Replies

And yet you can find no fossil record of the modern horse.

Relentless and shameless, aren't you? Shall I guess the gimmick is going to be that, if it isn't a modern horse, it's just an extinct thing and "Where are the transitionals?" Whereas, if it IS a modern horse, it's just a modern horse and "Where are the transitionals?"

The profusion of fossils from Hyracotherium to Equus make a nicely fleshed-out tree. This is about the sort of thing we should expect from our models of 1) geology and 2) evolution. Doesn't mean we won't find still more if we keep looking.

The names in the table below are all genera, not species. And yet supposedly we have no fossil record here.

2My        Old & New World Equus
                \  |  /
                 \ | /
4My   Hippidion  Equus                                           Stylohipparion
         |        |                   Neohipparion   Hipparion   Cormohipparion
         |        |    Astrohippus         |           |             |
         |        |    Pliohippus          ---------------------------
12My     Dinohippus    Calippus                     \  |  /
             |          |         Pseudhipparion     \ | /
             |          |              |               |
             -------------------------------------------     Sinohippus
15My                  \  |  /                                 |
                       \ | /                     Megahippus   |
17My                Merychippus                      |        |
                         |           Anchitherium    Hypohippus
                         |                 |           |
23My                Parahippus             Anchitherium             Archeohippus
                         |                       |                       |
                  (Kalobatippus?)-----------------------------------------
25My                              \  |  /
                                   \ | /
                                     |
35My                                 |
                                Miohippus  Mesohippus
                                      |        |
40My                                  Mesohippus
                                          |
                                          |
                                          |
45My                      Paleotherium    |
                              |          Epihippus
                              |              |
                       Propalaeotherium      |       Haplohippus
                              |              |       |
50My         Pachynolophus    |              Orohippus
                   |          |                 |
                   |          |                 |
                   ------------------------------
                                    \  |  /
                                     \ | /
55My                             Hyracotherium

From Horse Evolution.

So we have two "sciences" with slightly different information content. Real-World science: the table and link in this post. Loony Science: "And yet you can find no fossil record of the modern horse."

The advantages of each should be obvious. One has more information. The other one is very easy to study.

So which of these ancestors (bones) could mate with a modern horse and produce fertile offspring.

Don't know?

Can't know?

Morphology is not very convincing. Remember the horse skeleton collection that was used for YEARS to tout evolution in texts, and then was exposed as an evolutionary FRAUD. The curator sorted the skeletons by height.

This is reminiscent of Lamarck not Darwin.

>>As this third line of Miocene horses began to specialize in eating grasses, several changes occurred. First, the teeth changed to be better suited for chewing harsh, abrasive grass.<<

But even worse, TALKORIGINS is an evolutionary apologist site.

>>Ideally, of course, we would like to know each lineage right down to the species level, and have detailed species-to-species transitions linking every species in the lineage. But in practice, we get an uneven mix of the two, with only a few species-to-species transitions, and occasionally long time breaks in the lineage. Many laypeople even have the (incorrect) impression that the situation is even worse, and that there are no known transitions at all. Why are there still gaps? And why do many people think that there are even more gaps than there really are? <<

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html#gaps

Morphological species determination is, as I have said before, crap science. NS Evolution is full of squishy definitions, and unsupported assertion about evolutionary "pressures" causing specific changes. NS Evolution does not go after the frauds that have been exposed with vigor.

The horse fraud, the transitional man frauds, the embryo development frauds, the textbook frauds, the requirement of faith in Evolution to advance in biology (or medicine which is worse!)
The more I see these threads the less I am convinced it is even a theory.
NS evolution is not a hard science yet.

It will be. And it will answer many of the above questions. But it will also tighten up the definition of species, and the nature of acceptable evidence.

Talkorigins will be an embarrassment to future biologists, and it will be fun to see.
DK