in the fossil record we have now. Evolution didn't predict it, it simply gives an explanation of it.

It may not be necessary for them to have lived through the snowball earth.

ok. A couple of questions than. How long do you think that plant life was around for before the sun, and how do you think plant life survived wouthout the sun? where was its light source and so on? we know that plants require a source of light in order to survive.

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I obviously don't know how long, but there is evidence that organisms can live without the sun.

http://www.bu.edu/sjmag/pfstories/pflifezones.htm
Expanding life's zone
By Tai Viinikka Life is tenacious. If you've ever battled a stubborn bathroom fungus, or been dosed with antibiotics until you fear you might die before your bacterial infection does, you know that life--and in particular single cell life--can really hang on when conditions are tough. Over the last few years, scientists have discovered life in some tough venues on our own
planet, fueling scientific interest in life on Mars or elsewhere in our solar system. As scientists keep searching, life's comfort zone continues to expand.
NASA's Opportunity and Spirit robots, now probing the geology of Mars, have a motto for their mission: "Follow the water." Biologists (and astrobiologists -- scientists who search for unearthly life) are sure that if life as we know it turns up, it will require liquid water.
Geological evidence from the Mars rovers and orbiter photos indicate that the planet was moist in the distant past. It looks very dry now, with any remaining water locked under the polar caps. But Europa, one of Jupiter's giant moons, seems almost certain to have liquid water, in a 60-mile-deep ocean sealed under a 10-mile-thick global ice sheet. By comparison, oceans here on earth are at most about six miles deep.
“Europa's oceans should have more than twice the volume of the Earth's,” says Torrence Johnson, the chief scientist of the Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons. There's plenty of room for life, but can life flourish in a high pressure waterworld?
Deborah Kelley was looking at just such a world, at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, in 2000. Her focus then was the geology of the Atlantis Massif, a sizeable mountain on the bottom of the ocean near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Late one evening, some other scientists on the mission were watching from a remote camera being "flown" over the sea-bottom valleys. Kelley remembers an excited Swiss oceanographer barging into her cabin to say: “I think we've seen something. I don't know what it is, but we haven't seen anything like it before." When they gathered around the monitors, the scientists saw white towers of rock, 200 feet tall, venting hot water, covered in bacterial slime. What the expedition had found at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge was a new kind of geological formation inhabited by previously unknown life forms.
The first geothermal vents, as these hot spots are called, were found in 1977 near the Galapagos Islands by scientists using Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution's tiny submarine, ALVIN. At 8,200 feet down, these hot vents had been predicted. But Wood's Hole scientists photographed and brought back samples of life no one was expecting to find.
Before that time, it seemed clear that life was based on light: without plants to turn light energy and carbon dioxide into sugars, how could life exist? The ocean floors are almost totally dark, so under this logic, they should be barren. And yet the volcanic cloud-venting "black smoker" chimneys on the bottom of the seafloor were home to acid and heat-loving bacteria. A whole range of larger life -- clams, crabs, tubeworms--appeared to be living off those bacteria, much as we surface-dwellers live off plants. Scientists realized there was more than one way to get the energy needed for life.
Kelley led an expedition to the newly discovered vent, now called the Lost City hydrothermal field, in 2003. Unlike other deep sea vents, the energy at Lost City isn't generated by an underwater volcano, but from a chemical reaction between seawater and the underlying mineral, called peridotite. This reaction gives off heat, hydrogen, and hydrocarbons, leaving behind a common mineral called serpentine, a material you might find it in your own kitchen as a green "marble" counter-top.
Lost City is unique for now, but Kelley says that the geology at the Atlantis Massif is not rare, and that she expects other life islands based on peridotite will be found. "It really expands the places we find earthly life," she says.
The first discovery of living things growing where it was once thought impossible for them to grow was accidental. At Yellowstone National Park's hot springs in the 1960s, Thomas Brock of Indiana University found bacteria blooming at 176 degrees F, a species he named Thermus aquaticus. Decades later, in 2003, Derek Lovley and co-workers at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) looked at a bacterium delivered from the Mothra vent field in the northeastern Pacific. They watched as it grew in their sterilizing equipment at 250 F, well above water's normal boiling point. (The crush of several atmospheres of pressure holds the water to its liquid form.) This yet-to-be identified organism, called Strain 121, is so far the champ for hot water survival, but no one is taking bets on where the limit for hot life might lie. Lovley says simply "We do not know why Strain 121 can grow at these temperatures."
Lovley's research focuses on evolution of very early life on Earth, a search for the still-living descendants of the first bacteria. Three billion years ago, this planet had no oxygen and no protective ozone layer, so to survive, life forms hid in hot, deep crevices in the earth, fed on chemicals scavenged from hydrothermal vents, and, as Strain 121 does, made use of iron in place of oxygen. These iron-rich environments may not be rare. Although Mars is cold, dry and volcanically inactive now, Lovely says there's plenty of iron there, indeed, the "red planet" is that color precisely because of the rusty iron minerals that Strain 121 "breathes."
Another sunless environment now beckons extreme life scientists, but this one is cold rather than hot. In 1974, radar surveys of Antarctica showed lakes of liquid fresh water that had been sealed over by a couple miles of ice for at least half a million years. In 1999, a team of French, US, and Russian scientists drilled down from the Russian base at Vostok, Antarctica, to within 400 feet of the liquid water. Ice cores, formed from frozen lake water, showed that there are indeed bacteria making a living in the hidden lake. Lake Vostok, about the size of Lake Ontario, averages about 27 F, yet remains unfrozen due to the pressure of the ice lying on it. (Pressure causes ice to melt and become more dense, that is, liquifies it.)
Now that the NASA rovers have yielded firm evidence that Mars once enjoyed persistent liquid water, Earth's geologists and microbiologists are planning a search for fossil remnants of the Martian life Martian. Submarine designers ponder a submersible probe for Europa's cold depths. And meanwhile, bookmakers and astrobiologists continue to revise the odds – in life's favor.



well many of the things you have brought up so far are things like "finding a cow in the cambrian". Perhaps it would be better for me to ask what empirically differentiates your theory from the theory of evolution?[/quote]

ToE is an explanation of how life progressed, it doesn't explain how life began nor why. It is a man-made construct of data compiled and researched based on evidence and theory. My theory is based on data compiled and researched based on evidence and theory. Both have their gaps or lack of evidence, rest on supportive evidence and share a certain amount of assumption. Empirically it is based on scientific studies and those studies are sometimes tied in with evolution which does not conflict with my theory. So I don't really see why one must differentiate one from the other. That being said, ToE holds some assumptions that are not in line with Creation such as a purely natural explanation of life.

Another interesting article on sunless environment.


Life Without Sun
Photosynthetic bacteria apparently use radiation from deep-sea vents



ELIZABETH WILSON



LOW LIGHT Electron micrograph shows photosynthetic bacteria isolated from the sunless environment of hydrothermal vents.

Newly discovered photosynthetic bacteria may get all the light they need for metabolism from the dim radiation emitted by deep-sea hydrothermal vents. If the finding is confirmed, the organisms would be the first known to use a light source other than the sun, suggesting the possibility of life in other sunless environments, such as Jupiter's moon Europa. A group that includes microbiology and immunology professor J. Thomas Beatty at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver; marine biology professor Cindy L. Van Dover at the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va.; and chemistry professor Robert E. Blankenship at Arizona State University, Tempe, isolated the photosynthetic green sulfur bacteria from a single hydrothermal vent in ocean depths not reached by sunlight and cultured them in the lab (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2005, 102, 9306).
Their announcement comes with some strong caveats, however. The authors can't say for sure whether the bacteria are actually indigenous to the vents. There's a chance, they note, that the organisms could have drifted into the collection area from elsewhere, where sunlight could have supported them.
Other marine biologists concur. Colleen M. Cavanaugh, a biology professor at Harvard University, cautions that the bacteria need to be linked to their environment before the discovery can be validated. "But this would certainly be cool, if real," she says.
Linda Jahnke, a microbiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., notes that the violent, unstable conditions surrounding a deep-sea vent don't seem amenable to the bacteria's survival.
Beatty hopes their work will stimulate other groups to look for similar bacteria at other vents. "If we kept finding these organisms repeatedly, then there would be guilt by association," he says.
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright © 2005

Oncedeceived said:

We now know that grasses had diversified by at least 80 million years ago maybe longer. Mammals were not the impetus for them then, so why would it be a stretch for them to occur earlier without the aid of mammals?

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I said "things like mammals" so what would the impetus be in the precambrian?

Not only that, but bees were around long before the first angiosperms, so bees may not have been the driving force on them either.

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non sequitur.

It is very plausible for them to be destroyed by the bombardment of the earth or some other major climatic event. The order we expect is only because we are looking back as to how the plants, tree and grasses are in the fossil record we have now.

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no it isn't, it is also the genetic relatedness and morphological similarity.

and on the articles about sunless environments, we are an awful long way from bacteria to plants. And you still haven't established how you get a sun that is a billion or so years younger than the earth.

Jet Black said:

I said "things like mammals" so what would the impetus be in the precambrian?

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What would it be in the early Cretaeous?

non sequitur.

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Agreed. But again, we find that bees were around many times longer than once thought. It was once thought that they coevolved with the angiosperms and yet they were around possibly twice as long.

no it isn't, it is also the genetic relatedness and morphological similarity.

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True, but I was speaking about some of the assumptions made in light of that.

Jet Black said:

and on the articles about sunless environments, we are an awful long way from bacteria to plants. And you still haven't established how you get a sun that is a billion or so years younger than the earth.

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All plants and trees are considered to be related to the first bacteria. It is the same as my viewpoint on the Cambrian really.

It doesn't require a billion or so years.

Oncedeceived said:

What would it be in the early Cretaeous?

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it's worth pointing out that mammals have been around since the triassic.

Agreed. But again, we find that bees were around many times longer than once thought. It was once thought that they coevolved with the angiosperms and yet they were around possibly twice as long.

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well good for bees. but where does this leave flowering plants in the precambrian.

True, but I was speaking about some of the assumptions made in light of that.

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ones that fit in with genetic and morphological similarity.

It's worth noting here that, had the angiosperms, gymnosperms, grasses and so on evolved in the precambrian, we would see a far larger genetic separation than we do.

Oncedeceived said:

Correct.

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okay, so you believe that the evidence we have today doesn't falsify grasses existing 3 billion years earlier than we think. don't you agree though, that the evidence we have right now is the strongest evidence we could possibly have that they did not exist then? if not, what evidence do you feel would more strongly indicate that? and if this is the strongest evidence we can have, and it still doesn't falsify your claim, then it must be unfalsifiable, right? and if so, doesn't that render all your other predictions unfalsifiable too? because you could always play this exact same trick with any other species, or basically anything relating to the past. any time something contradicts your predictions, you can just claim unfalsifiability.

Oncedeceived said:

We now know that grasses had diversified by at least 80 million years ago maybe longer. Mammals were not the impetus for them then, so why would it be a stretch for them to occur earlier without the aid of mammals?

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Actually, the increase of mammalian grazers was probably about the biggest reason for the sudden diversity of grasses in the Miocene, I believe. There's lots of research out there on this topic.

Mallon said:

Actually, the increase of mammalian grazers was probably about the biggest reason for the sudden diversity of grasses in the Miocene, I believe. There's lots of research out there on this topic.

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Nothing like an evolutionary arms race to spur biodiversity, is there?

Jet Black said:

it's worth pointing out that mammals have been around since the triassic.

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I think that we were discussing the coevolution between grazers and grasses. Considering your viewpoint I doubt that you believe that there were many of these during the triassic.

well good for bees. but where does this leave flowering plants in the precambrian.

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Are you getting enough sleep? This really doesn't sound like you.

I think you understand my point. IF bees could be present for twice as long as originally thought, with the theories of co-evolution being questioned it is not a stretch to see that other theories may be proven questionable as well.

ones that fit in with genetic and morphological similarity.

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I still don't see this as a problem for my premise of the possibility of precambrian plant life. IF it were all destroyed and re-evolved it would be just as we see it. The genetic and morphological simularity present. In fact, we would probably see genetic and morphological simularity in the plant life that was destroyed earlier too if that is what happened.

It's worth noting here that, had the angiosperms, gymnosperms, grasses and so on evolved in the precambrian, we would see a far larger genetic separation than we do.

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Not if it were destroyed and began again.

I'm sorry Oncedeceived but you have no evidence for the existence of Angiosperms ( including grasses ) before the Cretaceous, just your wish that it was so.

Recent evidence from Indian dinosaur dung has pushed back the evolution of grass to about 100Ma, but this is still firmly in the agreed timetable of Angiosperm evolution.

It is impossible to prove that what you say didn't happen, because one day we may find a daffodill in the burgess shale, but as has been stated before, angiosperm pollen is ubiquitous in the geological column post early angiosperm development and absent before then. This points, overwhelmingly, to angiosperms not having developed at any point before .

Where are we supposed to go with this idea?

Oncedeceived said:

IF it were all destroyed and re-evolved it would be just as we see it. The genetic and morphological simularity present. In fact, we would probably see genetic and morphological simularity in the plant life that was destroyed earlier too if that is what happened.

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there is no way evolution would ever take the same path twice. if we had evolution occurring twice over, we would not expect to see the same species evolving over again, we would expect to see 2 different nested hierarchies that don't match up.

Baggins said:

I'm sorry Oncedeceived but you have no evidence for the existence of Angiosperms ( including grasses ) before the Cretaceous, just your wish that it was so.

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I said from the beginning that I didn't have any evidence for it. As far as wishing for it...I don't really have a wish for it at all. In fact, as I have stated before, I tend to go with the second scenerio. It fits with better with my own personal viewpoint.

Recent evidence from Indian dinosaur dung has pushed back the evolution of grass to about 100Ma, but this is still firmly in the agreed timetable of Angiosperm evolution.

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Oh, and what is the agreed timetable. It was agreed that grasses were not present until much later. It was agreed that they co-evolved with grazing mammals.

It is impossible to prove that what you say didn't happen, because one day we may find a daffodill in the burgess shale, but as has been stated before, angiosperm pollen is ubiquitous in the geological column post early angiosperm development and absent before then. This points, overwhelmingly, to angiosperms not having developed at any point before .

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So you can ignore that they were present some 80 million years without leaving any pollen?

Where are we supposed to go with this idea?

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That depends. Do you want to discount any valid points I make so not to give credence to Creation mindset or do you want to actually look rationally at possibilities. I can't say that there is evidence to support precambrian plants and grasses but I can see the possibility of such in such a long expanse of time. But I can't argue with empirical support because there is none. That being said, it is evident that we find our timetables being pushed back time and again with the more evidence accumulated. Such as with grasses and bees for example.

caravelair said:

there is no way evolution would ever take the same path twice. if we had evolution occurring twice over, we would not expect to see the same species evolving over again, we would expect to see 2 different nested hierarchies that don't match up.

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Ever hear of convergent evolution?

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Grasses and trees could have been very different and still be grasses and trees.

Mallon said:

Actually, the increase of mammalian grazers was probably about the biggest reason for the sudden diversity of grasses in the Miocene, I believe. There's lots of research out there on this topic.

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Yes, so this relates to what I said in what way?