Today we are sold the idea that the conventional animal group transitions held by evolutionists today (reptile-mammals / dinosaur-birds / archaeoceti-whales, etc.) constitutes some sort of rigorous test of the theory, and that if these supposed 'links' were not found, Evolution would have been in some kind of jeopardy for lack of evidence... This is not true. Evolution theory could have easily molded itself around extremely different transitional animal group narratives if it had been constrained by the data in different ways, as will be demonstrated.
For an example, lets look at the fact that leading early evolutionary proponents such as Thomas Huxley strongly advocated for an amphibian-mammal transition.
From Peter Bowler's "Life's Splendid Drama" p.280
Thomas Huxley argued on morphological grounds that the mammals were so different from any known reptile, living or fossil, that the class would have to be traced back directly to the amphibians...
Huxley's 1879 paper "On the Character of the Pelvis in Mammalia, and the Conclusions Respecting the Origin of Mammals Which May Be Based on Them" Here Huxley took issue with Gegenbaur on the interpretation of the pelvis, insisting that the reptilian modifications were opposite to those found in mammals.... Thus, argued Huxley, "it seems to be useless to attempt to seek among any known Sauropsida [reptiles] for the kind of pelvis which analogy leads us to expect among those vertebrated animals which immediately preceded the lowest known mammals." The Promammalia would have had a pelvis intermediate between that of the platypus and that of a land tortoise, and this would have been the type from which all modifications of the Sauropsida and Mammalia had diverged. This type, he claimed, could be seen in the pelvis of the salamander. Hence, "these facts appear to me to point to the conclusion that the Mammalia have been connected with Amphibia by some unknown 'pro-mammalian' group, and not by any of the known forms of Sauropsida." There was other evidence pointing in the same direction, especially the fact that the main conduit of the arterial blood from the heart is the right aortic arch in the Sauropsida, but the left in Mammalia. The implication was that two lines of evolution had diverged from the heart of Amphibia.
(A quote John Woodmorappe
"What if mammal-like reptiles never existed? Would evolutionary theory be crippled? Certainly not. Evolutionary theory is so plastic that any series of observations in the natural world could be cited in its favour!
Clearly, the ruling evolutionary paradigm existed before the discovery of mammal-like reptiles, and would have flourished had these reptiles never been discovered. In that event, todays evolutionists would be extolling some extinct amphibian group as the transitions (or stratomorphic intermediates) leading up to mammals. Cladograms would be constructed to show the close branching pattern between that chosen group of amphibians and mammals.
All else would fall in place according to the dictates of evolutionary dogma. The evolutionist triumphalists would be telling everyone that evolution is fact because of the many obvious similarities between the ancestral amphibians and the descendant mammals.
Compromising evangelical evolutionists would preach about the fact that God would never mislead us by separately creating mammals and amphibians with so many shared structures.
Leading humanist scientists would inform us that anyone who questions the amphibian-mammalian transition cannot possibly be a scientist, no matter his degrees or publications.
And, of course, the secularist fanatics would whip up considerable hysteria about the fact that the questioning of the amphibianmammalian transition is a dangerous threat to the very survival of science and reason, and that, if not quickly reversed, it will soon return us to the Dark Ages."
http://creation.com/...discontinuities
Next lets look at the fact that, even as recently as the last couple decades, based on multiple lines of morphological and molecular data, some evolutionists were seriously proposing that birds are most closely related to mammals.
from 1991. Amniote phylogeny. In Schultze, H.-P. & Trueb, L. (eds) Origins of the Higher Groups of Tetrapods: Controversy and Consensus. p.320
... Gardiner (1982) proposed a rather revolutionary cladogram in which the Diapsida and the Archosauria were separated, and the birds were a sister-group of the mammals. He listed 28 postulated bird-mammal synapomorphies-i.e., shared characters of the brain case, brain, snout, vertebral column, circulatory system, glands, and physiology (both groups being endothermic)...
Lovtrup (1985) proposed a third cladogram, which also involved a breakup of the Diapsida and Archosauria, and the establishment of a bird-mammal clade, the Haemothermia. He also split up the Lepidosauria, making the squamates and the tuatara the most primitive amniote groups.
Independent lines of evidence for amniote phylogeny have been obtained from studies of amino acid sequences in proteins... These have given rise to a number of maximum parsimony trees. The majority of these protein-based phylogenetic trees hypothesizes a sister-group relationship between birds and mammals, in apparent support of the morphological views of Gardiner (1982) and Lovtrup (1985).
A hypothesized common ancestor of the birds and mammals:
(Janvier, P. 1984. El divorcio del ave y del cocodrilo. Mundo Cientifico 32, 14-16.)
Evolutionists response to these criticisms have been something along the lines of "Well, those researchers weren't looking at all the data, and now we know that they were wrong." But here evolutionists will try and avoid the clear implications on the inherent malleability of their theory. The point is not whether most recent data supposedly supports conventional evolutionary relationships. The point is that, even in the absence of the data claimed to support current evolutionary models, the theory is demonstrably plastic enough to have simply conformed itself to entirely different lines of data and thus formed entirely different evolutionary narratives.
The Fossil Record in general, is something evolution theory has molded itself around in reaction to the paleontological developments of the 18th and 19th centuries. Evolution didn't predict the fossil record, it accommodated it. There has been much tough talk from evolutionists claiming a major strength of their theory in that we generally do not find the major mammal groupings anywhere below the upper Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks. But Evolution theory doesn't predict this... It doesn't predict mammals will evolve ever, nor (as has been demonstrated), the animal group mammals descended from, much less the specific geologic timing...
If, in the earlier centuries, an alternative fossil pattern had emerged of mammalian groups appearing in the lower Mesozoic, or even the Paleozoic, Evolution theory could simply have molded itself around these discoveries, and today one of the major tenets of the theory might proclaim "The Great Mammalian Radiation Event of the Permian" or something of the like.
(Nothing about the theory explains why we shouldn't find this... that's just not what we found and evolution theory molds itself around the fossil record and then pretends that it explains it.)
If such hypothetical fossil features appeared more enigmatic in comparison to today's conventional models, it would simply be treated as an 'evolutionary mystery', much like the Cambrian Explosion is today. Likewise, critics would be scolded for using "God of the Gaps" arguments for pointing out the enigma of mammals appearing in the Permian, etc.
Conclusion: There is no 'test' or prediction of evolution theory being fulfilled when we are presented the most recent transitional evolution stories. It merely reflects its nature of accommodation, as the amorphous fog-like evolution theory adapts itself to the shifting landscapes of data.
For an example, lets look at the fact that leading early evolutionary proponents such as Thomas Huxley strongly advocated for an amphibian-mammal transition.
From Peter Bowler's "Life's Splendid Drama" p.280
Thomas Huxley argued on morphological grounds that the mammals were so different from any known reptile, living or fossil, that the class would have to be traced back directly to the amphibians...
Huxley's 1879 paper "On the Character of the Pelvis in Mammalia, and the Conclusions Respecting the Origin of Mammals Which May Be Based on Them" Here Huxley took issue with Gegenbaur on the interpretation of the pelvis, insisting that the reptilian modifications were opposite to those found in mammals.... Thus, argued Huxley, "it seems to be useless to attempt to seek among any known Sauropsida [reptiles] for the kind of pelvis which analogy leads us to expect among those vertebrated animals which immediately preceded the lowest known mammals." The Promammalia would have had a pelvis intermediate between that of the platypus and that of a land tortoise, and this would have been the type from which all modifications of the Sauropsida and Mammalia had diverged. This type, he claimed, could be seen in the pelvis of the salamander. Hence, "these facts appear to me to point to the conclusion that the Mammalia have been connected with Amphibia by some unknown 'pro-mammalian' group, and not by any of the known forms of Sauropsida." There was other evidence pointing in the same direction, especially the fact that the main conduit of the arterial blood from the heart is the right aortic arch in the Sauropsida, but the left in Mammalia. The implication was that two lines of evolution had diverged from the heart of Amphibia.
(A quote John Woodmorappe
"What if mammal-like reptiles never existed? Would evolutionary theory be crippled? Certainly not. Evolutionary theory is so plastic that any series of observations in the natural world could be cited in its favour!
Clearly, the ruling evolutionary paradigm existed before the discovery of mammal-like reptiles, and would have flourished had these reptiles never been discovered. In that event, todays evolutionists would be extolling some extinct amphibian group as the transitions (or stratomorphic intermediates) leading up to mammals. Cladograms would be constructed to show the close branching pattern between that chosen group of amphibians and mammals.
All else would fall in place according to the dictates of evolutionary dogma. The evolutionist triumphalists would be telling everyone that evolution is fact because of the many obvious similarities between the ancestral amphibians and the descendant mammals.
Compromising evangelical evolutionists would preach about the fact that God would never mislead us by separately creating mammals and amphibians with so many shared structures.
Leading humanist scientists would inform us that anyone who questions the amphibian-mammalian transition cannot possibly be a scientist, no matter his degrees or publications.
And, of course, the secularist fanatics would whip up considerable hysteria about the fact that the questioning of the amphibianmammalian transition is a dangerous threat to the very survival of science and reason, and that, if not quickly reversed, it will soon return us to the Dark Ages."
http://creation.com/...discontinuities
Next lets look at the fact that, even as recently as the last couple decades, based on multiple lines of morphological and molecular data, some evolutionists were seriously proposing that birds are most closely related to mammals.
from 1991. Amniote phylogeny. In Schultze, H.-P. & Trueb, L. (eds) Origins of the Higher Groups of Tetrapods: Controversy and Consensus. p.320
... Gardiner (1982) proposed a rather revolutionary cladogram in which the Diapsida and the Archosauria were separated, and the birds were a sister-group of the mammals. He listed 28 postulated bird-mammal synapomorphies-i.e., shared characters of the brain case, brain, snout, vertebral column, circulatory system, glands, and physiology (both groups being endothermic)...
Lovtrup (1985) proposed a third cladogram, which also involved a breakup of the Diapsida and Archosauria, and the establishment of a bird-mammal clade, the Haemothermia. He also split up the Lepidosauria, making the squamates and the tuatara the most primitive amniote groups.
Independent lines of evidence for amniote phylogeny have been obtained from studies of amino acid sequences in proteins... These have given rise to a number of maximum parsimony trees. The majority of these protein-based phylogenetic trees hypothesizes a sister-group relationship between birds and mammals, in apparent support of the morphological views of Gardiner (1982) and Lovtrup (1985).
A hypothesized common ancestor of the birds and mammals:
(Janvier, P. 1984. El divorcio del ave y del cocodrilo. Mundo Cientifico 32, 14-16.)
Evolutionists response to these criticisms have been something along the lines of "Well, those researchers weren't looking at all the data, and now we know that they were wrong." But here evolutionists will try and avoid the clear implications on the inherent malleability of their theory. The point is not whether most recent data supposedly supports conventional evolutionary relationships. The point is that, even in the absence of the data claimed to support current evolutionary models, the theory is demonstrably plastic enough to have simply conformed itself to entirely different lines of data and thus formed entirely different evolutionary narratives.
The Fossil Record in general, is something evolution theory has molded itself around in reaction to the paleontological developments of the 18th and 19th centuries. Evolution didn't predict the fossil record, it accommodated it. There has been much tough talk from evolutionists claiming a major strength of their theory in that we generally do not find the major mammal groupings anywhere below the upper Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks. But Evolution theory doesn't predict this... It doesn't predict mammals will evolve ever, nor (as has been demonstrated), the animal group mammals descended from, much less the specific geologic timing...
If, in the earlier centuries, an alternative fossil pattern had emerged of mammalian groups appearing in the lower Mesozoic, or even the Paleozoic, Evolution theory could simply have molded itself around these discoveries, and today one of the major tenets of the theory might proclaim "The Great Mammalian Radiation Event of the Permian" or something of the like.
(Nothing about the theory explains why we shouldn't find this... that's just not what we found and evolution theory molds itself around the fossil record and then pretends that it explains it.)
If such hypothetical fossil features appeared more enigmatic in comparison to today's conventional models, it would simply be treated as an 'evolutionary mystery', much like the Cambrian Explosion is today. Likewise, critics would be scolded for using "God of the Gaps" arguments for pointing out the enigma of mammals appearing in the Permian, etc.
Conclusion: There is no 'test' or prediction of evolution theory being fulfilled when we are presented the most recent transitional evolution stories. It merely reflects its nature of accommodation, as the amorphous fog-like evolution theory adapts itself to the shifting landscapes of data.
