First-ever natural narwhal-beluga hybrid found, has bizarre teeth

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 22, 2019

Intelligent Design, speciation}

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A team of researchers has compiled the first and only evidence that narwhals and beluga whales can breed successfully. DNA and stable isotope analysis of an anomalous skull from the Natural History Museum of Denmark has allowed researchers to confirm the existence of a narwhal-beluga hybrid.

The hybrid’s skull was found on the roof of a hunter’s toolshed in Greenland.

“As far as we know, this is the first and only evidence in the world that these two Arctic whale species can interbreed. Based on the intermediate shape of the skull and teeth, it was suggested that the specimen might be a narwhal-beluga hybrid, but this could not be confirmed. Now we provide the data that confirm that yes — it is indeed a hybrid,” says Eline Lorenzen, evolutionary biologist and curator at the University of Copenhagen’s Natural History Museum of Denmark. Lorenzen led the study, which was published today in Scientific Reports.
Using DNA and stable isotope analysis, the scientists determined that the skull belonged to a male, first-generation hybrid between a female narwhal and male beluga.
The hybrid’s skull was considerably larger than that of a typical narwhal or beluga. But the teeth were markedly different. Whereas narwhals have only one or rarely two long spiraling tusks, belugas have a set of uniform conical teeth that are aligned in straight rows. The hybrid skull has a set of long, spiraling and pointed teeth, that are angled horizontally.
“This whale has a bizarre set of teeth. The isotope analysis allowed us to determine that the animal’s diet was entirely different than that of a narwhal or beluga — and it is possible that its teeth influenced its foraging strategy. Whereas the other two species fed in the water column, the hybrid was a bottom dweller,” according to Mikkel Skovrind, a PhD student at the Natural History Museum and first author of the paper.
Paper. (open access) – Mikkel Skovrind, Jose Alfredo Samaniego Castruita, James Haile, Eve C. Treadaway, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Michael V. Westbury, Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, Paul Szpak, Eline D. Lorenzen. Hybridization between two high Arctic cetaceans confirmed by genomic analysis. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44038-0 More.

For all we know, this could be common. If it’s a bottom dweller, who was looking? Maybe hybridization plays a bigger role in evolution than we supposed. And then schoolbook Darwinism plays a smaller one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcQ9KfoizXw

See also: Bird, Tested And Released, Turned Out To Be A Hybrid Of Three Species

Is The Recently Cited Hybrid Dolphin-Whale A “New Species”? No.

and

A physicist looks at biology’s problem of “speciation” in humans

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Comments

KF, There you go again with the "evolutionary materialistic scientism" shtick, apropos of nothing. All I'm saying is that I'm confident you are misinterpreting Lewontin (see our previous discussion for details). ENDdaveS_{June 29, 2019
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DS, your dismissal and accusation of closed mindedness on my part are without merit, that is snide, uncalled for behaviour of setting up and knocking over a strawman. That some have previously refused to face the substantial point previously cannot justify repeating that error this time. Indeed, it is a sign of projection, strawman caricature, and more. Instead, on manifest facts as marked up, the inadvertently revealing substance of Lewontin and NSTA (as well as many other similar cases) is demonstrable. All I did was to mark up. I have also put the challenge to you and others to warrant the core blind watchmaker thesis scientific claims objectively. Absent such, the ideological imposition of a priori, absolute evolutionary materialistic scientism is both manifest and utterly without warrant. Indeed, it is a betrayal of our civilisation's heritage of intellectual freedom. Rather than fruitless repetition of refusal to attend to manifest facts, I suggest you actually answer the challenge on the merits: ______ . Then, face its consequences of utter self-referential undermining of the credibility of the mind ____ and of moral government ____ (And all of these can also be documented.) In fact, blind watchmaker thesis accounts of origins have never been warranted, they were imposed ideologically, part of a much broader breakdown, squandering and betrayal of our civilisation's intellectual inheritance. We are going bankrupt and there will be literal hell to pay if we do not turn back from the brink. It may be too late as beyond a certain point the momentum of the slide over the cliff is irrecoverable. KFkairosfocus_{June 29, 2019
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Mimus: I just read your full post. You seem to understand what Hardy was doing. Hardy mentions his math is based on random mating. Obviously, breeders didn't rely on that. What became of HWE and how it was later understood is different than actual equations themselves. But certainly it is not an equation giving us dynamics nor was it a defense of Darwinism. As to the death of Darwinism, I didn't say Darwinism was dead. I said that there are evolutionary biologists, mostly taken with evo-devo, who aver that "neo-Darwnisms" is dead. Darwinism isn't dead; it's just impotent. (for the most part; i.e., the more interesting part of evolution)PaV_{June 29, 2019
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Mimus: HWE stands for Hardy-Weinberg Equilibria. Equilibria doesn't sound like change to me. From Hardy's 1908 paper:
In the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (Vol I., p. 165) Mr. Yule is reported to have suggested, as a criticism of the Mendelian position, that if brachydactyly is dominant “in the course of time one would expect, in the absence of counteracting factors, to get three brachydactylous persons to one normal.” It is not difficult to prove, however, that such an expectation would be quite groundless. Suppose that Aa is a pair of Mendelian characters, A being dominant, and that in any given generation the numbers of pure dominants (AA), heterozygotes (Aa), and pure recessives (aa) are as p:2q:r. Finally, suppose that the numbers are fairly large, so that the mating may be regarded as random, that the sexes are evenly distributed among the three varieties, and that all are equally fertile. A little mathematics of the multiplication-table type is enough to show that in the next generation the numbers will be as (p + q)2 : 2(p + q)(q + r) : (q + r)2, or as p1:2q1:r1, say. The interesting question is – in what circumstances will this distribution be the same as that in the generation before? It is easy to see that the condition for this is q2 = pr. And since q12 = p1r1, whatever the values of p, q, and r may be, the distribution will in any case continue unchanged after the second generation.
Isn't this enough evidence for you? Hardy was defending Mendelism, not Darwinism.PaV_{June 29, 2019
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People have been talking about the death of Darwinian evolution since Darwin’s day. The small minority of biologists who hold these views today don’t seem to be any more persuasive than their predecessors.
I hope there will always be someone around to try to keep it alive. So far, as you correctly say, there are quite a lot of biologists who see no problem with Darwinian theory at all. "There are no weaknesses in evolutionary theory" as some have affirmed. In my view, it is preposterous but it remains worthwhile trying to learn about why the theory remains dominant.Silver Asiatic_{June 29, 2019
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Mimus
Any highschool intro to HWE …
Ding, ding, ding!! First class skills from troll college. Didn't we just say it? Translation: "You are so stupid that even high school students know more science than you do."Silver Asiatic_{June 29, 2019
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The HWE posits stasis, not change
Any highschool intro to HWE, and in fact Hardy's paper, starts with the list of assumptions that have to hold for stasis. One of the key ones is the absence of selection. No one ever thought HWE implied stasis. The initial importance of the equation was to show that dominant traits wouldn't naturally take over the population (a mistake the biometricians made), subsequently it became an important basis for other calculations but "posited" nothing. People have been talking about the death of Darwinian evolution since Darwin's day. The small minority of biologists who hold these views today don't seem to be any more persuasive than their predecessors.Mimus_{June 29, 2019
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KF, We had a discussion of the Lewontin piece a ways back. I believe I came to a good understanding of the meaning of that passage. For you, this notion that Lewontin "inadvertently let the cat out of the bag" is an idée fixe which will just not let go. I know nothing about the origin of life, as I'm pretty sure you are aware.daveS_{June 29, 2019
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DS, Hazel and BB, I now extend the formal challenge to you. There has been more than enough of evasions, distractions and snide dismissiveness on your part above. Now, let us see you submit an up to 6,000 word summary on the empirically and analytically founded warrant for blind watchmaker thesis origin of life and of major body plans, including a justification of the implicit claim that functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information per observation does come about by blind causal forces such as chance and mechanical necessity. Note PaV's point also. It is time to step up to the plate. KFkairosfocus_{June 29, 2019
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DS (& attn BB circle), I suggest you attend to the just above, then soberly face the implications of the cat Lewontin inadvertently let out of the bag. KFkairosfocus_{June 29, 2019
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H, Lewontin let the cat out of the bag. I note that, over the years, there has been a refusal to face what has been inadvertently exposed. In case you think Lewontin is making an idiosyncratic remark, I append a less colourful but equally telling remark by the Board of the US Science Teachers' Association. I have reason to put the matter on the table as a reminder, until there is a responsible facing of the realities of the cat that jumped out of the bag. KF PS: NSTA, July 2000:
All those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science. [--> yes but a question-begging ideological imposition is not an accurate view] Science is characterized by the systematic gathering of information through various forms of direct and indirect observations and the testing of this information by methods including, but not limited to, experimentation [--> correct so far]. The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts [--> evolutionary materialistic scientism is imposed] and the laws and theories related to those [--> i.e. ideologically loaded, evolutionary materialistic] concepts . . . . science, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific methods, explanations, generalizations and products [--> censorship of anything that challenges the imposition; fails to appreciate that scientific methods are studied through logic, epistemology and philosophy of science, which are philosophy not science] . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science [--> a good point, but fails to see that this brings to bear many philosophical issues], a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations [--> outright ideological imposition and censorship that fetters freedom of responsible thought] supported by empirical evidence [--> the imposition controls how evidence is interpreted and that's why blind watchmaker mechanisms never seen to actually cause FSCO/I have default claim to explain it in the world of life] that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument [--> ideological imposition may hide under a cloak of rationality but is in fact anti-rational], inference, skepticism [--> critical awareness is responsible, selective hyperskepticism backed by ideological censorship is not], peer review [--> a circle of ideologues in agreement has no probative value] and replicability of work . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic [= evolutionary materialistic scientism is imposed by definition, locking out an unfettered search for the credibly warranted truth about our world i/l/o observational evidence and linked inductive reasoning] methods and explanations and, as such [--> notice, ideological imposition by question-begging definition], is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> sets up a supernatural vs natural strawman alternative when the proper contrast since Plato in The Laws, Bk X, is natural vs artificial] in the production of scientific knowledge. [US NSTA Board, July 2000, definition of the nature of science for education purposes]
kairosfocus_{June 29, 2019
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Mimus:
The challenge of mendalism was getting continuous traits and change out of discrete genetics. It was not that people thought HWE meant populations couldn’t change.
The challenge for Darwinian theory was to accomodate Mendelian 'discreteness' with Darwin's insistence on gradualism; not the other way around. The HWE posits stasis, not change. I didn't say the HWE meant populations couldn't change. As I said @49: "Mendelism flew in the face of Darwinian thought, and the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibria encapsulated the problems Darwinian theory faced given the newly discovered (1895) genetic laws of Mendel." What was needed was a theory that, contrary to de Vries saltational view, could meld Mendelian discreteness with continous, small variations and still yield a progressive type of evolution. Fisher and his fellow neo-Darwinists felt they had succeeded in doing so. For many decades this was accepted as so. However, many modern-day biologists now consider neo-Darwinism dead. So now what? With neo-Dawinism removed, we're back to the early twentieth century. IOW, please explain macroevolution. And, of course, we've all heard about small populations and frequency change and such. None of it, I'm sorry, passes muster. However, we can square de Vries denial of small mutations leading the way forward with Fisher's insistence that variation alone-small variations, is sufficient to move evolution along. They can be combined using Behe's "First Rule of Adaptative Evolution." (Notice this word "Adaptation" shows up again. How interesting!) Yes, numerous small deleterious mutations can 'adapt' a population to its environment; but, "big jumps" (De Vries) are needed to move evolution forward, and not just sideways. That's where infused information is needed and a Designer detected. Again, how do you explain macroevolution in a way that makes sense and is consistent with the facts? Behe's Rule is consistent with the facts.PaV_{June 29, 2019
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DaveS@63, thanks for the Saturday morning chuckle. I almost spit my coffee. :)Brother Brian_{June 29, 2019
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Just think, if the multiverse exists, somewhere there's a Lewontin who obsessively posts a passage by KF over and over, to similar effect ...daveS_{June 29, 2019
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Hazel- It would be even more interesting to count how many times people responded to Lewontin with your type of dismissive posts vs how many actually responded with something coherent.ET_{June 29, 2019
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Lewontin, again!!! :-) It would be interesting to have a count of how many times kf has posted this over the years.hazel_{June 29, 2019
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Mimus, it is duly recorded that you imply that you cannot actually adequately warrant the blind watchmaker thesis for origin of life and/or of body plans. (NB: Had such warrant existed, it would be trumpeted all over the Internet, so we can take it to the bank that reticence to take up the offer to host the making of the case is a strong sign that there is no such actually well founded case.) Thus, on fair comment, it is duly noted that intelligently directed configuration routinely accounts for functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information such as is a characteristic feature of life. Indeed, such FSCO/I can rightly be described as a reliable sign of design, on trillions of observed cases with no counter-examples. On further fair comment, it is observed that the blind watchmaker thesis dominates by ideological imposition and lockout of alternatives that actually meet the Newton Rules test, e.g. being an actually observed cause of a phenomenon. In that context, rhetorical games, barbs and personalities stand exposed as distractive from the merits as just summarised. G'day, KF PS: Lewontin inadvertently let the cat out of the bag:
. . . to put a correct [--> Just who here presume to cornering the market on truth and so demand authority to impose?] view of the universe into people's heads
[==> as in, "we" the radically secularist elites have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge, making "our" "consensus" the yardstick of truth . . . where of course "view" is patently short for WORLDVIEW . . . and linked cultural agenda . . . ]
we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world [--> "explanations of the world" is yet another synonym for WORLDVIEWS; the despised "demon[ic]" "supernatural" being of course an index of animus towards ethical theism and particularly the Judaeo-Christian faith tradition], the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
kairosfocus_{June 29, 2019
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KF, I HEREBY OFFICIALLY DECLINE YOUR INVITATION TO SPENT MY TIME WRITING AN ESSAY FOR THE SORT OF TOTALLY NORMAL AND WELL ADJUSTED PERSON WHO ISSUES ALL CAPS CHALLENGES TO PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET.Mimus_{June 28, 2019
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PaV, The challenge of mendalism was getting continuous traits and change out of discrete genetics. It was not that people thought HWE meant populations couldn't change.Mimus_{June 28, 2019
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F/N: A summary on the key challenge: https://uncommondescent.com/natural-selection/paleys-ghost-speaks-out-the-problem-of-neo-darwinist-evolutionary-incrementalism/ KFkairosfocus_{June 28, 2019
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Mimus, the challenge to make your case is on the table. Your evasion so far is duly noted, as is the doubling down on personalities and projections. KFkairosfocus_{June 28, 2019
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From a course:
The fact that Mendel’s work powerfully supported Darwin’s theory wasn’t realisedimmediately. In fact in the early years of the 20th century, the re-discovery of Mendel’s workboosted the reputations of biologists who opposed Darwin’s theory of natural selection.These Mendelians (De Vries, Bateson), worked on the inheritance of large-scale differencesbetween individuals. These traits segregated in breeding tests in Mendelian fashion andshowed a clear particulate pattern of inheritance. De Vries, Bateson and others concluded thatevolution proceeded in big jumps, via macromutations, and that species arose in one or a fewsteps as discrete mutations. If species can arise purely by mutation, their origin does notrequire natural selection and so they dismissed Darwin’s key principles of natural selectionand gradual change.
PaV_{June 28, 2019
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Here's the abstract of a paper published in the Journal of Heredity: The abstract reads:
Although the past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Mendel's role in the origin of genetic theory, only one writer, L. A. Callender (1988), has concluded that Mendel was opposed to evolution. Yet careful scrutiny of Mendel's Pisum paper, published in 1866, and of the time and circumstances in which it appeared suggests not only that it is antievolutlonary in content, but also that it was specifically written in contradiction of Darwin's book The Origin of Species, published in 1859, and that Mendel's and Darwin's theories, the two theories which were united in the 1940s to form the modern synthesis, are completely antithetical.
N.B. You can get a pdf, but it gets you to a infected site; so, be careful.PaV_{June 28, 2019
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Here's a paper I ran across where it is asserted that Mendel did his experiments as a way of undermining Darwin's theory.PaV_{June 28, 2019
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PaV
IOW, ADAPTATION is NOT evolution. Hence, the substitution. Read Behe’s “Edge of Evolution”.
It's one of those card-tricks that evolutionists like to play on the public. The most insignificant variation is extrapolated into an explanation for all of the biological diversity on earth.Silver Asiatic_{June 27, 2019
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Mimus
What do you think adaptation means?
Of course, adaptation means "evolution". ha ha. The theory of evolution. "There is heritable variation in populations". Wow. Definitely the most powerful theory known to mankind. And we actually observed it occurring!! Bacteria turned into human beings. The theory of adaptation.Silver Asiatic_{June 27, 2019
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I realise many of you will think I'm being disingenuous or snide, but I really think posts like the ones above represent an unhealthy attitutude to this topic and this website. Like I say, that's not something I can feel very good about encouraging, so I'll continue to not engage.Mimus_{June 27, 2019
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Mimus [44], personalising, polarising and dismissing without consideration of merits is an old tactic, and a fallacious one. KF PS: You and others may profit from the UD weak argument correctives. I note for one that adaptation of life forms (often by loss of function) and cumulative incremental change is not a viable answer to creation of the 10 - 100+ million bases worth of fresh genetic info and associated regulation required to account for novel body plans. Such a change requires passing an ocean of non-function in config space [which already undermines descent with incremental change leading to claimed unlimited modification] to reach new islands of function from molecular to gross anatomy levels. The scope of atomic and temporal resources of the observed cosmos, much less our planet, are negligible relative to what would be required for blind incrementalism to do the job. The dominant evolutionary materialist school of thought prevails, not on its empirically backed merits, but by ideological lockout and indoctrination; as Lewontin let the cat out of the bag on 22 years ago. What the empirical evidence actually warrants is clear: functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information beyond 500 - 1,000 bits is on trillions of cases only seen to come from intelligently directed configuration. That is readily explained on blind search challenge for beyond astronomical configuration spaces, where just 500 bits corresponds to 3.27*10^150 possibilities and every additional bit doubles the space. Where too, per description language, any configuration can be reduced to a bit string. And if you imagine that self-replication evades this, to account for self-replication per von Neumann kinematic self-replicator is a classic case of origin of such FSCO/I. PPS: All you need to get a guest post at UD is to put up a substantial argument. Many contributors started as commenters and their comments led to invitation to contribute. I have a longstanding offer to anyone who can put up an up to 6,000 word solid justification of blind watchmaker OOL and OO body plans. [Flexible limit, set by what people are willing to read as long copy: think of it as exec summ of the case.] Unlimited linking elsewhere but you need to have a substantial overview in a coherent essay. It was eye-opening to see the want of a take-up, across a full year, I eventually patched together a composite to see what the best shot looked like. I HEREBY FORMALLY CHALLENGE YOU TO TAKE UP THE UD PRO-DARWIN ESSAY CHALLENGE. You have chased the car, here are the keys, get in and drive.kairosfocus_{June 27, 2019
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Brother Brian and Mimus: The paper I linked to stands on its own. But I actually couldn't find the paper I read about four to six months ago, that dealt with an actual clonal population that exhibited an unexpectedly high level of heterozygosity. I couldn't find the paper. The paper I linked to was close enough to what the othe paper presented: heterozygosity where it wasn't expected, which undermines neo-Darwinian thinking. As to your quote above, Mimus, yes, indeed, Darwinism was being discarded by biologists at the turn of the twentieth century. R.A. Fisher, and others, "saved" it. Read up on the history of all this. Mendelism flew in the face of Darwinian thought, and the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibria encapsulated the problems Darwinian theory faced given the newly discovered (1895) genetic laws of Mendel.PaV_{June 27, 2019
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Mimus: Adaptation has its limits. Random processes can only do so much. Species revolve around certain specifications. They, for the most part, remain unchanged. Species come into existence, remain the same, and then disappear. So the fossil record tells us.PaV_{June 27, 2019
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