To: Fester Chugabrew
Thank you. I figured the principle of superposition would be the predominant assumption as to how the fossil record was formed. But what I am asking is why we would predict a find of dinsosaurs at (I presume) a lower level of the fossil record than primates. Why does the theory of evolution "predict" this?
TOE predicts that each species breaks off from an older one in an unbroken chain. (That's a little simplistic, as what you really see is more like a tree, with branches sprouting off of one another, but for the purposes of comparing with that 'Grand Canyon' picture I posted, imagine a simple chain.) So a reptile-like animal gives rise to a dinosaur which gives rise to a bird. With this picture, we would PREDICT that a reptile-like ancestor came earlier, and therefor would HAVE to be found in a lower geological strata. This could be disproven (falsified) by finding something like a bird in the same geological strata as that reptile-like forbear of both the bird and the dinosaur.
Now, you will often here of archeologists being "surprised" at finding a new fossil in a particular time period (geological strata). This corresponds to finding a bird fossil a little bit earlier than was previously thought they would be found (based on previous finds), implying that the "chain" needs to be corrected a bit. There is no real contradiction in such a find, as it merely represents new information and requires the adjustment of previously helf beliefs to match the new data. A TRUE falsification of the TOE would require a major find of, say, a bird in the same strata as the reptile-like ancestor of both dinosaur and bird (or, as I think this discussion started out on, finding a human fossil in a dinosaur-age strata). That kind of major contradiction would throw the scientific community into apoplectic shock and instantly guarantee the Nobel Prize to the discoverer. I don't think it's very likely to happen, though.
To: gomaaa
If indeed the theory of evolution is best represented by a tree, what form of life is considered to be at the base of the trunk? Is this tree a product of inductive or deductive reasoning?
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