There are some people who think that if you run thousands of generations of fruit flies in a laboratory, where the environment never changes (compared to the real world, in the field), with no inter-species rivals, no predators, and no food shortage… they are still supposed to change into something else.
That’s a hoot. Ignorance isn’t.
And eliminating ignorance is my mission:
Sam Gon, III writes:
“The common ancestor of birds and mammals … occurred at the split of the Sauropsida (Reptiles) and Synapsida (ancestors of mammal-like reptiles). The distinctive temporal fenestra in the ancestral synapsid first appears about 312 million years ago, during the Late Carboniferous period.”
“Although the mammal-like reptiles (Therapsida) appeared as early as 285 million years ago, nearly all were driven extinct in the end-Permian extinction crisis 245 million years ago that erased 90% of life on Earth.”
"True mammals first appeared following this major extinction event that marks the start of the Mesozoic, as archosaurs of that time evolved into
Readers will note that within the Snapsida (a class of animals that includes mammals and extinct precursor populations that are more closely related to mammals than reptiles) - - there are 3 major dead ends:
the Dimetrodons
the Dicynodontia, and
the Thrinaxodon.
A similar pattern can be seen on the Sauropsida (Reptile) side of the tree, with lines that were separate from Archosaurs and Turtles, but were wiped out before the present time.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I will get back to you after going through it.
Can you confirm that the evolutionary tree shared by you was developed without input from genetics/molecular studies?
It will help me if you can share the source of the material shared.
One thing noted by evolutionists is that during the time of dinosaur hegemony, mammals were mostly small, and had physiologies for hunting and digesting insects.
It wasn’t until dinosaurs were gone that mammals started to get bigger, and eat things other than insects.
Various branches of mammals have maintained to, various levels of completeness, the genes required to digest the tough body armor of most insects. There are 5 major kinds of genes for digesting insect body armor. (I can’t recall the technical term for this material.) Interestingly enough, humans actually still retain one of these 5 genes.
What’s my point?
In Evolution, “kinds” don’t just willy nilly differentiate into all possibilities. They can only differentiate and SURVIVE when other species and animal groupings don’t already occupy a niche better than a newcomer group would.
Mammals just DONT become big during the DINO age. Whenever one started to get bigger, dinosaurs eventually would notice them better and hunt them to extinction. Mammals never got bigger than about a badger, but most were shrew-like and shrew-sized.
Why don’t fish continue to evolve into new kinds of tetrapods? Because the descendants of the original tetrapods are brilliant at killing anything flopping around on the shoreline.
An intelligence can make ice. We don’t conclude that icebergs are intelligently designed because humans can make ice. The hypothesis fails because it can not adequately distinguish between what is natural and what is designed.
Where have feathers been explained by convergent evolution?
The starting point for mammals would be a unique population in a unique place at a unique time. Remember evolution happens to populations not individuals. Changing the gene pool in the initial population and trying again will give you different results. That unique initial population would never be repeated and so the exact same walk will never be repeated. And you don’t have a large amount of time. Evolution is impacted by events that happen, think the dinosaur killing asteroid, and these events don’t repeat.
Here is a brief summary found on the infamous Jerry Coyne’s blog (but he summarizes the paper):
He covers a paper that used 26 genes to construct the mammalian phylogeny with some notes:
As Christofer M. Helgen points out in a Perspectives piece in the same issue, families prove to be good monophyletic groups: clades like bears, cats, and dogs all indeed fall into families determined earlier on
morphological grounds.
Also the Wikipedia page linked before highlights fossil phylogenies vs. molecular for mammals:
Thanks for the info. If I understand correctly, synapsids are no longer considered as reptiles… so the tree will go something like this…
Synapsids to mammals. (+Dead ends)
Sauropsida to reptiles to birds. +(Dead ends).
So reptiles will be in parallel to mammals.
Some challenges to this scenario are -
Mammals and birds are warm blooded while most reptiles are not. So there seems to be a need for endothermic physiology to develop convergently somewhere along the two parallel tracks of evolution.
Associated changes are -
A heart with 4 chambers…
Changes in the expression of a regulatory gene.(interestingly the same change happened 3 times through convergent evolution!).
Details below:
Blockquote
Our findings provide a molecular mechanism for the evolution of the amniote ventricle, and support the concept that altered expression of developmental regulators is a key mechanism of vertebrate evolution.
Amphibians have a three-chambered heart, while mammalian, crocodilian, and avian hearts have four chambers, two each for pulmonary and systemic circulations. The acquisition of a fully septated ventricle has evolved independently in birds, mammals, and crocodilians10, and is an important example of convergent evolution.
Blockquote
Source:Reptilian heart development and the molecular basis of cardiac chamber evolution - PMC
Page 3.
Becoming warm blooded involves many more changes. It’s a big interlinked system. I just mentioned two.
Interestingly mammals can survive with hair on their bodies and birds can sport feathers because they are both endothermic. However, as per the evolutionary experts here, only feathers in mammals would falsify common ancestry.I am slowly learning and trying to understand how…
Haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe it will dawn on me in time.
This is circular reasoning. Phylogeny is based on things like feathers and mammary glands. It just proves the fact that clades are real things and don’t change easily… and I agree with that. It doesn’t prove common ancestry. Because common ancestry is not the only possible cause for clades to exist.
However, both birds and mammals are warm blooded… while reptiles are not. Crocodiles which are cold blooded have a four chambered heart which is a feature of warm bloodedness (it’s believed to have evolved from warm blooded ancestors). warm bloodedness can appear and disappear without much consideration to phylogenies relationships. So it will never be shown as a falsification for common ancestry. However, feathers will… If someone observes feathers on a mammal(god forbid!), The goal post will shift.
Lastly, there is not much difference between feathers, scales and hair in a a genetic/development perspective.
A recent study claims as below:
Blockquote
This indicates that the three types of skin appendages are homologous: the reptilian scales, the avian feathers and the mammalian hairs, despite their very different final shapes, evolved from the scales of their reptilian common ancestor.’
Blockquote
Source:Hairs, feathers and scales have a lot in common | ScienceDaily
Fethaers and hair are very different morphologically. But the same gene is responsible for their development. Though clades can be relied on to stay the same, feathers in mammals should not rock the scientific world. Evolution makes far greater claims of convergence.
Do you get the feeling that Ashwin is going to plunge into the error about reptilian scales vs. bird feathers?
If he launches into it when I’m not around… tell him the story of PLACODES!
“Hair in mammals and feathers in birds have long been known to develop from placodes—patches of thickened skin in embryos that are created by special cells known as columnar cells. These patches had not been seen in reptile embryos, leading scientists to believe that scales were unrelated to hair and feathers. Because birds and mammals evolved from separate lineages, scientists had two hypotheses: Placodes evolved two separate yet identical times in birds and mammals, respectively, or reptiles lost them over time, whereas birds and mammals didn’t.”
I actually read the papers I cite.(and of you read what I wrote, I cited this paper as support for my argument).
My argument is that since there is little difference on a developmental/genetic level between hair, feathers and scales… and they are homologous. Mammals with feathers is not going to falsify anything about evolution/common ancestry.
I am not claiming any kind of convergent evolution with respect to this feature.
The 2015 paper does not deny convergence in echo location for bat and dolphins. It argues against the methodology of 2013 paper that claimed a convergence in 200 genes. That is still in dispute.
If you read the links I shared. You must have noticed the article describing convergence is pointing to a convergence in proteins and 6 to 7 genes involved.
This is well established as far as I know.
I am attaching a link to 2016 paper continuing along this avenue of research in aye ayes. Let me quote:
Blockquote
Specifically, there is strong consensus evidence for seven auditory
processing genes with convergent amino acid substitutions among the echolocating bats and
dolphins (Table 1), to such a degree that phylogenetic reconstructions of the predicted protein
105 sequences of these genes produce monophyletic clades of all echolocators to the exclusion of
their more closely related, non-echolocating sister taxa (Liu et al. 2010; Shen et al. 2012). While
recent suggestions of an even wider, cross-genome level of convergence (Parker et al. 2013)
have not been supported by subsequent analyses (Thomas and Hahn 2015; Zou and Zhang 2015),
the evidence for convergence at the seven genes listed in Table 1 is robust.
Blockquote
Source:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/12/048165.full.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjTzdqVztTbAhWMYo8KHWxuAsEQFjAIegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw0kpMxNfz_m47b5WPIGGgYQ
The first article linked describes that echo location in bats and dolphins work the same way (same frequency).
Since my claim is not related to the 2013 paper. I did not mention it. I hope this makes things clear.
You act like there is no professional methodologies involved in the study of Evolution… but I’ve already mentioned your dismissive attitude to the professions that require the training and instincts of forensic detection.
The point my own post makes is that the precursor to making feathers is in virtually all tetrapods (the placodes).
But it still takes a specific trigger gene (or genes) to harness these placodes into species specific traits.
So, while it is conceivable that humans might have some pseudo genes for turning placodes into scales… I don’t believe there are any known pseudo genes for turning placodes into feathers.
Suppose a fossil is found in the future that is clearly a mammal, but has feathers. Would it falsify common ancestry?
I think scientists would just point to the similarity between two phenomenon and claim convergent evolution. And of course, those “crazy” creationists will be left arguing like you did above.
When there is no fossil evidence. Evolutionists will justify their story based on the lack of evidence and say evidence of this sort would falsify the theory.
When there is fossil evidence, they will tweak the story and the fossil evidence which was supposed to falsify evolution will become one of the champions of the theory.
This has been going on for 150 years.
Edit: Refer to people like Dawkins using convergent evolution as an argument for the inevitability of the phenomenon!
End of edit.
So I am clear that little things like mammals with feathers would never falsify common ancestry.
Your premise is that Evolution is wrong… and so any attempt to explain an anomaly must be an injustice.
And each time you dip your pen into some toxic ink, you keep coming up with a SINGLE anomaly… and what would we do about it?
What if I challenged you with a single anomaly … that you prayed to God the Father, and you heard his voice… just like he was in the room with you … and he said:
“Ash, don’t tell anyone… but I am known as both Yahweh and as Lucifer… for I am both!”
Would you quit the church?
What if your father was the one that had this single anomaly? And he DID tell someone, he told you?
Would you quit the church because of a story like this?
If you want a plausible and credible answer to your infuriating questions (no less infuriating than the ones I suggest in this post), you need to have a credible and plausible PREMISE! If all the world’s major scientists are convinced and invested in Evolution - - what do you think it would take to change the direction of something that looks pretty convincing?
Why not propose that we strike a 500 square mile region filled with fossils of mammals with fossils… dinosaurs above the KT barrier, and land-based predators that had the same signature bone structure as 4 legged proto-whales?
NOW you have a problem that would probably overturn Evolution as we know it.
You are pitching the idea that Evolution is like Phlogiston… a bizarrely wrong theory about how fire worked… which was studied and defended for 100 years. And then it was over-turned. But it was over-turned because of considerable and consistent evidence that showed there was a better explanation.
Read the history of it in the Wiki article and see what it took to convince scientists the truth that they were wrong. It wasn’t a vast global conspiracy. It is the nature of humanity and the search for truth.
And then promise me and @pevaquark that you will no longer propose “one or two anomalies” when you pose this question again. It is an unfair comparison and which would deservedly warrant heaps of ridicule on your head.
Then, please, if you would, read the article by Isaac Asimov (below) who writes about trends in truth … and how facts can be overturned all the time … but some truths become increasingly more reliable - - and thus change only in smaller increments.
George
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The Truth that Phlogiston was Quite Wrong - - for a Century
Facts change all the time … but some Truths Hardly Change at All… (like Gravity!)
A long time ago I got to meet Isaac Asimov. I was the only college reporter there at the Boston Museum of Science. Asimov was there to receive an award and he hated flying. He drove in from New York. The weather was bad. Bad enough that I was the only college reporter to show. In fact, bad enough I was the only reporter to show!
For 20 minutes I got to ask Asimov all my private little questions about the future and the Earth, and Asimov was on a roll! He summed up a large part of his view that if the Earth was already exceeding its carrying capacity in total human population, then math would provide the answer: either the Birth Rate goes down, or the Death Rate will go up. Hooooo… that was a lot for a college boy to hear on a messy weather day. (Modern day pundits believe global human population will peak some time around 2050-2060 CE, and then slowly begin an awkward descent down to who knows where.)
Finally the reporter from the Boston Globe showed up and I let him catch up with Asimov as I jotted down notes from what Asimov said, and how he said it. The Globe reporter would eventually write an article about Asimov’s lamb chop sideburns. My treatment would ponder Asimov’s grim predictions and some of the sociological remedies that could help us grapple with the future.
I submitted the write up to the school paper at Eastern Nazarene College. Even though I didn’t attend there, I felt honor bound to give them an article … after all, it was ENC’s school editor who asked me to run out to Boston to do the interview for the paper!
About 10 years later, Asimov wrote this text (below) regarding this group’s favorite topic: Evolution vs. Creationism!
The article, “The Relativity of Wrong” (The Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1989, Vol. 14, No. 1, Pp. 35-44), does an elegant job of explaining just why some bad ideas last a very long time:
The Relativity of Wrong, by Isaac Asimov
“. . . . what actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.”
"This can be pointed out in many cases other than just the shape of the earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured. "
"Copernicus switched from an earth-centered planetary system to a sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky, and eventually the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long. "
"Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly and the living things upon it evolve so slowly that it seemed reasonable at first to suppose that there was no change and that the earth and life always existed as they do today. If that were so, it would make no difference whether the earth and life were billions of years old or thousands. Thousands were easier to grasp. "
"But when careful observation showed that the earth and life were changing at a rate that was very tiny but not zero, then it became clear that the earth and life had to be very old. Modern geology came into being, and so did the notion of biological evolution. "
"If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times. It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly. "
We know that it is convergent evolution because the mutations which alter gene expression are different in each lineage, as are the sequences of the genes with altered expression.
It is because feathers evolved in the dinosaur lineage after the mammal and dinosaur lineage split. Horizontal genetic transfer is extremely rare in eukaryotes, so adaptations that evolve on one branch can not move over to other branches.
Those wings are an example of convergent evolution. As you can see, the details of each wing are very, very different. They are analogs, not homologs.
Those same genes are also shared by humans and many other mammals that don’t have echolocation. Also, when you compare the whole gene sequence for the Prestin gene you get the expected phylogeny:
“Indeed, the same misplacement of dolphin is observed in the Prestin tree reconstructed with only nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions (Figure S1B); but, when only synonymous substitutions are used, dolphin and cow are correctly grouped with 100% bootstrap support (Figure S1C).” reference
If there is another mechanism that will necessarily produce a nested hierarchy then now would be the time to describe it. As shown elsewhere, design is not limited to a nested hierarchy and regularly produces designs that don’t fall into a nested hierarchy.
Being warm blooded is not a physical feature. It’s a bit like saying that you should group a fruit fly, bat, and bird together because they can all fly.
The point is that the differences that led to feathers in dinosaurs and birds evolved in that branch, and those adaptations can’t jump branches on the tree.
