Simple, Possibly Stupid, Question

[jax5434]

Hello Everyone I have never posted on this forum before, but I have been on CF for about 4 years now and while I'm sure there are varying opinions about me I don't believe anyone would accuse me of "trolling". So please understand that while this may a stupid question it is an honest one. In a collection of Ernst Mayr essays entitled" Toward A New Philosophy Of Biology"in his essay "an analysis of the concept" on page 106 he makes the following comment. "more than 99.9 percent of all species that ever existed on earth have become extinct. This includes even such temporarily so-flourishing groups as the trilobites,ammonites, and dinosaurs." As I understand it the age of the earth is about 5.5by old with life beginning about 4by ago. So I thought (possibly my first mistake) that if I took the number of species existing today and multiplied it by 100 that would give the total number of species that have existed on earth. And if I took that number and divided it into 4 billion that would give the average rate of speciation. So I googled "species number of" and looked at a few websites. The most conservative #'s I found, at the home page of a group called the "Environmental Literacy Council" range from 5 - 30 million current species. At the lower # 5m X 100 = 500m species. Dividing that into 4b results in one new species every 8 years on average. The higher # 30m x 100 = 3b species. Dividing that into 4b resultsin a new species every 1.3yrs on average. I am neither a scientist or a mathmatician , nor am I foolish enough to think I have discovered some "smoking gun" but where is my mistake? God Bless Jax

 

[Verticordious]

99.9% would mean 999 out of every 1000 species is extinct, so you'd need to multiply by 1000, not 100.

 

[mark kennedy]

Hello Everyone I have never posted on this forum before, but I have been on CF for about 4 years now and while I'm sure there are varying opinions about me I don't believe anyone would accuse me of "trolling". So please understand that while this may a stupid question it is an honest one. In a collection of Ernst Mayr essays entitled Toward A New Philosophy Of Biology in his essay

an analysis of the concept on page 106 he makes the following comment.

more than 99.9 percent of all species that ever existed on earth have become extinct. This includes even such temporarily so-flourishing groups as the trilobites,ammonites, and dinosaurs

I took some liberties with you quote but I found the book. As one would expect he is making his sweeping generality on Darwin's perfection argument. The example Darwin is using is the rapid extinction of fauna in New Zealand and from there makes a giant leap into nature's selection process. There is no teleologically predetermined end to which these adaptations are directed which begs the question of how 'perfection' is better explained by 'opportunistic' selection or survivors.

He will immediately spring into one of the biggest problems with this concept, that of 'constraint'. It is becoming increasingly clear in what little I have gleaned from genetics that relaxed functional constraint is a dangerous gambit in nature.

As I understand it the age of the earth is about 5.5by old with life beginning about 4by ago. So I thought (possibly my first mistake) that if I took the number of species existing today and multiplied it by 100 that would give the total number of species that have existed on earth. And if I took that number and divided it into 4 billion that would give the average rate of speciation. So I googled species number of and looked at a few websites.

Here's what I found:

"'Right now we can only guess that the correct answer for the total number of species lies between 2 and 100 million,' says [Michael] Rosenzweig." (Just How Many Species Are There, Anyway? Society For Conservation Biology. 26 May 2003.)​

Isn't it odd that the estimate has a variable of some 98 million but they know so much about populations from prehistoric and primordial times? At any rate, let's see what you came up with:

The most conservative #'s I found, at the home page of a group called the Environmental Literacy Council range from 5 - 30 million current species. At the lower # 5m X 100 = 500m species. Dividing that into 4b results in one new species every 8 years on average. The higher # 30m x 100 = 3b species. Dividing that into 4b resultsin a new species every 1.3yrs on average. I am neither a scientist or a mathmatician , nor am I foolish enough to think I have discovered some smoking gun but where is my mistake? God Bless Jax

5 million species worldwide
5 million times 100 gives you 500 million
Divided by 4 billion years of continuous evolution it's a new species every 8 years.

Alternative estimate comes to a new species every 1.3 years.

Here's the problem, a little over 400 million years ago virtually all life would have been single celled. When the Cambrian would have been going on virtually every feature used to determine taxonomic classifications were established by some nebulous selective process. Within about a hundred million years the dinosaur populations flourished, were pushed to the brink of extinction then turn into birds or some such.

I think the mistake is in assuming the numbers are constants or that 'most of the species that have ever existed became extinct'. They are not even clear on how many species are alive today, what makes you think their estimates of primordial history are reliable.

I tried something like this with the Chimpanzee Genome a couple of years back. The single base substitutions came to 35 million and the indels (insertions and deletions) came to 90 million base pairs total in 5 million events. So lets try a 5 million year time frame since the chimpanzee human split, it comes to:

7 substitutions per year and 1 indel about 14 base pairs long at the same rate. A generation is about 20 years so it's about 140 single base substitutions and 20 indels, every generation, for five million years.

That is simply inconceivable given that with billions of humans on the earth we only differ by less then 1%.

The changes are not progressive, they are cyclical. What is more species my not be going extinct as much as they are simply changing and future generations are simply different.

It's not a stupid question it's just not based on accurate figures and most importantly. You can't argue empirically against an a priori assumption.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[juvenissun]

Hello Everyone I have never posted on this forum before, but I have been on CF for about 4 years now and while I'm sure there are varying opinions about me I don't believe anyone would accuse me of "trolling". So please understand that while this may a stupid question it is an honest one. In a collection of Ernst Mayr essays entitled" Toward A New Philosophy Of Biology"in his essay "an analysis of the concept" on page 106 he makes the following comment. "more than 99.9 percent of all species that ever existed on earth have become extinct. This includes even such temporarily so-flourishing groups as the trilobites,ammonites, and dinosaurs." As I understand it the age of the earth is about 5.5by old with life beginning about 4by ago. So I thought (possibly my first mistake) that if I took the number of species existing today and multiplied it by 100 that would give the total number of species that have existed on earth. And if I took that number and divided it into 4 billion that would give the average rate of speciation. So I googled "species number of" and looked at a few websites. The most conservative #'s I found, at the home page of a group called the "Environmental Literacy Council" range from 5 - 30 million current species. At the lower # 5m X 100 = 500m species. Dividing that into 4b results in one new species every 8 years on average. The higher # 30m x 100 = 3b species. Dividing that into 4b resultsin a new species every 1.3yrs on average. I am neither a scientist or a mathmatician , nor am I foolish enough to think I have discovered some "smoking gun" but where is my mistake? God Bless Jax

Be careful to use the function "average". This is an example on which it should not apply.

 

[Goinheix]

Non Christian answer
If you take a close environment, said a room or an island, with a limited area, in that area there is a maximum of plant that can grow. But also there is a limitation of minimum individuals for specie to survive to the next generation. At the end, we have that for a given area there is a maximum number of different plant. If those plants support animal life, we found that also there is a maximum of animal species that can survive (for the next generation) in a given area.

That means that for new specie to arrive or emerge, it is absolutely necessary to have some extinct. If the existing species don’t give way for the new, there will not be new, unless the new manage to substitute the old. At the other hand, if many old species disappears for some external reason, they will be substituted by new species in a short time.

The result is that cataclysms and mass destructions and great changes, promote the apparition of new species. More stable periods will slow down evolution.

Christian answer
God did order to the water and to le earth to produce live. Live is not produce of the water and earth by a chemical process. It happens on the order, power and wisdom of God. Inert matter can not produce live without the order, power and wisdom of God. Also, once given the order, the inert matter will continue to produce life every time when and place where there is lack of it.

Search for a hidden spot where is not live, and you will found a place where live is being produce either by migration from other places, for adaptation or any other way. Nothing is so hard than maintaining something sterile. That is because life has the order to invade everything.

Any how, at the end of the day, the answer is very similar to the non Christians: new life will appear only if there is a empty place to be filled. The non Christians see it as “there is not new life until an empty spot appears”. The Christians see it as “as soon a empty spot appears, it will be new life”.

 

[gluadys]

Any how, at the end of the day, the answer is very similar to the non Christians: new life will appear only if there is a empty place to be filled. The non Christians see it as “there is not new life until an empty spot appears”. The Christians see it as “as soon a empty spot appears, it will be new life”.

Yes, really there is not much difference between evolutionary science and Christian belief. No need to reject evolution to believe in creation.

 

[Papias]

Jax, overall your line of thinking makes sense for very rough estimates like yours. As Juvi pointed out, remember that there will be times with many extinctions and long times with very few extinctions, so talking about an "average" misses that point, because the fossil record shows that extinctions aren't regularly spaced.

E. O. Wilson's statement is a lower bound estimate (note that he says "at least"). That's because fossilization is rare, and so the vast majority of species that have lived and gone extinct haven't left any fossils, (they can be estimated based on ecosystems today and by looking at the ecosystems they fit in back then). E. O. Wilson is someone who is not only extremely intelligent, but has spent his life learning the evidence concerning biology, so if anyone is going to estimate extinction rates, he's a good one to go by.

Remembering that his number of 99.9% is a lower bound, and that speciation can happen quickly and easily (despite what most creationists say, there are plenty of examples of speciation documented in modern times), it seems clear that the number is likely higher. Add to this that you really need to divide by only the last 600 million years or so, and your rate is even higher.

Being that extinctions allow for the evolution of new species, this massive number of extinctions shows the glory of God, it's how God makes room for the evolution of more of his wonderful creations.

The peace of God be with you-

Papias

P.S. also, as you've probably already guessed, you can get accurate information from real biologists like E. O. Wilson. Some people on message boards will say falsehoods out of ignorance.

For instance-

Mark wrote:

Here's the problem, a little over 400 million years ago virtually all life would have been single celled.

No, the problem is that you feel content to post falsehoods. So Mark thinks that there were only single celled creatures during the cambrian explosion, 540 million years ago, long before his "400 million years"? Not much of an explosion then I guess. Hint - there were (multi-celled) animals around at least 600 million years ago. 200 million years is over 3 times the time since the dinosaurs died out.

That is simply inconceivable given that with billions of humans on the earth we only differ by less then 1%.

Here is a good example to point to should Mark every claim to understand genetics. It's not so much that he's wrong here (though he is - human genetic variability is less than 1%), it's that he's willing to contradict the experts, who know a lot more than him.

I can just see a person who thinks that way going to the doctor. "What? Penicillin? I don't need no anti-bitotic, I know better than those smarty-pants Drs, I'll just drink some of this 'ere magic crystal water, and be fine!"