Tracing the whale’s trail [Evolution trial, daily thread for 15 Oct]

York Daily Record [Penna] ^ | 15 October 2005 | LAURI LEBO

[PatrickHenry]

A paleontologist testified in the Dover school board trial about how fossils connect species.

The ancestor of the whale and its first cousin the hippopotamus walked the Earth for 40 million years, munching on plants, before dying out in the ice ages.

Known as the anthracotheres, it became extinct 50 to 60 million years ago, but not before its evolutionary tree diverged — the whale forging into the oceans, the hippopotamus to the African swamps.

Kevin Padian, a University of California-Berkeley paleontologist, told the story of the whale’s journey, along with the travels of its closest living relative, in U.S. Middle District Court Friday to illustrate how the fossil record connects us to our past.

In the First Amendment lawsuit over Dover Area High School’s intelligent design policy, Padian was the plaintiffs’ final science expert to testify. The defense will begin to present its side Monday.

Padian’s testimony was essentially a response to intelligent-design proponents’ claims that paleontology does not account for missing links and the fossil record belies evolutionary theory.

“The problem is that there are no clear transitional fossils linking land mammals to whales,” the pro-intelligent-design textbook “Of Pandas and People” states.

“How many intermediates do you need to suggest relationships?” Padian wondered.

He pointed to numerous transitional fossils as he traced the lineage of the whale to its early ancestors, a group of cloven-hoofed mammals of a group named cetartiodactyla, illustrating the gradual changes of features along the way.

“We think the transitions are pretty good,” he said.

One of Padian’s concerns with intelligent design — the idea that life’s complexities demand an intelligent designer — is that it shuts down the search for answers, he said. “It worries me that students would be told that you can’t get from A to B with natural causes,” he said.

One of the complaints of 11 parents suing the school district is that, after Dover biology students are told about intelligent design, they are referred to “Pandas,” which is housed in the high school library.

While the connection between the whale and hippopotamus is recent, Padian said some of the fossils linking whales to land-dwelling mammals go back to the Civil War but were ignored by the authors of “Pandas.”

The curator of Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology and author of the “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” also testified to the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

“Pandas” states, “Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agent, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.”

But Padian, at times affectionately, showed numerous pictures and diagrams of different reptiles evolving from ones possessing scales to ones possessing feathers.

Of a fossil of an archaeopteryx found in the 1860s, Padian said, “Now this is a beautiful critter.”

He also criticized the book’s assertions on homology — the study of similar characteristics of living organisms used to explain their relationships to other organisms.

As he cross-examined Padian, Dover’s attorney Robert Muise brought up one of science’s most ardent evolutionists in raising questions about the fossil record.

Muise asked Padian about the late Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, the idea that rather than Darwin’s characterization of evolution as slow and gradual change, it may be better described as taking place in fits and starts.

Gould offered the idea as an explanation for the patterns found in the fossil record, which shows abrupt appearances of new species, followed by long stagnant periods with little change.

While “Pandas” argues that intelligent-design proponents consider punctuated equilibrium unprovable, Padian said Gould offered the theory as an explanation to gaps in the fossil record.

“Is natural selection responsible for punctuated equilibrium?” Muise asked at one point.

“That’s a great question,” Padian said. While it may raise questions about the mechanism of evolution, he answered, it doesn’t contradict the idea of common descent.

[Havoc]

Oh, btw, thanks for your hit piece. Hovind provided further info I wasn't aware of in his video. Key points, when they returned in the 90s to continue the search for Glacier girl, they dug down 62 feet and reached a plywood cover that had been left over the earlier dig site. That cover was left in 1983. I was unaware of that. I was also unaware that Cardin also stated that in the 9 years the site was untouched, 30-40 ["annual"] rings accumulated. Nine years.

To show just how afraid Hovind is to be checked out, cause I want to underline this, the date of interview was 4/18/2001.
The interviewee was Bob Cardin, head of the salvage and restoration effort. His phone number is listed in the video as 606-248-1149. Here's to you guys finding some way to ignore facts you don't like lol.

[RunningWolf]

Hey thanks for this info about Hovind vs. Rainbow debate.

I will check it out

[Havoc]

More than one method? What, praytell, do you suggest is a more accurate method than your "annual rings". Please, humor us because there isn't a single method in use today that doesn't have behind it a pile of unproveable assumptions. The assumptions are no less fragile in any of the cases. And as they get sunlight cast in on them, the reverberant whails and moans are always the same, "well what do you recommend we use then?" Something, perhaps, that can actually do what you say it can do would be nice. In absence of that, shutting up would also be nice until you can come up with it. "I don't know" is always preferred over dogmatic pretense.

[RunningWolf]

DOH!!

There is great gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair at the house of evo

[RunningWolf]

there isn't a single method in use today that doesn't have behind it a pile of unproveable assumptions. The assumptions are no less fragile in any of the cases.

AGAIN.. DOH!!

[Havoc]

However on close scrutiny, using analytic procedures developed by geology, the similarities are artificial.

Nuts. Sherlock, let's you and me think something through real quick. Where does the river enter the canyon... At the bottom, right. Unless you can change the laws of physics and make water run uphill, you got some splainin to do. You'd like us all to believe the similarities are artificial. That is your claim. The problem is the facts get in the way of your claims. lol

Before you go using the trench cut through loose aggregate at Mt. St. Helens as a comparator to the canyon cut through age old rock

Well, that's a problem isn't it. Cause you've no evidence that a canyon was cut through "age old rock". The formations are very much the same upon review. St. Helens laid down hundreds if not thousands of layers of sorted sediment before the backed up waters burst through and carved out the river bed area again, leaving the Grand canyon like view behind. Based on what is seen in the spring lake region after St. Helens, one can look at the same thing happening in a once inundated region that is now Grand canyon. Further, if you were to fill in the canyon, you bury the river at the point where it enters the canyon, below ground level, so unless you know how to make water run up hill to carve all that out, you got a real credibility issue. We don't.

Your mention of polystrata fossils is equally misinformed

You mean it just hasn't been properly shaped by you guys yet. We understand that indoctrination only works if you submit to it. Those of us who didn't drink the koolaid can see that fossilized trees missing their root tips and standing upright and unbroken through dozens if not hundreds of layers of sediment can only get their one way, unless you intend to prove how trees dislodged from the ground can stand and petrify in place for eons without breaking or being bothered. Kinda begs lunacy doesn't it. That's the beauty of it - I don't need to do so because common sense begs if for everyone who looks at it. That's why it wins in public debates I'd imagine. LOL

[Havoc]

You do a lot of assuming here.

Maybe I do; but, from your seat I'm a hack when I do it and from our seat you're supposed to be allowed to get away not only with assuming; but, doctrinalizing your assumptions in the same way the assumption of "bleeding" to cure disease once was. See, it isn't as though we don't have some track record to look at here when scrutinizing claims of pseudo scientists. You can beg credulity in trying to disuade people of the facts at hand before ever examining them yourselves; but, as another here aptly showed, it isn't necessary to you guys in many instances to actually bother knowing what your "enemies" say before you demonize them. It's the threat of them that seems to be the problem. And Hovind goes beyond merely mentioning the rings as I merely did, He shows pictures looking down into the cut holes showing the rings plane as day (no pun intended).

As for how science actually uses Ice cores, there have been many shows put up on PBS, history channel and A&E. One I saw within the last year or so dealt with studying ice flows in the antartic. They Use the same terminology and explain it much the same way I did. Hmm. Wonder where I might have gotten such misleading information - from a science program where actual specialists in the field explain it perhaps.. nawww. Couldn't be. bwahahahaha.

[Havoc]

They don't tend to get that picky. In the show I remember seeing aired on the Antartic iceflows studies, they were doing core readings in a hut that was half buried by snow itself. They brought the cores in to look at and compared them with cores taken in other spots around the area they were concerned with. They explained it per my memory as a difference in the coloration primarily where there were obvious noteable changes in color and density. Some "rings" would appear more white while others might be more "clear". Some would be darker. But the seperations/deliniations were obvious to the eye. So no need to play begging games here.
They actually pointed it out in the video and you could see the differences quite clearly. Now that it's being criticized and undermined successfully, there appears to be revisionism going on at the front lines. I hate on the one hand to question people's honesty and integrity; but, on the other hand, when it's as blatent as what's happening here, I'm not sure how one can avoid it.

[Havoc]

You are very welcome, sir. When I hit the sack last night, I fell asleep listening to the opening 30 minutes or so because it is a good debate. I agree with Rainbow that he had a big job ahead of him; but, the guy is impressive. Brilliance just seems to ooze out of him.

I would note that in Rainbow's entire presentation, he seems to miss a HUGE point. Anyone who builds anything as a hobby or out of need does so to their own wants and desires. In the case of hobby, they do it for enjoyment and/or for the sense of fullfillment derived from the accomplishment of the completed piece. I'm an artist and know this all too well. I sculpt with polymer clays, paint, draw, build models, craft things from scratch, you name it. The creative process is something of a labor of love that is not fed by buying someone else's prebuilt/prepainted piece.

When one is good at creating or crafting, precision and detail are bragging points if for no one else but one's own satisfaction of accomplishment. Look at the guy who built a scale replica of the Titanic at rest on the ocean floor.. that wasn't passed off to someone else to do for him. The object wasn't the having, it was the creative process. The having becomes bragging rights when completed. It was a labor of love for this guy, a challenge. He spent countless hours pouring over mind numbing images from the Cameron dives in the archives and was careful in every detail.

The point is, if it's been missed, that personalities create for reasons other than mechanical antiseptic precision. Rainbow has divorced process so far from personality that he misses the point of creativity. It seems kinda funny to propose that God would build a machine to do something for him that he can do himself - as though God were looking for shortcuts to save him time... lol. What is time when one occupies eternity - literally. And what is he saving time for? That pesky dentist appointment next tuesday at 3pm?
Indeed, if he created time itself and is outside of time, then why would saving time ever be an issue? Why would shortcuts be necessary to a being with as far as we know, nothing better to do at the time. In point of fact, that's when I tend to do my best work - when i'm interested and have nothing better to do.

This point is not intended to pick or to make Rainbow look bad or anything. It's just an observation that stands out.
And upon reflection, it seems to fit with countless others as well.

Anyway, hope you get the video or even the audio and enjoy it. I have it on my local machine and will watch a bit more of it before bed. I got my copy from p2p; but, I'd imagine Hovind has it on his site. If not, let me know and I'm willing to make arrangements to provide the file on some public storage medium if people are interested. I don't mind the trouble.

[Havoc]

;)

[si tacuissem]

I try to catch up...

You wrote: " I was unaware of that. I was also unaware that Cardin also stated that in the 9 years the site was untouched, 30-40 ["annual"] rings accumulated. Nine years."

So I tried to solve this "miracle".

" Upper layers of ice in a core corresponds to a single year or sometimes a single season. Deeper into the ice the layers thin and annual layers become indistinguishable." (from Wikipedia)

Nine years correlate pretty well to 30-40 *seasonal* layers.

[Havoc]

Nine years may or may not correlate well to 30-40 *whatever adjective used* layers. That's the point. Without precipitation amounts, specific data on temperature levels, actual melts vs. actual accumulation events specific to season and year, you have no bloody idea what correlates to what. In a warm season, you might lose ten years of what might amount to data in a single day's melt off. Ten days later, during a blizard, you might accumulate ten years worth of accumulation in 8 hours. And this can happen over and over again.

To put a fine point on this intentionally, this is an observation a first year highschool student can both make and understand - even explain coherently. You'd have us believe that Scientists with vast IQs could miss something of this nature that so clearly undermines their model - indeed destroys it for any amount of credibility. It begs absurdity.

In absence of the precip and other weather data, you have nothing to correlate to other than assumption. And assumption, if we hide what the object of the dig is, puts the object well into the past beyond where it accurately belongs by standard methodology. What does that tell us? Your methodology ain't worth squat. It isn't that it has a bad margin of error. It's all error because the margin is unknown. The mragin is unknown because all the reinforcing facts for anything past a hundred or so years ago doesn't exist. You can argue trends you can argue any number of things. What you can't argue with any objectivity is the first bit of credibility of the method when you have no data upon which to base proper judgement.

Let's get even more obvious, shall we. Cause I like obvious. Look at the amount of material St. Helens laid down in a matter of hours in the Spring lake region. How many thousands if not millions of years would we be entreated to by you guys if we hadn't been here for the event. If we hadn't seen it first hand or in later reports.
It would likely end up being explained in the same manner as presumed volcanic events of the past.. with you guys telling us how 10s of feet of accumulated sedimentation over a layer of ash was millions of years worth of buildup - when in all likelyhood, it was at best thousands of seconds.

Is the idea smart with data to back it up for yearly rates, sure, it can be as long as you have the data to correlate with. As soon as you don't, the ground comes out from under you. The most obvious statement that can be made here is that Randomness doesn't create harmonic order.

Just for grins, let's think about something else for a second that is based on both observations and assumptions - the concept of global warming. Just a cute thought I'd like to proffer. You guys see a warming trend, why because it's warm in october and sometimes into November of late. I remember in my childhood when it was cold and kite flying weather during october. We bout froze our butts off on Halloween night a number of years in a row. This year, as last, I can still ride a motorcycle and probably will be well into November if not December.. At the same time, winter seems to have crept right up on summer - snowing almost till June seemingly - at least being butt cold till then. Your observation as a global warming nut would presume the earth is warming up. My observation is the seasons seem to be out of whack - even moving.. So, rather than a warming trend that doesn't account for the length of winter moving at the same time the warm trends are moving.. why are we not looking at the accuracy of our seasonal model? I've written programs and noted what happens when timing is off in a given loop, things happen when they're not supposed to - early or late.

Data is nice, but the lack of it isn't solved by assumption.
And often asking the right question or different questions may lead to a more proper result. I'm not trying to educate you - just suggesting that some of us are thinking rather than accepting blindly anything that anyone presents us. I'm also suggesting that what we like, though it seems reasonable, isn't necessarily reasonable if we bother to look beyond it's apparent helpfulness. When it comes to core dating, sedimentation and other dating methodologies, I think science was too worried with the appearances of doing something to be concerned with the actuality. And it likely was due to asking only the questions favored and settling for the answers most beneficial to the moment. That seems apparent due to the ease with which one can undo the doctrines...

[King Prout]

"genius",

the problem you have is reading comprehension.

I stated that ice cores do not have annual *rings* - and they do not.

I then stated that they are records of yearly cycles of snow deposition.

Yearly = annual.

In the relatively uncompressed ice within a few hundred feet of the surface, years are distinguished by visible strata in the ice. These strata are caused by the seasonal mean temperature shift, which causes a change in the crystalline form of the snow at the surface during summer's partial thaws.

One can count these visible strata quite easily, until the ice is so deep that pressure has compressed it to the point where the strata are no longer visible to the naked eye. At that point, specialized sampling and analysis technology must be used to identify embedded seasonal contaminants such as pollen. I know virtually nothing regarding these techniques, so I shall not attempt to explain them to you. What I do know, "genius", is that ice cores can be read back several thousands of years.

Each layer contained in ice cores thus form records of: each year's precipitation in that area, trace elements in the atmosphere, volcanic dust indicating eruptions, pollen, and other indicia. Taken serially, these yearly strata contain a record of long-term climate data, which data can be used to track climate changes.

I don't get my information from television, "genius" - I get this specific information from a friend of mine currently serving her second tour at the South Pole on Antarctica.

TRY. AGAIN.

[Havoc]

On the "annual rings" matter, lest I be accused of letting the subject go only on such meager claim as Scientific American, I thought I might cruise the web and further make you guys eat word. Ready:

Link 1 Richard Alley, one of the world's leading climate researchers, tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. In the 1990s he and his colleagues made headlines with the discovery that the last ice age came to an abrupt end over a period of only three years. Here Alley offers the first popular account of the wildly fluctuating climate that characterized most of prehistory--long deep freezes alternating briefly with mild conditions--and explains that we humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate. But, he warns, our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years.

Ok, maybe that was unfair because it also deals with icecores in Greenland.. lol. But the term used is "annual rings".

Here is one dealing with "annual" rings on an iceberg.

Here's a blog that references Annual layers and likens them to tree rings. Kinda wimpy, huh.

I like this one:

Each of the two ice cores, 154.8 and 163.6 meters long, yielded clear layering and annual dust layers that reflected the yearly cycle of wet and dry seasons, the latter bringing dust particles from the and lands to the west to the high Andes. The average year-round temperature at Quelccaya is minus three degrees Celsius-so far below freezing that the annual variations in the ice core accumulation reflect actual precipitation rather than variations in the intensity of summer melting. The research team believes this was the case for all of the fifteen hundred years of the cores, and that the annual rings give a chronology that is accurate to within about twenty years.

Oh, and one last one, I thought might be fun...


This is looking down into the boreholes melted out to reach Glacier Girl. Note the "annual rings"... /snickering

[Havoc]

See 454, thanks ;) lol

[Junior]

Oh please, yourself. The same scientific method that gave us the theory of evolution also gave us the basis for the technonology in the computer you're using. The theory of evolution is better supported by evidence than many theories out there, but anti-E types try to paint it as half-baked guesswork ("it's only a theory!"), as if the methodology that produced it was flawed.

[Junior]

You are mixing apples and oranges. All theories are subject to revision, hence the hesitant wording in scientific writings that you average creo jumps all over. The theory of evolution is constantly being tested; and, while the mechanics of evolution have been revised and tweaked in the last 150-odd years, the basics of the theory -- common descent, and descent through modification, have withstood the tests of time.

The theory is sound. The methodology is sound. These folks are attacking evolution because it does not agree with their particular religious views. However, in doing so they are bringing into question the scientific method which produced the theory of evolution, but which also produced all the science and technology we take for granted in the modern world.

[King Prout]

so, you are stupid enough to confuse "bore" with "core" eh?

[Havoc]

For more fun, we're dealing with an idea of a core that is only 263 feet with Glacier Girl. And it's 48 years worth of data. But in one of the links I noted for the use of the term 'annual rings' applied to ice core rings, another story on that matter Here discusses how they use cores from that location measuring 422 feet and 553 feet respectively to date back over 2000 years.. At 263 feet, we're 48 years old, double that and we're more than 2000 years back. somethin smells like funky feet. The funnier thing is they found an insect - stated in the article - at a 210 foot depth. I'm sure it's millions of years old (obvious sarcasm). I did try to find a date attributed to it; but, found nothing. So if anyone else wants to try, I'd be interested for the sake of a laugh.

[Havoc]

No, I'm just not dumb enough to see there is any difference. One's an innie, one's an outie. They contain the same data.
I'm sure, though, that you'll now tell us they don't by some
great mystery religion sophistry. Do flatter us with the tale.. lol