The Fossil Record

[Carl Berry]

I had a discussion with a Creationist who said that there is no record of one species evolving into another. I have seen how verious animals have evolved, such as the elephant & the horse, but I don't recall ever being shown where one species evolved to become another. Enligtenment please!
------------
Der Aldt
------------
Carl

[Squink]

Speciation is a process, not a thing. Processes don't leave fossils, things do.
Looking at ammonites for example, many intermediate forms have been found between one species, and another living millions of years later, yet the fossil record contains no videotape of the actual moment of transition. Scientist have to settle for the appearance of a succession of forms.
By asking for a "fossil record" of the moment of species transition the creationists are effectively asking for the moon. In return, you may ask them how they explain the obvious succession of forms.

[mok]

Carl Berry sed:

I don't recall ever being shown where one species evolved to become another

Actually, Carl, if you "have seen how verious[sic] animals have evolved, such as the elephant & the horse", then you have seen one species evolve into another. The fossil progression from Eohippus ("dawn horse") to Equus (today's horse) shows the species* Eohippus evolving into the different species* Equus.

Eohippus and Equus were not the same species - they are very diffent animals. If both were alive at the same time today, no one would consider them to be just variants of the same species. Eohippus was about a foot tall and had multiple toes with claws. Equus is about 6 feet tall or so and has single toes with specialized hooves.

-m

_________________

[sub]*Technically, Eohippus and Equus are the names of genera, not species. This is simply a convention of nomenclature -- the animals themselves were quite different species.

[Duck Duck Goose]

Here is the basic outline for an experiment you can do at home to illustrate evolution in action.

Get some fruit fly cultures. You may want to ask Mom or Dad to help you with this. :D Basically you divide up the cultures into two or three different batches and then expose each batch to different living conditions, like extreme heat, cold, toxins, etc. Fruit flies mutate very easily, so within a very short period of time each culture will have changed to adapt to the different living conditions. Each fruit fly culture will have evolved into a new fruit fly species.

Here is a website that shows some of the mutations fruit flies can have.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/mutant_flies/mutant_flies.html

Happy experimenting! :D

[Triskadecamus]

It all depends on your definition of "ever." Or of species, or any of a dozen other terms in the argument.

Eohippis was not a horse, but is a species believed to be a progenitor of the current species of horse. The pony living in a remote area of the Tibetan plateau is almost identical to the horse depicted in the cave drawings as Lasceaux, fifty thousand years ago. That particular type of horse is not a separate species, but does have very specific conformational differences from other horses of modern times. The denial of the possibility that this record of change among the various members of the genus is speciation is not supported by any evidence.

There are dozens of species that are apparently the surviving examples of entire genera of species found in the fossil record. In addition, there are many species that are conformationaly similar to species in the fossil record, but with sufficient differences to justify classification as separate species. That evidence is certainly entirely consistent with the model we call evolution. Alternative theories should meet the same stringent criteria of examination as evolution has.

In some cases, the individuals in current species populations show differences and similarities in DNA and mtDNA, which are divergent in amounts entirely consistent with collateral descent from common ancestors shown in the fossil record. In cases where such comparisons can be made in populations of living species, separation and time are the factors that correlate most directly with the variation frequencies. That evidence certainly supports the contention that species evolve. To deny that evidence, in a scientific sense, other evidence, as opposed to conjecture and philosophy, would be needed.

Single celled species have been shown to evolve under direct observation. Very simple multi-celled species have also been observed to change, and conserve new characteristics. While no one in the scientific community finds this all that important, it certainly is evidence to support evolution. The main reason that you don't find all that much new scientific evidence favoring evolution is pretty much the same reason why Heliocentrism is not studied by many Astronomers. Science moved on from this argument a half century or more ago.

[dropzone]

Weeeeeeellll, "speciation" is not as pretty in real life as it is in biology books. It's more of a gray scale. Let's use the ability to breed (I'll define that as "the ability to produce viable and fertile offspring") as the most obvious difference between two species, but there are also behavior and, to a certain extent, external appearance1. People cannot produce offspring by chimpanzees, and vice versa, despite what The Weekly World News says.

On the other hand, horses and donkeys obviously belong to different species, appearing and behaving different, but they can breed, sorta. Resulting mules are infertile, resulting hinnies are fertile, but not very. There are examples all over the "animal kingdom" of animals, say, sparrows, that look an awful lot alike to us, but they can tell the difference and do not, and cannot, breed.

The biggest problem that creationists have, as far as I can see, is an over-simplification of a complex question. The way evolution works is as a gradual process. A mutation here and there over a LONG period of time in two separate populations and, eventually, you have something that cannot breed successfully with something that looks A LOT like it. However, even with access to EVERY member of both population, you would not be able to point to a parent and a child and say that one is of one species and the other is of another. It doesn't work that way. It is an accumulation of small changes, not a sudden transformation. Sudden transformations are more in the realm of miracles.

Then there is their assumption that the universe is only a few thousand years old. Because evolution is so gradual, yeah, there hasn't been enough time to produce the variety of plants, animals, and others that now live, or have lived, if Creation occurred in 4004BC. However, that is enough time to evolve two species of sparrow from a population that has been split. Again, would you be able to say "This is when this population became House Sparrows?" No.

As for the fossil record, that, again, is not as pretty as the books make it look. In a book you see a picture of an idealized skull of a modern human. In reality, everybody's skull looks a little bit different; this is how those reconstructions of the faces of skeletonized murder victims can resemble the real people so much. Then the book shows you an idealized skull of one of our relatives, not mentioning that it was based on several partial skulls from times that could be thousands of years apart and which were found in itty-bitty pieces, like incomplete jigsaw puzzles with no box to tell the people who assembled them what they are supposed to look like.

Imagine that you are going to build a lineage of modern humans based on one photograph of one person taken every few hundred years. And most of the photographs are pretty poor, concentrating on the teeth and parts of the head and limbs. That is what is in the fossil record, lousy snapshots of an extremely tiny percentage of the creatures that ever lived. You can see trends, but that is all. Your sample is FAR too small to do more with than make assumptions and generalizations based on what is similar and what isn't. That is what paleoanthropologists do, and they are ALWAYS2 arguing. As I've mentioned before, what we understood the human lineage to be in 1974 was completely different from how we understood it last week, and Wednesday it might have changed again. It is a science of best guesses, which makes Pure Scientists question whether it should be considered a scence at all. And that is why my degree is a BA, not a BS.


* - Dogs are an obvious exception to the external appearance test. However, you start looking at their teeth and, well, you can see why we love teeth so much. Durable and they can tell you a LOT about the creature that owned them.

** - Always. All the time. Can't agree on the time or what to have for lunch. Until the creationists show up. Then they circle like musk oxen.

[Lumpy]

You know, I think that what creationists really hate about Evolution, even more than it's supposed atheism, is that the theory of evolution does away with the idea of species as fixed archtypes. Just as flat earthers can't understand why people don't fall off the bottom of the earth, creationists can't seem to fathom how a population of animals could specialize to the point that it no longer was interbreedable with the base stock.

[tomndebb]

One problem encountered when discussing issues with Creationists is that they are always in a hurry. (After all, their whole world got assembled in six days, why do the Evolutionists keep stalling when they are asked for proof?)

Darwin first published his Origin of Species in 1859. His theory did not become the scientifically dominant one, as Neo-Darwinism, until the mid-1920s. Part of his theory was the utter reliance on gradualism (indicating that all changes must occur only in geological time frames--a really long time). That aspect of the theory was not seriously challenged until Gould and Eldredge posited Punctuated Equilibrium in 1974--and that idea is still fiercely opposed in some circles even though the "rapid" changes they proposed still occurred in geological time--just in shorter periods than Darwin proposed.

So, basically, we have only entertained the notion that a species could evolve "quickly" (but still over periods of time much longer than a human lifetime), for fewer than 30 years. Until now, no one was even looking for species to evolve fast enough to watch.

More recently, people have begun to study the actual "origins of species." This site on Talk Origins (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) discusses actually observed speciation events. It begins with plants and moves to insects and a few other small critters. (The whole page is worth reading, but if you're in a hurry, scroll down to section 5.0 Observed Instances of Speciation.)

Talk Origins has a second page of updates, including references to mice and fish: Some More Observed Speciation Events (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html)

In addition, Peter and Rosemary Grant went back to the Galapagos, where Darwin first drew some of his Natural Selection conclusions by examining finches, and discovered that the finches have continued to evolve in the 170 years since Darwin was wandering around the islands. They published a popularized edition of their work as Beak of the Finch in the mid-1990s.

[Johnny L.A.]

Just as flat earthers can't understand...
The founder of the Flat Earth Society, Charles. K. Johnson, died in Lancaster, CA (where I used to live, BTW) on March 18th, 2001. Did he really believe the Earth was flat? Or was it all a giant hoax? Since Johnson was an aeronautical engineer, I suspect the latter; an interview with an Antelope Valley reporter on NPR on Wednesday indicated it might have been a joke.

[August West]

The fossil record of cetaceans shows a clear, definable path from a large land mammal to a freshwater and littoral sometimes-on-the-land mammal to a marine mammal.

Gould shows the progression in one of his essays, I don't have it with me but I'll find it and post a little more detail.

[Spoke]

If you want to offer your creationist friend an example of speciation in action, you might point to the horse and the donkey.

These two animals came from a common ancestor. They have drifted apart genetically, but not quite to the "breaking point." They can still breed with each other, but their offspring, a mule, will be sterile, unable to reproduce itself.

It is clear that horses and donkeys evolved from a common ancestor, and it is equally clear that their common ancestor has evolved into two species. Now if you dug up the fossil record, could you tell by looking at bones the exact point at which one species became two? Nah.

Lions and tigers, by the way, have a similar degree of relation. They can breed, producing a so-called "liger" (or "tiglon") but if I'm not mistaken, the "liger" is as sterile as a mule.

[JoeyBlades]

dropzone wrote:

As for the fossil record, that, again, is not as pretty as the books make it look. In a book you see a picture of an idealized skull of a modern human. In reality, everybody's skull looks a little bit different;

Actually, the problem is even more convoluted than that. On one hand you have the different species' that look fairly similar; on the other hand you have members of the same species that (from their fossil records) can look radically different...

Consider a million years from now, dogs have long been extinct and due to some cataclysm, the intelligent beings that are left behind have no records of them. They happen to excavate the skeletal remains of a chihuahua and a St. Bernard... They might not easily come to the conclusion that these were the same species... They might even assume the chihuahua was a member of the rodent family... (which I sometimes suspect, myself).


As to the OP:

Since speciation can only be inferred from the fossil record, you cannot use the fossil record to demonstrate speciation. Not being able to demonstrate that a thing occured is certainly not an argument that it did not occur... as your Creationist friends should certainly agree...

There certainly seems to be evidence of speciation occuring under conditions that we can observe and demonstrate, so it seems like a pointless argument to make that speciation did not occur... on the other hand, that does little to **PROVE** the theory of evolution as a whole - or at least the part that Creationists have a problem with (i.e. abiogenesis -> human beings)

[KeithB]

They would never confuse a chihuahua with a rodent. The teeth are wrong.

While fine-grain species transitions are rare they do exist. Instead of the "observed speciation FAQ", check out the "Transitional Fossil" FAQ by Kathleen Hunt at the talk.origins site listed above.

The problem is that a creationist will always ask for the intermediate between two transitionals. And, if they get too close together simply claim that they are the same animal. You can't win.

[FlyingDragonFan]

Originally posted by August West
The fossil record of cetaceans shows a clear, definable path from a large land mammal to a freshwater and littoral sometimes-on-the-land mammal to a marine mammal.

Gould shows the progression in one of his essays, I don't have it with me but I'll find it and post a little more detail.

I haven't read the Gould version, but a book called At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but then Went Back to Sea by Carl Zimmer, features a full discussion of the topic. It's very nicely illustrated, and details the full progression of the cetacean lineage. The original land animals seems to have been fairly similar to modern canines. The book also discusses modern animals, such as the otter, that seem to be themselves a type of "in-between" species, obviously originally land animals, but part way down the road to being aquatic. This is all in the second half of the book. The first half discusses how what passed for fish early in the fossil record managed to evolve into land animals. The entire book is very well written, and I highly recommend it for any amateur evolution buffs out there.

Originally posted by tomndebb
In addition, Peter and Rosemary Grant went back to the Galapagos, where Darwin first drew some of his Natural Selection conclusions by examining finches, and discovered that the finches have continued to evolve in the 170 years since Darwin was wandering around the islands. They published a popularized edition of their work as Beak of the Finch in the mid-1990s.

Actually, the story is much better than that. Peter and Rosemary Grant have spent the better part of the last thirty years on one of the more remote islands in the Galapagos Archipelago, cataloguing the various physical characteristics of seven or eight species of "Darwin's Finches." And I mean Cataloguing, with a capital 'C'. They measured the finches from beak to toe, noting, among other things, beak width, length, and depth. They kept track of every single bird on the island,recording birth and death dates, which birds breeded with which birds, and which birds were the offspring of said breedings. They also kept track of the food sources on the island, noting which species preferred which food. They developed methods of measuring the difficulty in, say, cracking open a seed from a particular cactus, and comparing it to the beak depth of the species of birds that seemed to prefer it as a food source. The amount of information they collected is staggering. Once a year they would go back to their university, I think Princeton, and enter all of the data into a computer, and try to find correlations in different chunks of data. What they found is that the different species of birds on the island were evolving during the time that they spent on the island.They could show that in the year after a long drought, as food became more scarce, more birds would be born with a larger beak, which allowed a bird to open tougher to crack seeds that smaller-beaked birds couldn't eat. Then, in rainer years, the average size of the beak on birds born that year would be smaller. Over the years, as droughts came and went, the overall species characteristics didn't change much, just sort of wafted back and forth, but the change from year to year was visible. Evolution in action, every evolutionary biologist's dream. It's a very good book about a pair of scientists literally proving that Darwin was correct.
Of course, it still won't convince a creationist, but if this book doesn't at least make a person think, nothing will.

[aramis]

Here's a slightly different take on the evolution/creation argument that you can use in such discussions.

Creationists love to attack evolution, but even if someone wee to come up towmorrow with absolute, incontrovertible proof that evolution didn't happen, that wouldn't help to support their own position one iota. They don't even have an argument other than 'the bible says it so it must be true'.

[I'm gonna try some HTML here so please be patient with me]
They also like to call creation a theory to put it on on equal footing with evolution but it's not, the proper term is creation myth. Looking at it that way, its intellectual peers are not evolution, but stories like the the ones at this site (http://www.allsands.com/History/Events/asiancreationm_wvx_gn.htm). Any one of them is as believable as what they have to offer, and has just as much evidence in its favor.

[Obvious Guy]

I know this is not the Great Debates forum, but I thought I would put my 2 cents in anyways...

Spoke:
To me the horse and donkey are not really prime evidence for evoultion in action. The differences between a horse and a donkey are purely from breeding certain physical traits.

August West:
the problem with say a seal like creature becoming a whale would pose considerable problems. Since the process of evolution is said to be slow, it would be difficult for offspring to adapt quick enough to survive. If its a land animal going to see, how would the offspring be able to adjust and evolve intime to be able to say suckle underwater?

[dropzone]

Originally posted by Obvious Guy
To me the horse and donkey are not really prime evidence for evoultion in action. The differences between a horse and a donkey are purely from breeding certain physical traits.
You are assuming that horses and donkeys were the same animal until humans started breeding them for specific purposes? I'm afraid that the fossil record DOES show that they were different species LONG before they were domesticated by humans.
If its a land animal going to see, how would the offspring be able to adjust and evolve intime to be able to say suckle underwater?
The seals of the present suckle on land, but the only thing that prevents them from suckling in water is that the young don't go into the water, probably to stay away from predators and to stay warm. Were a seal pup in a warm climate to follow its mother into the water it is fully possible for it to nurse. They have already developed the lung capacity to stay underwater. They just happen not to.

[Spoke]

Hey Obvious Guy, would you concede that lions and tigers are separate species, or do you suppose that some farmer somewhere has been breeding them for their respective characteristics?

[Tamerlane]

Obvious Guy: To expand slightly on what Dropzone said, there is some evidence that the genus Equus is actually polyphyletic and should be split. With the ancestors of modern horses and zebras on one side and modern asses, onagers, and kiangs on the other diverging about 250,000 years ago. There has been a proposal to split them into the separate genera of Equus and Asinus. Don't know how widely accepted ( if at all ) that has been. But it shows the separation.

The one thing donkeys and horses have in common ( and actually there are a number of things :) ), is that they were both probably domesticated in Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago.


- Tamerlane

[Tamerlane]

Oops! I take that back! Horses and asses may have diverged in the Pliocene ( 500,000 to 1.8 million years ago ). It is domestic horses ( E. caballuss ) and the Przewalski's Horse ( E. przewalskii ) that may have diverged 250,000 years ago. My bad :p .

- Tamerlane

[JoeyBlades]

KeithB:

They would never confuse a chihuahua with a rodent. The teeth are wrong.

Note to self: Next time you're trying to be funny, try to be more obvious... [wink]

[dropzone]

Originally posted by JoeyBlades
Note to self: Next time you're trying to be funny, try to be more obvious... [wink]
Yeah, but you can see why we love teeth so much!

[Obvious Guy]

Tamerlane you obviously know more about the fossil record than I do. So I cant respond for or against what you say.

spoke I know those traits wherent specfically breeded for by some person. Sometimes things just work out that way in nature. Like families have common traits and features that have unintentionally come into being.

dropzone I wasnt specifally talking about a seal. I was talking about a hypothetical seal-like creature that supposedly went from land to sea and evolved into say a whale. It would be very difficult for a species to live long enough to physically evolve to solely survive in the water.

[dropzone]

Originally posted by Obvious Guy
It would be very difficult for a species to live long enough to physically evolve to solely survive in the water.
Actually, not really. Seals are almost totally marine creatures. They are at a distinct disadvantage on land, and cannot hunt or effectively avoid predators on land, but can live on land if their needs are provided for. However, at one time a pre-seal was considerably more doggish and functioned perfectly well on land. As generation after generation (and I am talking about a LOT of generations) spent more and more time in the water, some of the pre-seals experienced mutations that proved to be helpful in an aquatic environment. And a point that is often missed, more pre-seals experienced mutations that proved DISADVANTAGEOUS or had NO EFFECT on their survival than had the "positive" mutations. No advantage or a disadvantage will not improve one's chance of survival long enough to pass that mutation along to the next generation. Many negative mutations do not survive long enough to be born alive, but don't tell your sister that her baby was stillborn because it was a mutant.

Another point that is often missed is that a mutation that provides an advantage in one environment can be a disadvantage in another, like a seal's legs. Or a trait was once advantageous may start getting a bit negative. My favorite example of that, because I had to spend so much pain and money fixing it, is our wisdom teeth. Our ancestors had plenty of jaw space for them. Some of us current humans do and some, like me, don't. At some point having an enormous jaw with great big teeth, as found in Australopithecines, stopped being necessary, possibly because of tools being used to cut up food and fire to cook (and soften!) it. Mutations for a jaw that stopped growing at an early age and smaller teeth, which would have been negative before, stopped being a problem. A smaller jaw chewing softer food needs less muscle to do its work, so enormous jaw muscles and a sagital crest to attach them to are no longer needed. If a mutation or two took them away, no biggy.

In fact, having a lighter head using less calcium and less muscle using less protein to make it and calories to move it might prove advantageous under certain conditions. So what if the jaw didn't get big enough for that last set of molars to fit into it? Most folks didn't live long enough for it to become a problem, anyway. And it's not like it's likely to kill you or prevent you from reproducing.

My point is that pre-seals were not magically transformed into modern seals overnight. What happened was a succession of mutations occurred and some of them made it easier for the pre-seals to spend more time in the water. Because these creatures were better able to hunt and evade predators than their more-terrestrial cousins, they were better able to pass their genes on to the next generation. A succession of slight advantages spread over thousands and millions of years gave us the modern seal.

As for the whole Chihuahua/Great Dane debate (and when is this thread getting moved to GD?), how does selecting for a specific group of traits in a dog breed differ from evolution, except in the sped-up timetable? Unnatural selection is funtionally the same as natural selection: in both cases the offspring that do not possess the advantageous traits are less likely to reproduce.

[Jalapeno_On_A_Stick]

I must first admit that the theory of evolution (and it is still just a theory) doens't explain many things to me and I therefore, for now, reject the notion that people evolved. I believe an itelligent being created all life.

With that said, I would also like to say that facts speak loudly to me so I am willing to research it further and am also willing to listen to what people on here have to say and even will go to whatever links are posted in order to learn more.

Now on to the ridiculous. In this link http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp (yes I know it's Jack Chick, but I think this particular tract makes some valid points) the "christian" points out many errors derived from fossils. I realize people on here don't like Mr. Chick, and so be it. I don't know the man, but if he indeed believes people are going to perish and suffer forever then at least I can give him credit for trying to divert people from what he thinks is their ultimate end. But what I would like to know is if this tract is totally false or were the fossils talked about indeed found to be what the christian claims them to be?? In other words, can anyone disput what is said in this tract or will it just be the typical "let's bash jack" and ignore that what is said may be true?

I'd really like to see a point by point refutal, if that's possible, on the fossil record talked about in this tract.

Thanks!

[Jois]

Dropzone, I should probably wait and post this tomorrow but...

Or a trait was once advantageous may start getting a bit negative. My favorite example of that, because I had to spend so much pain and money fixing it, is our wisdom teeth. Our ancestors had plenty of jaw space for them. Some of us current humans do and some, like me, don't. At some point having an enormous jaw with great big teeth, as found in Australopithecines, stopped being necessary, possibly because of tools being used to cut up food and fire to cook (and soften!) it. Mutations for a jaw that stopped growing at an early age and smaller teeth, which would have been negative before, stopped being a problem. A smaller jaw chewing softer food needs less muscle to do its work, so enormous jaw muscles and a sagital crest to attach them to are no longer needed. If a mutation or two took them away, no biggy.

Have you heard of "Culinary Evolution" I just read the term within the past month or so, it was coined by C. Loring Brace and discusses the facial and cranial changes that occur with changes in food and mastication.

Jois

[dropzone]

I have to go to bed, but I wanted to hit a couple points first.

"Richard Leakey found a normal human skull under a layer of rock dated at 212 million years"

I've not heard this, but the geology in the area he digs is so contorted by tectonic action that older strata could be squished on top of younger strata.

Neanderthals: "Dr AJE Cave said his examination showed that this famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago (more like 150, but that's over 50--dz) is that of an old man who suffered from arthritis."

True, to a point. Cave considered Neanderthals human, but not the same as modern humans ("This is not to deny that his limbs, as well as his skull, exhibit distinctive features - features which collectively distinguish him from all groups of modern men. In other words, his "total morphological pattern", in the phraseology of Le Gros Clark (1955) differs from that of "sapiens" man." (Straus, Jr. and Cave 1957). See this site. (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_neands.html)) His point was not that Neanderthals were identical to moderns, but that they had been misrepresented as stoop-shouldered brutes. If your spine was in as bad shape as that of this old guy you'd be stooped, too.

[Jalapeno_On_A_Stick]

Interesting stuff. I hope you have more. Thanks

[Collounsbury]

Originally posted by Jalapeno_On_A_Stick
I must first admit that the theory of evolution (and it is still just a theory)

Before making statements like the above, you should familiarize yourself with what the term "theory" means in science. I believe some Talk Origins site links have already been provided, you would do well to follow them.

doens't explain many things to me and I therefore, for now, reject the notion that people evolved. I believe an itelligent being created all life.

The first portion of the statement is hard to understand in terms of the rather vast evidence for evolution, so I have to assume you are poorly read in the matter. The second part of the statement is not relevant.

Now on to the ridiculous. In this link http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp (yes I know it's Jack Chick, but I think this particular tract makes some valid points) the "christian" points out many errors derived from fossils.

No, it does not make valid points, it makes many distortions. Go to the Talk Origins web site for facts and citations.

I don't know the man, but if he indeed believes people are going to perish and suffer forever then at least I can give him credit for trying to divert people from what he thinks is their ultimate end.

Anyone using the bile, hatred and lies that he uses does more harm than good to his "cause."

But what I would like to know is if this tract is totally false or were the fossils talked about indeed found to be what the christian claims them to be?? In other words, can anyone disput what is said in this tract or will it just be the typical "let's bash jack" and ignore that what is said may be true?

See Talk Origins: biological sciences are not based around evolutionary theory for nothing.

[Ben]

Originally posted by JoeyBlades

Consider a million years from now, dogs have long been extinct and due to some cataclysm, the intelligent beings that are left behind have no records of them. They happen to excavate the skeletal remains of a chihuahua and a St. Bernard... They might not easily come to the conclusion that these were the same species...

Since they are, in effect, members of a *ring* species, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the breeds at the extreme ends are separate species until they discovered the species connecting them in the middle.

To wit:

by the evolutionary definition of "species," the St. Bernard and the chihuahua are the same species because it's possible for St. Bernard genes to enter into the chihuahua breed. You just need to pass those genes through a number of intermediates first.

Incidentally, where did you get that argument?

-Ben

[DrFidelius]

Jalapeno_On_A_Stick:

Last year somebody thought that that particular Chick Tract made valid points. They were wrong, too.

I cannot seem to find an earlier, more detailed post, but last August I wrote:

Damn, and just a few months ago I corrected all the one-liner descriptions from that Chick tract. It takes longer to correct false information than to spew out the falsehoods in the first place. I seem to remember reading something somewhere that said that bearing false witness was a bad thing.

Lucy was no more a chimp than she was fully human, but her species is clearly intermediate between the two living types.

"Heidelberg Man" appears to be the type specimen of archaic Homo sapiens, and his jaw was shaped just like a modern human although it was about twice as heavy.

The specimen of Homo erectus known as "Peking Man" was lost during World War II. So? Many other specimens in better condition have been recovered from all over Asia, including others from the same deposit.

Two or three of the many Neandertalers found were aged individuals showing the signs of bone disease. Other individuals include children, and as the only significant difference between Neandertalers and us was in the skull (Neandertalers had that brow ridge and a larger brain) it is hard to see how arthritis could account for the characteritic cranial structure.

CroMagnons were, of course, modern Homo saps. The tern describes a cultural stage, not a species.

Nebraska Man was never described in the scientific literature; the scientist who first reported finding a tooth from an "antropoid ape" in American deposits realized his mistake before publication.

I haven't been able to track down the "New Guinea Man", unless it is a garbled half-memory of the Tasaday tribe the so-called "Stone Age" people fopund in the Phillipines in the Sixties or Seventies.

Any errors are entirely my own, I am writing this post from memory and yo know how us old people get...

I also especially like that Jesus is the electro-weqak force.

[DrFidelius]

...I think my spelling has improved over the past few months...

I also used to have a link detailing where Chick plagarized his "illustrations". Plagarism is bad. It is a violation of the commandments against stealing and covetting another's property.

[Jois]

Hi DrFidelius, The first think I thought of when I looked at the Chick cartoon was where did he get those illustrations. If you ever find that link, I'd like to see it, too, please.

Hi Spoke-, I don't know if Obvious Guy would concede that lions and tigers are separate species, but I think they are separate species, but that they may have been too recently separated to have completed total speciation. Hve you seen any dating on this?

Jois

[dropzone]

Thanks, Doc, that saved me a lot of trouble. Instead, I get to present a bunch of comments.

After logging off last night I couldn't get to sleep because I wasn't done here. As I lay thinking I realized that the errors in the Chick tract required a fair amount of effort to ferret out of the original data, and that the person who did it, our pal Hovind, had to purposely distort and misrepresent the data to make his points. In other words, the information he provides are not merely mistakes but outright lies! I have heard of people who thought that the end of bringing people to religion justified whatever means were required to accomplish it, but I have always thought that it was shameful to actually lie to people as part of one's evangelizing.

Having been raised Catholic, another of Mr Chick's pet hatreds, I have never been taught that there was a mutual exclusion between Christianity and evolution. In fact, a prominent Catholic priest and theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, was also a prominent paleontologist in the first half of the last century. He was also involved in the digs that gave us, uh, ahem, Piltdown Man but has generally been cleared of collusion. (What were they THINKING? Where the hell would the muscles for that jaw attach, fercryinoutloud?)

Lucy was a chimp? Nah, not with THAT pelvis. Nor with those femurs. No surprises at ALL when the gait of Australopithecus afarensis turned out so "modern."

I remember cases like "Nebraska Man" being used as examples of why one must be very careful extrapolating from a single tooth, as pigs and bears have some teeth very similar to ours. Convergent evolution on the part of omnivores, I suppose, but we had a good laugh at the guy who made the mistake.

Jois, thanks for the tip on "Culinary Evolution." No, I was unfamiliar with it, but I'm going to track it down ASAP.

Ben, if someone like Louis Leakey were to find Joey's dog skeletons, he probably WOULD put them in different species. Leakey was a guy who would create new species for slightly different specimens found in comtemporaneous strata five miles apart. Specimens as different as St Bernards and Chihuahuas could be different genera! ;)

[Lumpy]

Originally posted by Ben
by the evolutionary definition of "species," the St. Bernard and the chihuahua are the same species because it's possible for St. Bernard genes to enter into the chihuahua breed. You just need to pass those genes through a number of intermediates first.
-Ben Who says you need intermediates? A female St. Bernard, a male chihuahua, and a platform at the right height. ;)

Seriously, as far as I know all domesticated dogs are completely interfertile, in theory if not in practice.

[Jois]

And the chihuahua would say, "Who needs that platform!"

Jois

[Ben]

Originally posted by Lumpy
Seriously, as far as I know all domesticated dogs are completely interfertile, in theory if not in practice.

Precisely: in theory if not in practice. One thing creationists typically fail to understand is prezygotic vs. postzygotic isolation. Oftentimes species will be genetically compatible (in other words, you can make a test-tube baby,) but for a variety of reasons genes don't naturally flow between the groups. For example, different pheromones, mechanical incompatibility of genitalia, different mating dances, etc.

-Ben

[Jois]

Ben: Oftentimes species will be genetically compatible (in other words, you can make a test-tube baby,) but for a variety of reasons genes don't naturally flow between the groups. For example, different pheromones, mechanical incompatibility of genitalia, different mating dances, etc.

Right, Ben, I think underestimate how important the physical/cultural details are, maybe because some are subtle differences and others are just unfamiliar to us.

Carl Berry, I'm pretty sure the whale fossil sequences show one species evolving into another and the fossils for what we call cattle are pretty complete, too. The same is true IIRC for some kinds of shell fish. The problem is would your creationist friend be able to read and understand the fossil sequences. How much meaning would these things have for someone who had alread made up his mind that no such thing existed? Even http://www.google.com should get you pretty good info if you look (I'm guessing)for "whale fossils" and checkout "zoo paleo and whales" as well.

Jois

[yabob]

Having been raised Catholic, another of Mr Chick's pet hatreds, I have never been taught that there was a mutual exclusion between Christianity and evolution. In fact, a prominent Catholic priest and theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, was also a prominent paleontologist in the first half of the last century. He was also involved in the digs that gave us, uh, ahem, Piltdown Man but has generally been cleared of collusion. (What were they THINKING? Where the hell would the muscles for that jaw attach, fercryinoutloud?)
Tielhard de Chardin is interesting, but probably best approached as a philosopher and theologian rather than a scientist, in spite of his credentials. He spent his life attempting to reconcile science with intense spirituality, starting with an unquestioned assumption that such a thing could be done. It led him to things like the "noosphere", and the "omega point", and made him possibly the most formidable opponent of the existentialists who held center stage among the philosophers of his day, but meant he practiced his science with a definite agenda.

I will admit, however, that I am speaking from second hand observation by commentators, and have not read Tielhard de Chardin's work (by all account, a weighty undertaking). As for those commentators, Sir Peter Medawar has a lot of unkind things to say about "The Phenomenon of Man":

http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/Medawar/phenomenon-of-man.html

Some of Teilhard's modern fans will claim he anticipated the internet when he described the noosphere. My impression was that he had his heart in the right place, but was a bit off the deep end. Julian May used his world view for her SF "Galactic Milieu" novels to great effect, though.

[dropzone]

Originally posted by yabob
Tielhard de Chardin is interesting, but probably best approached as a philosopher and theologian rather than a scientist, in spite of his credentials.
I never really saw much difference between cutting edge science and mysticism. Hell, one of my professors claimed to have me Casteneda's Don Juan. "He was in a tree."

[kniz]

I hope I don't get kicked out for this, but it is not meant as religious. A couple of comments have been made as to why fundies insist on creationist rather than evolutionary explainations of why we are here. Some of the most rudimentary tenets of Christianity are built on the idea of "original sin". If you don't have Adam and Eve you don't have "original sin". Therefore, you don't need a savior to die for you and to them then everything is lost. So they really are shadow boxing over evolution, because it isn't what they really are fighting.

[dropzone]

Good point. Poly, care to tackle this one?

[dropzone]

Originally posted by kniz
I hope I don't get kicked out for this, but it is not meant as religious.
However, I can't let this pass. Have you gotten the impression that you can be thrown out of the SDMB for being religious or posting a possibly contraversial view? Have we developed that sort of reputation? It's sad if we have.

[JoeyBlades]

Ben:

... it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the breeds at the extreme ends are separate species until they discovered the species connecting them in the middle.

Precisely my point, with the minor exception that there is no 'species' in the middle. Stated otherwise, the fossil record is an incomplete and sometimes misleading record of the history of living things. It's a useful tool for positing piecewise segments of the overall theory of evolution, but it has some very practical limits to it's value.


You just need to pass those genes through a number of intermediates first.

Not at all. There are some obvious obstacles that make it unlikely that the two breeds would mate of their own volition, but there are no genetic barriers - no intermediaries required, except a determined human with a profound sense of humor and some knowledge of artificial insimination.


Incidentally, where did you get that argument?

First, it was an observation - not an argument. As for it's origins - it just came to me - a completely original thought... I occasionally have these...

[RM Mentock]

Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose
Here is the basic outline for an experiment you can do at home to illustrate evolution in action.

Get some fruit fly cultures. You may want to ask Mom or Dad to help you with this. :D Basically you divide up the cultures into two or three different batches and then expose each batch to different living conditions, like extreme heat, cold, toxins, etc. Fruit flies mutate very easily, so within a very short period of time each culture will have changed to adapt to the different living conditions. Each fruit fly culture will have evolved into a new fruit fly species.

I can create new species in my kitchen?!! Do I get to name them after myself?

[PosterChild]

A muslim friend of mine (physician & researcher) told me in all seriousness that humans used to be 30 feet (or yards, he couldn't remember which) tall, several thousand years ago. He knows this because Mohammed said so, and because there is a grave of a prophet in Jordan that's 30 feet long.

Anyone know of the grave. Seems like an easy thing to check, unless no one's allowed to check it out (which seems likely).

PC

[JillGat]

Originally posted by dropzone
Originally posted by kniz
I hope I don't get kicked out for this, but it is not meant as religious.
However, I can't let this pass. Have you gotten the impression that you can be thrown out of the SDMB for being religious or posting a possibly contraversial view? Have we developed that sort of reputation? It's sad if we have.
-----------------------
You won't get kicked out, but this may get moved to the Great Debates forum. I'm hesitating because I think this has been debated to death over there already!

[RM Mentock]

Everything over there has been debated to death. That's why it's called Grate Debates

[Jois]

Originally posted by RM Mentock
Everything over there has been debated to death. That's why it's called Grate Debates

Too true! But, have you noticed any improvement? :)

Jois

[RM Mentock]

Improvement in this forum?

[jab1]

Originally posted by Tamerlane
The one thing donkeys and horses have in common ( and actually there are a number of things :) ), is that they were both probably domesticated in Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago.Before or after the camel?

Something I've wondered: Do horses and asses mate in the wild? Are mules born in the wild? Or just on ranches at the bidding of the breeder? (Does this belong in GQ?)

[john_14_six]

There certainly seems to be evidence of speciation occuring under conditions that we can observe and demonstrate, so it seems like a pointless argument to make that speciation did not occur... on the other hand, that does little to **PROVE** the theory of evolution as a whole - [b]or at least the part that Creationists have a problem with (i.e. abiogenesis -> human beings)

I have read a lot of posts concerning evolution, but I have not yet seen anyone attempt to answer how life came from non-life. If anyone can enlighten me with a reference that does not violate any of the laws of thermodynamics, please do so. Thanks.

[GSV Consolation of Dreams]

Originally posted by john_14_six
I have read a lot of posts concerning evolution, but I have not yet seen anyone attempt to answer how life came from non-life. If anyone can enlighten me with a reference that does not violate any of the laws of thermodynamics, please do so. Thanks.

This has been asked and answered many times before.
Please have a look at this page (http://www2.uic.edu/~vuletic/cefec.html). I was going to say just section 3.5 but I think the whole thing is worth a read.

There's a cite, now, if you have any problems with it, go ahead rebut. I betcha 1000 eDrogna from my Temple ov thee Lemur (http://totl.net/) Vcash account you can't.

[john_14_six]

Thank you, atarian.

[hardcore]

john_14_six , anyone who claims that evolution or abiogenesis violates the laws of thermodynamics is guilty of Attributing False Attributes to Thermodynamics (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/creationism.html). I suggest you do some research, and a good place to start is with this article, The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html).

[Gr8Kat]

I have read a lot of posts concerning evolution, but I have not yet seen anyone attempt to answer how life came from non-life. If anyone can enlighten me with a reference that does not violate any of the laws of thermodynamics, please do so. Thanks.

IANAS (and I didn't follow the links, I'm speaking off the top of my head, so I'm probably repeating something, sorry if I am) but it seems to me that viruses would be a good "missing link" between non-life and life.

Are they alive? They don't eat or respirate, I'm not even sure if they move under their own power or if you have to sneeze or bleed them around.

Are they dead? They reproduce like crazy.

They're just a strand of DNA doing what every other single and multi-celled organism tries to do: spread that DNA. But are they alive? And are they "aware" that this is their mission? Do they have an instinctual "drive" to spread their DNA or do they just do it?

In junior high biology (I believe I passed that), we learned about "protists," ie, organisms that don't appear to be plants or animals. For example, mushrooms don't have chlorophyll so they can't make their own food like plants, but they can't move around like animals, plus their reproduction, unlike either plants or animals, is asexual, so they're "protists." Is that term still used today? Anyway, viruses and bacteria were catagorized as protists too. But with viruses, the question doesn't seem to be so much "is it a plant or an animal?" but "is it life or non-life?"

I'm in way over my head here, but I thought I'd throw in my 2¢ (and get back 1½¢ change).

[john_14_six]

Thanks for showing me the talk.origins links. Is there one that addresses either Fred Hoyle's (1982?) or Lee Spetner's (1997) works of statistical probability of evolution? Thanks again.

[hardcore]

john_14_six, try reading these articles:

The Probability of Abiogenesis (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-abiogenesis.html)
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob.html)
Evolution and Chance (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance.html)
Chance from a Theistic Perspective (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance-theistic.html)
There's probably more, but this is all I could remember off the top of my head. Read them thoroughly! There will be a pop quiz later. :D

[hardcore]

Oh, yeah.... there's another article that directly addresses Spetner called The Evolution of Improved Fitness (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/spetner.html).

[JoeyBlades]

gr8kat:

They're just a strand of DNA doing what every other single and multi-celled organism tries to do: spread that DNA.

Viruses come in both DNA and RNA flavors. More probably, the first sparks of life originated from an RNA structure.

But are they alive?

Clearly NOT.

And are they "aware" that this is their mission? Do they have an instinctual "drive" to spread their DNA or do they just do it?

It's just chemistry... is the oxygen aware of it's role in the process of oxidation? Nope. Living cells are simply catalysts for a chemical process involving these complex molecules known as viruses.

The interesting question is which came first? (chicken - egg). Did life spring forth from interactions involving viruses or are viruses simply defective fragments of DNA and RNA from living cells. Trying to keep this on topic, I don't think the fossil record can answer this question.

[Tamerlane]

jab1: The equids probably pre-date camels as domesticated animals. It's a little dicey with the Dromedary Camel, which MAY have been domesticated in Southern Arabia by as early as 4000 B.C.E., but was definitely domesticated by 1800 B.C.E. . The Bactrian Camel was likely domesticated about 2500 B.C.E. in Central Asia.

Camel fun facts ( since I have the book in front of me :D )

1.) As of the mid-1980's there were about 14 million domesticated camels in the world, all but 1.5 million Dromedaries. The largest number are found in the Sudan, Somalia, and India.

2.) Camelus dromedarius is now found only as a domesticated animal, with the exception of about 25,000 feral animals in Australia. Wild populations of Camelus bactrianus were fairly common until about the 1920's, but now comprise only two small colonies, with about 200 in China and several hundred in Mongolia.

-Tamerlane

[jab1]

Thanks.