Oldest vertebrate fossil found in Australia, scientists say

Of course, it might be noted that my statement that deer cannot pass on traits to their ancestors is -- well, it's not wrong, anyway. I meant descendants, of course.

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ican, if you refuse to read the texts such as Behe, you will miss much of the basic knowledge from which your argument could appreciate vastly.
Your comment that exteinctions cause immediate reductions in species IS correct , where you depart from data , is that there is no evidence that there is a march toward more complex brains(whatever the hell that supposed to mean). In the Paeocene through the Miocene were a vast number of mega fauna who were far less niche specialized in their food habits (and inferred TACTICS) than were specific dinosaurs.The really smart dinosaurs like the earlier Allosaurs or therapsids, were evolving in specialized niche areas that later became separate continental masses. Mammals, when dinosaurs were no longer around, evolved at least seven different orders in different proto continents. Luck of the climatic draw yielded larger furrier body masses able to witstand cold by a smaller mass volume, or in warmer land masses, the trend toward tactics and opportunistic feeding was a mere modification of the red queen. All the faster and sabre toothed individuals evolved within a limited proto geographic zone and no data has supported that , except for man, that a "big b rain" was even needed to survive. So the Universal rule you claim is not borne out by evidence , which, if you would take time to learn rather than constantly repeating your own version of reality, youd argue this from a greater base of knowledge. Now you are doggedly asserting that such knowledge is irrelevant. Id hate to have you design a bridge without a secure basis in civil structural.

The entire point youve made has, in my estimation, been adequately refuted and shown where you need to dress up your windows.
Your comment that evolution only prunes the bush is one of complete ignorance of cladistics and paleogeography. Yet you continue this effort with absolutely no grounding. Once or twice, ok. But youve not discovered anything new in your readings. You said you read Goulds "STructure..." then, I submit, youve missed the whole point .

Gentlemen, I dont think there is any cross communication possible herein. I either think ican is just having a personal joke at our expense or , his self proclaimed reverence for knowledge only goes as far as his prejudices.

Sorry to be so blunt but the thought just occured when I reread some of your posts and discovered you are merely restating positions in slightly different means. To that Im gonna say "ASKED AND ANSWERED"... move on to something substantive.

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rosborne --

Yep, endosymbiosis is a very cool thought. I've only briefly looked at the link and don't have much time to do so, so I don't know how far it goes into this -- but one of the principal pieces of evidence for this is the dual membrane on mitochondria and on plastids -- as though they were floating around in the cell as vesicles that never got everted! (Unless Campbell's textbook is wrong; I've certainly hear a mycologist go on about it.)

I'd also tend to question the classification of plants and animals as the two major kingdoms of life, but that's just quibbling...

Quote:

Your comment that exteinctions cause immediate reductions in species IS correct , where you depart from data , is that there is no evidence that there is a march toward more complex brains(whatever the hell that supposed to mean).

I took this statement by ican to mean that reduction happened within species during mass extinctions, not as a statement of the impact on overall biodiversity. I realize now I probably misread it.

Quote:

Gentlemen, I dont think there is any cross communication possible herein. I either think ican is just having a personal joke at our expense or , his self proclaimed reverence for knowledge only goes as far as his prejudices.

Ah, well, it's caused my young, mushy brain to revisit some things.

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me too dog, but apparently not our dabtaing friend. "Consistency is often not to be rewarded by conferring credibility"

Im applying a forensic approach now, Never ask a question whose answer you dont want to hear.

Science doesnt work like that, the arguments being pursued in the name of advancing knowledge, never start with a predetermined position and then discount everything that doesnt match your hypothesis. This is a bit disengenuous.

Anyway, Im tiring of the 'dueling quotes " method wherein , If I , or you say something, we get an incomplete sound byte which incorrectly argues itself as evidence

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patiodog wrote:

Extinctions do NOT cause reduction in the species that survive. In fact, they open up a variety of niches that were previously unavailable to them.

Yes, but they sure do cause a reduction in total species however relatively short lived.

patiodog wrote:

you are dead wrong that natural selection does not create new branches. The distinction is that natural selection does not actively create new branches. It can, in fact, be responsible for an increase in genetic diversity -- by selecting against individuals who are heterozygous for a certain trait, for instance.

Perhaps this will merely reveal my engineer's bias regarding cause and effect, but here goes anyway.

Natural selection (NS) is characterized, in everything I have thus far read, as the equivalent of a mindless, random killer of species or major percentages of members of species. This occurs as a consequence of NS mindlessly creating conditions within which certain species cannot survive. The only thing truly natural about mindless NS are the environmental changes it mindlessly creates. Being mindless, NS cannot contemplate improvements and attempt to influence outcomes accordingly.

So, by analogy, NS mindlessly prunes the alleged mindless bush. It is the alleged mindless bush that somehow causes itself to attempt to regenerate under the new conditions the life it heretofore possessed. Generally, however, it succeeds in not so much regeneration of what was but in generation of new life. I have hypothesized that the bush does this with a little help from 2ndI.

patiodog wrote:

... Once the species are separated -- whatever that separation is -- genetic drift occurs and they become more distinct. But the initial pressure is, in fact, natural selection.

.
I think calling NS a pressure initial or otherwise is mere metaphor. There is no pressure for change; there is only variable opportunity for change. The change is strictly caused by the actual propensity of life itself to allegedly mindlessly seek survival. In other words, NS doesn't create, it destroys.

To attribute to NS the attribute to create is no less repugnant to me than the idea that militant jihadists by virtue of their killing create opportunity for new forms of life to be bred. Yes, kill some life and other life will benefit. But the acts of benefiting are not caused by the killers but the propensity of the surviving life itself to endure.

patiodog wrote:

California has distinct mule deer populations ... Without human interference ... these two populations would have remained separated by their behavioral differences and continued their genetic drift.

In that regard then, there appears to be developing a 3rdI, mindful humans, which up to recent times had given little thought to these unintended consequences, but created conditions that nontheless fostered these consequences. But it's the deer genomes that did the "real work".

2ndI can be nothing more than life's mindless compulsion to, through mindless trial and error, seek ways to maximize its existence, and out of its successes to mindlessly emphasize future trials that are consistent with the experience of that which has and has not worked.

Wait a minute Shocked

While this may apear mindless to our bone-headed brains, it may not be mindless to procreating genomes. Hmmmm

patiodog wrote:

Respiration is far more efficient than fermentation, and, since the name of the game in evolution is efficient exploitation of available resources, oxygen would indeed have spurred a great diversification of life on this planet. However, the likelihood that there was sufficient oxygen as a result of unicellular photoautotrophs to evolve oxidative metabolism before the advent of multicellular organisms (allowing for the presence of colonies of relatively undifferentiated cells, as in the alga) is pretty high. The free energy change associated with lactic acid fermentation is -198 kJ/mol. The change associated with the complete oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide is -2833 kJ/mol. (Sulfur metabolism is another story altogether, but it obviously hasn't been a major evolutionary success story of late.)

(my emphasis added.)

A purposeless efficient exploitation of available resources? I've got to think more about this.

For now, just for grins, I hypothesize 2ndI to be that quality found within all life that exhibits purposefulness. Can a bunch of protein molecules not encased in a brain have purpose? Why not?

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Oh, for God's sake -- you're allowed to use free-and-lose interpretations of language and I am to be held to the strictest standards? Nothing I've postited to you is in the least wy objectionable. "Pressure" simply means that certain changes are prohibited, just as a boulder on Route 1 at Devil's Slide means that you can't take the highway. It doesn't tell you what highway you can take, it simply blocks one. If you don't understand the simple concept of a diversifying pressure (and, again, "pressure" doesn't signify intent in evolution any more than it does in a garden hose), you haven't grasped one of the most basic precepts of the model of natural selection. Have you ever read a basic biology text, or did you just jump to the ones, like Gould's, that presuppose a degree of familiarity of basic concepts before expanding on them? Surely you wouldn't gather much from reading Hawking without knowing a bit of physics first. I'm a little surprised -- OK, not surprised, but irritated -- that you feel you can challenge one of the most widely studied scientific models around (and the proof of how closely it is scrutinized is in how many studies are published every day that corroborate or modify some small part of the model) when you display such an inadequate knowledge of the basic subject matter.

I mentioned the Campbell text earlier. It's a pretty good one, very approachable, excellent diagrams (again, though, don't put too much stock in their life histories of fungi), and earlier editions can be got pretty cheap. Again, cheers. Have fun arguing for the sake of arguing.

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farmerman wrote:

ican, if you refuse to read the texts such as Behe, you will miss much of the basic knowledge from which your argument could appreciate vastly.

You lost me with that comment. I inferred from what you previously wrote that Behe's stuff was no longer accepted by the scientific community. Of course my reason for avoiding him was what I infered from you was his prior commitment to devine intervention as the cause of evolution.

farmerman wrote:

... So the Universal rule you claim is not borne out by evidence , which, if you would take time to learn rather than constantly repeating your own version of reality, youd argue this from a greater base of knowledge. Now you are doggedly asserting that such knowledge is irrelevant. Id hate to have you design a bridge without a secure basis in civil structural.

Irrelevant to my hypothesis, YES. Irrelevant to determining the nature of 2ndI, NO. Irrelevant in general, NO. We are not designing a bridge or a computer system here. I, at least, am trying to make sense out of what often appear to me to be conflicting and sometimes absurd claims.

Please provide me your recommended reading list. I am confident it will help me.

farmerman wrote:

The entire point youve made has, in my estimation, been adequately refuted and shown where you need to dress up your windows.
Your comment that evolution only prunes the bush is one of complete ignorance of cladistics and paleogeography.

GRRRRR
I did not write that evolution only prunes the bush. I did not mean that evolution only prunes the bush. I wrote and mean that Natural Selection only prunes the bush.

farmerman wrote:

Yet you continue this effort with absolutely no grounding. Once or twice, ok. But youve not discovered anything new in your readings. You said you read Goulds "STructure..." then, I submit, youve missed the whole point .

No, I never wrote that I read Gould's "Structure ... " I did quote from that part I have thus far read. I'm still reading and studying it and trying to get past the man's seeming propensity to dress up questionable ideas with a plethora of erudition serving perhaps to impress his colleagues, but certainly NOT serving to impress me. I keep trying because for reasons unknown to me, "I think that with all that .... in there, there's got to be a pony in there someplace".

farmerman wrote:

Gentlemen, I dont think there is any cross communication possible herein. I either think ican is just having a personal joke at our expense or , his self proclaimed reverence for knowledge only goes as far as his prejudices.

Sorry to be so blunt but the thought just occured when I reread some of your posts and discovered you are merely restating positions in slightly different means. To that Im gonna say "ASKED AND ANSWERED"... move on to something substantive.

Well, ok, it's time for me to be blunt too.

One principal you, farmerman, continually appear to misunderstand and improperly practice is that knowing the history of a series of events is NOT equivalent to knowing the causes of those events. The determination of cause requires an accurate knowledge of history (like you apparently have) but that knowledge by and of itself is insufficient -- dare I say, inadequate.

Another principal about which you demonstrate significant ignorance is the principal that argment should be directed to the arguments offered by their arguer and not to their arguer himself. Everytime you flip into your criticism of me whom you don't know (which you do with childishly increasing frequency), I infer you are either criticising yourself whom you do know, or are so terribly frustrated about what you are discovering you do not know that you want to blame the messenger.

Ok, so blame the messenger, if it makes you feel any better. But self-rectification has a more lasting satisfying result.

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Ican, if you have not already read it, get yourself a copy of "What Evolution Is", by Ernst Mayr., Basic Books, 2001. Almost every issue you have raise is addressed in that book. It is also simple, straight forward, and provide with much of the basic back ground (other than genetics which is a specialized field) on evolution that patiodog recommended. For genetics I would recommend "Evolutionary Analysis" by Freeman and Herron, Prentice Hall, 2001. It is an introductory text.

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Acquiunk wrote:

Ican, if you have not already read it, get yourself a copy of "What Evolution Is", by Ernst Mayr., Basic Books, 2001. Almost every issue you have raise is addressed in that book. It is also simple, straight forward, and provide with much of the basic back ground (other than genetics which is a specialized field) on evolution that patiodog recommended. For genetics I would recommend "Evolutionary Analysis" by Freeman and Herron, Prentice Hall, 2001. It is an introductory text.

Thank you very much. First, I'll try to order both through Amazon Books. Thanks again.

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Quote:

patiodog wrote:
California has distinct mule deer populations ... Without human interference ... these two populations would have remained separated by their behavioral differences and continued their genetic drift.

In that regard then, there appears to be developing a 3rdI, mindful humans, which up to recent times had given little thought to these unintended consequences, but created conditions that nontheless fostered these consequences. But it's the deer genomes that did the "real work".

You've misunderstood this example. You stated that natural selection cannot create branches. I have provided an example of case where that is not true -- one gene pool got split into two, and there is a selective pressure against the two merging back into one. This is neither good or bad: it just is. The two populations have clearly adapted to different terrains, and are/were on there way to speciation because natural selection acted against homegenization of their collective gene pool. The reason I mention the human factor is because this is the only reason we've noticed this: human interference has allowed us to see what happens when individuals from these two species mate. This is actually a case of one form of natural selection -- predation -- potentially causing speciation (through increased genetic hetergogeneity) while another -- environmental shift, caused by humans in this instance -- potentially increasing genetic homogeneity. It's actually a very good model for thinking about homogeneity.

And as for positing humans as 3rdI -- why do you feel the need to separate humans from the natural world? Competition and symbiosis between species is one of the driving factors behind macroevolution; why should our actions require a new category?

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Quote:

A purposeless efficient exploitation of available resources? I've got to think more about this.

Truer words have never been spoken. There is a limited amount of energy available on the planet. Those species that make better use of it are going to be more competitive than those who don't.

It does bring up an interesting point regarding complexity and intelligence, though. One of the most complex and highly conserved biological products around is the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. It has three different enzymatic subunits, is regulated in at least three different ways (probably more, but studies are still progressing; the first low-resolution crystallographic images were published fairly recently; the damn thing is so big that you can look at it -- a protein, for the love of God -- with an electron microscope). It requires five different coenzymes to function, and, in addition to its high degree of organization, appears to form highly organized supramolecular complexes that effectively catalyze reactions in two dimensions rather than three. And where is this thing? In the mitochondrion, that simple, ancient endosymbiont that was phagocytized by an old eukaryote -- probably my great-great-grandpappy. Nothing to do with intelligence, except that our big brains and their need for a very closely controlled thermal and chemical environent demand a lot of energy. Just a bit of trivia for you.

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no ican, I can go back to sections of your posta and show where you either purposefully contradict yourself or have apoor memory.
As for knowing the history is not knowing the cause, this has been your everlasting mantra , and up, is with which, it shall not be put. Maybe I cannot understand the cause, but by NOT knowing as you so proudly admit, you arent even able to pose intelligent questions. Thats a silly point youve been stuck with, why not lose it.

Im not really angry at you,Im more angry at me for thinking that, with your additional reading since last year, your misunderstandings would be on a higher plane of understanding, they are, alas, not. Consequently, Ive been quoting things that were in some of those works and I think they went right over your head. I didnt catch that until your "pruning the bush" statement, ahhh well,

Dog argues a point for sympatry, an idea that Mayr had renounced as not consistent withnatural selection. He has since , in the 1990s, changed his mind based upon data and field evidence. His newest points are within the very Mayr book Acquiunk has mentioned. The combination of gene drift (not the statistical autocorrelation aspect but the place motion of the great variability in a genome or a single gene sequence) and nat selection is now espoused by Mayr as the most important initiator in macroevolution.This is quite common, in that for speciation and higher taxa, animals need not be isolated for selection to be the only causation.Sympatry often occurs as the great variability and genetic diversity allows animals who dwell together to exploit totally different niches so as not to overstress a resource that is the limiting resource.( some owls fly in the day, There are rats that are evolving dentition toward an omnivorous diet, etc etc)

The only reason you should read Behe is to see your very

own argument told in a very ordered fashion. Of course Behe isnt doing a running gun battle. His argument has been pretty much taken apart but so has Cuviers, Lamark, Werner, Buffon, Jameson and others , We do, however read them to gain a sense of history of how even the thought of evolution and an old earth "evolved"

patiodog, what does the pyruvate d .c look like in the diffraction patterns? Is it distinguishable from others. Im familiar with Margulis genome capture theories but she was always taking of eukaryote to eukaryotic cell. You seem to indicate that the capture was between a euk and a pro.? Is that right?
See that could speed up genome capture a huuuge amnt. Ill bet Lynn Margulis gets some kind of medal for her work. Shes always sort of been considered a crackpot, but her chemistry seemed sound to me (although Biomole' reactions are not my forte)

Heres some more lit ican.
PAul Ehrlich and C Wills-The Children of Prometheus
Knoll AH-eArly animal evolution:views from comparitive biology and geology SCIENCE 1999 (cant remember the issue
Ive got it as a PDF

Averof M. 1995. HOx genes and the diversification of body plans. NATURE
376,p420

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Quote:

Sympatry often occurs as the great variability and genetic diversity allows animals who dwell together to exploit totally different niches so as not to overstress a resource that is the limiting resource.

This has been demonstrated exhaustively with microorganisms in vitro, hasn't it?

Quote:

patiodog, what does the pyruvate d .c look like in the diffraction patterns? Is it distinguishable from others. Im familiar with Margulis genome capture theories but she was always taking of eukaryote to eukaryotic cell. You seem to indicate that the capture was between a euk and a pro.? Is that right?

Haven't seen the diffraction -- it was today's biochem lecture, thought I'd throw it out there to help cement it in my own brain. We just looked at the TEM and plowed on into the Krebs cycle.

I've always heard the capture was most likely of a prokaryote. The mitochondria and plastid chromosomes are circular (a la bacteria), aren't they? I could be misremembering. My biochem. prof has said the origin was what I'd always thought it was -- prokaryote -- but folks don't always agree or even speak rightly on their feet. Gotta go to ecology. Cheers.

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well, if thats the case (mitochondrils from a pro to a euk) weve nocked off a couple bazillion years in systematics

microrogas and saympatry, yes, I believe e coli and e (stratumname here) were sequenced as such

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patiodog wrote:

And as for positing humans as 3rdI -- why do you feel the need to separate humans from the natural world? Competition and symbiosis between species is one of the driving factors behind macroevolution; why should our actions require a new category?

They don't require a new category. For now, I wanted to avoid analyzing influences caused by intelligent things, so I thought I could achieve that by putting all intelligent influences in a 3rd category.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

A population of a single species of animal is transferred from its home environment into two different environments: Environment H and Environment T. The anmals are lined up and a coin is flipped for each animal to decide whether it shall be transferred into H or T. After many generations have elapsed, significant physical difference are perceived to exist between the two populations.

What do you think caused these differences to evolve?

Did the coin do it?
Did the coin tosser do it?
Did the transferor do it?
Did the respective environments do it?
Did the chance editing of procreating genes do it?
Did natural selection acting within each environment do it?
Did 2ndI do it?
Did something else do it?

Did none of the above do it?
Did all of the above do it?

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farmerman wrote:

no ican, I can go back to sections of your posta and show where you either purposefully contradict yourself or have apoor memory.

I don't believe you!

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Lecture cancelled. Would have left hours ago if I'd known that was coming. Now gotta wait for my bus...

Quote:

well, if thats the case (mitochondrils from a pro to a euk) weve nocked off a couple bazillion years in systematics

Thinking about it again, I think you're right about the membranes. I'd confused the nuclear envelope -- which has two layers -- with the plastids et al, which have three. If bacterial this could have been because they were engulfed twice, or they could have been gram-negative, which have two membranes and minimal whatchamacallit -- the membrane glycoprotein that's peculiar to prokaryotes.

ican --
Genetic drift did it. But the question is -- what causes populations to become separated and drift apart? Could be continental drift, could be a fire that wipes out a swath of forest (so that whatever lives in the leaf litter on one side of the burn is now separated from its conspecifics on the other side of the burn), it could be a road. If something presents either/both populations from exchanging genetic material, they can speciate.

Doesn't have to be a physical separation, either. Competition can drive some individuals subject to intraspecific competition to seek out* other resources and establish a new niche.

*Again, I'm just describing possible behaviors; I'm not suggesting that anything tries to adapt any more than Norwegians centuries ago tried to retain lactase throughout their life so that they could subsist on a diet extremely high in animal milk.

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ican711nm wrote:

CAUSE AND EFFECT

A population of a single species of animal is transferred from its home environment into two different environments: Environment H and Environment T. The animals are lined up and a coin is flipped for each animal to decide whether it shall be transferred into H or T. After many generations have elapsed, significant physical difference are perceived to exist between the two populations.

What do you think caused these differences to evolve?

I don't understand the point of this little exercise at all...
How does flipping a coin and having an animal choose where it will go relate to anything in the natural world? What's the analogy you are trying to present?

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rosborne979 wrote:

ican711nm wrote:
CAUSE AND EFFECT

A population of a single species of animal is transferred from its home environment into two different environments: Environment H and Environment T. The animals are lined up and a coin is flipped for each animal to decide whether it shall be transferred into H or T. After many generations have elapsed, significant physical difference are perceived to exist between the two populations.

What do you think caused these differences to evolve?

I don't understand the point of this little exercise at all...
How does flipping a coin and having an animal choose where it will go relate to anything in the natural world? What's the analogy you are trying to present?

In this exercise, the animal does not flip the coin; something else flips the coin.

In this exercise, the animal does not choose where it will go; something else chooses where the animal will go.

It has been alleged that natural selection is the cause of procreating genomes NOT surviving.

It has been alleged that chance is the cause of the edits of procreating genomes. In particular, it is alleged that these edits of procreating genomes are the cause of genetic-drift.

Regardless, what do you think caused the physical differences to evolve?

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Oldest vertebrate fossil found in Australia, scientists say

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