The Deception of Evolution and the Fossil Sequence

[PsychoSarah]

I'm not arguing about what a scientific theory is. I'm explaining how fossils are not actually a rigorous test confirming that Evolution (universal common descent) is provisionally true, (as is so often presented).

Like you said, if the "evidence" was different, then the theory would be different. That may seem trite until you really stop to think about it with regards to how the evolutionary community presents the fossils as screaming "Evolution!" from the rocks in a supposedly highly specific manner.

Evolution is the explanation of observations we make. Thus, the more we observe that fits with it, the more evidence exists that the theory is correct. This doesn't change simply because the theory itself is based upon these observations, especially considering that this particular theory is rather strict in regards to what evidence will support it, and what evidence will destroy it. It has taken thousands of fossils discovered over the course of more than 100 years and countless amounts of genetic research and application to establish evolution as the prevailing explanation for the variety of life we see today; not the existence of life, mind you, just the variety of it. And yet, it only takes 1 fossil found in a rock layer that doesn't match up to cast some serious doubt on evolution. The fact that no such contradicting evidence has been found is a testament to how strong the theory is; if you think evolution could just change with the evidence, you overestimate the flexibility of scientific theories by wide margin.

 

[essentialsaltes]

This becomes obvious when we consider the fact that Thomas Huxley himself who lead the establishment of Evolution orthodoxy, originally claimed that mammals evolved directly from amphibians to the exclusion of reptiles based on similar anatomy. Thus if the fossil record had yielded patterns of reptiles above mammals, the supposed jaw/ear transformation could be said to have gone the other way around, from mammalian to reptilian.

No, because amphibians and fish also have [URL='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articular_bone']articular[/quote] bones in the jaw. The situation you imagine would be a violation of Dollo's Law. Dollo's Law may not be as unbreakable as the laws of physics, but it strains credulity to have jaw bones evolve into earbones and back again in just the same arrangement. In this case it is clear which are the derived forms. And they appear after the original forms. And continued fossil discoveries will either reinforce, or contradict, this conclusion. So far, the conclusions have been reinforced.[/url]

 

[lifepsyop]

No, because amphibians and fish also have articular bones in the jaw. The situation you imagine would be a violation of Dollo's Law. Dollo's Law may not be as unbreakable as the laws of physics, but it strains credulity to have jaw bones evolve into earbones and back again in just the same arrangement. In this case it is clear which are the derived forms. And they appear after the original forms. And continued fossil discoveries will either reinforce, or contradict, this conclusion. So far, the conclusions have been reinforced.

Dollo's "Law" is fluff. It's a wishy-washy attempt at establishing evolutionary constraints, yet whenever it is violated, an evolutionist may simply infer that that selection pressures prevailed against it. In other words, it's a law except when it isn't. All science so far.

Furthermore, evolutionists have little more than pure imagineering when it comes to explaining why the jaw bones would have evolved into ear-bones to begin with. With that in mind there is certainly no theoretical barrier they can provide that would prevent a reversal of the ear-bones back into jaw. "Natural selection did it" would suffice.

Or you could take a more hassle-free route and just say the "primitive" reptilian fossils did not fossilize until after the more "derived" mammalian fossils. In other words, ignore the stratigraphic sequence and simply base your transition on anatomy. This is done today with dino-bird, and fish-tetrapod "transitional sequences", where more "advanced" traits appear earlier than the "primitive" ones.

 

[lifepsyop]

The fact that no such contradicting evidence has been found is a testament to how strong the theory is

And if Evolution predicted the fossil sequence then that might actually be impressive. Like I said, a dominant fossil pattern was already known before modern evolution theory was established. Evolution theory molded itself around the known pattern. And afterwards this pattern more-or-less generally held together as it had already been doing before evolution theory came along.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Dollo's "Law" is fluff. It's a wishy-washy attempt at establishing evolutionary constraints, yet whenever it is violated, an evolutionist may simply infer that that selection pressures prevailed against it. In other words, it's a law except when it isn't. All science so far.

Furthermore, evolutionists have little more than pure imagineering when it comes to explaining why the jaw bones would have evolved into ear-bones to begin with. With that in mind there is certainly no theoretical barrier they can provide that would prevent a reversal of the ear-bones back into jaw. "Natural selection did it" would suffice.

Or you could take a more hassle-free route and just say the "primitive" reptilian fossils did not fossilize until after the more "derived" mammalian fossils. In other words, ignore the stratigraphic sequence and simply base your transition on anatomy. This is done today with dino-bird, and fish-tetrapod "transitional sequences", where more "advanced" traits appear earlier than the "primitive" ones.

-_- the reason why evolution doesn't go in reverse can be simplified for convenience into two points: 1, the same sequence of mutations that lead to the development of that trait being reversed back to exactly what they were previously would never be selected for in a natural environment and is so statistically improbable to occur even in regards to the mutations as to never happen, and we never see it in the fossil record. Even whales, which have an evolution that starts at sea, goes to land, then goes back to sea, have anatomy that isn't analogous to their previous sea-bound ancestors prior to the land based ancestors. 2, if the previous adaptations were good enough to survive in the environment long term with minimal changes, change would be naturally selected against, such as with "living fossils" like the coelacanth. There just isn't a situation that would happen naturally that would ever cause an evolution progression to revert to previously existing forms.

 

[PsychoSarah]

And if Evolution predicted the fossil sequence then that might actually be impressive. Like I said, a dominant fossil pattern was already known before modern evolution theory was established. Evolution theory molded itself around the known pattern. And afterwards this pattern more-or-less generally held together as it had already been doing before evolution theory came along.

This is actually incorrect. We use evolution to predict which flu virus to make a vaccine for every year, and we are right on the money more than 70% of the time; far too frequently to be merely by chance and lucky guesses, especially considering that flu viruses have hundreds of possible variants that can likely occur within the same year, and flu vaccines protect against less than a dozen of them.

This is also incorrect in regards to the fossil record, seeing as most fossils were discovered after evolution as a theory was published. Heck, first dinosaur fossil ever discovered was in or after Darwin's lifetime, if I recall correctly. It wasn't until genetics really got going that we could begin to predict the order of the fossil record the way we do now, though, but they have to be used in conjunction with the theory to accomplish this.

 

[lifepsyop]

-_- the reason why evolution doesn't go in reverse can be simplified for convenience into two points: 1, the same sequence of mutations that lead to the development of that trait being reversed back to exactly what they were previously would never be selected for in a natural environment

Huh? Why? You can be the first evolutionist to offer an explanation. Looks like you left that part out and just went with an assertion.

and is so statistically improbable to occur even in regards to the mutations as to never happen, and we never see it in the fossil record.

Saying it is improbable is not an explanation. Many evolutionists would contend that much of evolutionary history was "improbable", yet when they are forced by the data to say something happened, they say it happened. (By the way, morphological reversals are already prevalent in evolutionary systematics.)

There just isn't a situation that would happen naturally that would ever cause an evolution progression to revert to previously existing forms.

By all means, describe this mystical barrier preventing the anatomical reversal in question.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Huh? Why? You can be the first evolutionist to offer an explanation. Looks like you left that part out and just went with an assertion.



Saying it is improbable is not an explanation. Many evolutionists would contend that much of evolutionary history was "improbable", yet when they are forced by the data to say something happened, they say it happened. (By the way, morphological reversals are already prevalent in evolutionary systematics.)



By all means, describe this mystical barrier preventing the anatomical reversal in question.

Sure, I can explain it further. Simply put, mutations that impact actual traits are less common than ones which do absolutely nothing. Considering that something such as a jawbone's morphology can be the result of thousands of mutations if not millions of them, some being mutations so rare that the now prevalent trait could have originated in less than a dozen organisms, the chances of it all happening again in reverse order are practically nonexistent, especially considering the fact that in order for it to occur, we would have had to have an environmental change in which all those previous mutations were not an advantage, time for evolution, and to have the traits later be at a disadvantage in the original environment to a significant extent. This just doesn't happen in nature, most mutations can be beneficial in a wide enough range of environments that the chances of this all working to occur naturally is just plain impossible. But this is considering a complex structure such as a jawbone.

If you are thinking of something like color of moth wings, those traits never left the population, they just became more or less prevalent. They never disappeared or were rendered inactive in the whole population. Let's consider the human brain: one of the reasons why our brains can become so large is thanks to the inactivation of a gene that regulates brain growth (seen active in other apes). Were a human to be born with the active gene, should that even be compatible with the other genetic mutations we have that are different from other apes, it would reduce their intelligence. And you know us humans don't have much going for us besides our brains, this individual would have their survival and reproductive chances severely reduced, hence why the intelligence of our species will not revert back to that of other apes, even though it comes with the advantages of reducing nutritional needs and would reduce brain cancer risk. Also, you claim that there are representations of significant morphological reversals; why not state specific examples then with links to sources?

Not to mention that mutations have to be compatible. A mutation in a gene in a modern human might be beneficial, but to a human that lived 10,000 years ago could have been a death sentence. Thus not only would these genes have to mutate in the same way, but also many of them would have to do it in reverse order too, something which is just not possible to achieve naturally. This is the barrier to any significant morphological reversal. Traits that can result from very few mutations can have such a reversal, such as eye color, but beyond stuff like that, it just will not happen in a natural environment.

 

[lifepsyop]

Sure, I can explain it further. Simply put, mutations that impact actual traits are less common than ones which do absolutely nothing. Considering that something such as a jawbone's morphology can be the result of thousands of mutations if not millions of them, some being mutations so rare that the now prevalent trait could have originated in less than a dozen organisms, the chances of it all happening again in reverse order are practically nonexistent,

the chances of it happening once in any order is practically nonexistent. Evolutionists can't even come up with a workable hypothesis as to why such a transition would occur. Yet they *know* it did.

especially considering the fact that in order for it to occur, we would have had to have an environmental change in which all those previous mutations were not an advantage, time for evolution, and to have the traits later be at a disadvantage in the original environment to a significant extent.

Yep, it's called "natural selection". It's the same reasoning you invoke for the origin of mammalian jaw-bones in the first place. The ecological niches were present and favored specific variations. We "know" because the traits exist and therefore must have evolved.

This just doesn't happen in nature, most mutations can be beneficial in a wide enough range of environments that the chances of this all working to occur naturally is just plain impossible. But this is considering a complex structure such as a jawbone.

More bald assertions. Always the same non-explanations. What you said is so vague that you may as well be arguing against conventional evolutionary models at this point.

 

[PsychoSarah]

the chances of it happening once in any order is practically nonexistent. Evolutionists can't even come up with a workable hypothesis as to why such a transition would occur. Yet they *know* it did.



Yep, it's called "natural selection". It's the same reasoning you invoke for the origin of mammalian jaw-bones in the first place. The ecological niches were present and favored specific variations. We "know" because the traits exist and therefore must have evolved.




More bald assertions. Always the same non-explanations. What you said is so vague that you may as well be arguing against conventional evolutionary models at this point.

Yes, the chance of any given order is small, but even if I weren't to count the issue that mutations in different contexts won't do the same thing because genes interact with each other, surely you understand that having a sequence of mutations occur isn't nearly as improbable as having a sequence of mutations occur and then have them all reverse in reverse order, seeing as that is double the times mutations have to occur? The improbability is also why the same mutation order will not happen twice ever; hence why we know certain rodents that have so many similar traits aren't necessarily closely related. Additionally, you have to have a situation where the environment changes back to something in which all those previous mutations were better too, and have none of the individuals that have the regressing mutations die out before they can pass them down. Every given mutation path is so improbable that even 100 years from now I don't think we could facilitate it on purpose without directly changing the genes ourselves, and even then we would be hard pressed to get it right. If I hit the reset button on earth, the environment did exactly as it did when it lead to human evolution, I guarantee you there wouldn't be humans by the end, just because of how statistically improbable any evolutionary pathway is. There are an inconceivable number of other paths evolution on earth could have taken, but thanks to deactivated genes and ERVs sticking around in the DNA of living things, we can trace back what the pathway that did occur was. We certainly can't tell what will happen in any distant future though, we are pretty restricted to well-known viruses in future evolution predictions, unless it is some breeding effort, but that would be artificial selection, not natural selection.

Well, add the detail "and didn't always exist", and that will make that statement complete. I don't disagree with what you said though.

I use a vague example so that you can apply it to any specific example. If you like, I can give a specific genus working off of this. Heck, name your favorite rodent, I can give more specifics then, but if I get detailed like that it certainly will not fit well with reptile evolution, more as a matter of events mentioned than anything else.

 

[lifepsyop]

Yes, the chance of any given order is small, but even if I weren't to count the issue that mutations in different contexts won't do the same thing because genes interact with each other, surely you understand that having a sequence of mutations occur isn't nearly as improbable as having a sequence of mutations occur and then have them all reverse in reverse order, seeing as that is double the times mutations have to occur? The improbability is also why the same mutation order will not happen twice ever;

You don't seem to understand that in your own model, the reason for the genetic variation driving the jaw anatomy is because the mutations were selected for. A reversal would not be some kind of miraculous chance happening but because of a high level of selection pressure on the anatomical variation. You want there to be a constraint that tells you this wouldn't happen, but it doesn't exist in your theory. That's why you have to keep asserting it but can't explain why.

Additionally, you have to have a situation where the environment changes back to something in which all those previous mutations were better too, and have none of the individuals that have the regressing mutations die out before they can pass them down.

Right. That would be the inference. Remember, you believe deer-like animals turned into fully aquatic whales in roughly 10 million years because the right "environmental changes" swooped in. It's amusing that you're trying to throw all these constraints on the evolutionary process now.

There are an inconceivable number of other paths evolution on earth could have taken,

Sure there are. And "Natural Selection" can act as a constraint to focus on one of them. Your whole theory revolves around this concept.

but thanks to deactivated genes and ERVs sticking around in the DNA of living things, we can trace back what the pathway that did occur was.

Sounds impressive but it's really not. I've seen what evolutionists had to do with the placental mammal tree.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675975/

If molecular traits like ERVs don't match up how you'd like them to, there is a great deal of ad-hoc fudge-factoring available.

I use a vague example so that you can apply it to any specific example. If you like, I can give a specific genus working off of this. Heck, name your favorite rodent, I can give more specifics then, but if I get detailed like that it certainly will not fit well with reptile evolution, more as a matter of events mentioned than anything else.

You started with a specific example of jaw anatomy, and you just kept asserting it wouldn't happen. Of course we all know that if the data forced that conclusion you would say "it's unlikely but it happened". That's what's so amusing about this.

By the way, even if I agree with your assertions for arguments' sake, you could still invoke a temporal paradox for the fossil order of reptilian morphology appearing after mammals. That is to say that more primitive character traits did not fossilize until after more derived ones. It would be no problem for evolution theory to accommodate such a discrepancy.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Yes, regarding that presentation, it's mind-boggling to think about how many other varied anatomical traits are assumed to be the product of separate lineages evolving them over millions of years, when they may simply be the same animal at different life stages. This problem is compounded when we consider the fact that the same animal growing up in a totally different environments may exhibit significantly varied morphologies (a phenomena known as Phenotypic Plasticity). All of this equals lots of apparent variation that has nothing to do with Darwinian processes of selection acting on variation. It goes to show how much subjectivity abounds in evolutionary research.

Oh, agreed! Take Darwin's beloved Finches. Beaks adapted for different food sources - but one and all Finches. This is why evolutionists never discuss dogs and cats, because we see right before our eyes the variation capable within the genome - all within the same Kind. Living, breathing examples that falsify evolution completely, that we ourselves brought about through breeding that might have taken hundreds of thousands of years otherwise. I am quite positive that if dogs and cats did not exist today - but only in the fossil record - they would classify every different breed as a separate species. Showing us how they fit into their evolutionary tree. Something they can't do as it stands because we know the lineages of cats and dogs and understand they are not separate species - but different breeds within the Canidae and Felidae Kind. Only in the past - where one can speculate or dream all one wants - do they ever become other than they are.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Yes, the chance of any given order is small, but even if I weren't to count the issue that mutations in different contexts won't do the same thing because genes interact with each other, surely you understand that having a sequence of mutations occur isn't nearly as improbable as having a sequence of mutations occur and then have them all reverse in reverse order, seeing as that is double the times mutations have to occur? The improbability is also why the same mutation order will not happen twice ever; hence why we know certain rodents that have so many similar traits aren't necessarily closely related. Additionally, you have to have a situation where the environment changes back to something in which all those previous mutations were better too, and have none of the individuals that have the regressing mutations die out before they can pass them down. Every given mutation path is so improbable that even 100 years from now I don't think we could facilitate it on purpose without directly changing the genes ourselves, and even then we would be hard pressed to get it right. If I hit the reset button on earth, the environment did exactly as it did when it lead to human evolution, I guarantee you there wouldn't be humans by the end, just because of how statistically improbable any evolutionary pathway is. There are an inconceivable number of other paths evolution on earth could have taken, but thanks to deactivated genes and ERVs sticking around in the DNA of living things, we can trace back what the pathway that did occur was. We certainly can't tell what will happen in any distant future though, we are pretty restricted to well-known viruses in future evolution predictions, unless it is some breeding effort, but that would be artificial selection, not natural selection.

Well, add the detail "and didn't always exist", and that will make that statement complete. I don't disagree with what you said though.

I use a vague example so that you can apply it to any specific example. If you like, I can give a specific genus working off of this. Heck, name your favorite rodent, I can give more specifics then, but if I get detailed like that it certainly will not fit well with reptile evolution, more as a matter of events mentioned than anything else.

Except mutations in the "real world" have been all but abandoned by scientists in plant and animal husbandry - you know, were people actually work with such things versus theorists who can theorize anything in the playground of the mind.

http://www.weloennig.de/Loennig-Long-Version-of-Law-of-Recurrent-Variation.pdf

Real world actual mutation experiments have showed over and over that in each and every case variation limits are reached that can not be crossed. This is why the theory is so vague - because the evidence does not support it in the slightest. geneticists that actually worked with mutation in plant and animal husbandry understand the futility of mutations producing new genomes. Only in the playground of the mind does it still exist as a viable theory.

And as the experiments showed, there need not be any environment change back to what it was - the mutations automatically start recurring anyways and it becomes easier to "de-evolve" them I guess one could say.

 

[PsychoSarah]

You don't seem to understand that in your own model, the reason for the genetic variation driving the jaw anatomy is because the mutations were selected for. A reversal would not be some kind of miraculous chance happening but because of a high level of selection pressure on the anatomical variation. You want there to be a constraint that tells you this wouldn't happen, but it doesn't exist in your theory. That's why you have to keep asserting it but can't explain why.



Right. That would be the inference. Remember, you believe deer-like animals turned into fully aquatic whales in roughly 10 million years because the right "environmental changes" swooped in. It's amusing that you're trying to throw all these constraints on the evolutionary process now.



Sure there are. And "Natural Selection" can act as a constraint to focus on one of them. Your whole theory revolves around this concept.



Sounds impressive but it's really not. I've seen what evolutionists had to do with the placental mammal tree.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675975/

If molecular traits like ERVs don't match up how you'd like them to, there is a great deal of ad-hoc fudge-factoring available.



You started with a specific example of jaw anatomy, and you just kept asserting it wouldn't happen. Of course we all know that if the data forced that conclusion you would say "it's unlikely but it happened". That's what's so amusing about this.

By the way, even if I agree with your assertions for arguments' sake, you could still invoke a temporal paradox for the fossil order of reptilian morphology appearing after mammals. That is to say that more primitive character traits did not fossilize until after more derived ones. It would be no problem for evolution theory to accommodate such a discrepancy.

I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying it is so improbable that it would never be observed. Just like the same evolutionary pathway occuring twice.

They weren't deer like, just so you know, they kind of remind me of some sort of wolf more than anything else, but the land dwelling ancestors of whales did hunt by the shore. However, whales are anatomically very different from fish; their movement through the water is entirely different, their tails move up and down, not side to side. They still breathe air, care for their young, etc. They didn't regress, their mutations might have resulted in some similar traits to that of their fish ancestors, but they were new mutations at the time, not the resurfacing of old ones.

Yes, natural selection is pivotal to evolutionary theory. However, an environment which would be selective for what you are presenting would be exceedingly rare, since it would have to change back at a precise time without much of a transition in the environment and no other changes. You will never see an environment in nature change and then go back to exactly what it was like before naturally without some inbetween environments.

You will have to elaborate on what specifically you have a problem with in regards to the placental mammal evolutionary tree.

Name ERVS that don't fit before you claim people have to explain them away.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Remember, you believe deer-like animals turned into fully aquatic whales in roughly 10 million years because the right "environmental changes" swooped in.

But this did not 'undo' evolution. Whales breathe air and do not have gills. They have horizontal flukes, rather than vertical tails. These are derived from mammalian traits, not reemergences of fish traits.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Except mutations in the "real world" have been all but abandoned by scientists in plant and animal husbandry - you know, were people actually work with such things versus theorists who can theorize anything in the playground of the mind.

http://www.weloennig.de/Loennig-Long-Version-of-Law-of-Recurrent-Variation.pdf

Real world actual mutation experiments have showed over and over that in each and every case variation limits are reached that can not be crossed. This is why the theory is so vague - because the evidence does not support it in the slightest. geneticists that actually worked with mutation in plant and animal husbandry understand the futility of mutations producing new genomes. Only in the playground of the mind does it still exist as a viable theory.

And as the experiments showed, there need not be any environment change back to what it was - the mutations automatically start recurring anyways and it becomes easier to "de-evolve" them I guess one could say.

-_- you're joking, right? Animal husbandry has shown exactly how fast in certain environments evolution can occur, even within species. Could you honestly say that a Great Dane and a chihuahua are not significantly different from each other, let alone from their original non domestic ancestor? If I recall correctly, mustard, celery, broccoli, and cauliflower all originated from the same plant thanks to artificial selection by humans.

And I am one of those people that works with mutation, in lab; it is needed for my microbiology minor. And I can tell you right now that the genomes of living things are remarkably malleable: you sir could have an extra X chromosome and not realize it until you tried to have kids and found it a bit harder. A piece of 1 chromosome could have detached and reattached to another, and you would never know unless one of your kids had Downs Syndrome. And they wouldn't by any means be guaranteed to have it. And yet, we are a relatively young species, our genetic variation is a joke compared to many other species, but still outshines that of cheetahs, the only animal I know of that had a genetic bottleneck on the level of Noah's Ark. There are families that have within the past 100 years developed mutations that make their bones neigh unbreakable, heart disease a non factor... in as few as 5 generations. What stops it from continuing, what makes you arbitrarily place some limit? What evidence do you have that there is one, in the way that humans are not the result of evolution?

Yes, mutations always happen, but they don't build up in the population if they aren't advantageous in some way, except for in bottleneck events.

 

[lasthero]

Something they can't do as it stands because we know the lineages of cats and dogs and understand they are not separate species - but different breeds within the Canidae and Felidae Kind.

All felidae (tigers, housecats, lynx, cheetahs) are the same species and all canidae (foxes, dogs, wolves, et cetera) are all the same species?

I don't think 'we' know that at all. That's just you. I defy you to find even one scientist who thinks ALL cats and ALL dogs are the same species.

 

[lifepsyop]

I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying it is so improbable that it would never be observed. Just like the same evolutionary pathway occuring twice....

Sigh, same bald assertion as usual. Well I'm done trying to extract an explanation from you because it's obvious you have none. You just keep saying "it's improbable".

Yes, natural selection is pivotal to evolutionary theory. However, an environment which would be selective for what you are presenting would be exceedingly rare, since it would have to change back at a precise time without much of a transition in the environment and no other changes...

No, the environment could change all it wants as long as similar selection pressures manifest at some point. Other evolutionary trajectories will be just that and have no bearing on the matter.

...You will never see an environment in nature change and then go back to exactly what it was like before naturally without some inbetween environments.

The environment doesn't have to reverse the same way. It could have many pauses keeping morphology in stasis and/or off-shoots as long as at least some lineages were exposed to the same or similar selection pressures for the previous jaw morphology.

To really qualify this you'd have to have some idea of what selection pressures produced ear-bones from jaw-bones in the first place, and sorry but evolutionists don't have a clue. That's the problem with having a completely non-falsifiable explanatory device like "natural selection did it".

 

[lifepsyop]

But this did not 'undo' evolution. Whales breathe air and do not have gills. They have horizontal flukes, rather than vertical tails. These are derived from mammalian traits, not reemergences of fish traits.

It was not a comment on evolution's power to undo anything, but on the magical power you believe natural selection has to hone in on radically different body-plans in a short amount of time. You believe this mystical force can completely overhaul a terrestrial animal to be fully aquatic in the geologic blink of an eye yet also want to argue the same mystical force can't move a few bones a few inches around in a reverse direction on the skull. It's bizarre.

 

[PsychoSarah]

It was not a comment on evolution's power to undo anything, but on the magical power you believe natural selection has to hone in on radically different body-plans in a short amount of time. You believe this mystical force can completely overhaul a terrestrial animal to be fully aquatic in the geologic blink of an eye yet also want to argue the same mystical force can't move a few bones a few inches around in a reverse direction on the skull. It's bizarre.

-_- unless you consider millions of years to be short, not a short amount of time. However, generation timeframes greatly influence how fast a species can evolve, hence why bacteria can quickly become immune to antibiotics (the equivalent of a population of humans developing a resistence to cynaide) within a decade or two: their generations are hours rather than years.