Fossil 'disproves' evolution...?

[Beerina]

Don't you just love it, when people who seem to not believe in science, always try to explain it?

The laughable way they do it also shows just how deep their understanding of critical thinking goes, and shows what passes for proof in the demon-haunted world they live in.

Suggest to them that the word "God" is mathematically indistinguishable from the term "I don't know" with respect to origins, and their eyes glaze over.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Still not addressing the claim that the environment has not changed for 92 million years.

Because no one has said that. Many types of environments have been around for hundreds of millions of years. What was a great river on a flood plain inhabited by early crocodilians 90 million years ago might today be a mountain range or a shallow sea. But large rivers are still around today. Saying that a type of animal or plant has changed relatively little in tens of millions of years because of very effective adaptation to a certain type of environment is not the same as saying that the environment has not changed in tens of millions of years.

 

[aggle-rithm]

What is the niche though? Seems to me you are showing exactly the opposite of what is being said, that environment CAN change and did drastically and the creature still thrived because it was fine with it.

My point was that the niche of the creature in question spans a variety of environments, many of which we would hardly classify as an "ecosystem", that have existed somewhere or another on the planet for at least 100 million years, maybe more.

So, although the animal's niche hasn't changed, the environment has.

 

[MG1962]

IF you are serious please don't hesitate to expand on this. Perhaps I'm confused but it seems ridiculous to assert that a "niche" has remained relatively unchanged for 92 million years. To me I'd think the ocean could potentially be a niche if it weren't for rising and falling temperatures?

Please educate.

I am not sure what I can say. Since the Moons formation the Earth has had tides. There has always been a place between high and low tide with its own ecology, which needs some very special adaptions to survive.

General rise and fall of ocean levels dont affect it because the organisms will migrate up and down the margin as required

We have not had a total global cooling event since the rise of multicelluar life. So although life may go extinct in a localised area by virtue of changing conditions, globally unaffected organisms will be able to recolonise the area.

 

[fishbob]

Still not addressing the claim that the environment has not changed for 92 million years.

In any given location, the environment has changed many times. But there has always been deep water environments somewhere, always has been shallow near shore environments somewhere, always has been good octopus habitat somewhere - just not always at the same location. However octopi - clams that got legs* - can easily move to a suitable habitat.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nah, that changes significantly twice a day!

Dave

Not to mention plate movement.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

What are the oldest living animal and plant species still alive today?

The very oldest species on Earth are the cyanobacteria, which seem to have been around virtually unchanged for nearly 4 billion years. This is based on fossils of that age that have been compared under high-powered microscopes to existing species of these bacteria. Other bacteria that are about as old are the archaea, which thrive in acidic, high- temperature, or high-radiation environments.

Another remnant of ancient organisms includes the stromatolites, mounds of algae and bacteria that today grow in the Bahamas, Shark's Bay Australia, and a few other limited environments. They have been around, also largely unchanged, for over 3 billion years and at one time were the Earth's dominant form of life.

On the animal side of things, the brachiopod Lingulaa is probably the oldest, having existed nearly unchanged for over 500 million years, and the horseshoe crab (limulus) has been on the planet for several hundred million years, too. Since the average "lifespan" of a species is only a few million years, having such ancient species around is very impressive.

A good book about the earliest life is "Cradle of Life" by J. William Schopf. He is one of the premier scientists doing this sort of research. At a more advanced level, he has edited two scientific books, "Earth's Earliest Biosphere" and "The Proterozoic Biosphere", which should be in your university's geology or science library.

In order to understand how evolution theory explains species changing or not changing, why not look to the theory itself rather than trying to imagine how it would work?

Start with this Wiki entry on Punctuated equilibrium

Punctuated equilibrium is therefore mistakenly thought to oppose the concept of gradualism, when it is actually a form of gradualism, in the ecological sense of biological continuity.[3] This is because even though evolutionary change appears instantaneous between geological sediments, change is still occurring incrementally, with no great change from one generation to the next. To this end, Gould later commented that "Most of our paleontological colleagues missed this insight because they had not studied evolutionary theory and either did not know about allopatric speciation or had not considered its translation to geological time. Our evolutionary colleagues also failed to grasp the implication, primarily because they did not think at geological scales."[5]

The relationship between punctuationism and gradualism can be better appreciated by considering an example. Suppose the average length of a limb in a particular species grows 50 centimeters (20 inches) over 70,000 years—a large amount in a geologically short period of time. If the average generation is seven years, then our given time span corresponds to 10,000 generations. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that if the limb size in our hypothetical population evolved in the most conservative manner, it need only increase at a rate of 0.005 cm per generation (= 50 cm/10,000), despite its abrupt appearance in the geological record....

...It is often incorrectly assumed that [Darwin] insisted that the rate of change must be constant, or nearly so, but even the first edition of On the Origin of Species states that "Species of different genera and classes have not changed at the same rate, or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms... The Silurian Lingula differs but little from the living species of this genus". Lingula is among the few brachiopods surviving today but also known from fossils over 500 million years old.[30] In the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species Darwin wrote that "the periods during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured in years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form."[31] Thus punctuationism in general is consistent with Darwin's conception of evolution.[29]

From there you can branch out to the related concepts in evolution.

 

[themusicteacher]

Aren't sharks one of the oldest, if not THE oldest, living prehistoric ancestors, virtually unchanged for almost 450 million years? I imagine they've likely changed in size, prevalence, number and variety but I've heard them regarded as a living example of primordial history. That does nothing to discount evolution. If anything, it is the exception that proves the rule. Once again, however, anti-evolutioners will summarily and thoughtlessly twist this into "evidence" that evolution is a "big lie" through obfuscation, conflation, misrepresentation of facts, misinterpretation of evolutionary science and outright stupidity.

How insecure are these religious fools that it was they, not scientists, that manufactured this whole "war" between the ecumenical and the scientific? What a bunch of nervous, self-centered douchebags. Now, they feel the need to drag down a generation of kids into their delusion by saying that evolution is a "lie" and that ID is science by another name. It sort of reminds me of a "News in Brief" I read years ago in The Onion. It was about the efforts of anti-evolution nut-jobs to get ID taught in schools. One woman responded, "Sure, we can teach ID in school if I can staple a copy of the constitution to every cross in your church." or something like that. Do you honestly believe that these anti-evolution folks will be teaching science in their churches? Turnabout, it seems, is not fair play.

 

[Soapy Sam]

In case it is missed, I'd repeat fishbob's point.
There has always been deep water and that environment has not changed much, though the places where that deep water existed are not the places they exist now.

But a species may adapt to a different environment simply because a competitor moves into its original environment. While we assume ( the uniformitarian view) that the modern Beasty beastii likes the same environments as its ancestors, it may be that it is just adaptable.
Evolution is an absolute bugger.

 

[truethat]

Ok it seems to me that my original assertion that the claim that the octopus hasn't changed because it was perfectly suited to the environment is a bogus statement.

As I said.


So just so I understand correctly

The earth has changed in 92 million years. And so has the octopus, the spider and the shark.

I mean that's my interpretation of the science. Do I have it correct?

 

[I Ratant]

All of those animals, and every other, changes in whatever form possible for the animal to adopt to fit changes in the environment, given sufficient time.
Without that grace period, the animal will fail, and disappear.
And sometimes other animals may find the niche that just opened is just peachy-keen for it, like the killer birds that emerged after the K-T event removed the dinosaurs.
Gastornis and related species.
These were kings of their hills until something, either the environment or a tougher nasiter species of other animal cleaned their clocks!
Enteledonts, Andrewsarchus... nasty muthas, which don't (thank Gaia) plague us today!
A niche opens, it tends to get filled by something else.

 

[Ysidro]

I am kind of surprised that no one has braught up Cilocanth.

Fossil records have been found to be 400 million years old - so 4 times older than this octopus - thought to be extinct for 65 Mill. But now we know they've been living in deep sea UNCHANGED for that time.

So it's not like this octopus is unique? What's the big deal?http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Cilocanth

That's because they have changed. The ones found living are a different species of the order Coelacanthiformes than the ones we have fossils of. Sure, the order is still around but the individuals are different.

Just like the octopus. Really, everyone go read the Pharyngula post that has been linked to multiple times. It clears most of this up.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

In case it is missed, I'd repeat fishbob's point.
There has always been deep water and that environment has not changed much, though the places where that deep water existed are not the places they exist now.

But a species may adapt to a different environment simply because a competitor moves into its original environment. While we assume ( the uniformitarian view) that the modern Beasty beastii likes the same environments as its ancestors, it may be that it is just adaptable.
Evolution is an absolute bugger.

Also, there are many many species of sharks, so one needs to qualify what you mean by species. Megalodon, for example, is an extinct species of shark.

 

[godless dave]

My problem is the assertion that there are pockets of the planet in which environments remained basically unchanged for 92 million years. I can't wrap my mind around this as a possibility. So if someone could give an example and explain it a little that would be very helpful.

The Abyssal Zone of the world's oceans hasn't changed much in 155 million years or more.

 

[MG1962]

The Abyssal Zone of the world's oceans hasn't changed much in 155 million years or more.

Given the vast majority of ocean floor is under 120 million years old, I do find that a little hard to believe

 

[godless dave]

Given the vast majority of ocean floor is under 120 million years old, I do find that a little hard to believe

Some of it is 155 million years old, including some of the deep trenches where the water temperature doesn't change much (except right around the thermal vents).

 

[Old Bob]

Nobody questions if the times are correct. Carbon dating has huge errors. Isotope and cosmic rads methods leave a lot of maybe even for a layman like me. Dino prints with human prints overlay? We haven't changed much either. Half the time funding gets in the road of the truth. If the expert's are wrong they are not experts. Sorry to be negative but that comes with age, Darwin wasn't totally right in my opinion.

 

[Neverfly]

Please educate yourself on these claims.

Nobody questions if the times are correct. Carbon dating has huge errors. Isotope and cosmic rads methods leave a lot of maybe even for a layman like me.

This claim is not accurate and I suggest you read up and learn more about Radiometric dating prior to making claims.

Dino prints with human prints overlay?

Paluxy?
I've been there myself.
There are no human and dinosaur footprints. Only dinosaur footprints.
Read more about it Here.

Old, Bob, I am not trying to be rude- I am trying to help you out here.

Listing off old and debunked claims that someone else spouted is not going to help you present a case.

You may as well have said, "Everyone knows that if you drink soda and eat pop rocks at the same time, you'll explode."

There are a lot of nonsense claims floating around. One must educate themselves to the actuality before trying to use a claim they heard somewhere.

 

[Tricky]

Interestingly, as we speak I am scanning some old Gulf of Mexico micropaleontology manuals to digital format. Because of the fact that they are marine, meaning few periods of erosion within the last few hundred-thousand years, and also that they get spread widely, microfossils are one of the most important tools in the oil industry for knowing where (and when) in the rock you are. I'm scanning page after page of the little critters, each one changing just a tiny amount as we move up the section from Paleocene to present day. It is an almost unbroken fossil lineage with only a very few "missing links". Microfossils are almost the perfect tool because, being so tiny, they don't get broken up and destroyed by ocean processes. Because many are planktonic (floating) and have very short life spans, you have a constant rain of dead "bugs" on the ocean floor.

With microfossils, you can not only tell how old the rocks are, but you can tell what environment they were deposited in, as certain "bugs" prefer high-energy environments while others prefer to float lazily in the deep water. By reconstructing paleotemperature maps (from lots of sources, like minerology) you can also see if the critters liked warmer water or cooler.

Some bugs, known as "marker fossils" have a very short span in the geologic time scale, so if you find one, you can pretty much pinpoint the age of the sediments. Often, though, you have to go by fossil assemblages, i.e. "This time period has A plus B but not C and occasional D". (Much more complex than that, but you get the idea.)

As you look at the pictures, you can see a foraminiferan adding chambers, changing the amount of spiral, evolving a "lip' on the opening of its test (shell), and countless other subtle changes. Theses changes can be laid out in a successive picture so that the evolution from one to another is crystal clear. You never find one of the younger ones under one of the older ones (unless the sediments have been disturbed.) You will occasionally find "reworked" fossils, i.e. bugs from an older age that have been eroded and redeposited in younger sediments, but there are often clues (like polishing) that tell you if they are reworked.

I often bring this up when creationists try to say "there are no unbroken fossil lineages." They are wrong. You just need the right kind of fossil and the right kind of environment for preservation.

 

[Dave Rogers]

This is the sort of post that would make an ideal nomination for educational/informative post of the month, if we had that award. Thanks, Tricky.

Dave