And, in @dcscccc’s favor, it is possible to verb nouns. Maybe it’s time to start verbing adjectives?
Hello @dcscccc -
You just illustrated the fact that you haven’t grasped the rudiments of statistics yet.
One more biased sample is going to prove your point?
Your samples are biased for many reasons. One is that they exclude, by definition, ancestral forms. For example, paleontologists have concluded that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs. If you want an unbiased analysis starting from birds, therefore, you have to include the numbers of dinosaur species.
But you can’t stop there. You have to include the reptilian ancestors of the dinosaurs.
But you can’t stop there, either; you have to include the amphibious ancestors of the reptilian ancestors of the dinosaurs who preceded the birds.
But you can’t stop there, either… and so on, back to the prokaryotes and such that lived billions of years ago.
You seem not to have even thought about how sample bias can skew an analysis, even though I provided a very good illustration:
dcs, since you are not reading what I write–or understanding it, at any rate–I’m feeling a little discouraged. My offer to help you understand biostatistics by working through the free course still stands, though. Contact me via BioLogos if you are interested in understanding and using statistics.
This is the perfect example of quote-mining. You failed to cite the next sentence–the very next sentence after you terminated your quotation–which is key to understanding the authors’ point:
“It is probable that most durably skeletonized invertebrate species were represented in lithostratigraphic units throughout the Phanerozoic, but that this record is lost owing to erosion, burial, and destruction of skeletons in situ.” [emphasis mine]
I’m going to assume that you just didn’t read the entire abstract with due care, because I think you are intelligent enough to understand that the above sentence completely destroys your assertion that the fossil record is in fact complete. Or that this paper supports such a notion.
I’m going to save you some trouble, because I anticipate that you are going to claim that the authors of the paper are making baseless assertions, and are ignoring their own evidence. So let’s talk about the evidence and how the authors were using it. The authors were evidently trying to settle the question of whether the paucity of inverterbrate marine fossils in the Phanerozoic is the result of no fossilization or the result of erosion, burial, and destruction. Their empirical results point to the latter conclusion.
You so profoundly misunderstand the paper that you have actually changed the title in a critical way, without even realizing it. The original title is:
“How good was the fossil record?..” [emphasis mine]
The whole point of the paper is that an extremely unusual record (unusually recent, unusually well-preserved, and unusually available), shows what the larger fossil record for skeletonized invertebrates looked like before the introduction of problems like these:
- erosion
- burial
- destruction of skeletons in situ
Peace,
Chris Falter
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ok my friend chris. lets go by your way. lets say that all those papers are pointless. here is the simple fact- we have about 10 milion living species and about 500000 species in the fossil record. how you get to the conclusion that 99% of the species that have ever lived are now extinct?
@Dcscccc, are you not going to say a thing about your quote-mine that Chris_Falter caught? The fact that you are ignoring a rather major gaffe on your part is going to make readers wonder: Did you genuinely not notice that the source you were quoting totally defies the point you were making OR was the omission of the remainder of the sentence deliberate on your part?
Do you understand that some readers might think you were trying to mislead them?
Chris_Falter was gracious and attributed the 500-pound elephant in the room to your not understanding the material, but the fact that you appear to be ignoring your 500-pound elephant leads me to wonder: Were you caught red-handed and thinking that you can simply go on as if nothing happened?
This doesn’t appear to be a simple English language comprehension issue. But please let us know if it is. (This is a case where we may need some help in giving you the maximum benefit of the doubt.)
I’ll repeat what Chris_Falter wrote:
@dcscccc, do you understand what the term “quote-mining” means? Can you explain why it happened in this case?
We all prefer to attribute the quote-mine to a lack of understanding of the material, but do you understand why some readers might think you intentionally doctored (truncated) the quotation to misrepresent what the article stated?
Are you going to thank Chris_Falter for bringing your error to your attention or are you trying to ignore the fact that he caught a very significant misrepresentation? Again, please help us give you the maximum benefit of the doubt. Mutual respect for one another in this kind of discussion community would surely demand that you help us to understand this very serious truncation of the sentence.
“probable” is the key word here. what the evidence shows? again- very simple- even if all the species that appear in the fossil record are now extinct, its give us about 95% of total species that are still alive. so where is your counter evidence and why to ignore what the evidence lead?
Using that same logic, MOST of the dinosaurs in the fossil record STILL exist today … HA!
read my comments. this is not what im saying.
Aren’t you the same fellow who disputed the relevance of my 3 pivotal observations?
- we NEVER find marine dinosaur fossils in the same layers as we find whale fossils !
- we NEVER large land-based mammals (giraffes, elephants, rhinoceros, etc.) in the same layers as we find land-based dinosaurs ! … and
- we NEVER find marine dinosaur fossils in more recent layers than we find large mammals of ANY kind (whales or elephants) !
Since there is NO flood scenario that can duplicate these results … your only refutation was: dinosaur populations were too low to give us a representative finding in all pre-flood layers and that Whale and Elephant populations were too low before the flood to give us a representative finding in all layers.
NOW you are arguing that we have a good representation of how many species we have from the fossil record.
DCS, what would you do with your spare time if the BioLogos forums didn’t exist?
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The earth supports roughly 10^10 eukaryotic species. While this is clearly not a physics constant like the speed of light, it’s a good approximation of the number of species you would find on the earth at any one time in its history.
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Per the fossil record, the typical species exists for about 4M years.
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Eukaryotic life has existed for roughly 2B years.
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As you so like to say, dcs, do the math.
No, dcs, the key question is whether you are accurately representing the work of scientists, or misrepresenting it. You clearly misrepresented their work.
I have already given it, and you have never responded to it. Since you neither understand statistics, nor are interested in trying to understand statistics, I have nothing else to offer you. Other than my wishes for a good day.
Thank you for systematically describing what I thought I recalled from the posts of @dcscccc.
Dcscccc, do you understand why you have left readers (at least some of us) very confused as to what you are claiming? Even after making allowances for language obstacles, I’m often left speechless. I confess that I find it impossible to follow your reasoning. (Are you aware of the internal contradictions in your comments?)
ok chris. here is the problem. from your article:
“However, ‘extinction’ can also mean evolution into a totally new form. As the old form (species) disappears this is still an extinction as a particular way of life is lost, although there is still a carry over of genetic material.”-
so if we see a species that change into another species- then we cant claim that its extinct. if a dog species change into another species the dog isnt extinct. only the species changed. its mean that most of the animal kinds still alive.
now, your article still doesnt prove that 99.9 of the species exinct. because it doesnt prove that only a small percent of the species(about less then 1%) also appear in the fossil record.
STOP right there. Don’t move a muscle:
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It is impossible to know if a species represented by a gene pool has GONE EXTINCT or, instead, SPECIATED into another unique gene pool.
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Evolution is a moving picture.
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Fossils are SNAPSHOTS. [[Even in movies, If there are not enough snapshots, you don’t know whether a young man (early in the movie) has DIED … or has GROWN UP into an adult.]]
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Extinction Events make it easier for everyone … because it is clear that 100 types of dinosaurs didn’t all converge into 10 types of birds, right?
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And POCKETS of species help us to identify SPECIATION vs. EXTINCTION. Australia has a number of marsupial forms of mammals that look very much like placental versions found in the rest of the world.
Did the marsupials that used to exist go EXTINCT? … or did they EVOLVE over time into Placentals? By testing the genetic commonalities between Placentals and between Marsupials… it is possible to determine whether virtually all Placental forms of mammals come from a common ancestor. If so… that would mean that the great many Marsupials of the world (not living in Australia) went extinct… as Placental mammals out-competed them and speciated into the many niches that are still occupied by Maruspials in Australia!
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In addition to George’s excellent analysis, I would also point out that the species barrier is generally defined as the boundary across which successful reproduction cannot occur.
Dr. Hone is stating that (typically) the species barrier would arise over millions of years. If you could somehow mate an existing animal with an ancestor from 4mya, the offspring (if any) would be unsuccessful.
In order to understand what you are saying, would you please define an animal kind?
What is a “kind”?
This whole discussion invoking “SPECIES” or “KIND” is a giant diversion.
It is impossible to define “kind” … and even the term “species” starts to lose meaning when you find out that perfectly normal LIONS and TIGERS can mate and have fertile offspring. How more IRRELEVANT could the term “species” be?
So, what IS relevant? Instead of fixating on “kinds” or “species” we should return, over and over again, to the inexplicable findings connected to Australia - - with virtually no placental mammals there compared to the rest of the world.
until 2010 we never find a tetrapod under a 400my layer. so according to your logic tetrapod doesnt exist until 400 my. but now we know its false.
im not sure its always true. i heard about 2 species that split off about 10 my and after that they still can produce the next generetion.
kind= usually the same family level. another definition can be 2 species that can produce offspring
This is not the same logic. There is NO barrier to how soon or late tetrapods can appear.
The whole point of my Dinosaurs vs. Large Mammals scenario is that Dinosaurs PREVENTED the emergence of large mammals. And that’s why the bones of both can never be in the same matrix.
There no food-chain barriers to the emergence of Tetrapods.
DCS, you don’t really seem to have your heart in arriving at scientific comprehension - - you appear to be here for the simple motivation of scoring debating points…
I would not expect it to be true 100% of the time. Sometimes it would be more than 4my, sometimes less. That’s why I used the word “typically” in my post.
I will give one example: horses and donkeys can interbreed to produce mules, but mules are not successful. (They are useful and viable, but that’s not the biological definition of successful.) They diverged from a common ancestor 4mya.
Note that the ability to produce offspring and the ability to produce successful offspring are not the same thing.