₦airaland Forum

If whales are not descended from land-dwelling quadrupedes,  why have they got redimentary leg bones buried deep in their flesh?   These bones no longer have any attachment to the rest of the skeleton.  What are they used for?


Why are some whales born with fully formed legs? Read this report.


(Evidence speak louder than babble.  The cluncking fist of evidence smashes the bone-skull head of the creationist.   I know what they will do next.   Not address the issues staring them in their deluded eyes)

This is the most ridiculous of all the excuses for the validity of evolution . . . infact it is a clear indication that Huxley is not informed about much of his own arguments.

- First of all it is important to place his argument in simple terms (it must be noted that a lot of these clueless folks seem to revel in using high-fallutin words to convey the false impression that they know what they are saying. When he uses the term "atavism" he is simply talking about the presence of allegedly "vestigial organs" in humans that are thought to serve no purpose in man today but are merely traits that were once present in our prior ancestors.

- Before tackling the false idea that the tailbones and appendix in humans are false, i shld remind him that the idea of vestigial organs was first mooted by Robert Wiedersheim who first published a list of 86 "vestigial organs" in 1893. However this list has all but become obsolete in the scientific world because we now know that his list was based on ignorance of the functions of many of those organs rather than their being vestigial organs at all.

For example of a few organs on Wiedersheim's list:

1. Thymus gland - Today we now know that this organ + spleen and bone marrow are the 3 most important immunological sites for the maturation of immune lymphocytes. The term "T" in the name "T lymphocytes" refers to the fact that these group of white cells are almost exclusively produced in the thymus gland. The loss of a subset of this T lymphocytes (CD 4) is the basis for HIV AIDS.

2. Pituitary gland - Tiny gland about the size of a grain of maize found at the base of the brain. It secretes the hormones that make you even grow at all! Without growth hormone you'll remain the size you were at birth if you're lucky to be born alive.

3. Valves in the veins - If you've seen someone with varicose veins then you understand the importance of these innocuous piece of tissue. Blood flows through the veins against gravity, the valves prevent reverse blood flow so you dont end up with all the blood in your veins pooling at your feet when you stand or walk.

Now to the 2 organs Huxley ignorantly mentioned that were obviously copied from Wiedersheim's list:

1. the appendix - Now known to contain a large amount of gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) which helps to fight foreign organism that may be ingested inadvertently. Also secretes a fluid that lubricates the large intestine . . . which is why it is not uncommon for appendectomy patients to develop constipation until other regions of the intestines develop a compensatory mechanism to offset the loss of the appendix.
- An infected and ruptured appendix is a one-way ticket to death . . . so much for a useless organ.

2. tail bone/coccyx - Is attached to important muscles that control bowel movement and support some abdominal organs. Try asking a dude without his tail bone how easy it is to sit down.

Huxley . . . try reading before you post next time . . . you put real scientists to shame.

What do you think is the current scientific opinion about the 1893 list?   Science has moved in leaps and bounds science that list was first publish, so how might one evalaute the list in the light of current and modern scientific techniques.  We can deal with all the ideas you mentioned, but let's start with the human tail, reported many times in the medical literature.

The main question is  - If you posit an intelligent designer who created every single animal from scratch in one single creation event, why would he create humans with the genes for making a fully developed tail, complete with tail vertabrates, blood and nerve supply, skin and hair?   Why would he give us an organ that we do not seem to need but appears to be useful in some primates/apes?


There have been 23 true vestigial tails reported in the literature since 1884. A new case is described, and its magnetic resonance imaging and pathological features are presented. A review of the literature and analysis of the pathological characteristics reveal that the vestigial human tail may be associated with other abnormalities. Vestigial tails contain adipose and connective tissue, blood vessels, and nerves and are covered by skin. Bone, cartilage, notochord, and spinal cord elements are lacking. Tails are easily removed surgically without residual effects. Since 29% (7 of 24) of the reported tails have been associated with other malformations, careful clinical evaluation of these patients is recommended.    Annals of Plastic Surgery,  1988 Apr;20(4):340-4.


A case of a tail in a 2-week-old infant is reported, and findings from a review of 33 previously reported cases of true tails and pseudotails are summarized. The true, or persistent, vestigial tail of humans arises from the most distal remnant of the embryonic tail. It contains adipose and connective tissue, central bundles of striated muscle, blood vessels, and nerves and is covered by skin. Bone, cartilage, notochord, and spinal cord are lacking. The true tail arises by retention of structures found normally in fetal development. It may be as long as 13 cm, can move and contract, and occurs twice as often in males as in females. A true tail is easily removed surgically, without residual effects. It is rarely familial. Pseudotails are varied lesions having in common a lumbosacral protrusion and a superficial resemblance to persistent vestigial tails. The most frequent cause of a pseudotail in a series of ten cases obtained from the literature was an anomalous prolongation of the coccygeal vertebrae. Additional lesions included two lipomas, and one each of teratoma, chondromegaly , glioma, and a thin, elongated parasitic fetus.

  Human Pathology, 1984 May;15(5):449-53

Two children and one infant with a "human tail" are presented. The patho-embryology of this medical curiosity is briefly discussed. Treatment is usually unnecessary but resection of part of the coccyx together with the "tail" may become indicated by coccygodynia or for aesthetic reasons.   The picture of the human tail below is taken from this study. Bar-Maor, J. A., Kesner, K. M., and Kaftori, J. K. (1980) "Human tails." J Bone Joint Surg Br. 62-B: 508-510.




Thirty-three cases of true human tails have been reported in the modern English literature. A new case is described and its radiological and pathological features are presented. A review of the literature and analysis of the pathological characteristics of this interesting lumbosacral stigma indicate that the true human tail is a benign condition not associated with any underlying cord malformation. J Neurosurg. 1985 Sep;63(3):461-2.

Watch this video to find out.

I have searched the literature about studies on Chromosome 2 and I cannot find a single study that contradicts the current view that it was formed by the fusion of two ancestral chromosome. Here is article published in 2005, annoucing the work of the Human Genome project on Chromosome 2:

[size=14pt]NHGRI-supported researchers discover largest ’gene deserts’; find new clues to ancestral chromosome fusion event
[/size]

A detailed analysis of chromosomes 2 and 4 has detected the largest "gene deserts" known in the human genome and uncovered more evidence that human chromosome 2 arose from the fusion of two ancestral ape chromosomes, researchers supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reported today.

In a study published in the April 7 issue of the journal Nature, a multi-institution team, led by Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, described its analysis of the high quality, reference sequence of chromosomes 2 and 4. The sequencing work on the chromosomes was carried out as part of the Human Genome Project at Washington University; Broad Institute of MIT, Cambridge, Mass.; Stanford DNA Sequencing and Technology Development Center, Stanford, Calif.; Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, England; National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; Genoscope, Evry, France; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; University of Washington Multimegabase Sequencing Center, Seattle; U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, Calif.; and Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y.

"This analysis is an impressive achievement that will deepen our understanding of the human genome and speed the discovery of genes related to human health and disease. In addition, these findings provide exciting new insights into the structure and evolution of mammalian genomes," said Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of NHGRI, which led the U.S. component of the Human Genome Project along with the DOE.

Chromosome 4 has long been of interest to the medical community because it holds the gene for Huntington’s disease, polycystic kidney disease, a form of muscular dystrophy and a variety of other inherited disorders. Chromosome 2 is noteworthy for being the second largest human chromosome, trailing only chromosome 1 in size. It is also home to the gene with the longest known, protein-coding sequence – a 280,000 base pair gene that codes for a muscle protein, called titin, which is 33,000 amino acids long.

One of the central goals of the effort to analyze the human genome is the identification of all genes, which are generally defined as stretches of DNA that code for particular proteins. The new analysis confirmed the existence of 1,346 protein-coding genes on chromosome 2 and 796 protein-coding genes on chromosome 4.

As part of their examination of chromosome 4, the researchers found what are believed to be the largest "gene deserts" yet discovered in the human genome sequence. These regions of the genome are called gene deserts because they are devoid of any protein-coding genes. However, researchers suspect such regions are important to human biology because they have been conserved throughout the evolution of mammals and birds, and work is now underway to figure out their exact functions.

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes – one less pair than chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other great apes. For more than two decades, researchers have thought human chromosome 2 was produced as the result of the fusion of two mid-sized ape chromosomes and a Seattle group located the fusion site in 2002.

In the latest analysis, researchers searched the chromosome’s DNA sequence for the relics of the center (centromere) of the ape chromosome that was inactivated upon fusion with the other ape chromosome. They subsequently identified a 36,000 base pair stretch of DNA sequence that likely marks the precise location of the inactived centromere. That tract is characterized by a type of DNA duplication, known as alpha satellite repeats, that is a hallmark of centromeres. In addition, the tract is flanked by an unusual abundance of another type of DNA duplication, called a segmental duplication.

"These data raise the possibility of a new tool for studying genome evolution. We may be able to find other chromosomes that have disappeared over the course of time by searching other mammals’ DNA for similar patterns of duplication," said Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., director of the Washington University School of Medicine’s Genome Sequencing Center and senior author of the study.

In another intriguing finding, the researchers identified a messenger RNA (mRNA) transcript from a gene on chromosome 2 that possibly may produce a protein unique to humans and chimps. Scientists have tentative evidence that the gene may be used to make a protein in the brain and the testes. The team also identified "hypervariable" regions in which genes contain variations that may lead to the production of altered proteins unique to humans. The functions of the altered proteins are not known, and researchers emphasized that their findings still require "cautious evaluation." In October 2004, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium published its scientific description of the finished human genome sequence in Nature. Detailed annotations and analyses have already been published for chromosomes 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, X and Y. Publications describing the remaining chromosomes are forthcoming.

The sequence of chromosomes 2 and 4, as well as the rest of the human genome sequence, can be accessed through the following public databases: GenBank (www.ncbi.nih.gov/Genbank) at NIH’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI); the UCSC Genome Browser (www.genome.ucsc.edu) at the University of California at Santa Cruz; the Ensembl Genome Browser ( www.ensembl.org) at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute; the DNA Data Bank of Japan (www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp); and EMBL-Bank (www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/index.html) at EMBL’s Nucleotide Sequence Database.

Finally:
Do U even understand the experiment that was done at all? 


This is getting so boring, so U cant even see there were two experiments done with two different probes and those two probes gave opposite results. Arrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!

What are the results and what are the conclusions?

Finally:
U are becoming a bore and an annoying one at that.

If U cant pick out the sticky points from a very straight foward abstract , then we should not be having a discussion in the first place. We are not having a Journal club so I am under no obligation to walk U thru it.

[b]Similarities in chromosome banding patterns and homologies in DNA sequence between chromosomes of the great apes andhumans have suggested that human chromosome 2 originated through the fusion of two ancestral ape chromosomes. A lot of work has been directed at understanding the nature and mechanism of this fusion. The recent availability of the humanchromosome-2-specific alpha satellite DNA probe D2Z and the human chromosome-2p-specific subtelomeric DNA probeD2S445 prompted us to attempt cross-hybridization with chromosomes of the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), gorilla (Gorillagorilla) and orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) to search for equivalent locations in the great apes and to comment on the origin ofhuman chromosome 2. The probes gave different results. No hybridization to the chromosome-2-specifïc alpha satelliteDNA probe was observed on the presumed homologous great ape chromosomes using both high-stringency and low-stringency post-hybridization washes, whereas the subtelomeric-DNA probe specific for chromosome 2p hybridized totelomeric sites of the short arm of chromosome 12 of all three great apes. These observations suggest an evolutionary difference in the number of alpha satellite DNA repeat units in the equivalent ape chromosomes presumably involved in thechromosome fusion. Nevertheless, complete conservation of DNA sequence of the subtelomeric repeat sequence D2S445 inthe ape chromosomes is demonstrated[/b]


By the way, count me as one of Hux's casualties if that makes U feel better. I am outtie.

Yes, I did read that abstract and how does it support your point?

Yes, faced with the rubbish in the bible, what do you do? Bury you head in the same rubbish while claiming it to be right on the basis if faith. What a shame.

Hey, Finally,

I have challenged you to address the scientific papers you cited in one of your responses and also the paper from Nature which I cited.  It is becoming obvious now that you are unable to support you claim with the papers you cited,    and that making excuses and taking flight from the fray is your only course of refuge.

If you refuse to address these and take flight it will not be anything new here on NL.   Many a Christian and religious apologists have been crucified at the alter of hard scientific fact and logic (right here on NL)  and you will not be the first.  Just ask about Stimulus, 4Him, Imhotep, Pilgrim, Cyprus, etc, etc.   You will be joining the graveyard of the disreputable just like your antecedants.

Finally:
This might be my last post on this thread cos this is turning out to be more of a joke than a discourse. I would rather be in the Comedy section of NL than be here wasting my time.

[b]Similarities in the chromosome banding patterns and the homologies in DNA sequence between great apes and human chromosome suggest that human chromosome 2 originated by fusion of two ancestral chromosomes
[/b]

Does this support your position or does it rebutts it?    I get the funny feeling that you never really read these articles your cited, which would not surprise me in the least.  I call this "hoisting on your own petard"


If U are in the habit of reading of scientific article(s) (or any article at all) , U would notice that the trend is to go from the known to the unknown. The introduction of any scientific paper is typically divided into three paragraphs

1) What is known.

2) What is unknown or controversial

3) Experiments designed to either rebut or support what is already known/ adding more to what is known.



Now what U quoted above was taken from paragraph 1 of the introduction of that article where the authors where stating what was supposedly known and they also cited the 1991 paper, thereby exonerating themselves from the claim. The paper now went ahead to test those reasons more rigorously and from their experiments they found that the basis for that assumption was wrong.

I now know that U might not be able to understand the methodologies used in both papers (some of them I find questionable) so I will just advise U to go down to the discussion section of the paper and U will at least get the conclusion made by the authors cos it is apparent u completely missed their own conclusion. However, I have to warn U that reading conclusions without really understanding how the experiments were done is very dangerous and it is becoming apparent that U are in the habit of doing that.

U see why I think this discourse wont do any of us any good. When I have to point out basic and fundamental issues like the ones above, it makes look like I am delivering a lecture rather than having some meaningful debate. And thats the reason why I wont even go into the Nature paper cos it gets even more  messy and complicated.

In fact if you had read the article YOU CITED (Note that you cited this article in support of your position) you might have seen that I took that statement from the Results and Discussion section of the article, although it looks very similar to the first statement of the abstract.  I have not been able to find any statement from this paper that detracts from the view that Chromosome 2 is the fusion of two ape chromosome.

As an honest and intelligent Christian as you are, I implore you to point me in the direction of such a statement. 


Why don't you read the Results and Discussion section and tell NL how that detracts from the general scientific view?


Funny how you failed to address the other article you cited, whose abstract I gave above, and I repeat below:

"Origin of human chromosome 2: An ancestral telomere-telomere fusion, by J. W. IJDO*t, A. BALDINIt§, D. C. WARDt, S. T. REEDERS**, AND R. A. WELLS*¶
*Howard Hughes Medical Institute and tDepartment of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510 Communicated by Alan Garen, July 8, 1991."

Abstract
We have identified two allelic genomic cosmids from human chromosome 2, c8.1 and c29B, each containing two inverted arrays of the vertebrate telomeric repeat in a head-to-head arrangement, 5'(TTAGGG)n-(CCCTAA)m3'. Sequences flanking this telomeric repeat are characteristic of present-day human pretelomeres. BAL-31 nuclease experiments with yeast artificial chromosome clones of human telomeres and fluorescence in situ hybridization reveal that sequences flanking these inverted repeats hybridize both to band 2q13 and to different, but overlapping, subsets of human chromosome ends. We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2.


You also ignored the much more recent and comprehensive article in Nature.  Is this the sort of behaviour they teach you at your Christian churches?

ohwofasa:
like 2weeks back on my way from work,as i was about to cross the express road,i suddenly noticed a mad woman,as i walk passed the mad woman,the next thing i heard was,PASTOR GOODEVERNING:when i looked back,i almost passed out when i noticed that they was no one at my back,meaning the mad woman was referring to me.

b4 now,God has given many people messages for me,saying that He want me to be a PASTOR

WAT DO I DO?

I have heard before that god does speak through an arse( or was it an ass). So is he now speaking thru a mad woman? If I was you I would go sacrifce an ass in his honour.

What beef have you got with protestant beliefs? Do you care to enumerate?

The first draft of the genome of a 38,000 year-old Neanderthal is complete, scientists announced today.

Taken from New Scientist

Early glimpses of the genome, which was sequenced by Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues, have already cast new light on the ancient human species that went extinct more than 25,000 years ago.

"This will be the first time the entire genome of an extinct organism has been sequenced," Pääbo told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Chicago.

Now study of the more complete genome will allow scientists to examine Neanderthals' relationship with modern humans as never before.

A preliminary analysis of the sequence suggests that Neanderthals contributed few, if any, genes to humans via inbreeding. "There's no positive evidence that it occurred at all," Pääbo says.
'Terrific' news

Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, UK, remembers hearing Pääbo announce, in the late 1990s, that his team had sequenced a few hundred letters of Neanderthal DNA.

"You couldn't have imagined 10 years later we'd be talking about the whole genome," Stringer says.

"I think it's just terrific. It's a bit like suddenly getting a Hubble telescope," says Edward Rubin, a genomicist at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California. "We can study Neanderthals from a whole new vantage point."

However, Rubin notes that the sequence is a rough draft that will need much filling in. "To feel really confident in conclusions you make from this data, it will come from going deeper or looking at other Neanderthals," he says.

In the announcement, Pääbo said 3 billion letters of DNA comprising 60% of a male Neanderthal's genome, as well as several million more letters from three other individuals, have now been sequenced.
Cave dweller

Pääbo's team will continue to sequence and analyse Neanderthal DNA from all four of their samples to gain a more complete picture of the genomes, as well as genetic diversity among the species. They plan to publish their initial results later this year.

Palaeontologists discovered the bones that contributed the lion's share of the genome in Croatia's Vindija cave. Initial analysis of this sample and of other Neanderthal bones focused on small stretches of DNA from mitochondria, maternally inherited organelles that provide cells with energy. Mitochondrial DNA has been used extensively to study human evolution.

Yet to sequence the nuclear genome – about 180,000 times longer than a mitochondrion's – the researchers relied on a new technology that rapidly decodes very short stretches of DNA by reading light pulses generated from forging new copies of the DNA strands.

Since more than 96% of the DNA recovered from the Vindija bone belonged to invading microbes, Pääbo's team sequenced tens of billions of letters of DNA to get the 3 billion that they say undoubtedly belonged to Neanderthals.
Crossbreeding clues

Previous mitochondrial analysis of Neanderthal DNA has uncovered no sign that Neanderthals and humans interbred sufficiently to leave a trace. A preliminary analysis across the new genome seems to confirm this conclusion, but more sequence data could overturn this conclusion.

"I look at the fossil evidence and don't see much evidence of intermixture," adds Stringer.

Early glimpses at the Neanderthal genome have already trickled out in recent publications and conference presentations.

A Neanderthal recovered in Spain, seemed to have the human version of gene linked to language development, Foxp2, leading some researchers to speculate that Neanderthals communicated much like humans.

The same individual probably had a gene mutation for type O blood and at least one copy of a mutation that, in modern humans, would produce fair skin and red hair – possibly an adaptation to a cold climate with little sunshine.
Dating changes

The new sequences suggest that the Vindija Neanderthal lacked the ability to digest milk sugar in adulthood – a trait that became common among northern Europeans and Africans only in the last 10,000 years.

Two gene mutations cast further doubt on widespread sexual relations with humans. The Vindija Neanderthal lacks a version of a brain development gene, microcephalin-1, that some researchers had hypothesised humans picked up from Neanderthals. The same goes for a mutation in a gene linked to brain ageing and Alzheimer's called Tau.

Though evidence for or against human-Neanderthal fraternisation may draw all the popular attention, evolutionary biologists are eager to apply the data to less prurient projects. First among those will be understanding what makes humans human.

Our species has accrued millions of genetic changes since they last shared an ancestor with chimpanzees about 6 million years ago. Scientists have studied these differences to get a handle on what genetic changes contributed to human evolution.
Clean environment

With a Neanderthal genome sequence, scientists can attach even greater precision to when these mutations occurred. Most of the differences between humans and chimps undoubtedly built up before we split from Neanderthals.

But at some spots on the genome, Neanderthal and humans will differ, says James Noonan, a genomicist at Yale University in New Haven, who plans to focus on non-coding genetic changes that determine how much of a protein gets made.

Looming over the Neanderthal genome project has been the possibility of contamination from human handlers. Pääbo's team members perform much of their work while donning containment suits in clean rooms, and they have developed sequencing techniques to ferret out contamination.

Despite these precautions, an earlier release by the same team of one million Neanderthal DNA letters in 2006 showed signs of human contamination.

Those problems appear to be solved, says Rubin, citing the 2008 publication of a complete mitochondrial genome. "From that I'm expecting that this data's going to be largely Neanderthal."

As to whether the sequence means we could ever resurrect our extinct cousins, Pääbo rules it out. "We will not be able to recreate the Neanderthal even if we wanted to, it would be technically impossible," he says.

With all due respect, Sir, I think U are the one who really dont understand the theory of evolution. The mere fact that U admitted some horses went from a small size to a bigger size and then back again to a smaller size puts U at odds with Darwinism. Sometimes I wonder if U are still talking about Evolution or Devolution. Undecided

I don't remember admitting this, just for the records. It is not that I deny that this does not happen, or that evolution precludes this, but I don't remember having a discussion about the sizes of ancestral horses. I would be glad to be corrected.

But back to the main point, evolution does in fact, account for why within the same genera of organism, some evolve to a range of different sizes. It has happened may times in many different animals, notably horses, elephants, primates, humanoids (the results of the Hobbit man found in the Indian island should confirm that once all the disputes are cleared up). It is well known that isolation in island communities tends to produce dwarfism in animals. Check out the details of dwarf elephants here

Chromosome 2 again, kwa Shocked

The earliest paper that claims that chromosome 2 originated from a fusion of two ancestral ape chromosomes based their claims solely on similarities in chromosome banding pattern and hybridisation homology, something that was determined by ur run of the mill restriction digests.

Origin of human chromosome 2: An ancestral
telomere-telomere fusion
J. W. IJDO*t, A. BALDINIt§, D. C. WARDt, S. T. REEDERS**, AND R. A. WELLS*¶
*Howard Hughes Medical Institute and tDepartment of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510
Communicated by Alan Garen, July 8, 1991

Another paper came out 7 yrs later and this time used the more specific DNA satellites as a probe for the hybridization experiments. The long and short of it is that even after LOW STRINGENCY POST HYBRIDIZATION washes the probe did not hybridise to the presumed homologous chromosomes of the apes.

Origin of human chromosome 2 revisted (Rea Samonte et al 1998, Journal of Genetics , pg 44 to 47)

I give U those two papers to read, compare , contrast and draw ur own conclusions.

Many thanks for citing these sources and better still there appear to be from rebutable journals and by scientist working in the field. I trust we will both learn from these material. Now let's see what they have to say about Chromosome 2:


Lets, look first at "Origin of human chromosome 2: An ancestral telomere-telomere fusion, by J. W. IJDO*t, A. BALDINIt§, D. C. WARDt, S. T. REEDERS**, AND R. A. WELLS*¶
*Howard Hughes Medical Institute and tDepartment of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510 Communicated by Alan Garen, July 8, 1991."

Admittedly, I am not a geneticist but have a layperson's interest in scientific matters and some grounding in high-school biology. However, this should not prevent a high-level understanding of the subject. I could only get hold of the abstract of the article, which I present below:

Abstract
We have identified two allelic genomic cosmids from human chromosome 2, c8.1 and c29B, each containing two inverted arrays of the vertebrate telomeric repeat in a head-to-head arrangement, 5'(TTAGGG)n-(CCCTAA)m3'. Sequences flanking this telomeric repeat are characteristic of present-day human pretelomeres. BAL-31 nuclease experiments with yeast artificial chromosome clones of human telomeres and fluorescence in situ hybridization reveal that sequences flanking these inverted repeats hybridize both to band 2q13 and to different, but overlapping, subsets of human chromosome ends. We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2.

Can I draw your attention to the statement highlighted in red. What do you make of that statement with respect to your disputing the claim I made about Chromosome 2? Does it support your views?

Now, lets look at the other source you cited, viz Rea Samonte et al 1998, Journal of Genetics , pg 44 to 47. I was able to tract down a pdf for this article. Here is a statement taken from the article:

Similarities in the chromosome banding patterns and the homologies in DNA sequence between great apes and human chromosome suggest that human chromosome 2 originated by fusion of two ancestral chromosomes


Does this support your position or does it rebutts it? I get the funny feeling that you never really read these articles your cited, which would not surprise me in the least. I call this "hoisting on your own petard"


One of the most recent examination into this issue was published in Nature in 2005, viz Nature, Vol 434 and I present the pdf here . and you can watch Kenneth Miller talk about this article on this video . We actually know the precise fusion site, and this is what the article says:

Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of evolution,having emerged as a result of head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that remained separate in other primates. The precise fusion site has been located in 2q13–2q14.1 (ref. 2;hg16:114455823–114455838), where our analysis confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3; Supplementary Fig. 3a, region A). During the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the centromeric structure quickly deterioriated.


I keenly await your review of the sources you cited and the article in Nature and the video that I have presented. In the meantime, have a good day. I shall deal with the eye issue next.

davidylan:
This is the most ridiculous of all the excuses for the validity of evolution . . . infact it is a clear indication that Huxley is not informed about much of his own arguments.

- First of all it is important to place his argument in simple terms (it must be noted that a lot of these clueless folks seem to revel in using high-fallutin words to convey the false impression that they know what they are saying. When he uses the term "atavism" he is simply talking about the presence of allegedly "vestigial organs" in humans that are thought to serve no purpose in man today but are merely traits that were once present in our prior ancestors.

- Before tackling the false idea that the tailbones and appendix in humans are false, i shld remind him that the idea of vestigial organs was first mooted by Robert Wiedersheim who first published a list of 86 "vestigial organs" in 1893. However this list has all but become obsolete in the scientific world because we now know that his list was based on ignorance of the functions of many of those organs rather than their being vestigial organs at all.

For example of a few organs on Wiedersheim's list:

1. Thymus gland - Today we now know that this organ + spleen and bone marrow are the 3 most important immunological sites for the maturation of immune lymphocytes. The term "T" in the name "T lymphocytes" refers to the fact that these group of white cells are almost exclusively produced in the thymus gland. The loss of a subset of this T lymphocytes (CD 4) is the basis for HIV AIDS.

2. Pituitary gland - Tiny gland about the size of a grain of maize found at the base of the brain. It secretes the hormones that make you even grow at all! Without growth hormone you'll remain the size you were at birth if you're lucky to be born alive.

3. Valves in the veins - If you've seen someone with varicose veins then you understand the importance of these innocuous piece of tissue. Blood flows through the veins against gravity, the valves prevent reverse blood flow so you dont end up with all the blood in your veins pooling at your feet when you stand or walk.

Now to the 2 organs Huxley ignorantly mentioned that were obviously copied from Wiedersheim's list:

1. the appendix - Now known to contain a large amount of gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) which helps to fight foreign organism that may be ingested inadvertently. Also secretes a fluid that lubricates the large intestine . . . which is why it is not uncommon for appendectomy patients to develop constipation until other regions of the intestines develop a compensatory mechanism to offset the loss of the appendix.
- An infected and ruptured appendix is a one-way ticket to death . . . so much for a useless organ.

2. tail bone/coccyx - Is attached to important muscles that control bowel movement and support some abdominal organs. Try asking a dude without his tail bone how easy it is to sit down.

Huxley . . . try reading before you post next time . . . you put real scientists to shame.

I shall responde IN FULL later when I have more time. But in the meantime, I would like to see more recent and relevant scientifc data rather than quoting from a source that is more than 100 years old that does not reflect CURRENT scientific thinking on the subject.

More current and relevant sources/data, please.

Finally:
I am getting sick and tired of ur musings. I dont usually go into long debates on NL , I use NL purely for recreation  but U drew my ire when U suggested that I was a Christian fundamentalist ignoramus. I went into this debate with U thinking that U might have something up ur noggin but I was wrong. The more U write , the more U strike me as somebody who is incapable of independent thinking. The manner by which U post long articles that makes no sense lays credence to the fact that U swallow a lot of garbage without trying to figure out if they make sense or not. Even worse, U expect everybody to jump in the ship with you.

I have taken out some time to call U out some  issues and I have even posted the primary literature(s) that dealt with some claims that U wrongly made for all to read and draw their conclusion. U conveniently ignore chose not to address those articles and yet U accuse me of lack of data to support my claims. I have even used simple biological, chemical and mathematical concepts to try and reason with U , yet u accuse me of being dogmatic.  Sighs!!! I thought I would have a more enlightening discussion with you.

Anyways, U are bringing up the soft-bodied tissue again as an excuse for the fact that a  whole set of "transistional organisms" went awol. I suggest U scroll back and read my response to that. The only places that fossil records are missing are in the most important places ----- "the links". U now tell me to just believe that these links went missing cos of lack of fossilisation. The "Evolutionist" accuse the "Creationist" of relying heavily on faith but it seems to me that U even need more faith to believe the the theory of evolution than U do for the Creationist version with the amazing data (or lack thereof) that goes contrary to evolution.

Darwin relied heavily on Science to prove him right. Mathematically (Probability), it does not seem possible. Simple laws of physio-chemistry (Thermodynamics) does not allow for evolution. Biology ( Mutation and the genome) suggests that U must be inhaling something other than oxygen to believe that a very simple organism mutated so many times to acquire the level of complexity humans have right now. Fossil records seem to become incomplete and insufficient when U start to ask for the most important clue for evolution--transistional forms. So , pray, tell me, what the hell are U guys basing ur beliefs upon? Faith? I thought that was the forte of the creationist.

There is no need for me to keep going in circles with u. U have made no sense ever since we started this and I doubt if U would ever make sense.

                                                       Ka Chineke mezie okwu 

I know I have not addressed some of that info your present. It was not for the want of wanting, if you get what I need. You have made many posts and I thought I better address them one after the other. I also thought there were two key issues that had to be dealt with first, namely the fossil record/fossilisation and the definition of transitional as used in evolution. That is why my last few post have consentration on these subjects. Your post about the trilibite eye, chromosome 2, and the info you presented, etc are right now on my radar and am looking into them. So expect a response on one off these soon. I like to handle one major topic at a time, so I will post on one of them first and the others will follow.

Any new views?

Riff-Raff:
My journey into atheism was a slow and gradual process. I grew up in a home where my dad was a Muslim an Alhaji for that matter and my mum was a Christian.
All my early life I have towed the line of Christianity and Islam. I have in-depth knowledge about the two religions.
I was thinking about the world in general and the purpose of human life one day, I thought deep about life & religion.
I started asking questions about God from theists. I read the bible and Quran; there were so many questions to be asked. Whenever I ask the theist those questions, they will tell me “you cannot ask God questions” during my research on religion, i came to the conclusion that religion was a scam. I found out we human need to believe in something, hence the worshiping of stones, statues, people, ghost and all form of ridiculous things.
You will be amazed what people will do in the name of religion. There was a reverend: King in Nigeria committed murder, burning some of his church members in the process. After his death sentence, his church members kept on spreading his flyers. He was performing revival for members in prison. Goggle Reverend Jim Jones, his story is baffling cuz I kept wondering what the guy told his congregation that will make them commit suicide with him.
Pastor Chris had a man allegedly blind from birth healed on national TV. He showed him a color and the guy knew the color Blue. Can somebody please tell me how somebody that has been blind from birth know color accurately?
Sati guru Maraji says that he is God. A lot of people believe him. The Muslims will fight war at ridiculous things like a cartoon in the newspaper. Kill innocent Christians that doesn’t even know who drew the cartoon.
Read the Quran, it’s all about the Arabs. They even have their own style of writing.
Read the bible, it's all about the Jews. There was no prophet from China or Nigeria in the book. The Israelites are God's “chosen” people.
Before the two religions came to Nigeria, most people were idol worshippers. Even now there are more hypocrites in Nigeria than i can tell. Most people still practice idol worshipping secretly.
The religious people are confused. Some will tell you Jesus is God, others will say he is the Son of God. Some wears white garment, read different bibles. The Muslims have the shites, Sunnis and different other sect. It’s all about self-interest.
I feel sorry for Nigerian cause most are ignorant. They run around looking for miracles, everywhere. All the religious leaders perform one miracle or the other to gain crowd. You will see all form of miracles. It made me wonder if God gave Nigerians special powers.
When you show people the scam called religion, for those that care to listen. They will tell you they just want to believe even though they agree what you are saying is logically correct. They are scared of hell. Some people like my sister is even scared to talk to me about religion cuz she thinks God will kill me with the way i talk.
i ask them why Jesus had to die? Why does god need to see blood to forgive human? I ask how possible it is for an Angel to drop the Quran (written in Arabic) to Muhammad in a cave? I went deep down to the origin of the so-called holy books. Most of the stories just didn’t add up. Myth like human eating apple, which is the reason why we die. What of plants and animals, did they eat the fruit too? Jonah in the stomach of a fish, splitting the red sea, somebody ascending to heaven. All form of ridiculous things?
Somebody even told me i know too much. Is knowledge a disadvantage?  Some of my friends are even scared. They think i am the antichrist. It funny. They always avoid talking religion when I’m around cuz they know i will have something to say.
I had an Uncle that died of kidney problem. Instead of him to seek medical help, he was going to churches to cast and bind. He eventually died.
Another one of my neighbor had birth complications after being warned earlier by a doctor that she was going to need a cesarean. She ran to a white garment church and eventually had a stillbirth. She bleed to death.
Go tell an imam or a pastor that you are hungry. Instead of these people to offer you food, they will begin cast & bind the hunger. I could go on about all the ludicrous stories I have witnessed or heard.   
I have a group of very intelligent friends. Last year most of our discussions were centered on religion cuz I had an opinion that seem unhealthy to them. 2 are now Freethinkers. 1 is agnostic the remaining are scared to break free. Some just insist they want to believe cuz of fire. One will tell me "i have nothing to lose in believing"
There are books i read that changed my thinking, FREEDOM OFCHOICE- Thomas schalko, DA Vinci Code- Dan Brown, Angels and demon- Dan Brown, AGE OF REASON-Thomas Paine,  There are other influence, some posting by Huxley & some other people on the Nairaland religion section.
When it comes to religion people think with their emotions rather than their brain. There is a difference between conventional or perceived opinion about a subject & the truth. They do not want to see that.
My mum knows that i do not believe in God. She just has to accept that. My dad doesn’t, but one day he will find out. I will be in control of my own life by then.
What drive people to religion are questions like Where are we from? What is our purpose on earth? And where are we going when we die? Religion answers does questions.
My own opinion is, there is a creator but this creator has nothing to do with religion. Our purpose on earth is whatever we make it. Roger federer & tennis. Hitler & the war.
if roger had train as a footballer and became a good one. They will tell you that is his destiny.
Where we came from?  i do not know, my earliest memory was when i was 3 years old. i didn’t know anything in my mums womb. Just like death.
There are lots of mysteries in this world, things we do not have answers. Does that mean we should settle for the readily available answer?
I know a guy that got stabbed with a sharp bottle but cannot be pierced. My dad old guard used to disappear. These are not hearsay, these are two mysteries I witnessed but cannot explain. (I had to add these stories cuz of the MISSING WINNIE story. Those things do happen in Nigeria)
I also wonder which hell I am going to, is it the Muslim’s or the Christian’s cuz all religion promise you goodies in the after life, that is for the believers of course and you the non believers are going to hell. For the Muslims, the Christians are going to hell and vice versa.
I have also come to the term that there are forces in this world that science cannot explain.
People will believe or do anything provided you tell them God told it to you.
I have left religious apologist to their ignorance but i also respect their choice of believing cuz they are exercising their freedom of choice. i am careful about sharing my religious opinion cuz some people will maim you. i don’t talk except i am compelled to.

Heartening to learning about your story and how you are doing some freethinking in an extremely unwelcoming and irrational society.  I can only say "More grease to your elbow".  The world needs more poeple like you who are able to exercise their brains and apply it to the big questions of reality.  Nothing that humans have achieved thus far was handed to us on a plate - it has coem to us by the sheer hard work of the human mind.  Revelatory means of explaining the nature of reality have proven to be not only unreliable but utter falsehoods.  I am glad that you and some of your friends are no longer satisfy with the revelatory systems from the infancy  of humanity but to cast your lot with more rational and naturalistic ways of viewing the world.

I am also glad to learn that some of my post have help you in achieving a better understanding of religions and to see how harmful it is to society.  It makes all my efforts worthwhile, and it puts more grease to my elbows.   Many thanks for sharing that with us.

There are many resource on the web about atheism, religions, scientific rationalism and naturalistic philosophy.  I shall soon be putting out a post detailing some of these to aid readers with developing their rational and critical thinking skills.  In the meantime, why don't you do a search of book by George Smith, called atheism.   It is a good introduction to the subject.   I will also recommend you share with your friends.  Check out this book by Smith. It is a very good introduction to the subject.

The problem with you guys is that you make adhoc arguments without presenting much data or any logic behind whatever you present. Your arguments are what the philosopher Dan Dennet calls skyhooks, meaning the make appeal to devices out of nowhere to help you out of a tight spot. Here is an example of what I mean - I made a comment that is uncontroversial in the paleontological community about the relative rarity of fossilisation. This is important because understanding fossilisation is key to understanding the fossil record. This is how the debate got started:

Quote from: huxley on February 13, 2009, 11:34 PM

Fossilisation is an extremely rare event and most dead animals who decompose or be scavenged before the get the chance to fossilise. Further soft-body animals have very little chance of being fossilised. The pre-cambrian (and possibly the cambrian) was dominated by less complex soft-body animals that stand very little chances of fossilising. That is why very few fossils from this period have been found.

And this is your response:

More hand waving explanations. No substance at all.

First off all, fossils of unicellular animals (the most simple of all) have been found. Why do U now want me to believe that the gap between the pre-cambrian and the cambrian period can be explained by lack of fossilisation of subsequent organisms that "evolved " from these unicellular organisms.

Secondly, if a jellyfish can be fossilised , I find it hard to buy the argument that the reason behind organisms not being fossilised is as a result of their soft body tissue. Not many organisms can boast of being more soft-bodied than a jelly fish.

Thirdly, why are U bringing up scavengers in the pre-cambrian and cambrian period Grin Thats some hilarious shit!!!. Following Darwin's train of thought, U should not expect to find scavengers in those era cos organisms should have not acquired that manner of complexity. Matter of fact, those periods should be periods with the highest amount of fossilised organisms.

Your comments above show just how ignorant about this matters you are. I sought to enlighten you by providing the view of a scientist (Donald Prothero) working in the field at the present time. But you have NOT been able to engage with the information I provided.

[b]The current view is that less that 1 % of dead organism are able to form fossils. The figure is even less amongst soft-bodied organism. Can you show me any scientific arguments that contradict this position? I want arguments and data, NOT ramblings from your dogma.


You then further went on to argue that the fossil records shows animals appearing suddenly over periods of time. I asked you to be specific about what you meant by suddenly. To most people's understanding, the word suddenly is an adjective descriptive of the duration of an event. So if animals appeared suddenly - how sudden? 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, 10 years, 10 million years, 200 million years, etc?


If they appear suddenly as you say, why do they seem to retain features of preceding generations of animals? And further, why is it that in most cases, the retain features that soon go out of use (atavism) or are put to different use?


Any theory of sudden appearance of animals MUST explain common features that exist with past generation of animals and it MUST also explain why organism (including humans) possess atavism that appear to serve no purpose for the present animals (for instance, the appendix in humans. Or why some humans are born with a tail, including a tailborn. What is the gene if a tailborn doing in our genome?)



[/b]

That is the biggest misconception about Darwinism made by most proponents of the theory of evolution. What U call transitional forms have been shown time and again to be separate animals that have even co-existed with some of the so-called modern day animals. How can U tell me jellyfish developed into starfish and star fish into Fish and Fish into reptile and then reptiles into mammals when there is evidence that a star fish, jellyfish and even a dragon fly all coexisted together co-and that the morphological and phenotypical attributes of these  animals had remained the same over a million years.

Yet again you are displaying you lack of understanding of TTE.  The adjective "transitional" when used in the context of evolution simply means that some organism will display or possess attributes or features between a previous and a future type.   These attributes may be on the micro or macroscopic scale.   Take for instance the following scenario.

You claim that ALL organism sprung into existence in the Cambrian Explosion.  If that were true we should expect to find fossils of all organism, including present day ones, in the Cambrian.  But why don't we ever find dinosaur, or bird, or mammalian fossils in the Cambrian sediments?  But we never.

Dinosaur lived from the end of the Permian (about 250 MYA) to about end of the Cretaceous (about 65MYA), a period of about 185 MYs.  For about 90 percent of this period, there are ABOSOLUTELY NO FOSSILS OF BIRDS about.  Bird fossils only start appearing in the fossil record in the Eocene, about 50 MYA.

So with the postulation that birds are descended from reptiline dinosaur, we should be able to hypothesise that we should find animals that have reptiline features and the beginings of avian features in sediments of the Creteceous (145 - 66 MYA) or Paleocene (66 - 56 MYA)  or Eocene  (56 - 34 MYA).

Now, what you one expect to see in such features?  Well, things like reduces and elongated arms, feathers, light bone structures, etc, etc. Do you think if I went looking you such organisms in Cambrian rocks, such as the Burgess Shale, I would be likely to find one?  If not,   why not?

And I seriously hope that U are not confusing extinction with evolution. [/b]Those are two separate terms and cant be used interchangeably. Fossils have shown me that life forms can become extinct and not that one life form morphed into another as Darwin purports.

What makes you think I am conflating extinction with evolution?

[b]
Ok, I would take U back to Darwin's claims. He states that life forms GRADUALLY evolved from one life form to another and for his theory to be right (Darwin admitted as much) that there has to be intermediate forms.

That is ABSOLUTELY  CORRECT - very gradual evolution (change) with modification of lon periods of time.  And this is what the fossil record shows.   For instance, why do we not find mammalian fossils in the Siluvian (444 - 416 MYA)?  But mammals begin to appear in the record in the Permian, about 260MYA.

What gave rise to mammals in the Permian, what did not exist in the Siluvian?   Could it possibly be some slow, gradual modification of existing creatures, that over the long period of time became the mammals that you know and love?

Or did God just inject them onto the surface of the earth, correct with features that make them look like existing reptiles?

The pre cambrian era is one of the earliest era known to man and so far , I agree with U, no life forms have been found on pre-cambrian rocks other than unicellular organisms. However, all of a sudden there was burst of  VERY DIVERSE MULTICELLULAR ORGANISMS in what scientists called the Cambrian explosion. Life forms found included Jellyfish, star fish, snails and each of these creatures possessed very complex structures similar to their modern day descendants. The Cambrian period have been estimated to be about 530 million yrs old and the fact that there have not been changes made to these creatures over that period of time calls the theory of evolution to question.

What do you mean by sudden?   Can you quantify that in terms of years?

If there are gaps in the fossil records, such as there are, why is that the case ?

Why are there gaps in the fossil records?

Finally:
Stop looking for a cheap way out    If u think I put Darwin's words outta context, all U can do is to put it back in context. U did none of those.

Darwin raised not only that question but a whole lot of other questions in his book. Matter of fact , he devoted a whole chapter of his book to the problems and questions his theory elicits. And just like any other scientist, he speculated on various possibilities which does not even make sense to him cause the more he speculated the more he met a dead end.

If U think that Darwin answered his own questions definitively, then post his answers to the above questions so that I can read too. I have a feeling that Darwin's answers exist only in ur own version of "The origin of species".




I want to assume that U can find generic information littered all over the internet. But if U cant just let me know and I will try and dig up the article that descibed the tribolites ocular system. I read that stuff sometime ago and so it might take a while for me to dig up the primary article.


More hand waving explanations. No substance at all.

First off all, fossils of unicellular animals (the most simple of all) have been found. Why do U now want me to believe that the gap between the pre-cambrian and the cambrian period can be explained by lack of fossilisation of subsequent organisms that "evolved " from these unicellular organisms.

Secondly, if a jellyfish can be fossilised , I find it hard to buy the argument that the reason behind organisms not being fossilised is as a result of their soft body tissue. Not many organisms can boast of being more soft-bodied than a jelly fish.

Thirdly, why are U bringing up scavengers in the pre-cambrian and cambrian period Thats some hilarious shit!!!. Following Darwin's train of thought, U should not expect to find scavengers in those era cos organisms should have not acquired that manner of complexity. Matter of fact, those periods should be periods with the highest amount of fossilised organisms.

Once again, you guys are showing up yourself again for just how little you know about this area. What do you guys know about the process of fossilization? Can you provide any scientific evidence that detracts for the accepted view that only a very very, very small proportion of dead organism fossilize? You guys are wont to make completely unsupported claims. I would like to see the data you use in disputing the view that fossilization is an extremely rare event. Here is what a reputed paleontologist Donald Prothero, has to say about fossilzation, from his book "EVOLUTION What the fossils Say and Why it Matters", pages 51 - 54.

This is the gist;

There are other ways to estimate the quality of our fossil record (see Prothero 2004: 18). At the moment, biologists know and have described and named about 1.5 million species of earth (mostly insects) and some estimates say the earth harbours at least 4 or 5 million species in total. Yet there are at best only about 250000 known species of fossils animals and plants, or about 5 percent of the living population today. But today is only one time slice among millions in the past 600 million years where multicellular life has existed. If we total up all those time slices as well, then the total number of species that are represented in the fossil record is a tiny fraction of 1 percent.

But read the entire section from the book below:

===============================================================================================================================

To debunk creationist distortions about fossils, we must start with a clear understanding of the fossil record and the process of fossilisation. As discussed in the prologue, the fossil record was embarrassingly incomplete when Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, but it soon became on of his strongest lines of evidence. During the twentieth century, our fossil collections have vastly improved, so that hundreds of evolutionary sequences and transitional forms were documented.
This transformation from an embarrassing fossil record in 1860 to an embarrassment of riches by 1960 represented the hard work of thousands of dedicated palaeontologist and geologists. Yet they battle against enormous odds. Creationists often assert that the fossil record is nearly complete and should show the innumerable insensibly graded transitions that Darwin expected in 1859. Yet, even with 200 years of collecting behind us, the fossil record is relatively complete only in certain areas as mentioned in the above quote. Fossilisation is still a highly improbable event, and most creatures that have ever lived do not become fossils.

How do we know this? A whole subfield of paleontology, known as taphonomy (Greek for “laws of burial”) is dedicated to understanding how and why organisms become fossils (see Prothero 2004: ch. 1). Consider the chain of events that happens to an organism after it dies. First, there are the biological agents (bacteria, fungi, insects, and other decomposers, scavengers, etc.) that break down or destroy an organism after death. The soft parts of animals decay or are eaten quickly, so they almost never fossilize. Only the hard parts, shell or skeleton, have a reasonable chance of preservation. After an animal dies, its bones are typically scavenged and broken, so little or no remnants of the actual skeleton may survive. Taphonomists have done lots of research in places such as East Africa, where they have observed and documented the details of how hyenas and other scavengers tear up a carcass and break up nearly every bone. When the taphonomist mark and photograph these sites and return a year later to document the changes, even the bones that survive scavenging may have been broken or scattered by trampling or by other agents of destruction.

In the marine realm, there are many agents of destruction as well. Soft-bodied organisms, like jellyfish and marine worms, almost never leave a fossil record. Even organism with hard parts, like molluscs and corals, are prone to destruction. Wave and currents wash the shells back and forth and pound then into pieces, so only the most durable shells survive. Many shells are broken by predators such as crabs and lobsters, which use their claws or pincers to crack the shells open to get to the prey inside it. Abandoned shells are degraded by organisms that use them as an anchor or place to attach. A whole group of boring organisms, including sponges and algae, drill or dissolve holes in shells and reuse their minerals, thus weakening the shells even further.

Once a bone or shell survives this gruelling gauntlet, there are still further hazards. After burial, the shell or bone might be dissolve by water percolating through the sediments. Many fossils are actually many of new minerals that have replace the original minerals, showing how little of the mineral remain in the fossil record. As the potential fossil gets buried deeper and deeper, the huge pressures on the pile of the sediments above it may distort the fossil or crush it entirely. Many deeply buried sedimentary rocks are actually transformed by high heat and pressure into metamorphic rocks, and then all original traces of the fossil vanish entirely.

If the bone or shell avoids or survives all these ordeals – dissolution, replacement, distortion, pressure, metamorphism – there are still hazards ahead. Once the fossil-bearing sediment is uplifted and exposed again, the fossil is prone to erosion. If it weathers out at any time except when a palaeontologist happens to wander by (which has only been happening at rare intervals in the past 200 years), then the fossils will be destroyed and lost forever. There are only a few thousand palaeontologist in the entire world who can only devote at most a few weeks or months a year to collecting fossils, so most fossiliferous exposures go unexamined and their fossils are lost. If you think hard about it, the odd that any given organism will be fossilized and actually end up in our collections is minuscule. It is a miracle that we have any fossils at all.

There are other ways to estimate the quality of our fossil record (see Prothero 2004: 18). At the moment, biologists know and have described and named about 1.5 million species of earth (mostly insects) and some estimates say the earth harbours at least 4 or 5 million species in total. Yet there are at best only about 250000 known species of fossils animals and plants, or about 5 percent of the living population today. But today is only one time slice among millions in the past 600 million years where multicellular life has existed. If we total up all those time slices as well, then the total number of species that are represented in the fossil record is a tiny fraction of 1 percent.

Consequently, the fossil record of some groups that are entirely soft-bodied without hard skeletons or shells (especially insects, worms, jellyfish and the like) is so poor that most palaeontologists do not study them much and do not attempt to say much about their evolution. In certain groups with hard skeletons, however, the potential for preservation is much higher. If we focus just on the groups with excellent skeletons and a good chance for preservation (including microfossils, sponges, corals, molluscs, sea stars and sea urchins and their relatives, trilobites, the lamp shells or brachiopods and moss animals or bryozoans), the fossil record is not nearly so incomplete. These groups have about 150000 living species but over 180000 fossil species. Depending on how you do the calculations, between 2 and 13 percent of all the species that have ever lived in these groups may be fossilized. That is still not great but much better than the fraction of 1 percent estimate we just discussed. In some places, the record of fossil shells is very dense and continuous and these are places where palaeontologist focus their attention in studying things like evolution. They know that not every species is preserved, of course, but they have enough data to see how evolution occurs in the groups that do fossilize.
Most single-celled organisms, like amoebas and paramecia, are soft-bodied and never fossilize. But a few groups, such as the amoeba-like foraminiferans and radiolarians, have beautiful shells made of calcium carbonate or silica that fossilize very well. These single-celled protistans live by the millions in the oceans, and their shells are so abundant that on many parts of the seafloor the entire sediment is made of nothing but the shells of these foraminifera. The coccolithophorid algae secrete tiny button-shaped plates of calcite only a few microns in diameter. In shallow marine waters, however, coccolithophorids can live in enormous densities, and the accumulate thick piles of limey sediment we know as chalk.

For organisms as abundant as these, the fossil record is extremely good. All the micropaleontologists need do is collect a few grams of sediments from the outcrop or from a core drilled in the deep sea bottom, put them on microscope slides and they have thousands of specimens spanning millions of years of time. With a record as good as this, micropaleontologist can document evolution in great details and tell how old the sediment is, as well as show how the microfossils respond to climate change and whether the ocean waters in a given area got deeper or shallower. Indeed, micropaleontology is the single largest subfield in paleontology because the work is indispensible to oil companies who need to know the age of the rocks that produce oil. In addition, micropaleontology is critical in marine geology in studying how climate and oceans have changed over geological time. Without micropaleontology, we would have no oil and would still not understand the causes of the ice ages or earth’s past climate changes.

Finally:
Now back to ur horse thingy which is a classic bulwark for proponents of Darwinism (and the only one if I may add  )

I assume U have seen the evolutionary tree. Can U point out to me what is percieved as a non-horse ancestor of the horse. From Darwin's theory there has to be a some other form of animal that GRADUALLY over time turned into a horse. U have evidence for that non-horse ancestor?

The question is - How does one define when an animal is a horse? We only call it a horse now because that is all we are left with. Imagine if your lifetime span the lives of these creatures - which would you have called a horse? Be that as it may, here is the tree of the "horse":


2My Old & New World Equus
\ | /
\ | /
4My Hippidion Equus Stylohipparion
| | Neohipparion Hipparion Cormohipparion
| | Astrohippus | | |
| | Pliohippus ---------------------------
12My Dinohippus Calippus \ | /
| | Pseudhipparion \ | /
| | | |
------------------------------------------- Sinohippus
15My \ | / |
\ | / Megahippus |
17My Merychippus | |
| Anchitherium Hypohippus
| | |
23My Parahippus Anchitherium Archeohippus
| | |
(Kalobatippus?)-----------------------------------------
25My \ | /
\ | /
|
35My |
Miohippus Mesohippus
| |
40My Mesohippus
|
|
|
45My Paleotherium |
| Epihippus
| |
Propalaeotherium | Haplohippus
| | |
50My Pachynolophus | Orohippus
| | |
| | |
------------------------------
\ | /
\ | /
55My Hyracotherium

III. Small Eocene Horses

The first equid was Hyracotherium, a small forest animal of the early Eocene. This little animal (10-20" at the shoulder) looked nothing at all like a horse. It had a "doggish" look with an arched back, short neck, short snout, short legs, and long tail. It browsed on fruit and fairly soft foliage, and probably scampered from thicket to thicket like a modern muntjac deer, only stupider, slower, and not as agile. This famous little equid was once known by the lovely name "Eohippus", meaning "dawn horse". Some Hyracotherium traits to notice:

* Legs were flexible and rotatable with all major bones present and unfused.
* 4 toes on each front foot, 3 on hind feet. Vestiges of 1st (& 2nd, behind) toes still present. Hyracotherium walked on pads; its feet were like a dog's padded feet, except with small "hoofies" on each toe instead of claws.
* Small brain with especially small frontal lobes.
* Low-crowned teeth with 3 incisors, 1 canine, 4 distinct premolars and 3 "grinding" molars in each side of each jaw (this is the "primitive mammalian formula" of teeth). The cusps of the molars were slightly connected in low crests. Typical teeth of an omnivorous browser.

At this point in the early Eocene, equids were not yet very different from the other perissodactyl groups; the Hyracotherium genus includes some species closely related to (or even ancestral to) rhinos and tapirs, as well as species that are distinctly equine. [Note: the particular species that probably gave rise to the rest of the equids, H. vassacciense, may be renamed, perhaps to "Protorohippus".]


The answer to your question is highlighted above.

Finally:
It is funny U raised the issue of toes  and size in ur post. Another classic evolutionary BS. How does losing a toe or changing sizes reflect evolution?    If a horse changes from being one 3 toed to one toed it is still a horse , innit? It did not suddenly become a moose or a fox just because it lost the ability to make three toes :-

Because that is exactly the definition of evolution - Descent with modification. Looks like you don't even understand what you are trying to critique.

Finally:
Apart from that, Molecular biology have already shown how that cn happen. Most of those horse still have the ability to make three toes. The only difference is that the information t make three toes in these animals have been repressed and this repression can be genetically linked, epigentically linked or even envirionmental. The case of the toes is a classic case of adaptation rather than evolution.

Still on the toe,
Darwin theory focused on gradations from the very simple to complex. Horses should have started out one -toed and then progressively evolved into some multi -toed animal but it seems the reverse is the case. Does not fit to the Darwin model.


And remember, the horse is the best piece of evidence that proponents of Darwinism can come up with. Even at that it is still full of holes and very incomplete as acknowledged by Soper (1997, Biological Science p 890) :

The history of the horse does not show a gradual transition regularly spaced in time and locality, and neither is the fossil record totally complete.

Admittedly, the horse is one of the best. What have the critics got to say about it? It has stumped them. Tell you what - more is coming. There's;

Elephants
Whales
Hippos
birds
Humans

etc
etc
etc

Finally:
@ Huxley

I chuckled at how U chose to ignore a host of issues that I raised up in my previous posts only to throw out the horse, which by the way is the only supposedly strongest fossil records supporting TTE today as weak as it is. Molecular biology is just beginning to explain whatever misconception(s) that have been made in some hasty attempts to justify evolution in the equine family.

However, before I go into that let me remind u of some of the issues which i raised that were so not consistent with Darwin's thory of evolution.

The fossil record for the horse was for a long time one of the best available. But recently other mammalian fossil are being discovered. The elephant fossil record is now also very strong. Incidentally, this is discussed at length in Kenneth Millers (who is a Christian) book "Finding Darwin's God" pages 92 - 99.

Whale evolution is pretty well mapped out too. And in fact many other modern day hoofed animals. The evidence is getting better all the time.

In fact molecular eveidence is on the side of evolution. For instance molecular evidence revealled the close relationships between many different species. As in the case of the human chromosome 2 which is formed by the merging of two chromosomes from the common ancestor of man and ape. Also Endogenous retroviruses common to humans and chimps reveal we share a common ancestor. So there is plenty of independent source of evidence all pointing to evolution.

I challenge you to show the evidence that points to the contrary

Finally:
1) U never addressed the disconnect that is so obvious between the pre-cambrian and the cambrian period. The fact that there was a sudden appearance of not only a diverse but also numerous multicellular organisms in the cambrian period that looks nothing like the unicellular organisms found in the Azoic and Proterozoic era.

Now, what proportions of dead animals fossilise? What does it take for an organism to fossilise?

Fossilisation is an extremely rare event and most dead animals who decompose or be scavenged before the get the chance to fossilise. Further soft-body animals have very little chance of being fossilised. The pre-cambrian (and possibly the cambrian) was dominated by less complex soft-body animals that stand very little chances of fossilising. That is why very few fossils from this period have been found. Even so, there are still some good fossils from this period and the show the development of complex bodyplans, though not as complex as much later.

Finally:
2) U also chose to ignore the fact that an organism (tribolites) which was 530 million years old by carbon dating already have a very complex ocular system altho they were found to have lived in the cambrian period. Also, the fact that there was no organ that looks like a vestigial/rudimentary eye in all the organisms that came before the Tribolites something U would predict from Darwin's theory.

First off, I doubt carbon dating would have been used to date these samples. Whereever you got this is clearing not from a good scientist. Because of the half-life of C14, carbon-dating would not be used for samples thought to be in the millions of years range. Further, it would not be used for sea-dwelling animals.

Can you provide evidence of the data you are siting for the trilobite ocular systems?

Finally:
3) I told U a story of the shark that suddenly appeared in the Tree of life (that was composed by evolutionist by the way) without any relationship to the phyla above or below it. The sudden appearance of the shark ( a la most other animals) and its unique ability to regenerate its teeth ( a trait that was not seen in other phlyas close to it) is not something Darwin's model would predict.

Please, can you quantify the adjective "sudden" in terms of a given duration? Does "sudden" mean in a day, 100 days, 1000years, 1 million years, 10 millions years?

Finally:
4) What about the fact that some animals have lived on this planet for so many years without ever EVOLVING. For instance the dragon fly has been on this earth close to about 300 million years and fossil records showed that the dragon flies inhabiting the earth look the same like the ones that lived 300 million years ago. How come they were already complex in a time where U would predict from Darwin's model that most animals would still be in thier rudimentary form.

Whereabouts does TTE say all arganism MUST evolve? Is this part of TTE?

TTE by Natural Selection requires a minimum of conditions for evolution to be given a chance - 1) random genetic mutation 2) Any form of selective pressure. If an organism finds its niche in which it is "happy" and therefore does not undergo selective pressure, and mutations would not be worked upon by natural selction. Thus the organism would be unlike to evolve.

Finally:
There are many more questions that throw big holes in Darwin's account of evolution. Even at the time of Darwin published "The origin of species" he knew that his theory raised more questions than answers. He even posed some of the questions himself and I will give one example copied directly from "The origin of species":

Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?
Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?"
Charles R. Darwin, The Origin of Species: p. 205

Darwin carried out his work in the way most scientist work. He collect lots of evidence, posited a hypothesis. In his day, there was little fossil record available, but he was still confident that posterity would vindicate him. And it has.


What you have done here is called quote-minding. Can you present it in its full context? Darwin raised it as a possible problem, only to provide the answer later in his discuss. But quite-minders like yourself, dishonestly never present the full context.

Finally:
That was a scientific mind at its finest, questioning the validity of his own theory. Darwin raised those doubts even without the luxury of all the scientific discipline that we have today. If Darwin had lived to this age of Molecular biology and genetics plus all the fossil records , he woulda have been the first to call his theory to question.

To put my assertion that Darwin might dramatically change his mind if he had the information that we have today into context (and also bringing up the evolution of the horse) , I would leave U with these two quotes from a Paleontologist and an Evolutionary biologist

‘The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be modified or discarded as a result of more detailed information. What appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated.’ D.M. Raup, ‘Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology,’ Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin 50:22, 1979.

and

"Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature.
Dr. Denton, Ph.D (Molecular Biology)
This guy is a researcher in Sydney, Australia. U can google him up and read his articles.

Yes, I am aware of Denton. Let me restate my questions again:

1) Why are Dinosaur fossils never found in the cambrian?

2) Why are bird fossils never found in the cambrian?

Finally:
U and ur "copy and paste" syndrome

How else can I present REAL research results other that typing it all by hand again. Deal with the data, not whether I copy&paste it. Deal with the data.

davidylan:
This is probably because the evidence to show the transitional forms of the horse specie exists only in the imagination of desperate scientists. There is no solid proof. Look through all available alleged fossil records of the horse . . . you'd be hard pressed to find 2 that agree with each other.

For someone who had the impudence to call other African as being intellectual, you are great at revealing your hypocricy. People like you, the delusional creationist christians have no real data/facts to work with. You and your ilk do not do research, dig out fossils from the ground, publish in academic journals, write academic books, organise and attend academic conferences.

The real scientist who discover the facts about evolution do real research, public in peer-reviewed journals and books, have their work checked by independent experts, organise and attend conferences in paleonotology, molecular biology, etc. They practise science the way their colleagues in physics, chemistry, geology, computer science, etc, etc do. Thus their body of work is there in the university departments, museums, etc, etc, for all to see.

This is the sort of data about horse evolution that the real scientist discover:

And here's the tree, note that the timescale is a bit weird (e.g. the Oligocene is compressed almost to nothing) to keep it from being too long. All the names on the tree are genus names, so recall that each genus encompasses a cluster of closely related species.
The is a brief description of the tree for those who are visually impaired. Hyracotherium is shown giving rise to three lineages. Two lineages quickly go extinct. The third branches many times. There are many branches alive during most times until two million years ago when only the various species of Equus remain. The tree itself is unreadable to those who are visually impaired so skip the tree graphic.

2My Old & New World Equus
\ | /
\ | /
4My Hippidion Equus Stylohipparion
| | Neohipparion Hipparion Cormohipparion
| | Astrohippus | | |
| | Pliohippus ---------------------------
12My Dinohippus Calippus \ | /
| | Pseudhipparion \ | /
| | | |
------------------------------------------- Sinohippus
15My \ | / |
\ | / Megahippus |
17My Merychippus | |
| Anchitherium Hypohippus
| | |
23My Parahippus Anchitherium Archeohippus
| | |
(Kalobatippus?)-----------------------------------------
25My \ | /
\ | /
|
35My |
Miohippus Mesohippus
| |
40My Mesohippus
|
|
|
45My Paleotherium |
| Epihippus
| |
Propalaeotherium | Haplohippus
| | |
50My Pachynolophus | Orohippus
| | |
| | |
------------------------------
\ | /
\ | /
55My Hyracotherium




X. SUMMARY

For many people, the horse family remains the classic example of evolution. As more and more horse fossils have been found, some ideas about horse evolution have changed, but the horse family remains a good example of evolution. In fact, we now have enough fossils of enough species in enough genera to examine subtle details of evolutionary change, such as modes of speciation.

In addition to showing that evolution has occurred, the fossil Equidae also show the following characteristics of evolution:

1.

Evolution does not occur in a straight line toward a goal, like a ladder; rather, evolution is like a branching bush, with no predetermined goal.

Horse species were constantly branching off the "evolutionary tree" and evolving along various unrelated routes. There's no discernable "straight line" of horse evolution. Many horse species were usually present at the same time, with various numbers of toes, adapted to various different diets. In other words, horse evolution had no inherent direction. We only have the impression of straight-line evolution because only one genus happens to still be alive, which deceives some people into thinking that that one genus was somehow the "target" of all the evolution. Instead, that one genus is merely the last surviving branch of a once mighty and sprawling "bush".

The view of equine evolution as a complex bush with many contemporary species has been around for several decades, and is commonly recounted in modern biology and evolution textbooks.
2. There are no truly consistent "trends".

Tracing a line of descent from Hyracotherium to Equus reveals several apparant trends: reduction of toe number, increase in size of cheek teeth, lengthening of the face, increase in body size. But these trends are not seen in all of the horse lines. On the whole, horses got larger, but some horses (Archeohippus, Calippus) then got smaller again. Many recent horses evolved complex facial pits, and then some of their descendants lost them again. Most of the recent (5-10 My) horses were three-toed, not one-toed, and we see a "trend" to one toe only because all the three-toed lines have recently become extinct.

Additionally, these traits do not necessarily evolve together, or at a steady rate. The various morphological characters each evolved in fits and starts, and did not evolve as a suite of characters. For example, throughout the Eocene, the feet changed little, and only the teeth evolved. Throughout the Miocene, both feet and teeth evolved rapidly. Rates of evolution depend on the ecological pressures facing the species.

The "direction" of evolution depends on the ecological challenges facing the individuals of a species and on the variation in that species, not on an inherent "evolutionary trend".
3.

New species can arise through several different evolutionary mechanisms.

Sometimes, new species split off suddenly from their ancestors (e.g., Miohippus from Mesohippus) and then co-existed with those ancestors. Other species came into being through anagenetic transformation of the ancestor, until the ancestor had changed appearance enough to be given a new name (e.g. Equus from Dinohippus). Sometimes only one or a few species arose; sometimes there were long periods of stasis (e.g. Hyracotherium throughout the early Eocene); and sometimes there were enormous bursts of evolution, when new ecological opportunities arose (the merychippine radiation). Again, evolution proceeds according to the ecological pressures facing the individuals of a species and on the variation present within that species. Evolution takes place in the real world, with diverse rates and modes, and cannot be reduced to a single, simple process.

A Question for Creationists: Creationists who wish to deny the evidence of horse evolution should careful consider this: how else can you explain the sequence of horse fossils? Even if creationists insist on ignoring the transitional fossils (many of which have been found), again, how can the unmistakable sequence of these fossils be explained? Did God create Hyracotherium, then kill off Hyracotherium and create some Hyracotherium-Orohippus intermediates, then kill off the intermediates and create Orohippus, then kill off Orohippus and create Epihippus, then allow Epihippus to "microevolve" into Duchesnehippus, then kill off Duchesnehippus and create Mesohippus, then create some Mesohippus-Miohippus intermediates, then create Miohippus, then kill off Mesohippus, etc, each species coincidentally similar to the species that came just before and came just after?

Creationism utterly fails to explain the sequence of known horse fossils from the last 50 million years. That is, without invoking the "God Created Everything To Look Just Like Evolution Happened" Theory.

[And I'm not even mentioning all the other evidence for evolution that is totally independent of the fossil record -- developmental biology, comparative DNA & protein studies, morphological analyses, biogeography, etc. The fossil record, horses included, is only a small part of the story.]

Truly persistent and/or desperate creationists are thus forced into illogical, unjustified attacks of fossil dating methods, or irrelevant and usually flat-out wrong proclamations about a supposed "lack" of "transitional forms". It's sad. To me, the horse fossils tell a magnificent and fascinating story, of millions of animals living out their lives, in their natural world, through millions of years. I am a dedicated horse rider and am very happy that the one-toed grazing Equus survived to the present. Evolution in no way impedes my ability to admire the beauty and nobility of these animals. Instead, it enriches my appreciation and understanding of modern horses and their rich history.

Why is God's design so wasteful, creating hundreds of separate species for each group, only to let them go extinct.  For instance, of the nearly hundreds of horse species in the fossil record, only one survives to modern times.  The same is true for elephants, hoofed mammals and many many more?   Why is god allowing things that he so "cleverly" created go extinct?    Read here for more

Those of you with a hard of understanding disposition about TTE, here is how evolution has shaped the creature that we now see as horses:    Read the summary below or better still visit the [size=14pt] website[/size] or buy the books by these researchers;

By the way, do creationists actually do their own research?   Do they go out there in the fields and deep fossils out of the ground, document and classify, publish peer-reviewed acticles and present their finding at conferences?    If they do, where is their material?




X. SUMMARY

For many people, the horse family remains the classic example of evolution. As more and more horse fossils have been found, some ideas about horse evolution have changed, but the horse family remains a good example of evolution. In fact, we now have enough fossils of enough species in enough genera to examine subtle details of evolutionary change, such as modes of speciation.

In addition to showing that evolution has occurred, the fossil Equidae also show the following characteristics of evolution:

   1.

      Evolution does not occur in a straight line toward a goal, like a ladder; rather, evolution is like a branching bush, with no predetermined goal.

      Horse species were constantly branching off the "evolutionary tree" and evolving along various unrelated routes. There's no discernable "straight line" of horse evolution. Many horse species were usually present at the same time, with various numbers of toes, adapted to various different diets. In other words, horse evolution had no inherent direction. We only have the impression of straight-line evolution because only one genus happens to still be alive, which deceives some people into thinking that that one genus was somehow the "target" of all the evolution. Instead, that one genus is merely the last surviving branch of a once mighty and sprawling "bush".

      The view of equine evolution as a complex bush with many contemporary species has been around for several decades, and is commonly recounted in modern biology and evolution textbooks.
   2. There are no truly consistent "trends".

      Tracing a line of descent from Hyracotherium to Equus reveals several apparant trends: reduction of toe number, increase in size of cheek teeth, lengthening of the face, increase in body size. But these trends are not seen in all of the horse lines. On the whole, horses got larger, but some horses (Archeohippus, Calippus) then got smaller again. Many recent horses evolved complex facial pits, and then some of their descendants lost them again. Most of the recent (5-10 My) horses were three-toed, not one-toed, and we see a "trend" to one toe only because all the three-toed lines have recently become extinct.

      Additionally, these traits do not necessarily evolve together, or at a steady rate. The various morphological characters each evolved in fits and starts, and did not evolve as a suite of characters. For example, throughout the Eocene, the feet changed little, and only the teeth evolved. Throughout the Miocene, both feet and teeth evolved rapidly. Rates of evolution depend on the ecological pressures facing the species.

      The "direction" of evolution depends on the ecological challenges facing the individuals of a species and on the variation in that species, not on an inherent "evolutionary trend".
   3.

      New species can arise through several different evolutionary mechanisms.

      Sometimes, new species split off suddenly from their ancestors (e.g., Miohippus from Mesohippus) and then co-existed with those ancestors. Other species came into being through anagenetic transformation of the ancestor, until the ancestor had changed appearance enough to be given a new name (e.g. Equus from Dinohippus). Sometimes only one or a few species arose; sometimes there were long periods of stasis (e.g. Hyracotherium throughout the early Eocene); and sometimes there were enormous bursts of evolution, when new ecological opportunities arose (the merychippine radiation). Again, evolution proceeds according to the ecological pressures facing the individuals of a species and on the variation present within that species. Evolution takes place in the real world, with diverse rates and modes, and cannot be reduced to a single, simple process.

A Question for Creationists: Creationists who wish to deny the evidence of horse evolution should careful consider this: how else can you explain the sequence of horse fossils? Even if creationists insist on ignoring the transitional fossils (many of which have been found), again, how can the unmistakable sequence of these fossils be explained? Did God create Hyracotherium, then kill off Hyracotherium and create some Hyracotherium-Orohippus intermediates, then kill off the intermediates and create Orohippus, then kill off Orohippus and create Epihippus, then allow Epihippus to "microevolve" into Duchesnehippus, then kill off Duchesnehippus and create Mesohippus, then create some Mesohippus-Miohippus intermediates, then create Miohippus, then kill off Mesohippus, etc, each species coincidentally similar to the species that came just before and came just after?

Creationism utterly fails to explain the sequence of known horse fossils from the last 50 million years. That is, without invoking the "God Created Everything To Look Just Like Evolution Happened" Theory.

[And I'm not even mentioning all the other evidence for evolution that is totally independent of the fossil record -- developmental biology, comparative DNA & protein studies, morphological analyses, biogeography, etc. The fossil record, horses included, is only a small part of the story.]

Truly persistent and/or desperate creationists are thus forced into illogical, unjustified attacks of fossil dating methods, or irrelevant and usually flat-out wrong proclamations about a supposed "lack" of "transitional forms". It's sad. To me, the horse fossils tell a magnificent and fascinating story, of millions of animals living out their lives, in their natural world, through millions of years. I am a dedicated horse rider and am very happy that the one-toed grazing Equus survived to the present. Evolution in no way impedes my ability to admire the beauty and nobility of these animals. Instead, it enriches my appreciation and understanding of modern horses and their rich history.

If there are Christians here on NL that are honest and moral beings with some intellectual fibre, they should have no trouble answering the following questions:



1) Why are fossils of rabbits, horses, humans and elephants never found in pre-cambrian rocks?

2) Why are there no placental mammals native to the continent of Australia?

3) How is fossils fuel such as petroleum, coal, etc manufactured in nature?




I challenge our honest and moral Christians on NL to answer these questions. Mind you that some of these Christians have accused some Africans of being anti-intellectuals . So let us see the intellectual response to these questions from the said Christian.

If these Christians here are honest and moral beings with some intellectual fibre, they should have no trouble answering the following questions:


1)   Why are fossils of rabbits, horses, humans and elephants never found in pre-cambrian rocks?

2)   Why are there no placental mammals native to the continent of Australia?

3)    How is fossils fuel such as petroleum, coal, etc manufactured in nature?


I challenge our honest and moral Christians on NL to answer these questions.   Mind you that some of these Christians have accused some Africans of being anti-intellectuals .   So let us see the intellectual response to these questions from the said Christian.

davidylan:
typical atheist hypocrisy . . . give him substance . . . he calls you dumb, strike back and he starts bleating about "personal insults". Whats' new? 
Sorry, you have to ask the mods why they locked your thread, i dont believe in such cowardice. You know a lot about evolution? What else will they say?  Abeg no break my ribs joo. Explain to us now oh wise one.

Argument from ignorance. Changes in environmental conditions does not necessarily mean evolution is occuring at all. Man and organisms have shown remarkable ability to adapt to changing conditions WITHOUT EVOLVING. I asked a question earlier, does an African man need to evolve long caucasian hair and narrow noses to survive in antarctica? Why do African killer bees adapt to living in colder north american climates without evolving into beetles?

Yeah . . . what next? All fossils are fake?  These fools think we must have no brains.
funny enough the first two links have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with fossils, the last one has nothing to do with fossilized remains of insects in amber . . .   These guys na wa.

If evolution was true, would you expect to see the bee evolve into a "beetle" (or anything else) distinctly dissimilar from a bee over your lifetime?   Is this what TTE say?

davidylan:
you couldnt be addressing it to "delusional christians" . . . we were not the ones who portrayed Darwin as racist but Horus. You dont seem to be making much sense at all.

You accuse us of being "detractors of TTE" but it doesnt seem as if you have a good grasp of it yourself. Pls kindly explain to us why an ordinary shrimp failed to evolve for 170 m yrs.

https://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j82/davidylan/fossilshrimp170myrs.jpg

Does TTE say all organism HAVE to evolve?

Why don't you visit a fellow Christian's (Glenn Morton) site to see how he defends TTE with scientific evidence.  Here we go:

1)  http://home.entouch.net/dmd/transit.htm

2) http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.htm

3)  http://www.answersincreation.org/bio_glenn_morton.htm