Evolution? How?

Chumly wrote:

I'm the other one wrote:

Chumly wrote:

I'm the other one wrote:

Chumly wrote:

I'm the other one wrote:

May I ask how you think we got here?

What makes you think "we got here"?

LOL, then why are we here? How?

You two are intelligent beings, I know you can tell me.

What makes you think there is a reason why we are here?

I don't know. Isn't everything for a reason?

I'm not talking about reason as we have a mission either. I mean reason as in...oh...I'm not sure the word I'm looking for, drats.

So you think maybe we "just exist" or are an illusion or something else?

In the small picture it appears as if some things have a reason, as cause and effect appear real, but I know you are talking about the big picture. Man has a very hard time grasping that there no known reason for anything, but that is the facts, as things stand now.

It is also important to understand that there is no defined need for a reason for anything in the big picture, things can simply be without reason. Yuppers I know that is counterintuitive and frustrating because our brains want to find purpose and intent in all things.

I know that to be true. I can't help but get deeper in thought and contemplate life alot. It's after 2 am here and I need to hit the sack, so, yes...I do think too much. That's my problem.

Are you satisfied knowing that we will feed the worms after death? Or..it doesn't matter because we've served our purpose here...living life.

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"Tiktaalik was probably an unwieldy swimmer," says John Maisey, a palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It probably lived in shallow waters, says Maisey, only hauling itself on to land temporarily to escape predators. "Tetrapods did not so much conquer the land, as escape from the water," he says.

The implication of this is that the 'evolving' critter rendered itself unfit to live successfully in the water, so it had to find other habitat.

Or (assuming the shalow water dwelling fish COULD somehow have made it to other continents) did this same scenario of water-to-land play out on several continents, evolutionary 'lightning' striking , as it were, many or multiple times to produce land dwellers on all the continents?

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"Tiktaalik was probably an unwieldy swimmer," says John Maisey, a palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It probably lived in shallow waters, says Maisey, only hauling itself on to land temporarily to escape predators. "Tetrapods did not so much conquer the land, as escape from the water," he says.

The implication of this is that the 'evolving' critter rendered itself unfit to live successfully in the water, so it had to find other habitat.

If the 'evolving' limbs from fins made Tiktaalik less able to survive and thrive in it's (then) present watery habitat, then it would seem that right off the bat, the supposed evolutionary advance conferred, not an advantage but a DISadvantage upon Tiktaalik.

You assume that this animal lived under the constant threat of predation, which is not always the case. And even if the critter did live under some threat of predation, you assume that the advantage conferred by moving into this margin of the then-habitable world did not in itself confer some advantage to the animal. There may have been food to get in the shallows for which there was no competition, egg-laying spots that were not vulnerable to whatever critters liked to go around eating eggs. It may even be that the predators around were such superior swimmers that even swimming to the greatest of its abilities was not as effective an escape route for such a critter as simply clambering onto dry land. I'm no match for a shark, but I've spent plenty of time wading around in the surf of some of America's most notorious shark areas without any problems.


As to your "jawbone" beef...

Published on ScienceNOW on 1/18/2006 by Elizabeth Pennisi:

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Before we used the middle ear to amplify and transmit sound, fish used its components to breathe. Over time, a tube called a spiracle, which connects the gills to the water outside, evolved into a chamber behind the eardrum. And a bony strut that connects a fish's jaw hinge to the brain case became one of three tiny bones in this chamber. {emphasis added}

The early stages of this transition have now been studied by Martin Brazeau, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at Uppsala University, Sweden, and his advisor, paleontologist Per Ahlberg. The researchers analyzed a skull of Panderichthys--an ancient fish that evolved at about the same time as tetrapods (early four-legged land-dwellers) from a common ancestor. The team compared the fish's bones and head structure to fossils of a more primitive fish and an early tetrapod.

Since there are no bony attachments between the jawbone and the skull in any of the tetrapod skulls I've seen, I can imagine that this bit of bone may not have been essential to the animal's functioning.

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Another interesting question is this: Tiktaalik was found in Canada. It was supposedly a dweller in shallow water, so how are we to suppose that it crossed oceans to inhabit other continents?

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Some have contended that structures such as the eye, for example, may have evolved independently in as many as 40 separate instances or MORE, but this simply stretches credulity.

I've seen you bring this up before, without substantiating it. So -- show us somebody who's making this claim, so we at least have the opportunity to evaluate it.

real life wrote:

Quote:

"Tiktaalik was probably an unwieldy swimmer," says John Maisey, a palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It probably lived in shallow waters, says Maisey, only hauling itself on to land temporarily to escape predators. "Tetrapods did not so much conquer the land, as escape from the water," he says.

The implication of this is that the 'evolving' critter rendered itself unfit to live successfully in the water, so it had to find other habitat.

No. The implication is that it was living in a habitat in which its body structures gave it a survival advantage. Animals don't change first, and then find environments to suit them, they adapt to the environment around them.

real life wrote:

Or (assuming the shalow water dwelling fish COULD somehow have made it to other continents) did this same scenario of water-to-land play out on several continents, evolutionary 'lightning' striking , as it were, many or multiple times to produce land dwellers on all the continents?

Plate tectonics.

RL,
Why ask these questions if you are not willing to learn?

Oh, gawd, you mean we are all Canucks?

Chumly wrote:

RL,
Why ask these questions if you are not willing to learn?

Yeah, how dare I, right?

I should just take whatever I'm spoonfed and not ever question it, right?

Chumly wrote:

RL,
Why ask these questions if you are not willing to learn?

Yeah, how dare I, right?

I should just take whatever I'm spoonfed and not ever question it, right?