A Whale of a Problem for Evolution: Ancient Whale Jawbone Found in Antartica

_{Jonathan McLatchie

October 14, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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MSNBC.com is reporting on the discovery of a jawbone of an ancient whale in Antarctica: the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered. The news story reports,

The jawbone of an ancient whale found in Antarctica may be the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered, Argentine scientists said Tuesday.

A scientist not involved in the find said it could suggest that whales evolved much more quickly from their amphibian precursors than previously thought.

Argentine paleontologist Marcelo Reguero, who led a joint Argentine-Swedish team, said the fossilized archaeocete jawbone found in February dates back 49 million years. In evolutionary terms, that’s not far off from the fossils of even older proto-whales from 53 million years ago that have been found in South Asia and other warmer latitudes.

Those earlier proto-whales were amphibians, able to live on land as well as sea. This jawbone, in contrast, belongs to the Basilosauridae group of fully aquatic whales, said Reguero, who leads research for the Argentine Antarctic Institute.

“The relevance of this discovery is that it’s the oldest known completely aquatic whale found yet,” said Reguero, who shared the discovery with Argentine paleontologist Claudia Tambussi and Swedish paleontologists Thomas Mors and Jonas Hagstrom of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm.

Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist who wasn’t involved in the research, said that if the new find withstands the scrutiny of other scientists, it will suggest that archaeocetes evolved much more quickly than previously thought from their semi-aquatic origin in present-day India and Pakistan.

“The important thing is the location,” Sereno said. “To find one in Antarctica is very interesting.”

As many readers will doubtless be aware, the evolution of the whale has previously raised substantial problems because of the extremely abrupt timescale over which it occurred. Evolutionary Biologist Richard von Sternberg has previously applied the population genetic equations employed in a 2008 paper by Durrett and Schmidt to argue against the plausibility of the transition happening in such a short period of time. Indeed, the evolution of Dorudon and Basilosaurus (38 mya) from Pakicetus (53 mya) has been previously compressed into a period of less than 15 million years.

Previously, the whale series looked something like this:

Such a transition is a fete of genetic rewiring and it is astonishing that it is presumed to have occurred by Darwinian processes in such a short span of time. This problem is accentuated when one considers that the majority of anatomical novelties unique to aquatic cetaceans (Pelagiceti) appeared during just a few million years – probably within 1-3 million years. The equations of population genetics predict that – assuming an effective population size of 100,000 individuals per generation, and a generation turnover time of 5 years (according to Richard Sternberg’s calculations and based on equations of population genetics applied in the Durrett and Schmidt paper), that one may reasonably expect two specific co-ordinated mutations to achieve fixation in the timeframe of around 43.3 million years. When one considers the magnitude of the engineering fete, such a scenario is found to be devoid of credibility. Whales require an intra-abdominal counter current heat exchange system (the testis are inside the body right next to the muscles that generate heat during swimming), they need to possess a ball vertebra because the tail has to move up and down instead of side-to-side, they require a re-organisation of kidney tissue to facilitate the intake of salt water, they require a re-orientation of the fetus for giving birth under water, they require a modification of the mammary glands for the nursing of young under water, the forelimbs have to be transformed into flippers, the hindlimbs need to be substantially reduced, they require a special lung surfactant (the lung has to re-expand very rapidly upon coming up to the surface), etc etc.

With this new fossil find, however, dating to 49 million years ago (bear in mind that Pakicetus lived around 53 million years ago), this means that the first fully aquatic whales now date to around the time when walking whales (Ambulocetus) first appear. This substantially reduces the window of time in which the Darwinian mechanism has to accomplish truly radical engineering innovations and genetic rewiring to perhaps just five million years — or perhaps even less. It also suggests that this fully aquatic whale existed before its previously-thought-to-be semi-aquatic archaeocetid ancestors.

Another day; another bad day for Darwinism.

Comments

Sorry Lizzie, but that’s nonsense. The fossil record is a story of discontinuity, extinction and stasis. There is nothing remotely tree-like about it unless you want to talk about an upside town tree that begins with the Cambrian explosion… but we both know that that does atheistic evolutionists no favours!
Let's leave atheism out of this, right, Chris? We are talking about science, are we not? OK. Certainly the fossil record is a story of extinctions. That doesn't make the pattern un-tree-like, or rather, it has no effect whatsoever on the nesting of the hierarchies. They are still nested. Certainly there is a story of periods of stasis. Again, what about stasis violates treesomeness? Not only does it not violate nested hierarchies, it is entirely consistent with the Darwinian mechanism of adaptation. As for "discontinuity": as you agree, we expect some discontinuities, because fossilisation is both rare, and only possible in certain habitats. So "discontinuities" in themselves are not a problem, just as it is perfectly possible to get the general picture of a jig-saw puzzle, even if whole sections are missing. So what makes you think the pattern of what we do have is not tree-like? What is not tree-like about the deeply nested hierarchies into which the characters of organisms readily fall?
I feel no need to indulge your goalpost moving word games about missing links any further. I said it all in 2.1.1.1.9.
I am not playing "games" Chris. I find the suggestion that I am, somewhat offensive. But thanks for the reference to your earlier post. Unfortunately it doesn't address my question. You appeared to claim that there was not "one missing link in the fossil record". So I asked you to say what you meant by "missing link", because on the only interpretation I can make, the fossil record is all "missing links" - or at least, they are missing until we find them! And if what you actually mean is "new transitional fossils", again, there are a great many - fossils that are found to have characters shared with two already known taxonomic groups. They don't have to be in direct line of descent between the two, what they have to do is represent what must be an intermediate branch.
Just one more thing, please name one single extant species that is ancestral to another named but markedly different species (found only in the fossil record). If “the fossil data.. overwhelmingly supports a tree” then this would be easy. I doubt that Lizzie will rise to this challenge so it is open to any evolutionist.
I do wish you wouldn't be so aggressive, Chris. I don't know what I did to upset you, but it was clearly something. The fundamental problem seems to be that you lack a clear understanding of what evolutionary biologists actually claim. This is evidenced by this very question. Obviously no extant species can be ancestral to another! Extant species are the descendents of ancestral species, they don't have any descendents yet! And clearly no extant species can be ancestral to a species that lived earlier (i.e. is only found in the fossil record!) So there is clearly confusion here. What can you mean? One issue, clearly, is the word "species" - normally this is regarded as a horizontal concept, not a vertical one, although sometimes when one lineage remains very unchanged and a branching lineage changes a lot, we do say that the little-changed population is a "living fossil" that is "ancestral" to some other extant population. But this would be very loose terminology. But assuming this is what you mean: coelocanths, which are very little (but not un-)changed from their Devonian ancestors, are lobed-limbed fish, as were the lobe-limbed fish that are thought to have evolved into what we now called tetrapods, and from which all modern tetrapods, including ourselves, are thought to have descended, and also including extinct tetrapods, like Tyrannosaurus Rex. So that's my example - coelocanths are an extant species that has changed very little since its Devonian ancestor, and that Devonian ancestor was (or, if you prefer, is postulated to be) also ancestral to a very different now extinct animal called Tyrannosaurus Rex. But clearly modern coelocanths are not the ancestors of an extinct species! Moreover, it is worth noting that coelocanths have been subjected to just as much selective pressure as we have, over our lineages since our (alleged) lobe-limbed aquatic Devonian common ancestor. The difference is that those pressures have tended to maintain coelocanths at their local optimum, and they still, accordingly, inhabit the kind of habitat our Devonian common ancestor did. In contrast, we, and T. Rex, adapted to very different environments, and thus bear far less resemblance to that aquatic ancestor.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 15, 2011
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For whatever reason, your other post wasn't up when I wrote my reply. Yes, we would still be extrapolating, but your underlying premise is that we can make reasonable estimations of what other parts of the skeleton looked like. But when you're dealing with an intermediate form, or what is thought to be one, then how, and where, will it be "intermediate". It becomes just guessing at this point. If you had four or five pieces of the skeleton, all from different parts of the skeleton, then, in homology with other known skeletons, you could make some fairly good estimates. But that's not what we have in the case of Lucy.PaV_{October 15, 2011
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Just one more thing, please name one single extant species that is ancestral to another named but markedly different species (found only in the fossil record). If "the fossil data.. overwhelmingly supports a tree" then this would be easy. I doubt that Lizzie will rise to this challenge so it is open to any evolutionist.Chris Doyle_{October 15, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
In other words, it wasn’t an explanatory model, just a descriptive one.
This is really an apt characterization of Darwinian theory. Cladistics is a subset of Paleontology. It's not a Darwinian theory or any other kind of theory. It's a method of classification. You'll remember that the Linnean Classification scheme predated Darwinian theory by quite some time.PaV_{October 15, 2011
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Did I say it was a "bad" article? Did I say it wasn't "good"? I said it was embarrassing for Darwinism. And it is. Eugene S has the temerity to say that I don't know how science works. I suspect that it is Eugene who doesn't know how science "should" work. In the case of Darwinian science, it doesn't work. Darwinism should have been jettisoned a long time ago. So it is something other than science that is propping up an otherwise antiquated theory. And you say, "If it's right, cool. If it's wrong, even cooler." Ah, what dispassionate love for the truth. But if you were truly dispassionate, one simple look at the article should tell you that Darwinism is devoid of relevance, that it is impossible to explain the evolution of life via Darwinain mechanisms. The authors themselves should have so concluded. But, no, what we get instead is 'politically correct' type of thinking. And this in science. And we see this PC type of thought all over the place when it comes to global warming (oh, I'm sorry, I mean "climate change"). And it is also present in all of academe, illustrated by the "consensus thinking" that revolves around HIV and AIDs. Almost thirty years of research, and still no HIV vaccine. Why? Every other viral disease has its vaccine, why not HIV? This, too, is an embarrassment to science. So, pleeeeeeeease, let's not hear any more about who, or who doesn't, know "how science works"! We should, instead, be talking about why science isn't working these days. Here's my assessment: it's because of "consensus thinking", peer-review, and government funding, which is, itself, driven by consensus thinking.PaV_{October 15, 2011
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I submit that the fossil and molecular data overwhelmingly supports a tree, even though we simply do not have enough data to be confident that every node is in the right place. Sorry Lizzie, but that's nonsense. The fossil record is a story of discontinuity, extinction and stasis. There is nothing remotely tree-like about it unless you want to talk about an upside town tree that begins with the Cambrian explosion... but we both know that that does atheistic evolutionists no favours! I feel no need to indulge your goalpost moving word games about missing links any further. I said it all in 2.1.1.1.9.Chris Doyle_{October 15, 2011
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Elizbeth Liddle @ 1.1.1.3.6: Liz, when I said that strata are determined by their fossils, I was saying that each strata has its own characteristic fossils, used to discover this same strata elsewhere. So there is a one-to-one correspondence between the strata and these characteristic fossils. All this tells us is that A came before B, and B before C. What is the relevance of this to anything. IOW, how does Darwinian theory 'predict' one the next strata is going to produce, i.e., the next life forms that will develop? It doesn't. So, what you see is what you get. No more. It's no more than simply a fact. As to homology and convergent evolution, I wasn't trying to suggest they are the same thing. But here were talking about whales and this is, of course, a perfect illustration of what I was trying to point out: you have a land animal returning to the sea. It's the Devonian where we see the proliferation of fish. And now, in the age of mammals, you have them returning to the sea. How can Darwinian evolution have foreseen this? Impossible. Again, you get what you get. So in what way, then, does the fossil record support Darwinian assumptions? I don't see any. In fact, as we well know, the intermediate forms that Darwin anticipated remain undiscovered. The Pre-Silurian period, that was to be the lead up to the Cambrian, is devoid of fossil intermediates, contrary to Darwinian expectations. So, if the fossil record shows anything, it shows that the evolution of life forms had a direction. And, of course, this suggests there was a "Director" involved. But it doesn't really have anything to say about Darwinian assumptions one way or the other---although Darwinists freely 'interpret' the fossil record in accordance with the theory. But let's remember that Darwin saw the Fossil Record as a "Difficulty on the Theory". I don't see how this "difficulty" has been resolved. He had the Cambrian Explosion in mind when he wrote. But now we know that there was a Mammalian Explosion. It only gets worse for poor old Darwins! As to Common Descent, I think it is wrong to think of it as a continuous process. I think there is a version of Common Descent, but that it is stochastic, with vital interventions occurring throughout time, and what I would term Common Inheritance.PaV_{October 15, 2011
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No we don't, PaV. The "epicycle" model was based on a fundamentally different principle to the heliocentric model. Changing the place of a node in a tree structure is not the same as having to replace the tree with, say, a small world network. Although interestingly, the epicycle model fits the data just fine. The problem with it as a model is that it doesn't lend itself to a coherent underlying theory of orbital motion. In other words, it wasn't an explanatory model, just a descriptive one. The geocentric model did however, as Kepler and Newton discovered, and that theory turned out to have huge predictive power.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 15, 2011
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Chris, please explain what you mean by "missing link". It is not a technical term, and if you want to claim that there are none, you need to define what you mean by it. As you say yourself, we certainly do not have a fossil record of every living thing, or even an unbiased sampling. If the hypothesis of Universal Common Descent is correct, then every single organism is a "link" in the line of descent from the Universal Common Ancestor to the last organism in each lineage. Therefore every single that is not the last of its own line and every single living thing with offspring is a link. All those that we don't have a record of are "missing", and every one that we do find is a no-longer-missing "link". What we have, as I said, is a biased sampling of all those alleged "links", and, interestingly, when we try place them on a putative family tree, we find that that is what they readily form - a tree. It is, as you say, like a jigsaw puzzle, and we already have enough pieces to see that the overall pattern is, indeed, like a tree, ever diverging from branches closer to the postulated trunk. The Cambrian life forms can also be placed on this tree, coherently, although obviously there are important missing pieces above that level. However, the Ediacaran life forms have hugely filled out that part of the jig-saw. So the important question to my mind is not: "where are the missing links?", but "given the organisms we have, are they more consistent with a tree than with other patterns?" And the answer, it seems to me, is that the tree pattern is overwhelmingly supported. If it were not, cladistic analysis simply would not work. That does not prove Darwinian evolution of course, but it does support universal common descent extremely strongly. A while back I wrote two programs, one of which generated pseudowords by a common descent algorithm, and one of which used mix'n'match algorithm. I asked someone whether they could tell which had been produced by common descent, and which by mix'n'match. The person was able to tell, easily, which was the common descent set, because he was able to map the results on to a deeply nested cladogram. The other simply didn't did not resolve, and the best tree he could produce was not only full of conflicts but very shallowly nested. However, interestingly, the cladogram he made for the common descent set was not entirely accurate i.e. was not the actual lineage as generated by my program. In other words, it is possible to infer a tree from the data you have, even if you do not have enough data to retrieve the true tree in all its details. I submit that the fossil and molecular data overwhelmingly supports a tree, even though we simply do not have enough data to be confident that every node is in the right place.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 15, 2011
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Elizabeth @ 1.1.1.2.6: Eigenvalues are used to draw "diagonals" through data. It basically amounts to a least-squares method. The point is this: statistical correlations don't understand what they're correlating. So they can correlate anything to anything, just as in the case of a particular football team winning and the direction the stock market will take that year. Therefore, statistical methods require those using them to truly understand the nature of the data being correlated prior to doing any kind of statistical matching. So, "junk-in", "junk-out". IOW, the basis for the data points used in the correlations you're speaking of involves Darwinian assumptions to begin with. So is it any surprise that the resultant statistical correlations are amenable to Darwinian thought? This hardly represents the 'proof' of anything.PaV_{October 15, 2011
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There's a good primer on the methodology here: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad2.htmlElizabeth Liddle_{October 15, 2011
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However I do see the argumentation by various evolutionists as quite circular, and at times extremely poor in actual content, concerning this particular article and many others like it.
I'm glad you agree with me that the finding is not a refutation of the theory of evolution. However, you specifically referred to my own posts. Can you explain what you consider "circular" about my "argumentation"? I see no circularity. I certainly do not regard "neo-Darwinian evolution" as a fact. Theories are not facts. In fact, tbh, I would argue that facts are not in fact (heh) facts either. What we have and models and data - what is "given". And and data at one level is a model at another. Measurement itself, is a "modelling" process. I do consider "neo-Darwinian evolution" (if I am right in my assumption as to what you mean by that) as extremely well supported by data. I do not regard it as a "fact"; in any case, all models in science are provisional. It is a fundamental tenet of science. So we will still be discussion our theories until they are falsified. Then we may stop. There are no "clinchers" in science, there are simply more data and more incremental (occasionally radical) modifications to our existing models to better fit the new data.
Why should we look at the evolutionary tree concerning the whale, and believe that it evolved from a land dwelling creature, when there is no real evidence that it did?
There is a great deal of evidence that it did. That evidence is the distribution of the characters of whale and whale-like organisms into a crown group with a clear land-dweller at its basal node. Where exactly the sub-nodes are within that crown group are clearly subject to adjustment as new data becomes available. Nothing about the new find suggests that it is not a member of that crown group. What would be a "serious problem", not for Darwinism but for whale phylogeny would be a whale-like animal that lived earlier than the time when artidactyls are thought to have split from the mesonychids, as molecular phylogeny suggests that whales evolved from the artiodactyl branch. There's a nice clear cladogram here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Artiodactylamorpha.jpg Finally: can you explain why you think the new find is a "major problem for Darwinism", and not merely a good (and welcome) opportunity to improve our model of whale descent?Elizabeth Liddle_{October 15, 2011
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Hi Elizabeth, 'Well, to me, Peter, what seems to be “very wrong” is what you think the theory of evolution actually postulates, so that you see as a refutation something that is simply not' I personally think I have a good enough grasp of what the ‘Theory of evolution actually postulates’, and to be honest I didn’t necessarily view this as a refutation of it. Not on its own anyway. However I do see the argumentation by various evolutionists as quite circular, and at times extremely poor in actual content, concerning this particular article and many others like it. Over the two years I have been following this site, as well as one or two others, I see more and more that evolutionists just don’t have that vital piece of evidence that can actually win the debate. Which to be honest is something I find very hard to grasp - If neo-Darwinian evolution is a fact, as people like you are continually inferring, then why are we still discussing it, especially with all the technology available to us in the 21st century? Sometimes you come across an article where the arguments put forward seem to really stretch the limits of ID, but then what you always find is that nothing is ever really ‘proven’ or ‘won’, or that either side has ‘conceded’. It just seems to go back and forth, without anything definite being put forward that everyone can agree on. This find is just very typical of that. That is all I was implying really. Why should we look at the evolutionary tree concerning the whale, and believe that it evolved from a land dwelling creature, when there is no real evidence that it did? This find is undoubtedly a major problem for Darwinism.PeterJ_{October 15, 2011
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Morning Acipenser, Please be honest here: if the fossil record contained even one missing link, you wouldn't be asking me what it looked like. You'd be telling me the fossil's name, exactly what it is a transition of, where it was discovered and how old it is. Verified observations: that's how science works. Science doesn't work by simply appealing to things that exist only in the evolutionists' imagination. So, no more evasive tactics: it's put up or shut up time for you, Acipenser. Just because you don't have the complete set of pieces for a jigsaw, it doesn't mean you can't put what you do have together and get it a very good idea of what the whole picture would look like if you did have all the pieces. The same applies to the fossil record. Or do you think that palaeontology is just a waste of time? Remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Even the most ardent evolutionists are troubled by the Cambrian explosion. It's the last thing that the theory of evolution would predict we'd find in the fossil record. Have you seen Darwin's Dilemma? If not, you should.Chris Doyle_{October 15, 2011
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That’s amazing! It’s not as if it is IMPOSSIBLE (assuming no mistakes) for a stratigraphic range of a taxon to go the other way. Oh, wait, it is impossible. New fossils can only increase a range or fill in the existing range, they can never reduce it. Right. Can you support what is due to increasing sample size and that which just inconsistent (in the real world) with your theory? I would like to see some bold evolution predictions here - This ancestor with these attributes should take a minimum of blank myears to descend into this. Don't look at the chart. Being great with whatever the latest time span is found to be, is sketchy, but typical of all evolution. When is it not a minor adjustment? Time span halved, quartered, what? It is a problem at some point. (1) except in very rare cases, all fossil species are treated as sister groups, since direct ancestry is usually impossible to prove And lots of other ancestries. On it's face arranging things is just not what you want to make of it.butifnot_{October 14, 2011
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I had a friend say, "you don't know what time can do." Just substitute the word "time" with the word "god" and you can see how it is a faith-based statement.Collin_{October 14, 2011
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You may be right, but please give me a cite with evidence.Collin_{October 14, 2011
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Homo erectus.NickMatzke_UD_{October 14, 2011
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You mean there are actually people who believe that Mesonychids actually turned into Odontocetes through random evolutionary processes AND in a very short amount of evolutionary time to boot? WOW! Thanks for the good article. It highlights the fact that the available time for huge evolutionary change keeps shrinking, making the already incredible story even more unbelievable - if that is even possible. But for evolutionists, "nothing is too difficult for Evolution." I prefer this statement: "Nothing is too difficult for God." The faith of Darwinists never ceases to amaze! I'm sure my faith amazes them too, but articles like this show that it is the more logical position. At least we have a sufficient cause for the miracles we believe in. "When one considers the magnitude of the engineering fete, such a scenario is found to be devoid of credibility. Whales require an intra-abdominal counter current heat exchange system (the testis are inside the body right next to the muscles that generate heat during swimming), they need to possess a ball vertebra because the tail has to move up and down instead of side-to-side, they require a re-organisation of kidney tissue to facilitate the intake of salt water, they require a re-orientation of the fetus for giving birth under water, they require a modification of the mammary glands for the nursing of young under water, the forelimbs have to be transformed into flippers, the hindlimbs need to be substantially reduced, they require a special lung surfactant (the lung has to re-expand very rapidly upon coming up to the surface), etc etc." The devil is in the details! Most people have no idea what is involved in the type of transition necessary for Mesonychids to turn into Odontocetes. This article explains some of those changes, but there are many more as well. Personally, I find it incredulous that anyone could actually believe in this!tjguy_{October 14, 2011
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I don't think anyone would dispute that the 'extrapolations' are biased to some extent. 'Transitional' attributes are favored. I would be willing to bet that a survey would show less bones = more transitional , More bones = less transitional and also as more complete skeletons are found the posited animal becomes less 'transitional' in nature and not the other way aroundbutifnot_{October 14, 2011
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Elizabeth, I liked your analogy of the evolutionary tree and a linear fit to data points. You would agree with me that the closer the points are to the average line, the stronger the case one has for saying that there is a correlation, right? So if the points tend to move farther and farther away, and become more circular than linear, it would weaken the case for the correlation. So here's my question, I seem to be remembering that the tree of life keeps getting bushier and less connected; am I wrong? On a different point, can you please point to a fossil that is a direct ancestor to humans. I am really curious. I mean, Wikipedia says, "While some other, extinct Homo species might have been ancestors of Homo sapiens, many were likely our "cousins", having speciated away from our ancestral line." So what species (for humans or other animals) can we definitely say are ancestors to other species? This isn't a challenge, just a sincere question.Collin_{October 14, 2011
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OT; Music: Natalie Grant - Alive - Music Videos http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=F09J9JNUbornagain77_{October 14, 2011
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The range of occurrence of everything is increasing!
That's amazing! It's not as if it is IMPOSSIBLE (assuming no mistakes) for a stratigraphic range of a taxon to go the other way. Oh, wait, it is impossible. New fossils can only increase a range or fill in the existing range, they can never reduce it. Where's the news story here? As for the rest of this incredibly silly discussion -- this crap is EXACTLY why creationists/IDists get no respect, and deserve to get no respect. Any mildly competent discussion of whether or not this fossil "contradicts Darwinism" or whatever would have to recognize: (1) except in very rare cases, all fossil species are treated as sister groups, since direct ancestry is usually impossible to prove (2) they are evidence for common ancestry either way, because they fall into statistically-well-supported treelike structure (note: any discussion of "incongruence" that does not measure the degree of congruence/incongruence is basically worthless and incompetent. Small incongruence does not equal "no tree structure in the data" or whatever silliness creationists/IDists usually imply. (3) In general, cladograms and stratigraphy are significantly correlated. They are generally so both before and after some neat new fossil is found. This whale was found 49 million years ago, not in the Cambrian. It's a minor adjustment to the range. If one doesn't want to be talking nonsense, you've got to start calculating the Consistency Index, Stratigraphic Consistency Index, etc., AND (this is key) statistically comparing them to the null hypothesis of no tree signal. Scientists who know this stuff have absolutely no reason to take you seriously when you completely ignore these basics of the field. Introduction here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#nested_hierarchy Chronology of fossils: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#chronologyNickMatzke_UD_{October 14, 2011
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we also know what the skeleton of many other hominid skeletons look like and fit together. The data base is not limited to humans.Acipenser_{October 14, 2011
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So their early ancestors were some sort of mammal wolf/deer-like creature(whatever – choose your favourite fable) which I assume already had mammal reproductive systems, mammary glands, etc. But then it turned back into an Amphibian which would include the previous vestigial sex froggy/salamandish/toady reproduction systems which I assume includes egg laying, etc, but then morphed back to a mammal of the whale/dolphin variety with fully functional mammalian componants once again ??? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ???
What the frack are you talking about??? The word "amphibian" refers to both the biological group "amphibians", and to the state of being amphibious, i.e. living in both water and land. All that is meant here is the second meaning. Seals and sea lions are currently-living mammals that are "amphibians" in this sense.NickMatzke_UD_{October 14, 2011
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Eocene,
And these folks here will fight tooth and nail to defend such sludge.
No, rather they will defend it until somebody comes up with a better idea at which point they'll abandon it and take up the new idea instead. It's up to you to come up with that better idea, rather them complaining about "mud to man" with all the obvious religious connotations that has. It's funny but "mud to man" is exactly what you are claiming happened, remember?kellyhomes_{October 14, 2011
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Pav, Have you ever thought about taking a course in biology and then evolution? As this is just risible:
They’re not here during the summer. It rains and is cold in the winter; it’s warm and dry in the summer. So what of this “environmental change” that you’re talking about? In what does it consist? How do you quantify it?
I mean, really? You can't really imagine what "environmental change" means? Here's a quick example. Let's say the average temperature of the earth went up 1000 degrees. Where would the Geese fly then?
Further, while you will find that the Grants show “statistically significant” differences in beak size, looking closer at the data reveals that the ‘statistical’ change can easily be introduced by a few individuals (population sizes are small), and that the overall differences in beak size is something you could probably hardly detect from one year to the next.
Write a rebuttal paper. You might even get a couple of citations if it's good enough. But despite your obvious ability to shred the paper and it's conclusions I predict you'll never so much as put pen to paper with regard to sharing your insights into why they are so very very wrong. What a shame! Science thrives on things being disconfirmed, you are a great loss to the scientific endeavor Pav!kellyhomes_{October 14, 2011
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So how does ID explain the whale? "Design"?kellyhomes_{October 14, 2011
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Elizabeth: We had a go round here at UD several years back about a recent paper by the Grants. If you look at the fundamental data, you will find that beak size changes quite often, and that over a twenty to thirty year period, the beak increases and then decreases in size. Is this evolution? Are the finches now a new breed/race/species of finches because the beak size has enlarged? Further, while you will find that the Grants show "statistically significant" differences in beak size, looking closer at the data reveals that the 'statistical' change can easily be introduced by a few individuals (population sizes are small), and that the overall differences in beak size is something you could probably hardly detect from one year to the next. In the end, I'm not really sure what their studies demonstrate. Have "gene frequencies" really changed, or is it entirely an environmental effect, with a changing diet resulting in a changed beak size---IOW, an 'epigenetic' change. If this is Darwinism in action, and if this is all you can show, then Darwinism (as we already know) is in trouble. Firstly because the changes are of such a small nature, and, secondly, because it might have nothing to do whatsoever with genetic changes. If the Grants really want to know what's going on, then they should collect a feather or two from the little birdies and do a sequence check on them. While this is still somewhat costly, it is becoming cheaper by the second. This means that these kinds of studies will start happening. I would predict (from my own intuition about how impotent Darwinism really is, and not from an ID perspective) that these kinds of future studies will demonstrate very little "gene frequency" changes. IOW: Another day, another bad day for Darwinism!PaV_{October 14, 2011
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For instance Elizabeth doesn’t seem to be bothered about the fact that the whale in question lived at the same time as Ambulocetus, and instead of striking Ambulocetus off as a transitional (Because at the end of the day, it didn’t have to evolve into anything did it) she still clings to the belief that it deserves to be there.

It is evidence like this, countered with arguments like Elizabeth’s, which convince me even more that Darwinian Evolution is very wrong.
Well, to me, Peter, what seems to be "very wrong" is what you think the theory of evolution actually postulates, so that you see as a refutation something that is simply not. You are right that I am "not bothered" about the possibility that ambulocetus was contemporary with a more modern-whale like cetacean, for exactly the same reason as I am "not bothered" about the fact that there are still chimpanzees, even though the chimpanzee is, in palaeontological parlance, a "transitional" between orang utans and humans. The usage doesn't mean that our ancestors were chimps! It does mean that the chimp lineage branched off our lineage more recently than the orang utans did. Every time we discover a new fossil, it allows us to pinpoint lineage divergences more clearly. In this case, it is possible that we can now place ambulocetus on a divergent branch to that of modern whales. Or possibly the new animal is on a divergent branch. We don't know yet, until we have more details. But please do find out a bit more about how these lineages are inferred. They are not set in stone (pun not intended) because their simply aren't enough fossils for us to have a definitive lineage that is unaltered by subsequent finds. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle - you can find a piece that fits nicely in amongst a bit of foliage, and be broadly right, except that you may at some stage pick up a new piece that makes it clear that while you had correctly identified the earlier piece of foliage, it fits with the tree on the tree next to the one you'd originally thought it belonged to So I'd agree with you that Darwinian Evolution, as you clearly conceive it, is "very wrong". However, it seems to me you have unfortunately misunderstood what the theory is, and what it predicts :)Elizabeth Liddle_{October 14, 2011
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