Posted on 12/05/2003 3:26:16 PM PST by bondserv
New Record-Setting Living Fossil Flabbergasts Scientists 12/05/2003
A remarkably-detailed fossil ostracode, a type of crustacean, has been announced in the Dec. 5 issue of Science1 that is blowing the socks off its discoverers. Erik Stokstad in a review of the discovery in the same issue2 explains its significance in the evolutionary picture of prehistory:
Over the past half-billion years [sic], evolution has dished up [sic] an almost endless variety of novelties: lungs, legs, eyes, wings, scales, feathers, fur. So when paleontologists find a creature that doesn’t change, they take note. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)Two things about this fossil are exceptional. (1) It has a “jaw-dropping” amount of detail, such that even small fragile parts and soft tissues were perfectly preserved. (2) It is indistinguishable from modern ostracodes:
What’s most amazing, ostracode experts say, is how eerily similar the soft-tissue anatomy is to that of modern relatives. “I was flabbergasted,” says Koen Martens, a zoologist at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.This fossil, found near Herefordshire, U.K., was found in Silurian deposits estimated to be 425 million years old. That means that its modern counterparts are living fossils, virtually unchanged for all that time:
Some ostracode specialists are stunned. “This is a demonstration of unbelievable stability,” says Tom Cronin of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Whereas ostracodes diversified [sic] into some 33,000 living and extinct species, “these guys have just been plodding along totally unfazed.”This fossil, named Colymbosathon, is also upsetting those who look for evolution in the genes:
Finding a modern cylindroleberid in the Silurian clashes with molecular data, which suggest that the group and related families originated relatively recently, says evolutionary biologist Todd Oakley of the University of California, Santa Barbara. There’s no conflict for zoologist Anne Cohen, a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, who thinks Colymbosathon actually belongs to a long-extinct family. In any case, the new fossil indicates that a basic ostracode body plan was already present in the Silurian. It could also help [sic] sort out evolutionary relationships of fossil ostracodes.David Horne (Queen Mary College, London) predicts more “long-lost evolutionary blueprints” [sic] may emerge from these deposits. “The probability that they will find similarly preserved representatives of other ostracode lineages, and of other arthropods, is both high and extremely exciting.”
This is just one more of many remarkable, astounding, flabbergasting examples of living fossils. “Unbelievable stability” is not a prediction of Darwinism. The Darwinian world is supposed to be a fluid world, filled with diversification, radiation, and innovation. During the imaginary 425 million years, the continents moved all over the world, animals crawled onto the land and became geckos and crocodiles and birds and caribou. Mountains rose and valleys sank, and glaciers repeatedly advanced and retreated over much of the planet. Some animals moved back into the oceans and became whales, porpoises, manatees and sea lions in just a small fraction of this much time, and humans emerged from grunting chimpanzees, invented language and abstract thought, and conquered space. Is it reasonable to assume that in this slow whirlwind of continuous dynamical change, these ostracodes just reproduced themselves over and over millions of times without any change whatsoever?
Darwinists are caught in a crossfire of antagonistic evidence. Only a well-armored Darwinist could be excited about incoming bombshells like this. Only by wearing Kevlar-lined lead helmets around their brains can they keep the bullets from penetrating and the insides from exploding.
I see. You want me to provide you with a proof that there is no such thing as proof in natural sciences, Whereas you are free as a lark to propound "scientific" theories in contradiction with current scientific findings. I'll show you mine as soon as you show me the proof that there is a natural distinction between speciation and hybredization.
I'll leave a space below for you to point out to me what must surely be the well-known proof of the theory of gravity.
?????
What, pray tell, are they missing FROM? I'll tell you--a continuous record of morphological continuity embedded in monotonically increasing order in a continuous record of geological sequence. Matched nicely, one might add, in later days, by mutational distance comparisons amongst living phyla.
Like the hybridization vs. speciation scam, this one is based on pretending there is a natural meaning to man-made, artificial classification barriers. All fossils are "transitional", in that they are sporadic snapshots of a world teeming with species, only a tiny few examples of which manage the remarkable feat of dying without being broken up and incorporated into other living creatures. When times are turbulant, creatures change faster, and opportunities to fossilize are rarer--so the fossil "gaps" you're so fond of are exactly what you would expect to see in interzonal geographic layers: when times are turbulent.
Science does not lay much stock in deductive logic. Science largely relies on inductive logic. See if you can find an aristotalian proof somewhere in the pages of "Nature" or "Science".
Behe's model has zero credibility to a statistician. To calculate the odds of an event, you need a numerically specified state-space, and a numerically specified selection criteria within that state-space. Neither Behe, nor anyone else, has any idea whatsoever what the state-space and selection criteria actually were that produced life.
Most biologists just don't think about origins questions, but those that do, do not pin much hope on miraculous intervention by Venusians. Just painfully slow responses of increasingly stubbornly persistent pre-DNA congeries of adhering, self-sustaining entities. See Wolfram, See Woese, and see Kauffman for current best musings on the subject.
This is not an answer to the fundamental question of how life originates--it just puts off the question by a few billion years.
Could be???
And to be a believer in Evolution, none of these things are required.
THESE are stock and trade of the "E" folks.
That is not a proof. That is a flawed inductive demonstration. Try it in a non-rotating satellite in stable earth orbit, and your revelation turns into horse manure.
Even if you hold your breath until you turn blue, the theory of panspermia does not address the question of life's initial origins from lifeless organic debris. It merely evades the base question.
That is exactly right. Because science does not represent itself to be absolute, unquestioning truth, science is always ready to bow to better evidence. Unlike certain theologically inspired institutions I could name, who, because of their absolute assurance of their lock on TRUTH, felt justified in burning jews, witches, and scientists who disagreed with them.
Indeed it does. PH made no visible commitment to go away, he said the basic thesis here was laughable and he didn't need to ping anyone, or comment further.
-- your spin of it just makes you look silly [not laughable].
As opposed to spending time and energy insisting PH honor an invisible contract to go away?
Right. because classical evolutionary theorists do not spend energy on origins. Like Darwin, they take origins as a given to work from, and not their problem to address.
/ Same old arguments.
It would be nice if someone said something different, wouldn't it? :>)
It would. Unfortunately, the creationist attack on science curriculum continues unabated in courts and in front of school boards, even as we speak, so I will continue to retrace the same old subjects, in every way that I can think of, over and over. If it's getting to you, please feel free to read other threads.
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