Ancient lizards amaze scientists? But why?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 29, 2015

News, stasis}

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Shouldn’t we be used to this “no change in 20 million years” stuff by now?

A community of lizards from the Caribbean, preserved for 20 million years in amber, have been found to be identical to their modern cousins, say researchers.

…

“Most of ours had full skeletons, and details of the skin were impressed on the amber, providing very detailed images of tiny scales on the body and on the sticky toe pads,” she adds. More.

What if we just changed our default assumption? Change doesn’t usually or randomly happen. Most of the time it doesn’t happen at all.

And when it does happen, Darwinblather doesn’t explain it.

Who knows, a science could come out of all this.

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Comments

Good spotting NEWS. Excellent thread with the right points about the bigger picture. Why is it surprising? whats so incredible? if this all fits in hum drum evolutionary theory. It doesn't fit and its unwelcome by the bad guys. they would rather find such diversity and say SEE WE TOLD YOU. In reality these fossils are only a few thousands of years old. post flood. The geology conclusions are wrong. The biology only thrives from the geology with these guys. Its impossible that niche could be so perfect when all around them everyone is changing like crazy. its asking the public to believe a probability that is impossible. I predict more fossils of many things will have the same results.Robert Byers_{July 29, 2015
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Niche unaffected by high CO2. Niche unaffected by high sea level. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/last-time-carbon-dioxide-levels-111074 Caribbean seems like a good place to ride out the whole global warming thing. Sorry polar bears:(ppolish_{July 29, 2015
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Niche Stasis. 20,000,000+ years of Niche Stasis. Through multiple ice ages and global warmings. Niche Stasis. Has to be true.ppolish_{July 29, 2015
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wd400 reaching deep to save the sinking boat of Darwinism:
Nope. This is Hispaniola (Dominican Republic plus Haiti) which is one of several continental islands in the Caribbean.
This is nonsense. Hispaniola is littered with extinct volcanos. And I'm sure they have gotten their fair share of hurricanes over 20 million years. Besides, the anolis lizard is not found on just Hispaniola. They are all over the Caribbean. I used to live in the Caribbean and have personally observed lots of them in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Puerto Rico, Montserrat, St Barts, St. Lucia, Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados. People love them because they are gentle and they keep the insect population in check.
“surprising” really just means “publishable in a general interest journal”.
You are accusing the authors of lying and making scientific claims to further their careers? That's not surprising either. Darwinists generally display a low level of ethical behavior.
The niches that Anolis species occupy relate to their poistion in trees on on the ground. As long as there are trees then such niches will exist, so it’s all that incredible that species occupied them up to 20 million years ago.
So what? Random mutations do not give a rat's behind about your niches. There should have been some changes.Mapou_{July 29, 2015
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All of those islands are volcanic... Nope. This is Hispaniola (Dominican Republic plus Haiti) which is one of several continental islands in the Caribbean. "surprising" really just means "publishable in a general interest journal". The niches that Anolis species occupy relate to their poistion in trees on on the ground. As long as there are trees then such niches will exist, so it's all that 'incredible' that species occupied them up to 20 million years ago.wd400_{July 29, 2015
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""Evidence of anolis lizards living unchanged in different niches for 20 million years, indicates these niches have been stable for that period of time," she says." That is silly, isn't it Zach? Isn't it WD400? Complete islands have come and gone due to volcanic and sea level activity. 20 million years worth. I think a much better explanation is extreme "convergent evolution". The amber lizards went extinct. But they came back when conditions became favorable. Probably went extinct again and emerged again. 20 million years of this. Yes, they converged/emerged to the very same design. Go figure. Convergent Evolution? Maybe Resurrection Evolution.ppolish_{July 29, 2015
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Look like the lizzies that crawl across my window screens on a fairly regular basis.kairosfocus_{July 29, 2015
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anthropic
Since immaterial causes are “impossible”, Darwinism, however improbable, must be the truth.
Interesting point. New evolutionary research therefore has only limited purposes. One, to make money somehow, of course. Two, to see if findings can be made to sound like they fit a materialist theory without too much lying and manipulation. Three, if 1 or 2 don't work, say it's "incredible" and then sell the story to a magazine -- which brings us back to #1. Other than that, looking at fossils is pointless. Something like Darwin is the truth already and always will be. Finding more fossils is unnecessary.Silver Asiatic_{July 29, 2015
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We have seen quite a bit of sea level change over the last 20 million years. But this sea level change had no effect on flora and fauna per this just so story. Island flora and fauna. Not deep continental inland sanctuary. Island. Lol. Incredible what you are forced to believe under Evo Theory.ppolish_{July 29, 2015
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SA 4 Anything other than material causes is unthinkable. Some form of Darwinism is needed for materialism to explain life. Therefore, Darwinism is correct regardless of contrary evidence. ----------------------------------------------------- Or, as Sherlock Holmes famously said, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth." Since immaterial causes are "impossible", Darwinism, however improbable, must be the truth.anthropic_{July 29, 2015
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This suggests the different niches inhabited by the lizards have - incredibly - changed little over the past 20 million-year, report the team, in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
I like that little word they added: "incredibly". in·cred·i·ble /in?kred?b(?)l/ adjective 1. impossible to believe They actually admit that their own explanation is beyond belief. And yet they continue to go along as if nothing has changed. Apparently, nobody really cares.Silver Asiatic_{July 29, 2015
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A few more related notes:
Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head - July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: "This pattern, known as 'early high disparity', turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn't a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.",,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: "Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: "A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html Donald Prothero: In evolution, stasis was general, gradualism rare, and that’s the consensus 40 years on - February 2012 Excerpt: "In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. Rather than answers, we have more questions"— Donald Prothero - American paleontologist, geologist, and author who specializes in mammalian paleontology. https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/donald-prothero-in-evolution-stasis-was-the-general-pattern-gradualism-was-rare-and-that-is-still-the-consensus-40-years-later/
Moreover, it has been found that a major change in environment leads to extinction of species and not to the origination of brand new species as Darwinists had presupposed:
New Species, Darwin Wrong Again - June 28, 2013 Excerpt: By examining the fossil records of 19 Cenozoic terrestrial mammal clades, Quental and Marshall discovered extinction rates exceeding the formation rates of new species. Fossil record evidence demonstrates that the rate of extinction far exceeds the formation of new species. ,,, The investigators found no evidence for the emergence of any new species. These fossil record findings undermine Darwin’s theory that changing environments are a driving force of evolution: “under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection.” Rather than acquiring “any degree of perfection” in the wake of environmental changes, the effect increased the rate of extinction, not speciation. ,,,When species are challenged by changing environments, rather than adapting, the pendulum swings in favor of destruction?extinction rather than “the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection.” Darwin’s natural selection pendulum favors extinction, not the formation of new species. http://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2013/06/new-species-darwin-wrong-again/
Also of note: amphibians, reptiles and mammals are radically different in their embryological development
"The earliest events leading from the first division of the egg cell to the blastula stage in amphibians, reptiles and mammals are illustrated in figure 5.4. Even to the untrained zoologist it is obvious that neither the blastula itself, nor the sequence of events that lead to its formation, is identical in any of the vertebrate classes shown. The differences become even more striking in the next major phase of in embryo formation - gastrulation. This involves a complex sequence of cell movements whereby the cells of the blastula rearrange themselves, eventually resulting in the transformation of the blastula into the intricate folded form of the early embryo, or gastrula, which consists of three basic germ cell layers: the ectoderm, which gives rise to the skin and the nervous system; the mesoderm, which gives rise to muscle and skeletal tissues; and the endoderm, which gives rise to the lining of the alimentary tract as well as to the liver and pancreas.,,, In some ways the egg cell, blastula, and gastrula stages in the different vertebrate classes are so dissimilar that, where it not for the close resemblance in the basic body plan of all adult vertebrates, it seems unlikely that they would have been classed as belonging to the same phylum. There is no question that, because of the great dissimilarity of the early stages of embryogenesis in the different vertebrate classes, organs and structures considered homologous in adult vertebrates cannot be traced back to homologous cells or regions in the earliest stages of embryogenesis. In other words, homologous structures are arrived at by different routes." Michael Denton - Evolution: A Theory in Crisis - pg 145-146
bornagain77_{July 29, 2015
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The following study found that the cecal valve adaptation in lizards, which was used as a proof for Darwinian evolution for many years, was, in direct contradiction to Darwinian presuppositions, a repeatable environmentally driven adaptation, and also found that the adaptation happened far more quickly than would be predicted from a Darwinian perspective:
Lizard Plasticity - March 2013 Excerpt: So in this study, plasticity experiments were conducted. When the lizards were taken off a plant diet and returned to their native insect diet, the cecal valves in their stomachs began to revert within weeks. As the authors conclude, this pointed heavily to plasticity as a cause. We can infer that the this gut morphology likewise arose in similar fashion when coming into contact with the plant diet. http://biota-curve.blogspot.com/2013/03/lizard-plasticity.html Phenotypic Plasticity - Lizard cecal valve (cyclical variation) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEtgOApmnTA
To reiterate, phenotypic plasticity does NOT give support to neo-Darwinism but points to a deeper mechanism of design. A "mechanism' that was designed with the foresight of the specific environments that would be inhabited and that would trigger the specific rapid adaptations:
"One hint that biology would not cooperate with Darwin’s theory came from the many examples of rapidly adapting populations. What evolutionists thought would require thousands or millions of years has been observed in laboratories and in the field, in an evolutionary blink of an eye." Cornelius Hunter - Biological Variation - Darwin's Predictions Evolution of adaptive phenotypic traits without positive Darwinian selection - A L Hughes - November 2011 Excerpt: Recent evidence suggests the frequent occurrence of a simple non-Darwinian (but non-Lamarckian) model for the evolution of adaptive phenotypic traits, here entitled the plasticity–relaxation–mutation (PRM) mechanism. This mechanism involves ancestral phenotypic plasticity followed by specialization in one alternative environment and thus the permanent expression of one alternative phenotype. Once this specialization occurs, purifying selection on the molecular basis of other phenotypes is relaxed. Finally, mutations that permanently eliminate the pathways leading to alternative phenotypes can be fixed by genetic drift. Although the generality of the PRM mechanism is at present unknown, I discuss evidence for its widespread occurrence, including the prevalence of exaptations in evolution, evidence that phenotypic plasticity has preceded adaptation in a number of taxa and evidence that adaptive traits have resulted from loss of alternative developmental pathways. The PRM mechanism can easily explain cases of explosive adaptive radiation, http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/hdy201197a.html A. L. Hughes’s New Non-Darwinian Mechanism of Adaption Was Discovered and Published in Detail by an ID Geneticist 25 Years Ago – Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig – December 2011 Excerpt: The original species had a greater genetic potential to adapt to all possible environments. In the course of time this broad capacity for adaptation has been steadily reduced in the respective habitats by the accumulation of slightly deleterious alleles (as well as total losses of genetic functions redundant for a habitat), with the exception, of course, of that part which was necessary for coping with a species’ particular environment….By mutative reduction of the genetic potential, modifications became “heritable”. — As strange as it may at first sound, however, this has nothing to do with the inheritance of acquired characteristics. For the characteristics were not acquired evolutionarily, but existed from the very beginning due to the greater adaptability. In many species only the genetic functions necessary for coping with the corresponding environment have been preserved from this adaptability potential. The “remainder” has been lost by mutations (accumulation of slightly disadvantageous alleles) — in the formation of secondary species. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/12/a_l_hughess_new053881.html
As well, in contrast to what is expected in the neo-Darwinian model, adaptations are found to involve many genes instead of just a few genes:
Research on stickleback fish shows how adaptation to new environments involves many genes - April 2012 Excerpt: A current controversy raging in evolutionary biology is whether adaptation to new environments is the result of many genes, each of relatively small effect, or just a few genes of large effect. A new study published in Molecular Ecology strongly supports the first "many-small" hypothesis.,, "I suspect that as more and more studies use these methods, the tide of opinion will swerve strongly to the view that adaptation is a complex process that involves many genes spread across diverse places in the genome," says Prof. Hendry. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-04-stickleback-fish-environments-involves-genes.html
These following studies and video, on Cichlid fishes, are evidence of 'limited and rapid variation from a parent kind':
African cichlid fish: a model system in adaptive radiation research: "The African cichlid fish radiations are the most diverse extant animal radiations and provide a unique system to test predictions of speciation and adaptive radiation theory(of evolution).----(surprising implication of the study?)---- the propensity to radiate was significantly higher in lineages whose precursors emerged from more ancient adaptive radiations than in other lineages" http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16846905 Is the outcome of evolution predictable? - Oct 28, 2014 Excerpt: There are only very few circumstances in which one can investigate the repeatability of evolution, because spatially independent environments that are populated by the same species are extremely rare in nature. "The young and completely isolated crater lakes along the Central American Volcanic Arc in Nicaragua provide an ideal setting to study parallel evolution. Several crater lakes house populations of Midas cichlid fish that have developed independently from the ancestral population in the nearby great lakes of Nicaragua. This setting is like a natural experiment", explains Axel Meyer. In two of these crater lakes, Apoyo and Xiloá, new types of Midas cichlids evolved, independently from each other, in less than 10,000 years. These new species show identical morphological adaptations that are not found in the ancestral population: from the shallow, murky water to the new habitat of the deep, clear water of the crater lakes. "In each of the two crater lakes new species of the Midas cichlid evolved with an elongated body – a phenotype that does not exist in ancestral lakes from which the colonisers of crater lakes came from", explains Meyer,,, "Our study shows that complex parallel phenotypes in similar environments can evolve very rapidly, repeatedly and yet via different evolutionary routes. This is a microevolutionary example of rewinding Gould's tape and resulting in the evolution of two very similar species, albeit by non-parallel evolutionary routes", sums up Axel Meyer. http://phys.org/news/2014-10-outcome-evolution.html
Dr. Arthur Jones, who did his Ph.D. thesis in biology on cichlids, comments
"For all the diversity of species, I found the cichlids to be an unmistakably natural group, a created kind. The more I worked with these fish the clearer my recognition of “cichlidness” became and the more distinct they seemed from all the “similar” fishes I studied. Conversations at conferences and literature searches confirmed that this was the common experience of experts in every area of systematic biology. Distinct kinds really are there and the experts know it to be so. – On a wider canvas, fossils provided no comfort to evolutionists. All fish, living and fossil, belong to distinct kinds; “links” are decidedly missing." Dr. Arthur Jones - did his Ph.D. thesis in biology on cichlids - Fish, Fossils and Evolution - Cichlids at 29:00 minute mark (many examples of repeated morphology in cichlids) - video http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/video/14
bornagain77_{July 29, 2015
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From the article:
This suggests the different niches inhabited by the lizards have - incredibly - changed little over the past 20 million-year, report the team, in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
All the more amazing since the Caribbean region has been one of the most seismically active regions on earth. All of those islands are volcanic. So they can't blame the stasis on a lack of environmental changes. And let's not forget to mention the yearly hurricanes. Yet another Darwinist fail.Mapou_{July 29, 2015
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