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I'm not impressed, the supposed similarities notwithstanding.

Then you really haven't grasped its significance.

More information on this evolutionary event:

Gene Content and Function of the Ancestral Chromosome Fusion Site in Human Chromosome 2q13–2q14.1 and Paralogous Regions
Genomic Structure and Evolution of the Ancestral Chromosome Fusion Site in 2q13-2q14.1 and Paralogous Regions on Other Human Chromosomes

You fail to address my central point which is that when the "ancestor" with 24 pairs gave birth to a 23 pair animal, that 23 animal had to be able to mate with members of the 24 population (unless you are supposing that two 23s were born at nearly the same time and found each other). So for a while at least the 23 and 24s were biologically compatible (i.e. the same species).

Yes -- I covered this in my post. Did you not bother to read it, just fail to understand it?

Over a long time supposedly the 23 and 24 went their separate ways, I guess you want to tell us.

Yes. Look up "genetic fixation" if you want to come up to speed and be able keep up your end of the discussion.

But if this really takes a long time,

On average it takes 4*N generations, where N is the population size. And that's if the effect of the genetic change is *neutral* -- if it causes selection to come into play (positive *or* negative selection), then fixation occurs even *faster*. Consult any text on population genetics.

and if similar processes continue today, which I think you also want us to believe, then we should see numerous species with mixed chromosome counts. But we don't.

But we do see that in nature today, actually, contrary to your arrogant but dead wrong declaration that "we don't"...

Miniature Siberian swine, for example, have chromosome counts (in different individuals) of 36, 37, and 38. Among 41 tested individuals of the neotropical water rat Nectomys, chromosome counts of 52, 53, 56 and 57 were found. In the tufted deer (Elaphodus cephalophus), chromosome counts of 46, 47, and 48 were found. In the Lemur fulvus collaris, chromosome counts of 48, 50, 51, and 52 were found. In the owl monkey (Aotus), chromosome counts of 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, and 54 were found. In the Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx), 8 of 62 individuals in one herd were found to have two fewer chromosomes due to a fusion of chromosomes #17 and #19 -- this was traced back to an event two generations earlier, since the ancestries of the individuals were known. In the Black Rat, chromosome counts of 38, 40, and 42 were found. In 50 tested rainbow trout, chromosome counts of 59, 60, 61, 62 and 63 were found. In the okapi, chromosome counts of 44, 45, and 46 have been found. In the common house mouse Mus domesticus), a wide range of chromosome counts between 44 to 80 have been found.

(Beware of anti-evolutionists -- they have a very common tendency to post their mere guesses as if they were established truth.)

Now, would you care to retract your bulls**t declaration, and explain how you managed to be so arrogant as to flatly declare something that was quite simply not true, and that you had absolutely no basis for making?

Let this be a lesson about your embarrassing tendency to mistake your uninformed presumptions for facts.

Thanks for taking the time to write so much for us, I know it is hard work, posts like that don't just assemble themselves. I especially appreciated the section on SINE and markers, which is a fascinating subject to me.

I'll just make a few points, because I hate these discussions....

Creationists who claim that cetaceans did not arise from four-legged land mammals must ignore or somehow dismiss the fossil evidence of apparent whale ancestors looking exactly like one would predict for transitional species between land mammals and whales--with diminutive legs and with ear structures intermediate between those of modern artiodactyls and cetaceans (Nature 368:844,1994; Science 263: 210, 1994).

Not going to get into this realm of the match, except to point out that a good, smart programmer can write software that will successfully "predict" every known move in the stock market. Then, when the program fails to predict the next one, they can tweak it to predict that also. This does not, in an of itself, mean that eventually the program will successfully predict the stock market. It would be remarkably surprising if the current layout of speciation did NOT match the current evidence, as the evidence is used to create the layout.

Then after an excellent and easily understood explanation of genetic mutation and redundancy: All this is as predicted by evolutionary theory, you'll note.

There may be creationists who don't believe in evolutionary theory as regards genetic mutation and variation, but I'm not one of them. This is the "science" of evolution, that genetic mutations occur, that they cause variations in species, that they can and have created what we now refer to as "new species".

A little further down: This is the sort of prediction implied by the evolutionary theory which could be cross-checked by further research of various types, and if verified, would be yet further confirmation that evolutionary theory is likely correct. So far, evolutionary theory has been subjected to literally countless tests like this, large and small, and the vast majority of results have confirmed the evolutionary prediction

This is somewhat a circular argument. When this type of work first started, the "vast majority" of results were not confirmed, but as things were re-arranged to match this science, it provided a more consistant history than we had before we had this ability, and instead were dependent on less "scientific", more "artistic" matching of partial fossil records.

Even now, findings don't always match the existing "evolutionary tree", but we don't throw out the tree when this happens, or call evolution false because it failed to correctly predict something, instead we simply re-arrange the trees and happily move on.

And finally on this same discussion of GLO: Finally, note that there are ZERO mutational differences between the human DNA and the chimpanzee DNA, our nearest living relative.

Which could be counterintuitive, since with the billions of each species that have lived, and with a useless gene, you might expect MORE genetic variation than in species for which the sequence is critical. But, like how commentators can always tell you why the stock market goes up, or goes down, this does not disprove evolution. If we find no variation, it's because we are "close" on the tree, if there are a lot of mutations it's because evolution predicts there can be more mutations in a sequence that is unnecessary.

one thing is clear. Virtually anybody who truly believes that God created life (in a meaningful way) will NOT make it into the field of biology today. The creationist would argue that is because of the faith of biology, the biologists assert it is because of the anti-scientific views of the creationists. But whichever the reason, the fact that 99+% of biologists believe in evolution is only somewhat more interesting than that 99+% of the priests in a church believe in the church teachings, or that most people who join an Adult Lego Fan Club actually like to play with Legos.

Me: and if similar processes continue today, which I think you also want us to believe, then we should see numerous species with mixed chromosome counts. But we don't.

You: But we do see that in nature today, actually, contrary to your arrogant but dead wrong declaration that "we don't"...

Well please excuse this highly arrogant remark of mine.

I assume you know that I know that there are mixed chromosome counts in species as for example with Downes Syndrome humans. I think this was even part of one of our exchanges on this thread. When I said there should be species with mixed chromosome counts, I meant mixed the way eye color is mixed in the population. I'm not talking about less than one percent of a species population which is mostly sterile anyway.

Here's what the Britannica says:

Every species has a characteristic number of chromosomes (chromosome number).

Here's a site that discusses Variation in Chromosome Number. If you hunt around you can find this statement:

An important point to remember is that aneuploidy is usually lethal in animals

but you want everyone to believe this has been the key to moving life forward over zillions of years.

Please spare me the textbook replies. I already own several of the current texts on this topic.

ML/NJ