Ah, no. Although there are fundamental similarities in the genetics of all creatures, those that look similar, or have similar features, are not necessarily closely related. When an different (e.g. isolated) ecosystems provide similar niches for exploitation, similar looking creatures with similar lifestyles may evolve independently. For example, the marsupial mammals of Australia; as well as unique marsupials like wallabies & kangaroos, there are (or were) marsupial dogs, cats, rats, etc., that looked and behaved similarly and occupied similar niches to non-marsupial dogs, cats, rats, etc., in other ecosystems. Also, some physical solutions are particularly well-suited for their job - like
camera eyes, or flippers. It's called
convergent evolution.
Yeah I have this skepticism about convergent evolution. It just seems to much of a coincident. Its when unrelated creatures can have the same genetics as well that you begin to wonder. You would think that two different creatures in two different places would have some differences in these genes. But they are exactly the same like they were injected into each other. No variance at all and not just for a small amount but large chunks. It almost seems evolution is working to a set pattern. The thing is evolution always makes a big point about how similarities ie ape to humans in features/ anatomy should then show similarities in genes. For ape to humans they go on about the 98% similarity. So we would expect that across the board.
But it breaks down so often and the tree of life has many in-congruence. Then different shaped creatures start being linked with similar genes. Then similar shaped creatures have different genes as well. Then closely related creatures who should have similar gens are not as closely related as ones that are not suppose to be closely related. It certainly isn't straight forward. But evolution always has a name for the contradictions so that they can be explained away. For the eye to evolve so many times is incredible in that it is hard to believe it happened even once let alone many times.
The transitions aren't 'perfect' because you only ever get occasional snapshots with fossilization, and paleontologists working with very limited data will inevitably get some things wrong until more data becomes available; genetic information has been a great help. However, pruning or re-arranging a few branches on the tree doesn't make it any less a tree.
Yet they can lay out nicely arranged ape to human skulls in a transitional line like there's hardly nothing missing. But they can do this for any other creatures. It should be the case for every creature that walked the earth. They are trying to find all the links between today's humans which is where we are now and our common ancestor of apes. So there are many links in the chain they claim. If you take all today's animals and do the same you should have a progression of slightly changing features from one shaped creature to another.
So from any of today's animals back to a distant ancestor which are just two extremes such as a beginning and an end we should have many transitions. But what we seem to find is single separated creatures that are well defined on their own with very little evidence of progressive change. The sudden appearance of many and the sudden disappearance of others. The similarity in shapes for millions of years in many more. All of this points to a lack of evolution.
That can happen too, though it's unusual among complex animals. Which ones do you find troubling?
Well there is the case of the cow and snake which have very large chunks of the same DNA.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/01/how-a-quarter-of-the-cow-genome-came-from-snakes/
But there a whole lot more as well. Humans even have similar DNA to mouse, kangaroos and a sea urchin from memory. Yet we dont look like them as we do to the apes.
Bear in mind that paleontology is a particularly competitive field because of the scope for major discoveries and career-making. This means that skepticism and challenge is the default approach to new claims and finds, and so frauds and errors are usually found out fairly quickly (particularly after some of the infamous attempts of earlier times), and there is huge incentive to overturn existing paradigms.
Yes I know thats what concerns me. But I dont think its as honest as you say. Its that there is so much that is overlooked that only the major finds may be challenged. But also other scientists will welcome some of the finds because it helps build the story of evolution. It can be assumed that a fossil found in a certain part of the ground is as old as the other fossils and the ground that a fossil is found in is assumed to be as old as the fossil found in it as well. It can be assumed that a nearby fossil belongs to its neighbor or the best one that fits belongs to its neighbor. A lot can be amused about the behaviors of animals based on the fossils which is only speculation. But often those assumptions are geared towards the theory rather than not so that it adds more flesh to the bones of evolution.
Please provide the relevant references or links to these tests.
I have done in my other post but here are some more.
Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective:
“A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order.”
http://www.princeton.edu/main/...../60/95O56/
Why Proteins Aren’t Easily Recombined, Part 2 – Ann Gauger May 17, 2012
Excerpt:
In other words, even if only 10% of non-matching residues were changed, the resulting hybrid enzyme no longer functioned. Why? Because the substitution of different amino acids into the existing protein structure destabilized the fold, even though those same amino acids worked well in another context. Thus, each protein’s amino acid sequence works as a whole to help generate a proper stable fold, in a context-dependent fashion.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....59771.html
Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283600939974
What makes you think so? If the originator of that mutation has viable offspring - and by definition, it has a better than average chance because of the mutation - it will propagate through them. That's a gross over-simplification, but the principle applies.
I only go by the test done. The same with breeding with dogs for example. The more you play around with the original genetic makeup and move further away from the natural state the more cost to fitness happens. AS far as I understand it if a beneficial mutation is selected it is going to be a very small effect in change. That effect may be nothing on its own and will need to be further acted upon to eventually have a strong enough beneficial effect to hang around and be selected. But each mutation is random so you dont know when and where those additional mutations are coming.
In the meantime the effects of the small mutations that have already occurred aren't so great for the creature to keep because on their own they dont mean much. So they are either weeded out of they are beginning to have cost to fitness. Even if it was a very small benefit it is not enough and the disruption to the existing genes has other negative effects that will outweigh any benefit. or the benefit comes with a cost because it has also disrupted the overall genome as a consequence. So overall most mutations are a cost fact even if they are beneficial or neutral. At the end of the day mutations are an error to what is already good.
That's partly how evolution works; the badly maladapted ones die without reproducing. Do remember that ALL creatures eventually die - and nearly all get sick. 99% of all species are now extinct.
But I just dont think that the very small possibility of any benefits that mutations can have can be the driving force for such complexity and variation we see. Its like one step forward and 100 back. Its illogical and what is essentially a loss of info and a cost to fitness or an error is something that makes things fitter and adds more info and complexity. Just because mutations can change things for the worse doesn't mean they can also create things much much better. I think evolution takes something that happens one way and extrapolates something out of it that just isn't there.
Where as micro evolution which is changes in existing genetics will not be as harmful. It was designed that way and there maybe much more capability within our genomes than we think thats already there. Every creature has a build in ability to make certain changes with their environments and other living things. Between them all there's plenty of scope to change.
I'm afraid that's too garbled to make sense of.
So you didn't watch the video or the video wasn't working properly. He is saying that for just two steps with point mutations one being to take out an existing binding site which controls how a gene is expressed. The other was to give that site a new ability to be able to change how that gene is expressed. So they weren't actually changing the gene but preparing to to be able to make changes. So in other words more mutations would be needed to finish the job to actually change that gene to have a new function. From memory I think there needs to be at least 6 or 7 mutations to complete a simple change to a new function in genes. But it can take many more as well sometimes.
So its not just one mutational change that can change but many to make changes in functions. But even for these 2 simple changes the tests showed that it would take around 100 million years in humans. Considering that the changes needed for a complete change from one creature to another and all the vast complexity we see in living things this is where it becomes impossible to believe. It would take more time than the planet earth has been around. I have already posted papers showing this in an earlier post.
OK, having watched the video (8 wasted minutes of my life I won't get back), I see what you're talking about. They're implicitly assuming that all genetic evolutionary change depends on a kind of two-point mutation they say is rare; a claim that needs support - even assuming their calculations are correct - and for which no evidence is supplied.
Thats is where you need to check out the papers supplied in earlier posts. I have posted these many times. But its not just from this. Other papers I have posted show this difficulty in other tests. Other papers show the cost to fitness of mutations. Altogether it amounts to being very unlikely.
We may not understand all the complexities of gene regulation and expression, but it's clear that if the claim about the point mutation mechanism described in the video is correct (although I've seen no evidence to support that), then changes due to mutations in the real world occur via different mechanisms. In other words, empirical evidence suggests that either they're wrong, or they've shown that the two-point mutation they describe is not the only mechanism for genetic evolution - and frankly I doubt anyone else thought it was.
I guess this is the ongoing debate about the ability of evolution. It has come down to the detailed functionality of the genes themselves. Not the observational evidence or the fossil evidence which can be up for interpretation. But the actual testing of the ability of mutations and natural selection. All I know is that in all tests done there have never been able to evolve a new function that wasn't there that gave a benefit of fitness and didn't come at some cost. Most have been a tweeking of existing genetics and even when they have claimed that a new function has been created it is actually been a loss of existing genetics to gain that ability.
You would think in all the tests and some which have been going on for 20 or 30 years with bacteria that there would be some great advancement showing evolution. Instead we have these small changes that seem to be wholly within the existing genetic ability and nothing truly new.
