Where's PETA when it counts?
Posted on 08/23/2005 10:39:22 AM PDT by woodb01
Where's PETA when it counts?
It (Ichys post) was presented as evidence of "transitional" fossils purportedly showing the progression from dinosaur to bird. Are you saying that it may not be that way...that the scientific data he presented is in error?
And even if you were right, evolution isn't a steady progression from a to z. It's two steps forward, one back. Observing the one back step doesn't invalidate the argument that there's stepping going on.
That's honestly a new one on me. Things devolve in order to later evolve. So you're saying that some of the fossils we dig up might not actually be example of evolution, but devolution? Why don't they just use some kind of super duper test to check the age of the bones instead of having to guess where they belong in an evolutionary sequence?
Correct.
That doesn't mean, however, that I have made the elementary mistake of saying that one is ancestral to the other.
In a nutshell this is the order he listed as a sequence in evolution: [snip] Now there are scientists, professors even, well versed and well studied in paleotology and avian evolution who insist that Caudipteryx is a descendent of Archaeopteryx.
Really? Who?
So my question is: Why isn't the matter settled?
You have yet to document that it actually *isn't*.
Why can't they just point and laugh at the idiot scientists who obviously have dated these fossils wrong?
Because cladistic trees aren't based on dates in the first place. Maybe you should make sure you actually know what you're talking about before you attempt to spot a "flaw" in my posts.
After all evolution (as pointed out by so many) is a proven fact.
And it is.
You would think that scientists in the same field would be able to agree on the age of a fossil. But their aging varies by apparently millions of years.
You have a vivid imagination.
Occam's Razor. If it isn't science, it's the kind of logic science uses. Parsimony. Cladistics is all about parsimony.
It makes sense that God created the universe and the creatures in it to me.
You know, I had a theory that that's what was going on with your incredulity. It fit the data I had. What looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck probably is a duck. You're a creationist objecting on religious grounds and grasping at any straw he can find. That's what you looked like.
Same thing with that cladogram. It makes the most sense according to a parsimony analysis of the fossils we have.
Ah...I see. So then in fact the fossils Ichy presented are not really transitional fossils, but fossils that merely show a transition? The actual fossils used aren't the important thing?
There's a huge preponderance of opinion that birds are descended from theropods.
There's a huge preponderance of opinion that God created man and every living creature. You'll have to do better than that if you want to make a scientific point. For example, there is NOT a huge preponderance of opinion that says 2+2=5 or that a water molecule is composed of 5 parts of carbon.
That's even worse than stable, like Arafat.
I was pretty proud of my last post...why didn't you read it. Alan Feduccia? Wikipedia states about Caudipteryx
: "Feduccia believes these fossils are flightless birds that evolved from a flying ancestor, probably Archaeopteryx."
Why can't they just point and laugh at the idiot scientists who obviously have dated these fossils wrong?
Because cladistic trees aren't based on dates in the first place. Maybe you should make sure you actually know what you're talking about before you attempt to spot a "flaw" in my posts.
So what was the point in posting a cladistic tree to show the transistion of dinosaurs into birds if it has nothing to do with dating? Isn't evolution about change over time? Are you saying that how old fossils actually are has no bearing? Scratch that. Let me ask straight out. How old are each of the fossils in the "transitional sequence" (your words) that you posted?
I'm genuinely curious as to dates and why or why they don't matter.
Thankfully, science is not defined by appeal to popularity.
Looks rather twisty-shouty. You can never tell if fossil A is the direct ancestor of fossil B even if it is older and everything looks right. You might find a better contemporary candidate for direct ancestry later. That's just how it is.
It still means something if you find a fossil series that morphs like movie frames, even if one frame is seemingly out of order. You consistently decline to explain why such a thing exists at all if it doesn't mean what most scientists think it does.
There's a huge preponderance of opinion that God created man and every living creature.
A lot of scientists who accept evolution are in that statistic. Strawman.
You'll have to do better than that if you want to make a scientific point.
Why don't you try doing better? I am citing the preponderance of opinion in science. You are citing one Alan Feduccia, last I saw. Except Feduccia does think birds evolved from reptiles only it was archosaurs. He thinks so precisely because he can make a case for it based on some morphological similarities. His problem is that the same logic makes a far better case for theropods. Your problem is you don't accept any of this logic at all and have no real horse to put in the race except your unwillingness to understand.
For example, there is NOT a huge preponderance of opinion that says 2+2=5 or that a water molecule is composed of 5 parts of carbon.
Indeed there is not. Were you composing in a hurry? Let me try again: There is a huge preponderance of evidence and opinion in science that birds evolved from dinosaurs. You were asking why it isn't settled. It's basically settled. There are always a few tenacious borderline-crackpot types in science. Lots of people work in that area and we don't screen for sanity.
Tell that to Dr. Alan Feduccia...
A classic to rank with National Lampoon's.
Then why are people posting fossil sequences and purporting to prove evolution? By your own admission it's uncertain and inexact.
It still means something if you find a fossil series that morphs like movie frames, even if one frame is seemingly out of order. You consistently decline to explain why such a thing exists at all if it doesn't mean what most scientists think it does
I can come up with a lot of reasons. I would say that they're similiar creatures that lived about the same time. Or they're similiar creatures that lived at different times. Throw out your belief in transistional fossils and all that it implies and how would you prove me wrong? It should be easy, shouldn't it?
Oh, yeah. You're right it would work like that. Dummy me, I fell for tallhappy's deception. If the glove don't fit, you must aquit (another spin, another place).
In other words, of all the zillions of cells infected, only three patients got the bad locus, and even then it was likely to have happened in one solitary cell.
I see it.
In cladistic analyses, Caudipteryx is usually shown to be closely related to the Oviraptoridae.Cladistic analysis tends to be based on a broad spectrum of comparative features and often needs a computer for all the number crunching.
Paleontologists Alan Feduccia and Larry Martin, however, claim the remains are not dinosaurian at all, but those of a bird. They note that the fossils have a short tail, similar to the bird Confusiusornis, and the skull shows many birdlike features that are not found in theropods. Stomach stones were present, which indicate that these were herbivores, resembling Enanthiornites and flightless birds. The fossils have no predatory hand claws like theropods, and lack the serrated teeth typical of theropods. Feduccia believes these fossils are flightless birds that evolved from a flying ancestor, probably Archaeopteryx.
Feduccia and Martin have zoomed in on a handful of features that favor their idea. Here's what my link you didn't read said about cladistics versus the theropod deniers:
Finally, such opponents also refuse to use the methods and evidence normally accepted by comparative evolutionary biologists, such as phylogenetic systematics and parsimony. They rely more on an "intuitive approach," which is not a method at all but just an untestable gestalt impression laden with assumptions about how evolution must work. The "controversy" remains an interest more of the press than the general scientific community.A bigger question. It's no problem telling any extant bird from any extant reptile. The idea seems almost ridiculous. But here's Caudipteryx and it seems hard to decide if it's a dinosaur or a bird.
Evolution says transitions are smooth. THERE SHOULD BE specimens whose status in one bin or the other is extremely arguable because the bins are arbitrary and the change is smooth. Caudipteryx is just one example of a thing like that. (Archaeopteryx itself is the more classic example. It's almost a perfect half and half between a bird and a dinosaur.)
Evolution says related things diverge from each other in time. That's again what we see. You can't confuse any bird with any reptile today. Go back in time, you get confused. The bins which are based on modern forms don't work. Everything is converging. Same thing happens with reptiles and mammals. Land animals and whales. Humans and apes.
You don't have a story for that, do you? You're going to brazenly ignore it. Evolution says there's this branching tree. There is. Creationism spends most of its time denying the evidence even exists.
I meant what I said. The point was that virtually no scientist thinks that 2+2=5 or that a water molecule is composed of anything but 2 parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen. Opinion doesn't matter. It's hard, basic, provable testable science.
You were asking why it isn't settled. It's basically settled. There are always a few tenacious borderline-crackpot types in science. Lots of people work in that area and we don't screen for sanity.
Feduccia is a crackpot? He literally wrote the book on avian evolution. He's not alone. The disagreement among evolutionists are there because it's not like math and chemistry where the answers are obvious and testable.
You mean...the so-called "missing" link is no longer missing! Oh, horrors! What'll they do? What'll they do?
[Ichneumon:] No it doesn't. Learn how to read a cladistic tree, you dolt. It says that Caudipteryx's ancestors split off from the Archaeopteryx lineage prior to the splitting off of the families which appear between them in the tree.
[DouglasKC:] I'm able to post without calling you names.
That's because I don't make goofy, triumphant, idiotically false accusations against you which warrant pointing out that I'm behaving like an idiot.
I would expect the same consideration.
You have my full permission that if I ever *do* behave like that much of an idiot, the same consideration would apply.
You make the point yourself in your post that there is an evolutionary sequence involving each of those critters. It's in your post.
No, it isn't. Not in the way you misstate it, anyway.
You even have commentary pointing out the evolutionary changes to us dolts.
Not clearly *enough*, it seems...
[DouglasKC:] However, there are evolutionary avian experts who posit the exact opposite...that Caudipteryx evolved from Archaeopteryx.
[Ichneumon:] Feel free to name them, and cite their research to that effect.
[DouglasKC:] Thanks, I will.
Apparently you won't, because the page you link doesn't actually say what you claim it says.
This is the faculty page for Dr. Allan Feduccia. Dr. Feduccia teaches at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an expert in the field of avian evolution. The webpage says : "Alan Feduccia's research centers on the origin and early evolution of flight, feathers, and endothermy. He is also interested in the evolution of birds through the Tertiary, the origins of flightlessness and the evolution of other morphological specializations in the world avifauna, and avian systematics in general." The page has references that state: His new book The Origin and Evolution of Birds was the lead science book for Yale University Press for the fall of 1996, and winner of the 1996 Scholarly and Professional Publishing Award of the Association of American Publishers. Feduccia has recently published cover articles in Science and Naturwissenschaften, and the former was listed in Discover Magazine's top 50 news stories of 1993, and in Science News' science news of the year. Undoubtedly he is an expert in the field.
Blah, blah, blah. I don't care about anyone's alleged qualifications (as we all know, even the "experts" can screw up), especially when you're quoting their *own* descriptions of themselves, I care whether their evidence holds water. But that's a moot question in this case, since you misread the web page anyway. The web page you link below actually agrees with *my* cladogram, not your own sequence.
Yet he thinks that your evolutionary sequence is not correct. His views are best summed up in this article..
It's sweet that you spammed so much of Feduccia's resume in your post, when there's *NOTHING* on that page you linked which quotes Feduccia saying anything whatsoever to support your contention that he's one of the folks who are, you claim, "evolutionary avian experts who posit the exact opposite...that Caudipteryx evolved from Archaeopteryx".
The only thing that Feduccia says on that link is that he "isn't convinced" that the featherlike markings on some fossils actually are feathers.
Oooookay... And this is the same as asserting that "Caudipteryx evolved from Archaeopteryx" HOW, exactly? Oh, right, it isn't.
The really funny part is that the page you link actually *agrees* with me that Protarchaeopteryx "was more developed than Caudipteryx" (i.e., comes *after* it on the cladogram, not before).
Care to try again?
Be careful of leaning too heavily on Feduccia, by the way -- while it's highly unlikely that even he is foolish enough to actually claim what you say he does (that "Caudipteryx evolved from Archaeopteryx") because he would actually place them on very *SEPARATE* lineages in his minority "birds did not evolve from dinosaurs but from something else" view, he's not a great authority on much else either, because he's rather a crank on the subject, and is famous for getting a lot of elementary things wrong. No *wonder* he's such a darling of creationists, and speaks at their meetings. Feduccia and Larry Miller are pretty much the *only* holdouts to the now widely accepted (due to the evidence) conclusion that birds did, indeed, descend from theopod dinosaurs in the manner indicated by the cladogram I posted.
[No we're not. You really haven't a clue as to how cladistic trees are constructed, or read, have you?]
Well clue me in sport.
Cladograms are not based on dates.
Obviously I'm not understanding something here.
Obviously.
How many years transpired between Caudipteryx and Archaeopteryx and what tests can you show me that prove it?
I don't know and I don't care (go look it up yourself), the dates of the specimens are irrelevant to the construction of the cladogram, for the same reason that the following creationist slogan is a silly fallacy: "If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?", and similar misconceptions (i.e., amphibians evolved from fish, but there are still fish even today).
[No, because a) cladistic trees are based on a huge amount of actual evidence, not "guesses", and b) your own "guess" is highly unlikely to be "as good as another" because you're a complete idiot when it comes to biology.]
Minus the (5? 10? 15?) actual fossils
Thousands.
and how the scientists interpret them,
...and the thousands of observed characteristics in each fossil...
what is the huge amount of actual evidence?
See above.
And where was your so-called "evolution" before trees evolved?!?
HA!
Because many people are less clue-resistant than yourself and the display you are making will not convince anyone who gets it better than you do.
I can come up with a lot of reasons. I would say that they're similiar creatures that lived about the same time. Or they're similiar creatures that lived at different times.
Your Nobel awaits you, Einstein.
I will here repost the standard form of the "No transitional forms" dialogue.
But wasn't all that evidence relevant when it was supposedly missing?
- Tap-Dancing Science-Denier declares that the fossil record lacks instances of things changing in an orderly series from some Thing A to Thing Z. As this kind of evidence is to be expected, the lack of it must weigh against evolution having happened. By the very statement of this objection we are invited to believe the Tap-Dancing Science-Denier would accept such evidence IF ONLY IT EXISTED but the thing is it doesn't exist.
- Someone who disagrees demonstrates many instances well known in the literature of fossil series intermediate in form and time between some Thing A and some Thing Z.
- The Tap-Dancer then declares fossil series evidence to be irrelevant. How do we know ... various things? The dates of the fossils? Whether fossil A lies exactly on the ancestral line of fossil B?
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