YEC is not Absolute: Though Genesis Is Literal

[DayAge]

Oh yeah,
I was also showing Vance that the "Days" do not have to be overlapping.

God Bless!

 

[DayAge]

Here are some articles about ONE of evolutions biggest problems, THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION:

http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/Cambrian.pdf

500 Million yr. old jellyfish
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020128/020128-5.html
sexaul reproduction 500 Mya
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020128/020128-5.html
Vertebrates 530 Mya
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/11_6_99/fob1.htm

God Bless!

 

[troodon]

Now as far as evolution. There is an over all progression of more advanced life forms on earth through the ages. That is because only certain types of life can exist at certain times:
Because of earths rotation, wind velocities 3.8 Bya would have been about 1,000 mph 3ft off the ground and 2,000 mph at 6ft. Not good if you live on land.
Also, certain piosonous metals were at too high a concentration on the surface. So, God made bacteria that would eat them and put them out into concentrated ore deposits.
The many different life forms created over the ages were used to change the atmosphere, produce soil, etc.... If you will be more specific, I will try to answer.

God Bless!

Well, if this is the case, why did God go off on so many useless tangents when He was just, more or less, playing around until it was time for humanity? Dinosaurs, thecodonts, and therapsids were all very complex organisms, as complex as those we see today. Why would God let them run the planet for 200 million years and then decide to just kill them off one day?

If you are refering to macro-evolutionary changes in animals, I have not seen them.

Here's[/quote] an example of how closely the lines blurr between "dinosaur" and "bird".

There's also much smaller things. Like in late-Triassic to early-Jurassic dinosaurs you can see the 5th and 4th digits on the hind feet steadily dissapearing (although 4 never completely dissapears). Why would God create them in that order?

 

[troodon]

Here are some articles about ONE of evolutions biggest problems, THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION:

http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/Cambrian.pdf

500 Million yr. old jellyfish
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020128/020128-5.html
sexaul reproduction 500 Mya
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020128/020128-5.html
Vertebrates 530 Mya
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/11_6_99/fob1.htm

God Bless!

Fossils are extremely scarce for this time in history. One of the reasons this "explosion" seems so big is because it coincides with the development of hard-shelled body parts. These fossilize much more easily; thus we get a disproportionate increase in fossils.

Fossils of non-hardshelled bodied animals exist in the precambrian as well. See this thread for a discussion on those animals.

 

[DayAge]

troodon,
I will try to answer post 43 here. If God did not create these life forms at different times then:
The atmosphere would be piosonus.
The land would be piosonous.
The sun would have cooked us, because of the greenhouse gasses.
We would not have coal, oil, limestone, gas, kerogen, and marble. You would be left in the stone age.
God replaced life forms as conditions changed. Besides over long periods of time, bad mutations would make life worse. God says that He was involved in the extinctions and replacements (Psalm 104:29-30).

There were a lot of feathered birds and dinosaurs living 124-128 Mya. So! Some of these birds had no teeth like Confuciusornis or ate seeds like Jeholornis Prima.
The feathers of all of these creatures were not as "highly evolved" as today's birds or Archaeopteryx.
Which begins a new problem, Archaeopteryx is 20 million years older than these creatures. This shows the diversity of God's creation, not the evolution of birds or feathers.
Then there is Proto Aves. This may be the first bird and at 220 Mya it shows up at the same time as the first dinos.
http://www.bsu.edu/web/00cyfisher/Protoavis.htm
There are also fossil footprints of birds 212 Mya in Argentina.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992466
http://www.discover.com/issues/oct-02/rd/breakbirds.html/
how to tell birds feet from dinos.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/342352.stm

also see bird and dino hands don't match:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm

Oh yeah! At the triassic-jurassic boundary, the triassic reptiles and dinos go extint and are replaced in less than 100,000 years by large jurassic carnivores and sauropods. See Science Mag. 17 May 2002

God Bless!

 

[DayAge]

More dino to bird problems:

Feathered lizard 220 Mya
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=Birdfossils
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/802009.stm

God Bless!

 

[DayAge]

troodon,
Answers to post 44.
First read my links, especially the first one. It answers all of lucaspa's arguments.
http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/Cambrian.pdf

There are plenty of soft bodied fossils in the precambrian. Just none that help evolution.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/000817/000817-1.html

the Preceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can not help either. Just microbes until another unexplained explosion ~570 Mya (just before the cambrian 543 Mya) called the Ediacaran.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/13/6947?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&fulltext=precambrian+animals&searchid=1063086155892_1829&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance

At the end of another PNAS article trying to fit evolution into the cambrian, it ends:
To conclude: The Cambrian explosion is real and its consequences set in motion a sea-change in evolutionary history.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4426?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&fulltext=cambrian+explosive&searchid=1066548451066_175&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance

God Bless!

 

[troodon]

troodon,
I will try to answer post 43 here. If God did not create these life forms at different times then:
The atmosphere would be piosonus.
The land would be piosonous.
The sun would have cooked us, because of the greenhouse gasses.
We would not have coal, oil, limestone, gas, kerogen, and marble. You would be left in the stone age.
God replaced life forms as conditions changed. Besides over long periods of time, bad mutations would make life worse. God says that He was involved in the extinctions and replacements (Psalm 104:29-30).

That doesn't explain why he would use such advanced life forms. Birds and dinosaurs both had very high aerobic activity and would have been much more susceptable to a poisonous atmosphere than us.

There were a lot of feathered birds and dinosaurs living 124-128 Mya. So! Some of these birds had no teeth like Confuciusornis or ate seeds like Jeholornis Prima.

That doesn't explain why God would blurr the lines to such a degree. What's the point of him making toothed birds and feathered dinosaurs except to deceive us as we begin to uncover their fossils?

The feathers of all of these creatures were not as "highly evolved" as today's birds or Archaeopteryx.

That's beside the point; they are still proteinous feathers.

Which begins a new problem, Archaeopteryx is 20 million years older than these creatures. This shows the diversity of God's creation, not the evolution of birds or feathers.

That is not a problem at all. It shows one of two things happened: either these animals split from the clade that became birds before they had evolved flight feathers or they experienced an evolutionary reversal in which the flight feathers were lost for more efficient hair-like feathers.

Then there is Proto Aves. This may be the first bird and at 220 Mya it shows up at the same time as the first dinos.
http://www.bsu.edu/web/00cyfisher/Protoavis.htm

Come on, you can't pull that on me Proavis has been discredited for a decade; it is a chimera of the bones of several different animals. The only people who think it is a bird are its discoverer and creationists (well, and Feduccia but he's crazy ). It is illegitimate taxa. What is so funny about this animal is its most avian feature is its braincase. Troodonts (a type of dinosaur and my namesake) had a more avian braincase; are they therefor birds?

There are also fossil footprints of birds 212 Mya in Argentina.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992466
http://www.discover.com/issues/oct-02/rd/breakbirds.html/
how to tell birds feet from dinos.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/342352.stm

I'm sorry but these are not convincing at all. Dinosaur and bird prints have been confused since the beginnings of paleontology (no joke, some Connecticut dinosaur tracks were misinterpreted as the prints of the bird Noah let loose from the ark to find land). Most of the evidence suggesting that these are bird prints is the reversed hallux. But, this had to have evolved in dinosaurs at some point; no sense in it not being during the Triassic. Your third article even said that this reversed hallux could have not existed:

"However, the new research shows the backward pointing imprint is just an illusion created by the motion of the foot and the folding of the mud.
"The first toe doesn't have to be reversed, which is the way it would be if you read the print literally," Stephen Gatesy says. "We've learnt that the footprint can, in some ways, be deceiving - it can look more like a bird print than it actually should." "

Basically, your hypothesis that birds were created in the Triassic runs up against the same problem that the birds evolving in the Triassic theory does: that in the dozens of Triassic and early-middle Jurassic beds we have there are no, I repeat, novalid bird fossils.

also see bird and dino hands don't match:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm

Read about it, refuted it, didn't get a T-shirt. See here

Oh yeah! At the triassic-jurassic boundary, the triassic reptiles and dinos go extint and are replaced in less than 100,000 years by large jurassic carnivores and sauropods. See Science Mag. 17 May 2002

False. Coelophysis and several species of prosauropods make it right on through the Triassic into the Jurassic unscathed. Plus the triassic reptiles probably died out some time earlier.

More dino to bird problems:

Feathered lizard 220 Mya
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=Birdfossils
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/802009.stm

ROFL! Oh man, it was bad enough that you tried Protoavis but now you're pulling a Longisquama on me? LOL!

Talk about feathers!

Regardless, even if longisquama had feathers (more debatable than Protoavis but still very, very questionable) how would this be bad for dino-bird evolution?

 

[DayAge]

troodon,
I hear a lot of rhetoric but no evidence.
Why God made everything He made, I can not answer right now.

Scientists do not seem to find it hard to tell birds from dinos. They each have their own characteristics.

That is not a problem at all. It shows one of two things happened: either these animals split from the clade that became birds before they had evolved flight feathers or they experienced an evolutionary reversal in which the flight feathers were lost for more efficient hair-like feathers.
Evidence please, not rhetoric.

Protoavis has not been discredited and the 212 Mya footprints have passed the tests and are birds.
I added the last link on footprints to show you that the prints can be tested. Notice that the photos of the bird prints are not sunk into mud. Try again!

Gregory Paul's response is to earlier research (i.e. 1997). like this (1997):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/10/971027064254.htm
I posted this (2002):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm
not the same. Try again!

The feathered lizard poses a problem as it says in the Geology Society article:
It is extremely unlikely that such structures could evolve independently in two different groups.

Now if birds, dinos, and reptiles are not related, feathers had to evolve 3 times. Whatever!

God Bless!

 

[DayAge]

Yes there is evidence that some triassic creatures may have made it through, but that does not explain the findings in Science that I talked about. New fauna and complete diversification in LESS than 100,000 yrs.

God Bless!

 

[troodon]

troodon,
I hear a lot of rhetoric but no evidence.
Why God made everything He made, I can not answer right now.

It's deception; but we'll move on.

Scientists do not seem to find it hard to tell birds from dinos. They each have their own characteristics.

It is hard to tell. That is why Marsh nearly lost his funding when he claimed the Connecticut tracks were made by bipedal dinosaurs; because they looked like birds. The only thing even remotely interesting about the prints you cited is that they are small (small theropods existed; especially in the Triassic), they appear to show a reversed hallux (paleontologists have been looking for years for a dinosaur with a reversed hallux; this is welcome news if it is the case). In fact, I'm extatic that these have been found. It is a very good sign that dinosaurs could have evolved a reversed hallux prior to taking off the ground; that's fantastic!

That is not a problem at all. It shows one of two things happened: either these animals split from the clade that became birds before they had evolved flight feathers or they experienced an evolutionary reversal in which the flight feathers were lost for more efficient hair-like feathers.
Evidence please, not rhetoric.

That is not rhetoric, it is offering two of the possible scenarios (my responses to protoavis and longisquama, however, where rhetoric because that is all they deserve ).

Here's the way it went down:

A) Dinosaurs were evolving feathers for warmth. The most recent common ancestor between the feathered dinosaurs of the Yixian and all birds had short, barbed feathers which in some ways mimicked hair. This was all the dinosaurs needed for warmth so they did not develope it further while the birds needed a more aerodynamic surface for their wings so they developed flight feathers.

B) Dinosaurs evolved straight into birds; flight feathers and all. Shortly after this development, some types of birds lost their ability to fly (like an ostrich or moa). Because they still had long arms with deadly claws they used these as killing tools in their new niche as arch terrestrial predator. Because flight feathers are useless (and in fact detrimental) on a terrestrial predator who uses its arms as its primary weapons, the flight feathers reverted back to their archaic barb-like state (much like humans can revert back to their tailed state).

Protoavis has not been discredited

Yes it has.

"Because part of the skull and the neck appear to be those of a drepanosaur, I have analyzed these features in the section on drepanosaurs above. The rest of the remains consist of the largely disarticulated elements of two or more small individuals. Preservation of the bones ranges from good to poor. Chatterjee insists that the bones belong to just two specimens from the same taxon and cites nonduplication of parts in support of this view, but the lack of articulation leaves open the possibility that the bones represent an assortment of animals. The scapula and coracoid are so small relative to the vertebrae that their association with the rest of the skeleton must be challenged... The identity of some bones remains in dispute; the rather simple depictions of some bones do not closely match the photographs; and older and newer depictions of the same bones differ from one another."

Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds, Gregory S. Paul, Chapter 10- Looking for the True Bird Ancestor, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 2002, pp. 177.

He continues for another page on why Protoavis is illigitimate; I can PM you the rest if you like.

and the 212 Mya footprints have passed the tests and are birds.
I added the last link on footprints to show you that the prints can be tested. Notice that the photos of the bird prints are not sunk into mud. Try again!

And you obviously must have missed the part of that link where they said,

"However, the new research shows the backward pointing imprint is just an illusion created by the motion of the foot and the folding of the mud.
"The first toe doesn't have to be reversed, which is the way it would be if you read the print literally," Stephen Gatesy says. "We've learnt that the footprint can, in some ways, be deceiving - it can look more like a bird print than it actually should." "

And, as I said earlier, I would love it if it were the case that there was a theropod with a reversed hallux. It would do wonders for the arboreal dinosaur hypothesis for flight origins; but I'm not seeing any evidence here.

Gregory Paul's response is to earlier research (i.e. 1997). like this (1997):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/10/971027064254.htm
I posted this (2002):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm
not the same. Try again!

I've read it, I've also read the actual paper (you must remember I read this stuff for fun ). The exact same problem remains despite Feduccia's new efforts to push his propaganda. Feduccia abitrarily (as in he has no criteria for) calls the receeding digit digit V and therefor calls the digit to its left digit IV. What he completely ignore is that, since in dinosaurs manus digits 1-3 are dominant, it is absolutely probable that those digits would develop in a similar fashion to the three dominant digits on the pes!

The feathered lizard poses a problem as it says in the Geology Society article:
It is extremely unlikely that such structures could evolve independently in two different groups.

Now if birds, dinos, and reptiles are not related, feathers had to evolve 3 times. Whatever!

Why would it have had to evolve twice? Even **if** the Longisquama impressions are feathers that simply means that feathers were present in the MRCA between Longisquama and dinosaurs. That is all that it means!

And again, this is assuming that these are even feathers. They look a lot like solid structures in the pictures (and upclose from what I hear); they do not look like they are made of filaments as feathers are.

Yes there is evidence that some triassic creatures may have made it through, but that does not explain the findings in Science that I talked about. New fauna and complete diversification in LESS than 100,000 yrs.

I fail to see your point. The new "large theropod dinosaurs" that appear right after the Triassic are very similar to those found in the Triassic. Elaphrosaurs and Coelophysis; very similar.

troodon,
Answers to post 44.
First read my links, especially the first one. It answers all of lucaspa's arguments.
http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/Cambrian.pdf

There are plenty of soft bodied fossils in the precambrian. Just none that help evolution.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/000817/000817-1.html

the Preceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can not help either. Just microbes until another unexplained explosion ~570 Mya (just before the cambrian 543 Mya) called the Ediacaran.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/ful...tspec=relevance

At the end of another PNAS article trying to fit evolution into the cambrian, it ends:
To conclude: The Cambrian explosion is real and its consequences set in motion a sea-change in evolutionary history.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/ful...tspec=relevance

I'll look at this tomorrow.

time right now

 

[DayAge]

troodon,

Quote:

Scientists do not seem to find it hard to tell birds from dinos. They each have their own characteristics.

It is hard to tell. That is why Marsh nearly lost his funding when he claimed the Connecticut tracks were made by bipedal dinosaurs; because they looked like birds. The only thing even remotely interesting about the prints you cited is that they are small (small theropods existed; especially in the Triassic), they appear to show a reversed hallux (paleontologists have been looking for years for a dinosaur with a reversed hallux; this is welcome news if it is the case). In fact, I'm extatic that these have been found. It is a very good sign that dinosaurs could have evolved a reversed hallux prior to taking off the ground; that's fantastic!

1) I'll take the blame for this mix up. When I spoke about scientists being able to tell birds from dinos, I meant there fossils.
2) I put up 3 links, 2 about BIRD tracks in Argentina and 1 about dino tracks in Greenland. This was to show the differences.
Bird or at least VERY bird like prints:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992466
Dino prints:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/342352.stm
As you read the article you can see that the scientists are cautious about calling the Argentina prints birds. This is because according to evolution birds are not supposed to be around.

As for the digits in the hands: First thank you for the link
http://www.lifesci.utexas.edu/courses/bio478L/ReadingsPDF/Burke-Feduccia.pdf
I will read through it carefully, But I would like to point out that it is from the earlier research in 1997.
2002 study claims new evidence:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm

Lingisquama is 220 Mill. yrs old, so when did feathers develope? My quote from Geology Society as well as other studies, say that evolution should not repeat.

large theropod dinos (e.g. Eubrontes giganteus is ~10 ky) as well as "herbivors (e.g., prosauropods and small ornithischians) appear within 100 ky after the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, represented by both tracks and bones."

From small theropods to these in under 100,000 yrs.?
Most mutations are either neutral or bad. How would you explain these changes? I say special creation.

I do appreciate your comments.

God Bless!

 

[troodon]

Sorry I'm late; lots of homework.

1) I'll take the blame for this mix up. When I spoke about scientists being able to tell birds from dinos, I meant there fossils.

That's not quite true. Rahonavis is disputed over whether it's a bird or not. Also, a few researchers like the hypothesis that some advanced theropods (Dromaeosaurs, Oviraptors, Troodonts among them) are descended from flying birds... thus making them birds. Feduccia claims that Paul called Caudipteryx a dinosaur, even though Paul did nothing of the sort although I believe Currie did claim it was a dinosaur. Mononykus is another example of a disputed dino-bird. I'm sure if you want me to I can dig up lots of examples of dinosaur bones that were misidentified as birds and visa-versa (even one Archaeopteryx skeleton was called a Compsagnathus).

2) I put up 3 links, 2 about BIRD tracks in Argentina and 1 about dino tracks in Greenland. This was to show the differences.
Bird or at least VERY bird like prints:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992466
Dino prints:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/342352.stm
As you read the article you can see that the scientists are cautious about calling the Argentina prints birds. This is because according to evolution birds are not supposed to be around.

Why do these prints look bird-like? Because they are small and look like they have a reversed hallux. There is nothing impossible (or even improbable) about dinosaurs beeing that small. Also, your BBC link discusses how dinosaur feet could look like they have a reversed hallux when they don't. Plus, as I said earlier, there isn't even anything wrong with a dinosaur having a reversed hallux. This would be welcome news to dino/bird apologists such as myself. I'm not saying these couldn't be bird prints; I'm saying that the lack of bird fossils throughout the Triassic and into the late Jurassic makes this very improbable given the tendancy for birds to thrive under nearly all conditions. I'm also saying that these prints could very well be dinosaurs or non-dinsaurian reptiles that mimicked birds in this fashion (although the latter is very unlikely).

I might add that even **if** these are bird tracks it does nothing to damage Dino-Bird evolution. The fellow quoted at the end of the New Scientist article, Chatterjee, accepts Dino-Bird evoltion. He just fancies that it occured much earlier than is commonly accepted.

As for the digits in the hands: First thank you for the link
http://www.lifesci.utexas.edu/courses/bio478L/ReadingsPDF/Burke-Feduccia.pdf
I will read through it carefully, But I would like to point out that it is from the earlier research in 1997.
2002 study claims new evidence:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm

I'm not sure if you'll have access to it but the newer paper is here.

Before I continue, you might want to take not that Feduccia uses the evolutionary relationship between neognathous and paleognathous birds as the very foundation for this bit of research.

On to the study. Feduccia did, this time, actually find a little nub to call digit I; it is quite remarkable What is not mentioned in the paper is whether or not this nub (and "nub" is a liberal term here) was present in all the samples or in the one that he shows pictures of. If it is only present in this one then I must say if you break open enough ostrich eggs you're going to find some messed up ostriches. If it was present in more than one then why wasn't this nub in the '97 research? It's clear as day in these pictures but is nowhere to be found in the old paper.

Regardless, if it is a normal condition for ostriches then we have some possibilities.

Perhaps you are right and birds were created independantly by God. If this is the case then why did God give them the information for tiny little embryological fingers? Seems silly.

Perhaps Feduccia is right and birds evolved from a 5-fingered, non-dinosaurian ancestor. If this is the case then why is there a ~60 million year gap during which we have nothing approaching a full-blown bird fossil?

Perhaps this nub is not indicative of a finger; perhaps it is just some oddity of ostrich growth (if you look on the right side of the ankle of the hindlimb on day 14 you can see a nice little unexplained nub there too. And I'm not talking about digit V).

Perhaps an ancestor along the ostrich evolutionary line developed, if not an extra finger (Polydactyly is amazingly common in humans), then the embryological beginnings of a finger or a nub in a place where it can be conveniently called a finger.

Perhaps dinosaurs are not really 1-2-3 fingered, and they are really 2-3-4 like Feduccia proposes birds to be. The fossil record is clear that at least some dinosaurs became 1-2-3 but it is not at all clear that advanced theropods evolved from these creatures (it is just sort of assumed for the sake of argument). Feduccia's example of an early 5-footed dinosaur turning into a 1-2-3 dinosaur (Herrerasaurus) has had its theropod classification questioned by many paleontologists on non-finger related grounds. This scenario runs into the problem of there being no transitions showing a 2-3-4 theropod; then again there are no 1-2-3-4-5 birds either, nor is the fossil record even remotely complete in the middle Triassic.

Lastly (that I can think of), perhaps Wagner and Gauthier are right and dinosaurs are 1,2,3 turned 2,3,4. These boys wrote a fantastic paper that worked under the assumtion that Feduccia was right about finger homologies. They propose in their paper,

"Asymmetry in the hand is especially marked in basal dinosaurs in which the ancestral phalangeal formula (2-3-4-5-3) has been reduced to 2-3-4-3-2 and is reduced even further in early theropods to 2-3-4-1/0-X and later to 2-3-4-X-X".

This jives perfectly with the traditional view of Herrerasaur-like creatures being ancestral to theropods and allows Feduccia's premature (IMO) conclusions to be correct

Oh, just so I can sound like a YEC for a minute, maybe Feduccia is lying and he's just part of the big YEC conspiracty to destroy evolution

Lingisquama is 220 Mill. yrs old, so when did feathers develope?

As I said earlier they only look like feathers when you look from really far away. Up close they look a lot more like unfibrous skin-flap type structures. Also their placement along the body is much more like dermal plates and structures (Stegosaurs, Acrocanthosaurs, Spinosaurs, Dimetrodon) than feathers.

My quote from Geology Society as well as other studies, say that evolution should not repeat.

I think you're misreading that because that would be wrong. Similar characters can evolve more than once (hair-like structures have evolved at least 3 times [mammals, arthropod 'fuzz', and pterosaur 'fuzz'] as well as flight [birds, insects, pterosaurs). Also, characters can show up that were once covered by previous mutations (human tails, whale limbs, bird fingers) so it is quite possible that the ancestor for all archosaurs had some sort of feather which was covered up by many clades... only to show up again millions of years later.

large theropod dinos (e.g. Eubrontes giganteus is ~10 ky)

Eubrontes isn't all that large (for a theropod) and most researchers believe it was a Dilophosaur. Dilophosaurs are, when it comes down to it, little more that Coelophysids with 2 crests and 10 more feet in length. Easy to do in 100 thousand years; especially if the clade split off before the die-off.

as well as "herbivors (e.g., prosauropods and small ornithischians) appear within 100 ky after the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, represented by both tracks and bones."

Prosauropods and small ornithischians are both very well known from the late Triassic. You're going to have to pull some specifics if you want me to actually address them.

From small theropods to these in under 100,000 yrs.?

Triassic theropods approached (at least) 4 meters in length (if you call Herrerasaurus a theropod). It is possible even larger examples existed without a fossil record (Aliwalia is estimated to have been 1.5 tons!). It is very easy for 3 meter theropods to evolve into similar 6 meter theropods in 100,000 years; even though your foundational logic is wrong. The dinosaurs that evolved into the somwhat larger examples we see in the early Jurassic would have split off far more than 100,000 years earlier.

No one has ever claimed that Prosauropods and Ornithischians evolved from theropods. Those clades split from each other far into the Triassic.

Most mutations are either neutral or bad. How would you explain these changes?

Drastic increases in size is very easy (look at what has happened to domestic dogs and what is happening to humans) and this is all we see at the Triassic/Jurassic boundry. The large thecodont predators finally kick the bucket and dinosaurs come in and take over. These increase in size to deal with the prosauropods which in turn increase in size evolving into sauropods (that is an extremely generalized scenario but it relates the basic idea).

I say special creation.

Question! How were all of these animal species dying off? Was God creating and then slaughtering the animals or was He creating such awful designs that they couldn't live for more than 2 million years or so at a time?

 

[mattwebb22]

If we add gaps in between each day then we have to agree that God said Death is good. Because no animal has ever lived for billions of years, but God said His creation was good.

Death only came after the fall, so billions of years can't exist before the fall, otherwise animals lived for billions of years. Are you suggesting that they did?

Why would it take God so long?

Is it not possible that as God created Adam to be about 30 years old in appearance, although he was actually only 0, that he did this for everyone else aswell?

 

[mattwebb22]

The word day is "yom" in Hebrew, and the same context and same word is used to describe Jonah's stay in the whale's belly. Does this mean that Jonah was in the belly for 3 billion years?

 

[bdfoster]

I'm relatively new to this forum so I don't know how much this has been discussed. But it seems to me this is one of the most frequent misconceptions of YEC: that evolution violates the doctrine of original sin because it requires death before the fall.

When the Bible speaks of death, the word is used in two different ways. It can refer to physical death or spiritual death. Sometimes a single passage will use the word in both contexts. Spiritual death is by far the most important. Physical death is only the end of our animated existance in our physical bodies. Spiritual death is eternal separation from God, the source of life.

If we add gaps in between each day then we have to agree that God said Death is good. Because no animal has ever lived for billions of years, but God said His creation was good.

Physical death is good. It is part of God's evolving creation. Organisms die so that others can live.

Death only came after the fall, so billions of years can't exist before the fall, otherwise animals lived for billions of years. Are you suggesting that they did?

Spiritual death came after the fall. Pyhsical death was already here. Spiritual death could only come after spiritual life had been breathed into Adam. Spiritual death is the result of sin, and our salvation from Spiritual death is the major concern of scripture.

Brent

 

[lucaspa]

If we add gaps in between each day then we have to agree that God said Death is good. Because no animal has ever lived for billions of years, but God said His creation was good.

Death only came after the fall, so billions of years can't exist before the fall, otherwise animals lived for billions of years. Are you suggesting that they did?

The idea that physical death came with the Fall seems to be theory invented by creationists precisely to cause people like you to fear evolution.

In Genesis 2 when Adam is told not to eat the fruit of the tree, Adam is told that he will die "in the day" he eats the fruit. Well, Adam lived 930 years, didn't he? So the death could not have been physical, or God lied to Adam. Also, at the end of Genesis 3 you find that Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden before they can eat of the fruit of the Tree of Everlasting Life, because if they eat of that tree they will live forever. The implication is that they cannot live forever without the fruit and, if they were going to live forever before the Fall, there would be no need to tell them not to eat the fruit of that tree, would there?

So, physical death has always been here, and it is "good". Why would it be bad if when, after you die, you are united with God? I really have a hard time figuring out why creationists fear death so much when they also proclaim that they are saved and will be with God. It doesn't make any sense to me. Yet there it is. Physical death is terrible and something really, really bad. Why?

Now, I can see that spiritual death would be very bad. That would mean that you are forever cut off from God. And that doesn't sound good at all.

Is it not possible that as God created Adam to be about 30 years old in appearance, although he was actually only 0, that he did this for everyone else aswell?

Yes, it's possible, but then you have the problem that God is a deceiver. This is the Oomphalos argument, or the Appearance of Age argument, first put forward by Rev. Paul Gosse in 1857. It was denounced by his fellow ministers because it makes God be just like the devil -- a deceiver.

 

[lucaspa]

1) I'll take the blame for this mix up. When I spoke about scientists being able to tell birds from dinos, I meant there fossils.

It is difficult. Archeopteryx is classed as a bird only because the descendents ended up there. As Troodon pointed out, at least one Archie fossil without the feathers was misidentified as a Compsagnathus.

As for the digits in the hands: First thank you for the link
http://www.lifesci.utexas.edu/courses/bio478L/ReadingsPDF/Burke-Feduccia.pdf
I will read through it carefully, But I would like to point out that it is from the earlier research in 1997.
2002 study claims new evidence:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020815072053.htm

This has been going on for a long time. Notice that Feduccia is not arguing that birds did not evolve, but is arguing only the exact ancestral lineage of birds. We had a visiting developmental biologist who walked us thru the development of digits in birds and showed that Feduccia is wrong. There is a shift in digit number during bird development and that it is possible for birds to be descended from dinos.

Lingisquama is 220 Mill. yrs old, so when did feathers develope? My quote from Geology Society as well as other studies, say that evolution should not repeat.

Why not? Evolution does repeat. Who says feathers only developed in one lineage? They could have developed in 2 lineages but the one with Longisquama didn't survive. The "feathers" in Longisquama are very primitive and may not be feathers at all. Remember that Longi was first discovered and described 50 years ago and the original paleontologists did not think the structures were feathers. It's possible that Fedduccia and colleagues saw what they wanted to see. BTW, I've got the paper as a PDF file and would be happy to mail it to you. Look at the pictures and decide for yourself.

From small theropods to these in under 100,000 yrs.?

Troodon pointed out the error of ancestry. However, I will just point out that yes, the size could have increased in just 100,000 years. Calculations have been done that show that if mice increased in size a mean of 0.01% per generation -- far too small to be detected -- that in just 60,000 years they would be the size of elephants!

Also, it turns out that natural selection can work up to 10,000 times faster than observed in the fossil record. Rather than worry about why this went so fast, what we should be asking about is why the rest of evolution went so slow.
2. Reznick, DN, Shaw, FH, Rodd, FH, and Shaw, RG. Evaluationof the rate of evolution in natural populations of guppies (Poeciliareticulata). Science 275:1934-1937, 1997. The lay article isPredatory-free guppies take an evolutionary leap forward, pg 1880.

Most mutations are either neutral or bad.

Most mutations are either neutral or beneficial 997.4 out of a thousand mutations are either neutral or beneficial. Only 2.6 per thousand are bad.

 

[lucaspa]

The word day is "yom" in Hebrew, and the same context and same word is used to describe Jonah's stay in the whale's belly. Does this mean that Jonah was in the belly for 3 billion years?

No, because "yom" has two definitions: a 24 hour day and the length of a task, regardless of the number of days. You have to decide which definition is being used. In the case of Jonah, it would be the definition of yom as 24 hour day.

Many OECers say that "yom" in Genesis 1 is the second definition.