Oldest vertebrate fossil found in Australia, scientists say

Ya beat me to it rosborne. hee hee. I was trying to learn how to use the quotesy things and never tried it before. I wanted to pull icans comment out of context cause it , too caught my attention.

he may have misinterpreted some authors who stated tha"The Cretaceous extinction was especially hard on land dwelling vertebrates" or something to that effect.
I keep getting from him, however, the opinion that vertebrates were constantly being re-invented as an entire body style. thats where he gets his mathematical implausibility quotients.

Damn. It's already been addressed. But to go with the glaringly obvious example -- yes, the dinosaurs died out (or some of 'em evolved into birds, whichever you prefer). But not all the vertebrates died out in that extinction. Nothing like it. Where'd this idea that everything but plants and bugs and unicells die at every mass extinction come from. (For that matter, how does this targeted evolution idea explain the plant world in the least? Or did the benevolent hand just keep it around so we'd have something to eat when we triumphed over all the other animals?)

Oddly enough (maybe) the question under discussion was addressed in an article in the New York Times today. I'll simply throw this grenade and let you guys sort it out. Here is the link.Science Times link

rosbrne, Thank you for your response.



Yes, I am talking about the standard theory of evolution. Rather, I am here asking about the standard theory of evolution. Specifically, I am asking about what evidence is there that "there are no targets". After all, designating something a theory, even a 150 year old theory, doesn't relieve that theory's proponents of providing evidence to support their contentions. I claim a modicum of evidence that evolution does have a target: a class of life known as intelligent life. I want to find the evidence, whatever it may be, that refutes my claim.

Repeatability may be another way of describing convergent evolution. cactus plants in US and bromeliads in Africa have the exact same adaptive patterns(thorns, sunken stomata, etc) i think these are reasonable questions to try to test. The difference between what youve brought us acquiunk, and icans "theories" are that ican has a specific need to not observe anything , but to try and speculate with an often specious 'grand' summary and subjective mathematics..
ive always been a fan of "the niche has driven the resultant species, they continuously adapt, and by so doing, are limited to their ultimate choices the farther their body evolves in niche adaptation"Like the sabre toothed animals of the pliocene. There were maybe 50 species in maybe 5 orders , all displaying"sabre toothness". Why that form, and why then? sabretoothness kept going until they became extinct during the Pleistocene. that entire body plan worked for so long, then no longer made sense for some reason. S. wroe has done some work on sabre toothed animals and has concluded it was a body style for fast moving and quick engorging eating habits , these were large forested areas that, once they became colder and drier, the sabertooths , except the very robust and quick cat-form all died because they probably couldnt adapt quickly enough

Within the last few years, evolution theory has become a greater blend of genetics and paleo research. genetics looks at animals with their dNA roots showing that their places of origin are more predictive of theirassociations than weve thought before. Ive been following the discoveries that have been found about the "non coding "regions of genic makeup. It turns out that all that Junk" DNA is really a part of the genome that often encodes population diversity . weve seen that, within a very few generations, entire populations of humans like tribes display a marked allele difference, and many cultural features like, disease susceptibility, prediliction for alcoholism, erupting wisdom teeth , etc are encoded in the junk dNA of the genome in what are called sTRs or short Tandem Repeat alleles. the forensic guys are going nuts cataloging populations of different hill folks from one side of the blue ridge to the other.

ican asks questions that we all need to ask , it keeps our conclusions ordered. Thats why i love it when he shows up.
remember were dealing with a very fuzzy bush of life and were viewing it freom a position in time that we define as climax, when , if the earth makes it long enough, we will be surprised at the life forms in 5 or 10 million years because we are now going through a diversity or die period similar to the time in the Pliocene when the African forests were gradually turning to savannah, except we are turning the world into one big urban center separating realms of native vegetation.

ican, youre not thinking like a scientist , because you want us tto believe that youve got a modicum of evidence that intelligent life was THE GOAL of evolution. That approach is what id expect from a cleric. Youve laid no foundation of evidence other than "I believe'---well thats religion.
I can go no further than evidence leads. if intelligence were the universal goal then somebody forgot to tell the horshoe crab. Hes been around unchanged since the jurassic, basically a dumass hunk of pVC on legs.
you refute the possibility that chance encounter is an external engine that sometimes drives evolution. For example, it is well known that the entire human population was almost wiped out less than 100000 years ago. our genetic diversity had crashed to just a few linneages that were the lucky ones. Estimates are that maybe only a few thousand humans survived a cataclysm (A mega volcano that covered the earth with ash and darkness) We either dodged a major bullet, or that was part of the overall universal plan of the intelligent amino acids

Hi Ican,



The idea that there are no "targets" is an inference which results from the theory. You can't find "evidence" for a non-thing. The only case in which evidence for targets would come into play would be if someone (even you) could provide "evidence" that there *are* targets. Evidence of this nature would be contrary to the basic theory, and would be pounced upon by scientists around the globe eager to leave their mark on history. But it's going to take some very POWERFUL and SOLID evidence, so be prepared to do your homework



Non Sequitur (see comments above)



If you have a theory of your own, then *you* need to provide evidence to support your claim. You cannot expect science to go around refuting everything that someone proposes.

Hair brained schemes are a dime a dozen. The burden of proof lies squarely on the shoulders of the person proposing the theory, not the other way around.

All that being said, you should probably review the link I provided on complexity before getting into the argument of intelligence. Intelligence is a specific component of complexity, and even the general idea of a trend in complexity is difficult to argue.

Best Regards,

rosborne & farmerman

My principal recent sources are:
(1) "The 5th Miracle", by Paul Davies, Touchstone, 1999.

(2) "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory", by Stephen Jay Gould, Belknap, 2002;

(3) Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968.

(1), Chapter 1, page 21, alleges:
"The great proliferation of complex life forms occurred only within the last billion years. The oldest well-documented true animal fossils ... found in Australia ... are dated at 560 million years. ... Before about one billion years ago, life was restricted to single-celled animals."

(2), Chapter 9, page 766, alleges:
"As a central proposition, punctuated equilibrium holds that the great majority of species, as evidenced by their anatomical and geograpical histories in the fossil record, originate in geological moments (punctuations) and then persist in stasis througout their long durations (Sepkooski, 1997), gives a low estimate of 4 million years for the average duration of fossil species."

(3) Volume 20, Sedimentary Rock, page 156, alleges:
"Because of the fossils entombed in them, the sedimentary rocks contain the whole of the life-record of the past. ...
Some [sedimentary rock layers] consist of cemented accumulation of shell or skeletal debris and form a veritable fossil 'hash'."

I infer from all of the above plus a geological reference I am reviewing for a particularly relevant quote, that the geological layers of sedimentary rocks formed within the last billion years include a great many layers comletely devoid of fossils of any kind. I infer from this that there existed many long periods when living organisms capable of producing fossils did not exist. I infer from this that evolution frequently retrogressed within the last billion years, but subsequently progressed to re-evolve fossil producing living organisms. I infer from other quotes in the above references that, while they were always only a small proportion of the existing species, the fossil producing life tended to be included in that class of life deemed to be the more intelligent life. I infer from this that the more intelligent life, despite many retrogressions, continued to evolve despite the fact that such life did not prove to be the most or even the more survivable life.

Again, I ask that you please provide me references to those observations/inferences (not merely theories) of which you are aware that at least provide plausible reasons for thinking my inferences are invalid.

Ok, so we have a theory, an unproven theory, that there are no targets of evolution. And, you claim that the burden of proof lies with those who claim there are/were targets.

Your excuse is equivalent to that old sophist excuse that one cannot prove a negative: cannot prove that A AND NOT A cannot both be true at the same time; cannot prove that the earth does not follow an orbit around the sun; cannot prove that gravity pulls but does not push; cannot prove that the earth is not flat; cannot prove that light does not travel in a vacuum at the same velocity for all observers; ... shall I go on?

The burden of proof rests with the proponents/advocates/believers of a theory and its alleged implications. The scientific method demands at least that. It always has and it looks like it probably always will.

So let's have a modicum of evidence that evolution has zero targets.

DELETED; DUPLICATED IN ERROR

Huh?



I agree. Therefore, I expect science to provide evidence that its theories and their implications are valid.



Either side of that argument is difficult to argue according to Gould. I agree with that, too!

Best Regards

ahhhh. ican, youre just being as slippery as ever. No facts and you propose 'theories' with n o context'
If youve read Goulds book, (and I compliment you if you have cause its a terrible self congratulatory read)
you didnt get it. In his book gould only adds three functionary mechanisms to Darwin all of which would take your own ideas and trash them'
punctuated equilibrium- (which , by the way is being whittled away by closer sampling)
Exaptation (pre adaptive design for future adaptation based upon snatching genomes) This is Margulis theory which Gould merely plagiarizes without credit. In fact, you will not see lynn MArgulis name anywhere in his book
Internal and external constraints on adaptation.
This book is a large, difficult reading, rambling final work of a true giant , but its not his best. however, in the book
He modifies Darwin in methodology only. I like it that you use this as a source, HOWEVER,you are so out of context that its even difficult establishing a base from which we can talk.
Now, as you know, Im a geologist. So when YOU talk of vast fossil free layers. Please be specific. Its true there are areas of sed rocks that are fossil free. However, that doesnt mean that vertebrates or any other form wasnt alive in that time. It only means that they werent at that particular sedimentary place. There are many reasons why fossils dont occur in sedimentary rocks. Its mostly due to the environment{ anoxic conditions of the sediment, there could e a high energy environmnet that chews up the dead animals before they are even fossilized, the conditions dont lend to fossilization, (like glacial moraines)} Be specific , what formations are you talking about?. I may even have been there and can shed some light on the why there are no fossils at that location..
You cant just jump to a personally satisfying conclusion without understanding the pitfalls of your selected evidence.We often develop models for some phenomena or another and then along comes some piece of counter evidence and BOOM-back to the starting gate.
You have to look at the total sed record, its representative environment, its energy budget, its levels of oxygen, etc. these are important features of fossilization and diagenesis. youve leaped over an entire body of knowledge to come up with a rather dubious inference, so Ihave to wring you back to basics. please let me know which formations of which you speak. If i am able, i will get the information from a stratigraphic lex and we can shed light on why "no fossils". You are wrong on that inference, very wrong.

If you didnt understand Rosbornes comment that you posed a non-sequitur, im not surprised. In our past discussions you have always dismisswed the concept of theory and I find it a bit tiresome that you still refuse to understand.

IN SCIENCE

A THEORY IS AN EXPLANATION OR MODEL IN WHICH ALL EVIDENCE TO DATE SUPPORTS
AND

NO EVIDENCE HAS YET BEEN FOUND WHICH REFUTES THE EXPLANATION OR MODEL

Its a two part thing that , in the case of modern evolutionary theory, is heavily based upon evidence. weve got coalescing disciplines of paleo, geology, chronochemistry, physics, genetics. All these disciplines converge on a theroy that , like many other theories in science , has not been disproved. and, therefore its a fact. so stop with the emoticons . I think everyone else understood what rosborne was poiting out

Can you agree only for the sake of argument that I am not being slippery; I'm just being ignorant? You are a working geologist. I am a retired electrical engineer (and working aviator) who knows only some of that which others in your field, and in the fields of paleontology and evolutionary biology have alleged to be true.

I know science (e.g., some physics, chemistry, and biology) and especially the scientific method. I know that according to that method theorists or their proponents or their advocates or their believers share a common burden. That burden is the burden of proof that the implications of their theories are true. It matters not at all to me (i.e., it is irrelevant to me) that for 150 or so years the Standard Theory of Evolution has been accepted as true without such proof.

A fundamental implication of the standard theory is that evolution is totally untargeted. I claim that at least part of what has evolved (e.g., intelligent species -- species with brains) maybe was or maybe wasn't targeted. This implication is definitely not settled despite the plethora of opinions, rationalizations, and guesses to the contrary. I'm seeking evidence one way or the other. If you know of some, please provide it or reference to it.



It looks to me that any source I choose to reference, you will trash or assert "I don't get it." Well, perhaps you are correct. Perhaps the problem is just that. Perhaps I simply don't get it.

How else but from the fossil record do the folks who do get it determine what did or did not exist during some particular time period? I am unable to name or characterize the individual strata that are devoid of fossils (i.e., blank). But you appear to be able to do that. So please do it! Then please provide me such evidence as you have or can reference why these strata are blank.



I understand this. It is my perception that it is you and many others in your and related fields who are more guilty of this than I am. It is critical to the validity of the standard model that zero outcomes were targeted . So what's the evidence? Merely claiming that something is an inference from the standard model (i.e., from a long standing theory) is not science, its at best doctrine like religious doctrine, or political doctrine, or miltant doctrine.



I find it tiresome that so many folks, not only you, make doctrinaire claims without accepting the burden of proof of those claims. Rather you criticize the arguer whom you don't know and avoid the argument which you do know. Here is a simple case. Prove that my assertion is a non-sequitur, and that you are not merely pandering to preconceived notions.





I find this a clear distortion of the scientific method. For a scientific model, any scientific model, to be determined to be true, evidence must be provided to support at least its most critical implications, else it is a suspect theory. In physics, cosmology, and astro-physics, and even in engineering, one of the most effective methods used to support whether a theory is valid or invalid is to test the main implications of that theory. You say the standard model implies that evolution is not targeted. Possibly you are correct. Surely you can supply a modicum of evidence to support that which you say, is true. Surely the implications of the theory of evolution for all its wonderful can be shown to be true by virtue of this one implication: it isn't targeted. Surely evolution theory has not been given some pontifical-like exception and granted a pass to not follow the standard scientific method like other scientific models.

Short question for ican: just when do you think it was that vertebrates dies out and re-evolved?

Sorry if that seems too simple a question for you, but when did this happen?

This weekend, I'll find the web site for you, that was referenced in another able2know forum, that alleges that more than 5 times within the last 600 million years there have been major die-outs and re-evolutions of intelligent species (i.e., species possessing brains and bones).

ican seems to assume that the fossil record is a complete record of past life, it isn't. It isn't even a random sample of past life. It is simple a record of everything that for what ever reason, chance, environment, or lack of intelligence, end up face down in the mud. And even then it has to be the kind of mud that will produce fossils, and those conditions a very specific.

That was Encyclopedia Britannica's allegation (see specific reference given above); not mine.

If I already knew all that is true, I wouldn't be asking or referencing; I would be telling.

AHEAD OF SCHEDULE -- THESE LINKS WERE PRESENTED TO ME BY OTHERS. I DID NOT FIND THEM.
(I'll discuss them when I have more time)

Here's one theory on life forms and geologic strata:
http://www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/science/burky3.htm

Here's another link on geologic principles:
http://www.emerald.ucsc.edu/~jsr/EART10/Lectures/HTML/lecture.07.html

This site has a graph showing the number of families surviving each mass extinction:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/complex_life/complex_life.html

More information on these as well as other extinctions:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/deeptime/low_bandwidth.html

A DIGRESSION

I found this little gem in the last link.
"Did you know?
Ice ages occur in cycles that seem to correspond to variations in the shape of Earth's orbit and the orientation of its spin axis. While these factors operate independently from one another, on occasion they combine to trigger great temperature swings. The cold or hot weather determines whether glaciers expand or retreat."

Well, in order to have iterations of cold climate one must necessarily have iterations of warm climate.

So the cause of temperature change is probably far more effected by the coincidence of "the shape of Earth's orbit and the orientation of its spin axis" than it is by the ozone or carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.

Well now ain't that a big surprise?

ican-I love this. YOU posed all the propositions and then Im supposed to speculate on them for you in your terms. NAAAHHH. This is a debate trick wherein you pose something just to get it into record

If you dont know of any fossil-free units, why then do you bring this up as a very point of evidence to support your point of debate ?? You cant pull that one on us.

EVidence , Evidence, its different from irrefutable proof. Evidence leads to proof.Its a brick in the wall of proof. If you understand the scientific method then you understand the role that evidence plays. The explanation of a theory that I flamed at you, wasnt just me talking , its a reasonable paraphrase of numerous texts on the subject .

Lets start with some other theories and play the same game.
ONE MINUTE OF PAUSE HERE --------------------------
im not, nor have I attempted to jump into your entire argument about the targeting of evolution, cause this is something upon which, your mind is made up. I only wish to caution you that your supportive facts are almost all incorrect. So I dont feel we are equally qualified to discuss this quai theological point. Neither of us. AS a scientist i may only wish to find out what was on the 'GRAND PLAN" when it futzed around with all the evolutionary dead ends. That alone should make you reconsider your stand
-------------------------------------------------------------
there have been major die-outs. The BIG 5, as its known , are accompanied by at least 20 mini die outs. ALL environmentally produced. nOWHERE, and Im really sure of this, does it say that all the species of an order were killed off during a die out.Some orders eventually went extinct but members of classes remained to carry the genome over and begin gracing us with new species from a preserved genome. Heres where youre understanding takes a big walk from EVIDENCE.
For Example:
EVIDENCE shows that 7 orders of mammals made it through the Cretaceous die-off. We have fossils of miomia and miosimia in the early Paleocene as well as the late cretaceous New mammals didnt start from scratch. I have no idea where you get this opinion. CAuse it is totally wrong. Now youre sounding more like a BAptist minister. Youre shouting stuff which is scientifically untrue and are expecting some of it to stick to the wall.


Modern evolutionary theory is based totally on evidence.EVIDENCE It started with Darwins taxonomist (his name was Gould also) . The fact that several species of finches occured in an archipelago , and these were totally differenmt than those on a mainland, got Darwin and Gould thinking. How could something immutable change?
The evolutionary history of the whale is made entirely up of hard pure evidence . Fossils found in similar marine sediments at successive ages show a progressive "whale like' morphology. These occured in an area of the Proto Asian continent. EvIDENCE WAS TESTED BY COMPARISON AND STRUCTURAL MORPHING.
how about the horse/ even Creationists have a special problem with the evolution of the horse. it evolved in the uS and then, for some reason it moved to Asia and finished its evolutionary change.

youre way of thinking is sort of like standing on the Trans Pacific tower and pronouncing that all architecture was evolving to this building.

I work with engineers all the time. They can often be highly focused and analytical. I wouldnt accuse them of great familiarity with the scientific method as a gospel . Many (actually0 most often the theory and evidence arent coincidental, and many theories dont even lend themselves to testing. What are we to do with brane theory or the M theory ? hell even atomic theory has large open holes. Universal Gravitation etc, we have equations and instruments to measure but were not sure what this force represents.

Nope, the only way to prove a theory in science is by not disproving it.
Many times 'proof" leads us into the realms of philosophy not science. I think thats where youre going.

AND the very important point that acquiunk made about how imperfect the fossil record is, is a section of paleo that has gotten amazing boosts in the last 10 years or so. So much evidence has been accrued showing the intermediate forms of many species that we , as a discipline, are seriously questioning Gould and Eldredges punctuated Equilibrium.theory. (not that its really a big headbanger anyway)Gould originally posed this in the 70s when there were a huge amount of gaps in the fossil record. Today, many of these gaps have been fairly well filled in and evidence seems to support that, instead of lightning fast evolution, instead it appears that there were many intermediate species of a root form. and many of these occured as contemporariy species. evolution favored one or more forms and others died out. Thus, the old rule of Dave Raup has been preserved. The more species of a genera, the more secure that genera is from extinction and more favored to survive and evolve in a changing environment
ENVIRONMENT is the driver,EvOLUTION is a response, so is EXTINCTION. .

NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

Wrong again. Goto and read the links in my previous post. The information you ought to be seeking will be found there.

If untargeted cannot be shown to be true, then much of the standard model is in doubt. Restarts from previous states occurred, blank strata exist whether I personally am able to recover their specifics from my aging memory or not. However, I will recover same from the links provided plus some more. It would take you, Mr. Geologist, less time to do the same, if you would simply open your mind to the possibility that findings that conflict with yours may actually be valid.

No more than one billion years were required for multi-cell and fossil producing living organisms to evolve the intelligent life we observe from single cell life. You are convinced all that evolution occurred via random mutation and natural selection despite multiple catastrophic interuptions, multiple re-sumptions from throwback states of evolution, more than a moogol number of possible genome sequences, and less than a googol number of possible mutations in that one billion years. Incredible!

More on this post of yours later.