I think there is no way to tell for sure, it could be a side lineage. But we can tell a lot about you by studying your cousins, can’t we? And those ridiculously tiny hind limbs on basilosaurus? We call that a clue. And the hind limbs encased in the body walls of some whales? There’s another clue.
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Himalayacetus, though there is some uncertainty about its 53mya date. Indohyus. I’m guessing you’re about to ask what came before them now…"
OK, but looking at my cousins you’d still see a very similar human being, not a different species (well some of them maybe!) which lives in water and not on land, and Im not aware that evolutionists believe in a few million years time (assuming we’re still around then) the future families of my cousins or myself will look significantly different. Thats the problem I have with evolution, all the real-world examples such as darwin’s finches were temporary in nature, reversing to the original features when the local environment reversed back. And of course, they remained finches!
What kind of model for the ‘origin of species’ would you say you acknowledge? Are you more along the lines of ‘God created everything as is and species never change’ or ‘God created some original kinds and they diverged from there?’
Hi, Peter – and welcome! Thanks for your questions. I’ll do my best although others here who delve into these things professionally as scientists will be able to answer more specifically and with more confidence; so I defer to any corrections that may be required. But here is my observing layman’s response. You asked:
Some relationships did not look immediately obvious, and only after some fossil study did any possible lineage make itself more apparent. In this case, finding skeletal commonalities that link it both with whales, but also with hippose and others as described in the paragraph below that I found at this site.
Over time, fossils also revealed that Pakicetus had an ear bone with a feature unique to whales and an ankle bone that linked it to artiodactyls, a large order of even-toed hoofed mammals that includes hippos, pigs, sheep, cows, deer, giraffes, antelopes, and even cetaceans, the only aquatic artiodactyls.
That is a good question, and one that gets to the heart of an entire outlook about the development of life in history. Is the whole concept of discrete species and their allged fixity --is that all a construct of our own making (as some like Ashwin allege the whole evolutionary outlook to be)? Or are the boundaries between species more fluid when considered over large time scales? That is all a bigger subject than can be addressed in one post here, but there are resources here that can help. At first I was going to recommend going to the search glass on the biologos home page and looking for the word ‘speciation’; [and you certainly can as interested]; but that brings you to some articles that may be a little more technical than needed. Maybe one good place to start would be with the first of these ‘misconceptions’ articles.
Creatures [populations, rather] will presumably evolve (or go extinct!) as new environmental circumstances change over time. So it wouldn’t be strange that ecological changes would give rise to these sorts of changes first in one direction, but then later in another.
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7 posts were split to a new topic: The ID Book Heretic: A Brave Journey where No Man Has Gone Before
Well no, but would that not be a reasonable question if there is a continuous line of evolution?
As I understand it, there would need to be geographical separation (or some other reproductively isolating mechanism) between animals before their speciation finally veers off far enough to where they would be recognized as a separate species in the traditional sense. Darwin’s finches (or David Lack’s finches, rather) didn’t have that so much, which would keep some of the speciation in check. Or at least that’s my understanding of that situation.
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@Ashwin_s (@T.j_Runyon, @T_aquaticus, @pevaquark, @jpm and all those other volunteers who are interested in the exact wording of what BioLoogos officially rejects ) :
You write: " A designed process is ultimately not random. The end results are anticipated/predicted.
Evolution cannot be conflated with Design."
It doesn’t matter what rules you have made up in your head.
The BioLogos folks have qualified their definition and use of Evolution (see image below):
So, it would seem long before you could reject the BioLogos definition on Evolution, BioLogos.Org had already officially rejected YOUR view!:
“[BioLogos.Org] believe[s] that … God continues to sustain the … functioning of the natural world, and the cosmos… Therefore [BioLogos.org] reject[s] ideologies … that God is no longer active in the natural world.”
Further: “[BioLogos.org believes] that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth [including your Sugar Glider and Flying Squirrel] are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Thus evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes.”
And lastly, but most crucially, for the purpose of discussion in this thread:
“…Therefore, we reject ideologies that claim that evolution is a purposeless
process …” [and that claim] “… evolution replaces God.”
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[ severe line of text removed by moderator; ruling accepted and endorsed by GBrooks9 ]
Finally seems to be the key word. We have such a finite experience on earth that we think a couple of hundred years is a long time, which is less time than the finches have been observed, but for speciation, the time spans may well take orders of magnitude more. I don’t know how many years it would take, as it probably would vary, but suspect a range of 200K and up for most to truly develop as new species. Dogs are sort a sub-species of wolf, as they still interbreed, but is thought they separated about 18-32 thousand years ago, and have had help from us in differentiating and breeding.
It is difficult to understand deep time but that is the key ingredient.
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That was an analogy. You didn’t comment on my other statements. Why would a whale have useless hindlimbs?
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You are not the only one who has these concerns. Some Creationists are willing to allow for a population to “change slightly or a lot” - - but when they are asked to accept that at least one of the separated sub-populations can change into something VERY different … that’s when we have some major objections.
It just so happens that another thread has one or two particularly relevant postings on this topic! One of them is reproduced below:
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The Australian Case Study: Marsupial Radiation Tracked
via Genetic Fingerprints of Ancient Viruses!
This post really should get its own thread (and it will, eventually).
“Tracking Marsupial Evolution Using Archaic Genomic Retroposon Insertions” by Maria A. Nilsson, Gennady Churakov, Mirjam Sommer, Ngoc Van Tran, Anja Zemann, Jürgen Brosius, and Jürgen Schmitz
PLoS Biol. 2010 Jul; 8(7): e1000436. Published online 2010 Jul 27. PMCID: PMC2910653 PMID: 20668664
Notice in the image below, the various branches of Marsupial populations that appear to be derived from a population in South America. Since the original discovery of this one population, decades ago, genetic analysis has shown that the existing marsupials of Australia are the result of this one population “radiating outward” into various empty niches - - to be vigorously exploited by emerging marsupial specialized forms - - in safe isolation from the placental mammals that were coming to dominate the rest of the world!
[Be sure to click on the images to enlarge text to a more convenient font size!]
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A “zoom” of this image will be of particular value to us later on, because it creates a convenient grouping of some fairly disparate phenotypes:
While at the top we have “shrew-like” forms, and at the bottom we have “kanga” forms aggregated, in the middle grouping, we have the suggestion that three very distinct groupings share a close heritage:
Dasyuromorphia: the group having most of Australia’s carnivorous marsupials, including
quolls,
dunnarts,
the numbat,
the Tasmanian devil,
and the thylacine.
[In Australia, the exceptions include the marsupial moles and the omnivorous bandicoots.]
Notoryctemorphia: moles, vegetarian
Peremelamorphia: bandicoots & bilbies “the characteristic bandicoot shape: a plump, arch-backed body with a long, delicately tapering snout, very large upright ears, relatively long, thin legs, and a thin tail. Their size varies from about 140 grams up to 4 kilograms, but most species are about one kilogram, or the weight of a half-grown kitten [4 kilograms = 4 half-grown kittens].”
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This is the ideal “research scenario” to see how much genetic change occurs, and how quickly - - according to Evolutionary Theory - - to accomplish divergence into three distinctive “forms” of marsupials!
Australia provides the perfect example of how 3 different populations, surprisingly closely related via Common Descent, can come to look dramatically different from the original population!
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Would you like to learn about whale anatomy, up close and personal, including hindlimbs? You should. Here is a fascinating and instructive video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXccTHXPYfM
Features veterinary scientist Mark Evans and comparative anatomist Dr. Joy Reidenberg. It’s a dissection of a whale that died of natural causes.
I also suggest that you try to catch the traveling exhibition: Whales: Giants of the Deep which was developed and presented by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. It features more than 20 skulls and skeletons from various whale species (ancient and modern) and showcases many rare specimens, including the real skeleton of a male sperm whale measuring 58 feet long (or about 18 feet longer than a school bus); etc. I saw it at the AMNH; not sure where it is now, but it was amazing!.
Hippos are the closest living relatives of whales. In this cute video you can see a mother and baby hippo swimming together.
’ And the hind limbs encased in the body walls of some whales? Theres another clue’.
If all whales are descended from 4-legged animals, why do not all whales have those hind limbs encased in their body walls?
So @beaglelady asked:
And @EDC1 replied:
That certainly is a strange response, and a non-answer to @beaglelady’s question. However, I shall help thee out and have one idea that answers both questions. It is because the Intelligent Designer loves promiscuous cetaceans! (special @pevaquark note: the link is to an academic paper it’s safe I promise!) The Intelligent Designer gave some some tiny hind limbs so they can get busy more often, with selection pressure for larger certain parts, and removed the tiny hind limbs in other cetaceans because He doesn’t like it when they try to get busy.
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Since I’m not seeing the ‘post moved’ thing I moved the other posts related to the book Heretic here:
Please carry on here with ‘Whales did (NOT) evolve!’
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A post was merged into an existing topic: The ID Book ‘Heretic:’ A Brave Journey where No Man Has Gone Before
After reading the article I suggest that you don’t tell a whale his pelvis is vestigial.
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Don’t know. Some shrink way down, and some disappear. But what Is a whale doing with legs?
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weren’t some of the hind limbs encased in the body wall? Why does a whale need a vestigial pelvis? Simply to fool us?