Transitional Forms
Everytime I hear creationists talking about a lack of transitional fossil's, I want to tear my hair out! Not only is every living thing a "transitional" form, but there are so many fossil's which show aspects of speciation, I don't understand how they can keep their eyes clenched closed to reality.
Archaeopteryx
Darwinius masillae
Tiktaalik
Homo Erectus
Plus so many more to count.
EAT IT CREANDERTHALS!
"This may shock you, but not everything in the bible is true." The only true statement ever to be uttered by Jean Chauvinism, sociopathic emotional terrorist.
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"The means in which you take,
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"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme leadership derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
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Probably the best list I've seen.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Has any good resources on transitional forms, post it here! Now the Creanderthals coming here won't have that far to go to be shown just how wrong they are.
"This may shock you, but not everything in the bible is true." The only true statement ever to be uttered by Jean Chauvinism, sociopathic emotional terrorist.
"A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished." Mikhail Bakunin
"The means in which you take,
dictate the ends in which you find yourself."
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme leadership derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
No Gods, No Masters!
and don't forget to point them to the thread about the crocoduck being found! i would search for it and link to it but i'm on break and have to ration my time. maybe later.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
A living transitional fossil...
I'd just LOVE for any evolution skeptic to explain the data presented in this image...
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
wait thats not s human at the last stage right ?
I think it's some sort of primate fetus/infant (which, dictionary defintion-wise, doesn't really rule us out)
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
could someone clarify the pic please
So yeah, it is a human fetus
This is from Ernst Haeckel's theory that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". It is largely discredited now, but I'm no expert and Wikipedia has a lot more information than I do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Wikipedia is fascinating. Before I know it I'm reading a science journal about inducing tooth growth in chickens by reactivating dormant genes.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
It is fun, isn't it? I used to own a set of encylopedias and I finally donated them to the local Rotary Club to send to Uganda. Wikipedia has more information and is faster to search.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Anyone who asks for a transitional fossil is proving that they have no idea how evolution works. Every living thing on planet earth is a transitional organism, so EVERY fossil is a transitional fossil.
A great book that's easy to read, and makes a wonderful Easter gift for any YEC friends is "Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin. It explains (and has pictures of) several of the most important transitions in our evolutionary past, including the move from fin to arm. It ought to be required reading for every high school freshman biology class.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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dam it looks so lovely
Canis and ursidae: http://www.fossil-treasures-of-florida.com/bear-dog.html
Looks like an awesome pet.
edit: Since creationists use dogs and cats so much in their anti evolution rants.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
and we still have a tail bone... It annoys me, hopefully we can evolve it away soon
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You cannot disprove the existance of God, but you also cannot disprove the existance of an all powerfull, incomprehesible, pink elephant that lives in the boot of my car.
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Awsome
Small nit-pick - not all forms would be transitional.
We should exclude those suspected to be on the very verge of extinction.
But that would be a very small fraction, and rather hard to identify with confidence as the last of their line.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Why are Dodos called Dodos??? Because they remind us of human dolts!!!!!!!!????????????
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_and_everything.html
Here is a link to a speak by Douglas Adams where he speaks about several species adaptations including the Dodo. Good stuff.
A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce
When I hear a creationist ask for a transitional fossil, it is usually not because they deny reality. I usually find that it is because they fundamentally misunderstand what evolution is.
For example, I recently read a forum post by a creationist (I can't remember where it was from, its possible it was from RRS) in which the creationist asked for a transitional fossil between a monkey and a spider.
I don't understand why the Christians I meet find it so confusing that I care about the fact that they are wasting huge amounts of time and resources playing with their imaginary friend. Even non-confrontational religion hurts atheists because we live in a society which is constantly wasting resources and rejecting rational thinking.
Well, I guess if we're being nitpicky, we can say that only individual organisms which reproduce are transitional, which would actually make a significantly higher number of them non-transitional. But that's only if we think of "transitional" and "organism" as separate words. We could think of "transitional organism" as a term which applies to any organism whose DNA is modified from its parents and whose offspring, whether actual or potential, would also be subject to modification.
We'd still have some issue with asexual clones and a few other nit-picky quirks of nature, but that would avoid the problem of having to guess whether this fossilized crocoduck actually had offspring or not.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Well, personally, I don't really care for the argument that everything is transitional. And I don't see it as a nitpick to say that the K-T boundary or the P-T boundary are filled with life forms that failed to become something else.
Absent mass extinction events, something would have become something else. It still requires evolution as the base assumption.
However, even if there were no mass extinctions, it remains a fact that lines of evolution end. That is just what happens. Nothing to see here, move along.
As far as transitional fossils are concerned, yes, there are some.
However, on the merits of the “there are none” argument, I think that it bears noting that the conditions that produce a fossil are fairly rare. In that light, we are somewhat lucky to have as much as we do. Even so, we do have some. Dare I say that we have enough to make a point?
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Well, I think we're just quibbling semantics. The point of saying "every organism is transitional" is to say that every organism is part of the evolutionary system, which is descent with modification. My parents are a "transition" between my grandparents and me. Yes, we're the same species, but I am a continuation of the process of generational modification of a line of DNA.
With the weird caveat that we haven't completely disproved the remote possibility of successful macro-mutations between one species and another in one generation, it's safe to say that no fossil marks an "absolute transition" between species. Everything we call a transitional fossil is a plant or animal whose features illustrate part of the evolution of new adaptations, such as fins becoming limbs. But when we look at Tiktaalik, for instance, we're not seeing an isolated individual that was the sole link between forms. There were certainly thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions of individuals, any one of which looked essentially like its parents.
Speciation can only be identified in retrospect. Who knows which individual [iTiktaalik[/i] was the one whose genome contained the "spore" for whatever species followed it on the evolutionary tree? In the same respect, who knows if I have a mutation which would lead -- in a hundred thousand years -- to a totally new species? We just can't know until it happens, since virtually every organism has mutations/reorganizations which could, in theory, lead to new species. So I think it's perfectly proper to speak of every organism as transitional, so long as we understand that every individual is not going to propagate a new species, but in theory, each individual could.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
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EVOLUTIONARY DEAD-ENDS?! ON EARTH????!!!! MADNESS I TELL YOU, MADNESS!!!!
The Creationists still seem to be asking us to show a 'transitional' form between completely different species/lineages - many of them actually take the infamous 'crocoduck' as serious example of what they expect us to show if evolution were 'true'.
So they just don't get the idea that evolution is a step-by-step process.
Our argument that if you could see representatives of every generation along the entire lineage of any 'species' we know of today, nowhere would you see any difference from one generation to the next greater than you would expect to see between a parent and its offspring, just doesn't get through to them.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I've never understood why the monotremes are not a good example of a transitional. Yet every creationist I've ever debated has not accepted them. Mammals that lay eggs-what else could they be but a transitional?
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Well, to concede that would to admit their argument against evolution had holes in it, and since they know evolution is not true, there cannot be any 'transitional' forms, so that's all there is to it, you dumb atheist.
But even back before Darwin, people had classified animals into plausible family trees showing how you could go from one species to another similar one in a consistent direction, so the evidence for the relatedness of so many species has been around all this time. Its like the 'God-of-the-Gaps' argument, they will ignore all the evidence that fits, and seize on the gaps where intermediate forms just did not split off into separate species or just died out.
Its funny, they will use the absence of surviving intermediate forms as evidence against evolution, and then ask, 'if we evolved from apes, why are their still apes?' So whether there are intermediate species or not, its still evidence against evolution...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I posted a bear dog, I thought that might seem transitional enough.
Amphicyon
Description: Amphicyon is a “bear-dog,” which fills an evolutionary position between modern bears & dogs. It's grizzly-sized. The preserved trackways suggest it could run down large prey! This was part of a series of reconstructions based on fossils found in the Barstow Fossil Beds.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Yeah. Monotremes are transitional forms that just happen to be lucky enough to still live. I think this highlights another misconception many Creationists have of evolution. They seem to think that evolution is somehow "done." But there's nothing in evolutionary theory to suggest that there wouldn't always be transitional forms. We'd be kind of shocked to see a world where there weren't any, in fact.
Another really good example of transitional forms is any one of several existing ring species. Of course, Creationists will poo-poo ring species because "they're just variants of the same species," but this highlights their misunderstanding of the concept of species, which has actually been rendered sort of quaint and outdated by modern evolutionary theory. In the classic example of the heron gull and black backed heron, the two species do not interbreed, but there's still a complete, unbroken chain of populations, each of which interbreeds with the surrounding populations. In other words, if we imagine bending a 1 foot wire into a circle, neither end would be joined to the other, but as we move around the circle in either direction, everything is joined. That's how a ring species works.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Hamby ~ I currently have this in audio book form ~ not only is it easy to follow ... Shubin has a sense of humor!
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Well, I don't think that monotremes are really a good example of a transitional form. Yes, everything is transitional as noted above and I have already mentioned that I have reservations on the matter.
That being said, monotremes lay eggs and other mammals do not. Since nothing lays half an egg, I don't really want to get into this with the YEC crowd. It is just not a great position to take.
Basically, we all know what is what. However, adding to that, everything that now exists can rather easily be seen as a terminal to evolution. This does not deny everything that happened up to the current moment, nor does it say anything about what will happen in the future.
Sticking to transitional fossils though, I fail to see how not having one would even be a valid point. OK, we do not have everything. SFW. Here I am reminded of the 19th century concept of the “missing link”. Of course in the modern world, we have plenty of transitional forms between the rodent like creatures that went into the trees many millions of years ago and what eventually came out.
However, the fact that we simply do not have every intermediate form does not show anything at all. Sure, the link may well be missing (in whatever sense that makes). That does not mean that it never existed.
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Sure it is. That doesn't mean they won't set up a straw-man and then knock it down, but there's no helping that. The "half an eye" argument just displays ignorance of evolution, so you're not going to prevent it without giving them a course in evo-bio, which they clearly aren't willing to take in the first place.
This all comes back to transitions being dependent on the future. We won't know if a platypus fossil will be thought of as a transition to something else until something else exists. And it was the same way with Tiktaalik, one of the most important transitional fossils in the archives. If there had been a natural disaster that wiped out all the [Tiktaaliks[/i], then it wouldn't be a transitional fossil. It would be an evolutionary dead end. But that doesn't take away from the fact that it has anatomical features of several separate modern clades.
It's probable that there have been many "transitional dead ends." Fins in fish developed ankle and wrist-like hinges, but they didn't have to go on to become limbs. That mutational line could have died out, and land animals could be getting around on some other locomotive system. There were probably other potential transitions that simply didn't cut the mustard when compared with flopping around in the mud on pseudo-wrists.
What? I guess I don't understand what you mean. How can we say anything is "terminal" in evolution if it's still reproducing?
True enough. In fact, combining plate tectonics, evolution, and ecology, we'd be incredibly surprised if we had every intermediate. Frankly, if we had every single fossil of every form that had ever lived, we'd have to seriously question our conclusions about a great many scientific theories.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism