Newly found species fills evolutionary gap between fish and land animals

EurekAlert (AAAS) ^ | 05 April 2006 | Staff

[Dimensio]

Do you have an argument of substance to offer?

[muawiyah]

Well, maybe. I'd like to see Archers, Daniel, Midland come up with a "new species" with definite species boundaries.

When they do we may find out how it happens.

Until then, no one has seen it ~ they've guessed at it, and speculated about how it can happen, and so forth ~ I think it's going to be something far more complex than so far imagined, and will involve a bit more than the simple transfer of chemical information at the cellular level.

[muawiyah]

Again, Carolina-guitano, as you note speciation was presumed to arise out of imperfect reproduction ~ that is, mutation. On the other hand, we now know that some species differ from others in but one gene, and by one "letter" transposed with another in the gene sequence.

So, what is it stokes the fires of speciation?

No doubt it's not that transposition by itself ~

[PistolPaknMama]

There is no *proof* for any theory in science. There is evidence that does or doesn't support them.

My point exactly. If we evolved from fish-laying eggs, to egg-laying mammals, why couldn't we be mammals that laid eggs while swinging from trees. Birds lay eggs in trees. Seems a natural progression that primates, along their evolutionary path, would lay eggs in trees, unless they'd already learned about the live-birth thing. Eggs are much less fussy (unless you're a penguin) requiring more attendance after hatching. On the other hand, live births incapacitate the female to a certain extent due to carrying and nursing her young. Not to mention the immediate demands of the newborn, whether hatched or birthed. Laying eggs and letting the young develop outside the mother is much less demanding than the newborn developing inside the mother. Nobody has explained how we went from one to the other. If so, and we are so smart, why did we adapt to the more cumbersome and demanding live birth instead of egg laying. Because we were too busy swinging from trees and that whole egg-sitting thing was just a bother in ADHD primates? We were too busy eating parasites off our neighbor to sit on our own eggs, so lets just evolve to pop out our young. We'll carry them on our back today, and as soon as the first Walmart opens in a few cajillion years we'll get one of those sling thingys to carry them. Evolution at its finest.

[furball4paws]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1351793/posts

[muawiyah]

Sharks give live birth.

Early placental mammals were driven from Australia by marsupials due to their reproductive superiority.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Again, Carolina-guitano, as you note speciation was presumed to arise out of imperfect reproduction ~ that is, mutation."

Genetic variation + differential reproductive success.

"On the other hand, we now know that some species differ from others in but one gene, and by one "letter" transposed with another in the gene sequence."

Most differ by considerably more.

"So, what is it stokes the fires of speciation?"

Genetic variation + differential reproductive success.

[muawiyah]

The dispute is won with a single finding.

[Old_Mil]

The prokaryotes (single-celled organisms without membrane-bound organelles), kingdoms Eubacteria and Archaea. These at one point had a common ancestor but it is lost. Eukaryotes (organisms with membrane-bound organelles) are thought to have evolved through some type of symbiotic arrangement between bacteria and archaebacteria. The simplest version involves an archaebacterium engulfing an bacterium, the bacterium lives inside the host and provides oxygen scavenging, hydrogen, or some other benefit. Over time many genes on the engulfed bacterium's genome become transferred to the nucleus (there are varying theories about how that arose too), new genes arise, and eventually we get the modern eukaryotes with mitochondria.

Support for this idea includes the fact that eukaryotes like us share many metabolic enzymes with bacteria, but our mechanisms for gene transcription and translation are more like the archaebacteria's.

Or, the obvious explanation being that all life that shares a common environment is going to have similar methods of existing within that environment. This is a prime example of the flaw in evolutionary thinking. Evolutionary biologists approach all science with one unassailable dogma: evolution is true. Thus, all the "evidence" must be forced into this framework. Since evidence does not exist (as in the above theory of endosymbiosis), the theory (which is in reality little more than science fiction) is pronounced as fact and held forth as evidence.

All statements from evolutionary biologists can be reduced to fit the following framework:

(1) A looks or functions like B
(2) We know evolution is true
(3) Therefore A and B have a common ancestor

[William Terrell]

Evolution doesn't proceed though *blind chance*.

Then what directed it? Intelligence?

Evolutionary theory starts with the first imperfectly self-replicating organism. It matters not how this organism came to be.

Basic to the theory is the lack of an intelligence behind the life we see here, now. Hence the Great Debate among evolutionists, creationists and intelligent designers. Where the proto-organism came from would be central to the issue, don't you think?

[ahayes]

If we evolved from fish-laying eggs, to egg-laying mammals, why couldn't we be mammals that laid eggs while swinging from trees.

Because by the time apes evolved their ancestors were far removed from the egg-laying mammals and were placental mammals.

[William Terrell]

The process of biological evolution starts at the point where the first imperfect replicators start replicating for the first time. How those first imperfect replicators came to exist is not addressed by the process of evolution.

Basic to the theory is the lack of an intelligence behind the life we see here, now. Hence the Great Debate among evolutionists, creationists and intelligent designers. Where the proto-organism came from would be central to the issue, don't you think?

[King Prout]

"collage"?

[js1138]

Where the proto-organism came from would be central to the issue, don't you think?

It's a question that biologists are interested in, but it has zero relevance to how evolution works.

The question of whether evolution is random or not is simply not stated usefully. Variation is mostly random. It does not anticipate need. Selection is not random for a species. the conditions of the environment can be studied to any arbitrary degree of precision, and the environment determines which variants are most successful at producing offspring.

Evolution cannot produce a new feature simply because it is needed. If it could, species would not go extinct.

The variations that do get produced, by whatever mechanism, are all that selection has to work with.

[Lurking Libertarian]

Name one new species existent since man has had historical records ..please just one, or is evolution of species suspended with the advent of man?

There are some instances recorded here, and some more here.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"My point exactly."

Actually, your pint was that because evolution is a theory it was junk science.

"If we evolved from fish-laying eggs, to egg-laying mammals, why couldn't we be mammals that laid eggs while swinging from trees.?"

Because primates don't lay eggs. There is no evidence at all that there were ever egg laying primates.

"Birds lay eggs in trees. Seems a natural progression that primates, along their evolutionary path, would lay eggs in trees, unless they'd already learned about the live-birth thing."

No, this is ridiculous. There is nothing about living in trees that would push a population to adopt egg laying. What's more, even if there was, adaptations don't evolve just because it may be useful (I see no way it would have been useful in a tree to lay eggs). Evolution works with what's already there. The entire reproductive system of primates was already placental; this places contingencies on any further evolution of the reproductive system.

"If so, and we are so smart, why did we adapt to the more cumbersome and demanding live birth instead of egg laying."

Much better protection of the young. Also, it provides a great start for the mammal's immune system.


This is all a smokescreen of course; YOU said that evolutionary biologists DID say that our ancestors laid eggs in trees while swinging from trees (as our primate ancestors). You have failed to substantiate this absurd claim by citing ANY biologist who as ever said this.

You made the claim; put up or shut up.

[Coyoteman]

Key word is "THEORY". Some interesting comments on this thread but when it comes right down to it, evolution is just a "THEORY".

See my earlier post to you, #52, above.

Your comment that evolution is "just a theory" is deliberately misleading. What else would it be? Why do you think that your attempt to belittle evolution as "a theory" means anything other than you do not understand the role of theory in science.

Rather than scoring a telling point against evolution, you may just have exposed your opinions of, and education in, science.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"The dispute is won with a single finding."

Of what?

[muir_redwoods]

Remember, Newton's Laws of motion got corrected by Einstein's Theory of Relativity

[RightWingNilla]

So a transition from fish to amphibians (that is, at the taxonomic level of "class") is not a transitional form? Move the goalposts much?

I am seriously beginning to think the YEC idea of a "transitional" is having an animal morph (in a matter of seconds) into a totally different critter.

Based on the total lack of science literacy exhibited by the creationist posters, they must have gotten their biology education from old Michael Jackson videos.