Denyse O’Leary quotes Steve Meyer’s question:
Why, he [Agassiz] asked, does the fossil record always happen to be incomplete at the nodes connecting major branches of Darwin’s tree of life, but rarely—in the parlance of modern paleontology—at the “terminal branches” representing the major already known groups of organisms?…
Was there any easy answer to Agassiz’s argument? If so, beyond his stated willingness to wait for future fossil discoveries, Darwin didn’t offer one.
and responds:
And no one else has either.
Oh, yes, they have, Denyse. That’s what what punk eek was. But it also falls readily out of any simulation – you see rapid diversification into a new niche at a node, and thus few exemplars, followed by an increasingly gradual approach to a static optimum, and thus lots of exemplars. But I present an even more graphic response: when you chop down a tree, and saw it up into logs for your fire, what proportion of your logs include a node?
Funny, too, that the genes in organisms are related, the same way they are in “microevolution,” across the nodes.
Also, the overall pattern of life in the record is evolutionary, for which they have no explanation.
They’re always arguing against the evidence of life being derived evolutionarily by simply trying to refute that it did happen–without any sort meaningful explanation to replace the explanation that evolution provides. Non-explanation is supposed to take the place of explanation, ignorance is to replace knowledge. It really can’t work that way, unless one generally denies that the data are in fact meaningful.
Glen Davidson
This seems to be another manifestation of the same misunderstanding you mentioned in the earlier Meyer’s Mistake topic.
its not reasonable to excuse the poverty of connections , to be had in the fossil record, when the fossil record is evolutions evidence for descent.
Its so easy to say connections indicate sudden change and so not apparent in the fossil record until statis has arrived.
The equation HERE is that the fossil record is used by evolutions to PROVE descent .
Creationists say it doesn’t but evolutionists say LOOK at the fossil record. We look and find great gaos connecting the needed important changes between kinds of life.
then evolutionists say DON’T expect to find connections. Its too quick and unlikely rto be caught in fossils.
the gaps are exactly as they would be if there was NO connections by evolution.
Evolutionists ask for too much elbow room in fossil evidence.
Explaining away the lack of fossil evidence is NOT showing fossil evidence for evolution.
There is no fossil evidence for evolutionary biology. its never going to be found.
Anyways its not biological scientific evidence anyways as the fossils only are evidence AFTER the geology is accepted. Or rather no biological evidence is indicated by fossils. Only a special video of cartoon stills (fossils)
GlenDavidson,
Its evolutions job to prove itself. Creationists don’t need other options for mechanisms to make the case evolution is not true.
anyways genes showing descent is only a line of reasoning.
A creator working from a common blueprint at higher levels like genus etc etc would also make it that like genes are in creatures for like needs.
Therefore a other option for gene likeness nullifys any point that genes likeness demands descent conclusions.
Genetics is not evidence for descent ideas just because of looking the same at the atomic level. It would be that way anyways. Its not evidence but a line of reasoning only. A presumed exclusive extrapolation is not genetic scientific evidence.
So let me try to understand your reasoning.
A videotape of a crime is not evidence because it’s made up of stills?
It also shows up in simple models. If you computer-simulate a Birth-Death Process with a modest growth rate (slightly higher birth rate than death rate of lineages), most of the lineages around at any time will be destined for extinction. Only a few will be ancestors of the survivors. So it doesn’t require any special process to have a situation where an incomplete sampling of fossils will miss the actual ancestors of living species, while getting the relatives of those ancestors.
Robert Byers,
Or in other words, evolution has to “prove itself,” it’s just that creationists won’t accept the finding of the evidence that evolutionary theory predicts as evidence that evolution occurred.
Getting back to the fact that creationists do deny that data are in fact meaningful, but selectively.
Elizabeth:
For why “Punk Eek!” fails please read Chapter 7.
One of my favorite quotes:
” I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning” – Lord Kelvin, 1896, on the possibility of heavier-than-air flight.
Louis Agassiz died in 1873. What does what either he or Darwin thought about the state of fossil knowledge in their day have to do with our modern understanding?
Elizabeth:
When I chop down a tree and saw it up into logs for my fire, I do so with reason, purpose and plan. Are you saying that the reason evolution lacks evidence where it is most needed is a teleological one?
Brilliant understanding of the analogy.
The ID/creationist proof uses Complex Specified Information.
If the number of atoms is on the order of 10^23 and there are 10^23 positions atoms can take in a branching structure, then the logarithm to base 2 of (10^23)^(10^23) is greater than 500; therefore the branching structure can’t happen in the lifetime of the universe.
DeNews also links to a passage in DD where Meyer compares phyla to gradation of color in a paint store
Damn. Meyer is actually demanding to see the fossil crocoduck, the half bird / half dog, the half bull / half frog, and all the other Creationist ‘transitionals”.
No wonder Meyer gets laughed out of any serious scientific discussion.
Out of interest, what would such evidence look like? Care to explain?
What, exactly, is “missing” and would you start to accept “Darwinism” if such “missing” evidence was found?
Moved some stuff to guano. Remember the rules, guys!
No, I’m saying that if you sample from a tree, you will get many more samples from the bits between the nodes than the bits at the nodes.
In other words, the reason why there are far more fossils from periods where a population has adapted to a niche then from periods when they are rapidly adapting, is because there were far more individuals from those periods to fossilise.
Whether it “fails” or not, Denyse is wrong. It was most certainly offered.
And of course, Meyer is wrong that it “fails”. Not only does it not fail, even the simplest evolutionary model will demonstrate the same phenomenon. The rate of adaptation slows as optimisation is reached.
Fossils only record gross morphology. Evolution continues at the molecular level in cockroaches, crocodiles and horseshoe crabs.
Behe and his followers close their eyes to the Lenski experiment and the evidence that neutral mutation can accumulate and enable sudden breakthroughs in function.
One more thing. Dog breeding demonstrates that gross morphology can change in an eyeblink.
Please explain why Punk Eek fails, in your own words.
Well, it will depend of the kind of tree, there are trees with long stems and few nodes. But according to darwinism each point of the stem is a node. Then you have to see a bush like tree and found as many logs with nodes and without nodes.
But populations do not know they are adapted or there is other population in the process of “rapidly adapting” so knew intermediate forms should appear equilibrating the proportion of population adapted and “rapidly adapting”.
It’s true that populations do not know they are adapting, but when the environment is stable, morphological change will slow down.
And stability is relative to form and function. Cockroaches haven’t had any need to change their outward form. That doesn’t mean there have been no genomic changes.
Okay, I’m going to take umbrage with “optimization”. I think better incremental fit gets harder as we approach local maxima on the fitness landscape, but nothing is really optimized. Omniscient design would make angels, evolution makes man.
According to popular mythology, angels are not exactly perfect or reliable.
Makes me think that eternal life could be something like eternity in a corporate office, or perhaps in a Tupperware party.
So, change is driven by the enviroment? Is that what darwinism says?
petrushka:
And stability is relative to form and function. Cockroaches haven’t had any need to change their outward form. That doesn’t mean there have been no genomic changes.
Cockroaches needed only undetectable genomic changes since the cambrian until today living in my kitchen, What type of enviromental change produced the first cockroache ?
Selection is partly driven by the environment. before getting mad at evolution, whu not go away and learn about it?
Soooo, Mung/Meyer, I have a tiny challenge: Name me two distinct crown group taxons that we don’t have a stem group fossil with transitional features linking together.
On a related note, PZ Myers recently did a talk at Skepticon 6 on Meyers book:
Change is steered. by the environment. If you have driven anything you know that steering in a straight line is still steering.
Genomic change is not undetectable. One can detect the effects of drift on closely related varieties and species. One can also detect morphological changes that are too subtle to be noticed by non-specialists.
Insects thrive in many climates, so their varieties may be due more to drift than to selection. are actually interested in learning something, as opposed to carping, I suspect there are many resources available.
I used “optimise” deliberately in preference to “perfect” – as good as you can get with what you’ve got, i.e. local maxima. Then maybe a breakthrough mutation, or more likely a change in environment for a sub population, and suddenly what what are local are no longer maxima!
But I’m happy to use whatever words best conveys that. In other words I don’t disagree 🙂
Aha! I see the problem! No, not at all.
It is so important to distinguish between speciation, which is a branching of one population into two, and evolution of a single population over time, which is often fairly static, but nonetheless yields transitions that are visible in the fossil population over long periods of time.
Speciation, on the other hand, is when one population divides into two sub populations, and one of them starts to adapt to a different niche, or simply evolves independently, gradually increasing the “morphological distance” between it and both its ancestral population and its contemporary descendents on the other branch.
These sub branches often go extinct early, and when they don’t, have very small populations in the beginning – it is the small size of their populations that give rise to rapid evolutionary change, but also results in few, or no, fossilized examplars.
Only when the new sub population is established do we start to find fossils, by which time it will have moved a substantial “morphological distance” from its cousins.
I think speciation has nothing to do with the point. We are talking about morphological change
Ok, I can buy the explanation that we have less chance to find fossils of small populations, but according to darwinism each small population is changing. (Mutation are independants of anything bar the DNA chemistry) Then we have many small populations ( A stem branching at each point of his lenght). So the chance to find nodes when you chop the steam should be very high.
Blas, how about you print out an image like this one,
http://images.wisegeek.com/tree-no-leaves.jpg
say coffee table size, then blindfold yourself and poke a marker at a hundred or a thousand points. Only the points that land on a branch or twig will count as fossils.
Then try to reconstruct the tree using only the fossils.
You mean it is impossible to reconstruct the tree? That we have only that points and given the truth of ToE and CD we reconstructed the tree?
The first point is that most of your points will land between nodes, not at them. However, populations differ from tree branches in that they get fatter as they move away from a node!
The second point is that you can imagine that instead of poking a marker at the tree, you can make it into a giant jigsaw puzzle. In other words, you will be able to fit parts of the puzzle together. The branches also change as they grow, one might grow yellower and rougher, while another grows redder and smoother.
But the snag is that most of the pieces of the puzzle are missing – and of those you have, most won’t be of nodes!
It is not impossible to tell that the points are points on a tree, but as more points become available, the picture will become more accurate, and some of the inferred connections will change.
We are back again to the first point. It depend of the type of the tree. A darwinistic tree should have many nodes, as each point of the tree is a node, each isolated population should “rapidly evolve”.
More points you have avaiable more nodes you will get.
It is interesting that creationists find it necessary to go back to soft bodied organisms before they can point to to significant gaps. Since the Cambrian there have been two mass extinctions and a complete reorganization of the continents.
Most of the coastal areas that provide good conditions for fossilization have been erased by tectonics.
No it isn’t. You simply don’t understand what a node is it seems.
Blas, nodes are analogous to speciation events. The point where one branch splits into two is a node. Obviously most of the tree will be made of branches, that is straight lines of relative stasis. The morphological change, the “speciation events” and adaptations to new niches, will be found located at the nodes, that is, the points where one branch splits into two.
So, from the point of view of accidental fossilization (getting caught in a mudslide and being buried under hundreds of feets of sediment, for example), you will have the vast majority of your fossils happening to individual organisms being part of populations representing the branchens, the straight lines. Only rarely will you be lucky and get fossilization at or close to an actual node (the point where the branch splits into two and most morphological change occurs).
Consequently, the fossil record will have many more fossils from larger periods of relative stasis, but significantly fewer transitional fossils.
Blas,
Then we have many small populations ( A stem branching at each point of his lenght). So the chance to find nodes when you chop the steam should be very high.
Perhaps, but unless you find a member of these small populations you can’t tell if the fossil was a node or not.
Blas:
Go out to any plot of undeveloped land and dig. What percentage of current plants and animals are being fossilized?
But that it is not the point. We have more fossils that expected? Ok. The point is how many transitional forms we have in proportion to the non transitional forms.
Lizzie made a pararel with real trees.
My point is from a darwinistic perspective we should have as many transitional forms as non transitional. Because each isolated population is subjected to “rapid evolution” independently of the enviroment.
I do not know and that is irrelevan to to the point as explained before. More important should be explain how many of the actual isolated population are in “rapid evolution”?
Well dogs are undergoing rapid evolution. The question is not how many there are, but how many will be fossilized. The conditions favoring fossilization are rare.
ETA: Do you suppose in million years we will have fossils of every transitional between wolves and teacup poodles?
And that is exactly where you are wrong.
Blas, you are still confusion longitudinal evolution with speciation.
If you define a transitional form as any population during a time when evolution (defined as change in allele frequency over time), then yes, every single population is “transitional”. And if you have a sequence of fossils from that population, then yes, you will see gradual change over time, and we do.
However, if you define a transitional form as a fossils from two populations shortly after one diverged from the other, no we will not have a great number, because at that time, the one undergoing faster evolutionary change, will be pretty small. Its numbers won’t start to increase long enough to have a decent chance of leaving fossils until it has “travelled” quite a large morphological distance from cousins in the population it diverged from.
In fact, in palaeontology, “transitional” fossile isn’t defined in either of those ways, but to quote wikipedia, as “A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group.”
Again, this could describe any fossil, but only in the context of a specific ancestral group and a specific derived group.
Since ID advocates are fond of mathematics, I suggest that Blas get out some graph paper and draw a branching tree. Doesn’t matter much how the details are done, so long as it’s a branching tree.
Then count the squares that include a branch point vs the squares that include a line. Just make sure the grid is fine enough so that there are thousands (if not millions) of squares between nodes.
This is from the Origin of Species:
Darwin writes:
On the sudden appearance of groups of Allied Species in the lowest known fossiliferous strata. There is another and allied difficulty, which is much graver. I allude to the manner in which numbers of species of the same group, suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. Most of the arguments which have convinced me that all the existing species of the same group have descended from one progenitor, apply with nearly equal force to the earliest known species. For instance, I cannot doubt that all the Silurian trilobites have descended from some one crustacean, which must have lived long before the Silurian age, and which probably differed greatly from any known animal. Some of the most ancient Silurian animals, as the Nautilus, Lingula, &c., do not differ much from living species; and it cannot on my theory be supposed, that these old species were the progenitors of all the species of the orders to which they belong, for they do not present characters in any degree intermediate between them. If, moreover, they had been the progenitors of these orders, they would almost certainly have been long ago supplanted and exterminated by their numerous and improved descendants.
Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures.
Obviously, his theory is not true! He’s wrong three different ways. When will this theory be thrown out?
Don’t stop there. Tell us the three ways.