Evolution? How?

Hi Farmerman,

Providing a scenario in which something 'could have' happened is quite different from showing that it, in fact, did occur.

Evolution suggests the possibility that these species could have diverged under various scenarios etc.

But it is just as easy to suggest that they could have been distinct all along. There doesn't seem to be any proof that evolutionists can offer that would negate that.

The different plants that are found at different elevations could all have easily been co-existing from the beginning. There is nothing to indicate that they could not.

Some thrive in one environment, some in another and that's where you find them. Nothing difficult about it.

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au1929 wrote:

real life wrote:
au1929 wrote:
Palm Trees and Lake Fish Dispel Doubts About a Theory of Evolution

By CARL ZIMMER
Published: February 21, 2006
Sooner or later, everyone encounters a kentia palm. Its ability to grow in low sunlight has made it one of the world's most traded houseplants. Skip to next paragraph William Baker/Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
WHERE'd they come from? Some scientists say the kentia palm (Howea forsteriana), top, evolved side by side with the H. belmoreana, above, on a Pacific island.
Ad Konings
New research suggests the arrow cichlid, top, which eats insect larvae, evolved in Lake Apoyo from the Midas cichlid, above, which feeds on snails.

"If you've been to a wine bar or to Starbucks, there may have been one in there," said William Baker, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England."Whether you realize it or not, you're familiar with this palm," he said.As ordinary as this houseplant may be, however, Dr. Baker and colleagues have found that it has an extraordinary story to tell about evolution. The kentia palm (Howea forsteriana) is found in the wild only on a single remote island in the South Pacific. Based on a recent study, Dr. Baker and his colleagues have concluded that roughly two million years ago, an ancestral species of palm tree living on the island split in two, and one became the kentia palm.The idea that members of a species living side by side can split into two species is controversial. Some scientists have presented evidence that the process has produced several species of plants and animals, but their ideas have met with intense skepticism. Two new studies in the journal Nature ?- one on the kentia palm and a second on fish in a Nicaraguan lake ?- are impressing some leading skeptics, however.One reason for the skepticism is that another way for forming new species is well supported by evidence. When a population becomes isolated by a geographical barrier, it can evolve into a new species. Birds swept to a remote island, for example, may reproduce only among themselves and not with the rest of their species back on the mainland. Over generations, the birds can acquire a unique set of mutations. They may evolve to be so different from the mainland birds that the two populations can no longer interbreed. They may sing different courtship songs, for example. They may be able to mate, but their hybrids may prove to be sterile. Based on a vast amount of research, scientists agree that this process ?- called allopatric speciation ?- drove the evolution of many species. But some scientists have suggested that some species evolved without geographical barriers and that a new species could emerge from an old one even when all its members were living side by side. The key was for some individuals to begin to mate with one another and not with the rest of the species. If this tendency could be inherited, then two genetically distinct populations could emerge. Ultimately, they would become two separate species.Mathematical models have suggested this process ?- known as sympatric speciation ?- can happen under certain conditions. And scientists have discovered a handful of cases in which, they argue, sympatric speciation took place. Fruit flies from a species that originally lived on hawthorns in the United States, for example, have shifted to apples in the past 150 years. Their DNA suggests that they are diverging from the hawthorn population.But sympatric speciation has drawn fierce criticism. Skeptics have argued that many cases of sympatric speciation could just as easily have been produced by allopatric speciation. Two species sharing an island may well have evolved allopatrically elsewhere, for example, only later moving to the island in two separate invasions.The two studies published this month in Nature are among the best ever published, in the opinion of some of sympatric speciation's toughest critics.In one study, Axel Meyer of the University of Konstanz in Germany and his colleagues examined two species of fish that live in Lake Apoyo, a volcanic crater lake in Nicaragua. One species, the Midas cichlid (Amphilophus citrinellus), has a big body and uses powerful jaws to crush snails at the lake bottom. The slender arrow cichlid (A. zaliosus) lives in the open water, where it eats insect larvae.Lake Apoyo formed less than 23,000 years ago when its volcano became extinct and filled with rain water. Dr. Meyer's team studied the DNA of the two cichlids and compared it to that of fish in neighboring lakes. They concluded that the Midas cichlid originally invaded the lake, perhaps swept in during a hurricane. The arrow cichlids then branched off the Midas cichlids, evolving a distinct body and no longer breeding with their parent species.The origin of the arrow cichlids did not take long, geologically speaking. "It was less than 10,000 years, but it could be as short as 2,000 years," Dr. Meyer said.

Dr. Meyer suspects that the arrow cichlid evolved from slender Midas cichlids and shifted from a diet of snails to a diet of insect larvae. They enjoyed more reproductive success if they mated with other slender cichlids, because their offspring could swim efficiently in the open water. Over time, the fish may have evolved the mating preferences that now help keep the two populations distinct.

Dr. Baker and his colleagues present a similar picture of the kentia palm. The kentia palm grows only on Lord Howe Island, 350 miles east of Australia. The island is home to a similar species, Howea belmoreana. The kentia palm grows about 50 feet high, while Howea belmoreana reaches only about 20 feet. Kentia palms thrive on exposures of soft sedimentary rock, while Howea belmoreana grows mostly on soils formed from volcanic rock.

By studying the palm's DNA, Dr. Baker and his colleagues found that the two Lord Howe species are much more alike than either is to any other living palm. Based on the mutations accumulated in each species, they estimate that an ancestral palm arrived on the island long after the island formed about seven million years ago.

About two million years ago, the sedimentary outcrops began to be exposed on the island. This was also the time when kentia palm split off from Howea belmoreana. Dr. Baker and his colleagues propose that the kentia palm evolved from palms that colonized the new outcrops. They were still close enough to the other palms to interbreed. But growing on the sedimentary soil may have changed the growth of their flowers.

The scientists have found that the kentia palm flowers seven weeks earlier than Howea belmoreana, making it almost impossible for them to interbreed.

"It's hard to imagine a more watertight case," Dr. Baker said.

Critics have raised a few possible alternative explanations for each study. It is possible, for example, that the palms might have evolved through geographic isolation on other islands. Their descendants then colonized Lord Howe Island, and then the other islands sank underwater. (Lord Howe is expected to disappear in 200,000 years.)

But even these critics consider these alternatives a bit of a stretch.

"I've read these papers fairly carefully, looking for weak points," said Douglas Futuyma of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "But I can't find any."

Or perhaps they were simply different species all along. Is there really ANY evidence that would eliminate that as a possible conclusion?

Real Life.
Take it or leave it.

*blinks, turns head from side to side*

I didn't even see it. Did you provide evidence and I missed it?

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Real Life

It is odd that you will accept the fable of creation and the rest of the religious gobbledygook without a thread of evidence. However, you insist on absolute proof of evolution. No sense talking to the religiously brainwashed. Believe what you will.

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Dispels doubts about "a" theory of evolution -- that is, that these plants evolved from a common ancestor on that particular island -- that is, that speciation could occur without profound geographic isolation.

Ever'body wants a to find a smoking gun to prove or disprove, and its really about a vast body of knowledge that integrates very, very nicely under the theory of evolution.

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au1929 wrote:

Real Life

It is odd that you will accept the fable of creation and the rest of the religious gobbledygook without a thread of evidence. However, you insist on absolute proof of evolution. No sense talking to the religiously brainwashed. Believe what you will.

Hi Au,

I didn't ask for absolute proof of evolution.

Actually what I asked you for was evidence to disprove[/b] creation, if you can. Since you insist that 'all the evidence' favors evolution, this should've been a slam dunk, eh?

Show solid proof that two 'related species' that exist naturally (i.e. -- one is said to have 'evolved' from the other) COULD NOT have both co-existed from the beginning.

Easy class, eh? You oughta ace this one in your sleep.

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real life wrote:

au1929 wrote:
Real Life

It is odd that you will accept the fable of creation and the rest of the religious gobbledygook without a thread of evidence. However, you insist on absolute proof of evolution. No sense talking to the religiously brainwashed. Believe what you will.

Hi Au,

I didn't ask for absolute proof of evolution.

Actually what I asked you for was evidence to disprove[/b] creation, if you can. Since you insist that 'all the evidence' favors evolution, this should've been a slam dunk, eh?

Show solid proof that two 'related species' that exist naturally (i.e. -- one is said to have 'evolved' from the other) COULD NOT have both co-existed from the beginning.

Easy class, eh? You oughta ace this one in your sleep.

What evidence would disprove the idea of divine intervention? The answer is none, because in a scientific equation, "God's will" is a free variable, compatible with absolutely any imaginable scenario. No matter what we find, the creationist can always say that's just the way God wanted it. While some specific creationist claims are in principle vulnerable to scientific investigation, they can still never be falsified, because the creationists always can and often do fall back on the excuse of divine intervention (God erased the evidence, they often say, and substituted new evidence as a test of faith) to shield their dogma from disproof. That isn't science. Evolution, by contrast, could be falsified by any number of discoveries.
http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/crenotscience.html

P

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rl-typical, youre asking everyone to do your home- work.I should Leave that up to those who pose their own hypothesis(Im giving you a great deal of credit by even using the word hypothesis).Whatya gonna do about a dynamic environment or the genetic data? Geologically we know almost exactly when Mt K was formed or when the Rift valley lakes appear or when the limestone outcroppings of an area form in time.
You poses it , you closes it. Thats the rules I propose we go by.
.

I think Ive heard you claim that Alll these animals and plants have been created by some means, all at once,and just sit there for most of geologic history IN ANTICIPATION of a whole series of impending environmnetal changes, . I see,... now we are involved in praecognitave creation during a time when the worlds continents looked nothing like they do today . Howcome we dont ever see a fossil evidence of a fistfight between a dinosaur and an elephant or a lion. Weve got plenty of trace evidence of dinosaurs pouncing on other wee dinosaurs and even early mammals. We also have fossils of early mammals attacking smaller dinosaurs, but these are all arranged in narrow stratigraphic bands. Why didnt a T rex snack down on a horse for example or a slow moving bovid? There should be some real evidence. There is one , in Paluxy River Texas , but we all know thats a fake "creation" of a father and son team of "well meaning" Christians who then started the Paluxy Museum.

So wheres the next batch of praecognitavely created critters going to appear out of the crowd as the PAcific ocean closes and all the critters on one side meet those of the other? Or as the Australian subcontinent slowly moves toward and slams into the underbelly of the continent of Asia . Those "yet to be perfectly adapted critters" should be out there now somewhere just biding their time.Why dont we see them?
Your idea, would have all the critters becoming extinct until there will be but maybe one or two species left.. maybe a rat and a cockroach. Youve gotta read the Signor and Lipps paper "Sampling bias... and catastrophes in the fossil record" GSA Special paper 190 (1982). I think it puts the hokum to bed about "an animal could have existed all through time , it just wasnt fossilized for over 570 million years". Their research wasnt anything to do with Creationism, it was to see whether the hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium has shown vast times in the stratigraphic record showing little or no higher taxa being evolved by gradual change or was there a significant amount of saltation going on.It just lays out some rules of fossil occurence , like a fossil isnt merely a death assemblage, its Life Evidence , because things have a personal time clock in which , while the species goes on, individuals die and are fossilized according to their numbers that lived. Thats why we see trillions of Forams, billions of trilobites, hundreds of thousands of dinosaurs and onlythousands of hominids. We never were the really big population that we are today. We were kept in check by disease, predators, and by the fact that we never had a lot of hominid species that lived side by side at any one time. Besides, we never lived in ideal fossilizing conditions ( our best fossils are found in ash deposits.)

.

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Evolution: A change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one
generation to the next.

Creationism: The belief that oak-trees can outrun raptors when trying to escape to higher ground during a global flood.

P

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Microevolution has, after all given us the , Mobile oak. Ive always assumed they just held their oaky noses and floated to higher ground. I could be wrong .

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It's rather a disingenious argument that rl deliberately wants us to disprove Creationism. How's about he tries and prove Creationism instead of trying to disprove evolution.

Disproving evolution will not prove Creationism or ID to be true.

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Hi Farmerman,

When you ask "why don't we find.....?" isn't that just an argument from silence, and not really 'evidence' of anything?

Could be because of the smaller number of higher animals, as you alluded to. Could be many other reasons.

But reading into what we don't find really doesn't seem to be the best of the scientific method, does it? At least it wouldn't seem so.

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I think I've a bigger problem with the "intelligent" part than the "design" part...

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rl. dont critcize me. as I see it, Im trying to understand your argument

Quote:

But reading into what we don't find really doesn't seem to be the best of the scientific method, does it? At least it wouldn't seem so.

If you recall, you asked my opinion once that, even if we dont find a fossil of an animal doesnt mean it didnt live. (I agreed with you as an opinion about a being in a specific time only), not an entire species showing up "missing " in the fossil record. Your entire argument has all the animals created and then progressively dying off. My question "why dont we see"... is merely an example that is an "If...then" argument very common in math and P chem

I feel comfortable that your entire attempt at cobbling an argument is lacking in logic, ability to test, and to make further predictions and discoveries . Either way Im sure youll attempt to claim rectitude of your ideas because.

1 If theyre not in the fossil record they didnt exist
or
2 if theyre not in the fossil reord they existed but werent fossilized.

I harken back to the collection bias data. If an animal or plant lived in large enough differentiable species with enough individuals, It HAD to leave fossils ( this is from pure sampling statistics not wishful thinking)
1
.

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farmerman wrote:

......If an animal or plant lived in large enough differentiable species with enough individuals, It HAD to leave fossils ( this is from pure sampling statistics not wishful thinking)......

Hi Farmerman,

I agree, but that's a big IF.

There are many species that may exist for long periods with relatively small populations. The population may increase many centuries later, if conditions favor it. Or they may not.

Or perhaps they live in environments that don't favor fossilization due to scavengers, climate, etc.

And yes, there are species alive today that probably we will have no fossils of. But I wasn't addressing that.

---------------

Be that as it may, my point IS related to lack of fossil evidence of a species for a specific time, not lack of fossil evidence for a particular species altogether.

When evolutionists state, 'Species X appears in the fossil record at this juncture' , then we are not discussing it's total absence. My point is that just because we do not have fossils of Species X from earlier periods does not mean they did not exist earlier, even back to the beginning.

----------------

I appreciate your efforts to understand my points, as I also try to understand yours, and I hope you don't take my questions in the wrong spirit. I don't mean to come off as critical of you.

It's difficult in an arena such as this not to be misunderstood occasionally since tone and emphasis are extremely difficult to gauge from postings. But my questions are simply expressions of my doubts about evolutionary presuppositions, how they are arrived at, and how they are maintained and defended by evolutionists in general. There's nothing personal there. At least that's the way I try to look at it.

And believe me, I know that Christians have our own presupps also, etc. Not a surprise to me at all, and I have no problem with them being questioned also.

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real life wrote:

When evolutionists state, 'Species X appears in the fossil record at this juncture' , then we are not discussing it's total absence. My point is that just because we do not have fossils of Species X from earlier periods does not mean they did not exist earlier, even back to the beginning.

And just because we haven't found a talking fish in the ocean doesn't mean there isn't one there.

You are focused on absolutes to the exclusion of reason and reality. Here's a little dose of reality for you Real...

Evolution predicts that we will not find fossils of fish which existed before the first creatures with backbones. It predicts that we will not see fossil primates before the first mammals appeared. It predicts that we will not see fossil humans before the first primates.

Evolution predicts that we will see a fossil record which reflects a gradual morphology of species which fits consistently within the geological record. In short, it predicts that we will see evolution imprinted in the fossil record, and we do.

In over a hundred years of searching, with hundreds of thousands of fossils of every imaginable type, not one primate fossil has ever been found which predates mammals, not one fish has ever been found which predates chordates, and not one fossil has ever been found which breaks the basic sequence.

Even though your statement above is logically correct, it is realistically irrelevant. Science has never been about absolutes, it's about preponderance of evidence.

Talking fish live in cartoons. Granted some of them are good cartoons, but they're still cartoons.

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The fossil record shows that there were animals that lived way before our time. How do we know this? It's all related to physics and ecology. The best empirical theory is that of evolution. Basically, you connect the dots.

ID cannot be considered empirical because, the concept of an "intelligent designer" cannot be seen and does not have any connection to any form of evidences. It only asserted an axiom that is questionable and non-empirical at best. Thus, it cannot be considered "scientific."

The presence of a God, is not addressed in evolution. Such questions are out of the realm of science and into the realm of philosophical or religious belief.

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Ray wrote:

The presence of a God, is not addressed in evolution. Such questions are out of the realm of science and into the realm of philosophical or religious belief.

Agreed. If more people understood that, I think we would see a more rational treatment of evolutionary theory from the general public.

As it is, too many people's religious beliefs are based on the trinkets of ancient dogma, rather than an appreciation of the core values of the religion.

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excellent responses ros and ray. However, I still get back to rl's thesis

Quote:

When evolutionists state, 'Species X appears in the fossil record at this juncture' , then we are not discussing it's total absence. My point is that just because we do not have fossils of Species X from earlier periods does not mean they did not exist earlier, even back to the beginning.

----------------

See what I mean? It strongly implies that everything living harkens back, immutably, to "the beginning". As ros said, we have no evidence that what rl implies has occured, in fact we have evidence of just the opposite, that organisms , through time have adapted to changing environments by leaving fossil evidence of their own morphological changes. The systematics are quite compelling and robust . My biggest argument(and I must leave it at that , is that the systematics of morphological change through time are very useful disgnostic tools. We use the fossil species radiation data to correlate to continental margins and continental breakup "dates". The morphological evolution of specific microfossils are quite useful in detecting specific mineral and most petroleum deposits. This is all done by applying the predictive mechanisms inferred from natural selection and geological distribution diagrams.
For example,Most coal deposits are taken for granted today but the early discovery of unique deposits called "cyclothems" coupled with basal conglomerates and containing evidences of specific series of plants, were responsible for an early application transfer to detect these fields from English and Welsh coalfields to the Paleozoic coals of the Appalachian US and Canada and Russia. Today we dont even bat an eye at these applications, in fact a geologically savvy child could find productive coal measures just from stratigraphy and evolution data.

Most museum and academic paleontologists haveno connections to the real world applications of their findings, and most of those that do are employed by resource companies and most are tied to strict confidentiality agreements (including yours truly). The oil companies are most famous for "locking up" their findings for years after their field discoveries are made because they are not interested in sharing the knowledge , but of protecting their "intellectual property" to enhance their market share. The recent mega gas field finds in the Trenton Black River Formations of the Eastern US are still not written up in detail in journals. The discovery , as far as the oil companies are sharing now, relate to a unique geochemical pathway that is related to a type of depositional environment that is interpretable by a series of fossil sequences . Evolution of organisms wasnt responsible for the gas, but was responsible for the ability to locate and isolate the field.
The ability to apply these findings in the field, to utilitarian (applied ) sciences and not just be part of intellectual patois, drives the Creationists nuts. What is predictable and works in the field, is, as ray said, merely an inferential thingy, but its damn hard to deny when it works.
By the way, by the development of microgeophysics and the systematics of geological distribution of specific fossil sequences has taken oil exloration from a hit or miss inexact science to a highly accurate applie mix of science and engineering. 50 years ago we wouldnt have been able to "slant" drill a wellfield and tap its mass from just one spot, now, thanks to foram evolution and "diagenetic baking" we can spend lots less money in developing fields
However, having said that, one must approach these data with an open mind and no preset worldviews. We have very few Creationist geologists, and those we do have , arent in the marketplace of the applied. (Or they havent had a great success trail).

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rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:
When evolutionists state, 'Species X appears in the fossil record at this juncture' , then we are not discussing it's total absence. My point is that just because we do not have fossils of Species X from earlier periods does not mean they did not exist earlier, even back to the beginning.

And just because we haven't found a talking fish in the ocean doesn't mean there isn't one there.

You are focused on absolutes to the exclusion of reason and reality. Here's a little dose of reality for you Real...

Evolution predicts that we will not find fossils of fish which existed before the first creatures with backbones. It predicts that we will not see fossil primates before the first mammals appeared. It predicts that we will not see fossil humans before the first primates.

Evolution predicts that we will see a fossil record which reflects a gradual morphology of species which fits consistently within the geological record. In short, it predicts that we will see evolution imprinted in the fossil record, and we do.

In over a hundred years of searching, with hundreds of thousands of fossils of every imaginable type, not one primate fossil has ever been found which predates mammals, not one fish has ever been found which predates chordates, and not one fossil has ever been found which breaks the basic sequence.

Even though your statement above is logically correct, it is realistically irrelevant. Science has never been about absolutes, it's about preponderance of evidence.

Talking fish live in cartoons. Granted some of them are good cartoons, but they're still cartoons.

Hi Ros,

What you find, for instance, in sedimentary strata is the smaller, less mobile creatures usually buried first --- on the bottom; and the larger, more mobile creatures usually buried last - on the top. Not surprising, is it?

When an area is inundated by water which results in the formation of sedimentary strata, it is not unusual that the smaller creatures would be affected first, would you agree?

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real life wrote:

Hi Ros,

What you find, for instance, in sedimentary strata is the smaller, less mobile creatures usually buried first --- on the bottom; and the larger, more mobile creatures usually buried last - on the top. Not surprising, is it?

Hi Rl,

Actually what we find is that dead things don't move very fast and get buried just like all the other "less mobil" creatures.

Sedimentary strata usually form in geologic timeframes, not biological timeframes. So your suggestion that "slow things" and "fast things" appear in different strata seems crazy.

Every now and then you get a snapshot of time due to a sudden geological event, like a landslide or something like that (Gobi Desert Raptors and Proto's for example, or Dinosaur National Park Duckbill dinosaurs).

real life wrote:

When an area is inundated by water which results in the formation of sedimentary strata, it is not unusual that the smaller creatures would be affected first, would you agree?

So all those itty bitty T-Rex's and Duckbills and Brontosaurs were just having a "slow day"?

Come on, we're talking about geological timeframes here, not day/night floods. At least suggest something which relates to reality.

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