DescentBB

So it would seem the fabled missing link has been found:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8057465.stm

What will the creationist and new age religionist have to say. Darwin wins once again.

Woodchuck wrote:What will the creationist and new age religionist have to say. Darwin wins once again.

That's one incredibly cool fossil!

You DID read far enough into the article to notice that there is still some controversy over the claims? You would have had to make it to sentence 4 to find that.

I'm not questioning the claims myself, I don't know enough about it. Just pointing out that its a bit premature to claim the discovery of a "missing link" when the paleontologists are still arguing over exactly what the fossil represents.

Do you really need such a confrontational title for this?
But yes. That is cool and I hope it's real.

\"She belongs to the group from which higher primates and human beings developed but my impression is she is not on the direct line.\"

Independent experts are keen to see the new fossil but somewhat sceptical of any claim that it could be \"a missing link\".

Dr Henry Gee, a senior editor at the journal Nature, said the term itself was misleading and that the scientific community would need to evaluate its significance.

seems like we dont need to say anything, scientists are already sceptical.
my question is why did it take 29 years to make this public?? it was found in 1980

Regardless if this has to do with evolution or if it has to do with Creationism ... There is a viable reason for it's existance. We just may not know that reason... yet.

And for the Creationists, most would probably tell you that they will get the chance to find out (chance to ask the person who truly knows) at a later time.

So as far as I'm concerned (and you would probably categorize me as a Creationist) ... my thoughts are:

Cuda, perhaps the 29 year wait is that it was part of a large private collect and was never open to examination?:

\"Ida was discovered in the 1980s in a fossil treasure-trove called Messel Pit, near Darmstadt in Germany. For much of the intervening period, it has been in a private collection.\"

Octopus wrote:Do you really need such a confrontational title for this?

I am God-like in my title selection ability, no?

With every intermediate fossil found, 2 more gaps are created.

but they are getting smaller

The gaps are getting smaller? what a joke.....

woodchip wrote:

Octopus wrote:Do you really need such a confrontational title for this?

I am God-like in my title selection ability, no?

God only types in all caps.

CUDA wrote:

"She belongs to the group from which higher primates and human beings developed but my impression is she is not on the direct line."

Independent experts are keen to see the new fossil but somewhat sceptical of any claim that it could be "a missing link".

Dr Henry Gee, a senior editor at the journal Nature, said the term itself was misleading and that the scientific community would need to evaluate its significance.

seems like we dont need to say anything, scientists are already sceptical.
my question is why did it take 29 years to make this public?? it was found in 1980

Actually Cuda, this was shot down about 6 years ago.

Looks like a sloth to me.

*edit*

And while we're at it, I found THIS article. Patchy but interesting. I'd like to run down the Ref's but don't have the time.

The hind legs are too long for a Sloth.

tunnelcat wrote:The hind legs are too long for a Sloth.

maybe its the missing link for Sloth's

Could be Sid.

CUDA wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:The hind legs are too long for a Sloth.

maybe its the missing link for Sloth's

really. why not that?

lol... thousands upon thousands of fossils and finally after hundreds of years or some long time period someone found something that they're not even sure is a \"missing link?\"

There are and there never were any missing links, so please throw out the illogical evolution theory and spare us the headaches.

CUDA wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:The hind legs are too long for a Sloth.

maybe its the missing link for Sloth's

I still think it looks a lot like Sid.

It's absolutely amazing how easily people like this can (unofficially) categorize something as an early human.

It's a freaking small monkey/lemur-type thing!

I don't believe in evolution at all. It's obviously an animal, and like a couple of animals still in existence in our day there are what I would call design similarities (as they say).

Also I'm a little skeptical about their 3D reconstruction. Knowing a little bit about 3D, I know you can't just derive something 3D from something that seems, essentially, to be 2D. There just isn't enough information, which means there is probably some guessing going on.

I'd be tempted to suggest that someone who actually knew animal skeletal systems to begin with could do a better job of classifying it.

The whole idea of missing links seems pretty silly to me. To ask where are the missing links, you have to tacitly acknowledge the general sequence. And whenever you find a missing link, then it just becomes another one of God's wonderful albeit extinct creations, for which now you have to find two more missing links, i.e.

ccb056 wrote:With every intermediate fossil found, 2 more gaps are created.

I don't know much about this fossil, but I have a question for the young-earth creationists--how many human features must this fossil have for it to be "the" missing link? Clearly, a chimpanzee isn't human enough to be considered the missing link. But how close? Just any closer than a chimpanzee?

Sergeant Thorne wrote:Also I'm a little skeptical about their 3D reconstruction. Knowing a little bit about 3D, I know you can't just derive something 3D from something that seems, essentially, to be 2D. There just isn't enough information, which means there is probably some guessing going on.

do a few CTs, Xrays and whatever you got and model the bones seperatly, then realign them (use the Spore editor? ). or why not ask HIM in the first place?

I'd be tempted to suggest that someone who actually knew animal skeletal systems to begin with could do a better job of classifying it.

Jeff250 wrote:how many human features must this fossil have for it to be "the" missing link? Clearly, a chimpanzee isn't human enough to be considered the missing link. But how close? Just any closer than a chimpanzee?

Your question is entirely valid, but I did want to point out that this particular fossil isn't claimed to be a missing link between apes and humans, but between the higher primates (which includes humans) and more distant relatives.

I'm NOT a young earth creationist, but I hang out with a lot of them. The most rational argument I have heard on this topic from a Young Earth Creationist was twofold:

1: Relying on "Missing Links" to support a Young Earth is a dangerous position, because fossils are occasionally found that seem to fit into those gaps.

2: Instead of making an emphasis on any particular missing link, his main position was that Evolution really SHOULD produce a fairly smooth continuum of change. But what we see is very long periods of stability in any particular form, and then a sudden leap to a very different form, with only a few scattered forms that might be transitional. The graph of change should be a curve like rolling hills, but instead it's bluffs and buttes with steep or almost vertical cliffs. The Naturalists try to explain this with "Punctuated Equilibrium", but the Creationists feel that this is just an excuse to try to explain away data that does not match with the predictions.

Again, I'm NOT a Young Earth Creationist, but I do agree that the general lack of gradual change in the fossil evidence is a difficulty in evolutionary theory. Not an insurmountable one, but I find Punctuated Equilibrium a bit weak.

Kilarin wrote:Again, I'm NOT a Young Earth Creationist, but I do agree that the general lack of gradual change in the fossil evidence is a difficulty in evolutionary theory. Not an insurmountable one, but I find Punctuated Equilibrium a bit weak.

evolution: fossil evidence (albeit far from complete on the time scale, there have to be a ton of factors present to preserve an animal or plant into a fossil)
creationism: ?

Floyd wrote:creationism: ?

funny person wrote:For years I have held a coke can in one hand and a banana in the other, and compared the two (I have done this in Yale and other universities when I have spoken on the subject of atheism). Both have a tab at the top. The banana has a wrapper with perforations, is biodegradable, has outward indicators of inward contents--green too early, yellow, just right, black--too late, etc. It was a parody; the point being, if someone designed the coke can then obviously Someone designed the banana.

Laak Oh'ma gawd! Duh!

i suppose you are just poking fun, because despite the excellent job on the quoting, the content is somewhat flawed

A bit.

Floyd wrote:

I'd be tempted to suggest that someone who actually knew animal skeletal systems to begin with could do a better job of classifying it.

Roll your eyes if you want. I'd bet money that this guy doesn't have a solid, experiential background in animal biology.

Floyd wrote:evolution: fossil evidence (albeit far from complete on the time scale, there have to be a ton of factors present to preserve an animal or plant into a fossil)
creationism: ?

I'd say

evolution: fossil evidence
creationism: fossil evidence

The fossil evidence out there doesn't come with signs that say "look, I'm proof that evolution happened"

Fossil evidence indicates that something lived & died a long time ago. The difference is that evolutionists & creationists fill in the gaps differently. (Another way you could say it is that they answer "why" differently.)

Are all of the different ways to fill in the gaps equal? No. Ultimately, some are closer (I say closer because I don't think anyone is 100% right, at least in lack of detail.) to what actually happened than others. The problem is our assumptions. Science (read: evolutionary theory) starts by defining God out of the equation, and then goes about interpreting the evidence to support that assumption. Creationists define God into the equation, and then go about interpreting the same evidence (with varying amounts of "God just did it that way") to agree with their assumption.

Evolutionists will never be able to dis-prove creationists, because creationists will always find a way to explain new evidence, falling back on their "God just did it that way" trump card. Likewise, creationists will never be able to dis-prove evolutionists, because they will always find a way to explain away any new angle that creationists throw their way, falling back on their "yay, multi-verse" trump card.

That's why I think human origins is, at heart, a philosophical question. I personally think that we're being wasteful in all of our efforts at scientific archeology. that's a personal opinion, but I see fossils & dinosaurs as having minimal practical modern-day scientific relevance, and lots of philosophical relevance.

snoopy wrote:Science (read: evolutionary theory) starts by defining God out of the equation, and then goes about interpreting the evidence to support that assumption.

I disagree. Scientists begin with no assumptions about God's existence, and then they proceed from there. Do you think that there is scientific evidence that should compel a scientist with no assumptions of God's existence into thinking that God exists? (The best thing I can think of is the unsuccessful "Intelligent Design" movement.) If you think that scientists make assumptions about God's existence, then how do you think that the science of human origins would have developed if all scientists had made no assumptions about God's existence?

snoopy wrote:falling back on their "yay, multi-verse" trump card

I think that this is done for cosmological issues, not for biological evolution issues, which makes it more fair, since whether there is a multiverse is a very cosmological type of question.

cosmology and biology... two of the saddest stories in science, as far as I'm concerned. at least the former utilizes math.

Kilarin wrote:Again, I'm NOT a Young Earth Creationist, but I do agree that the general lack of gradual change in the fossil evidence is a difficulty in evolutionary theory. Not an insurmountable one, but I find Punctuated Equilibrium a bit weak.

This is ridiculous.

1. Evolutionary theory dictates punctuated equilibrium (for an empirical demonstration of this fact, see this video).
2. Your friend disagrees with this premise, so replaces it with a new, incorrect one: "Evolution should result in gradual change."
3. Your friend then argues that since the premise is incorrect, evolution is therefore an incorrect model.

Otherwise known as a strawman argument. Your friend is "defeating" the exact opposite of the perhaps counterintuitive but empirically verifiable fact that evolution results in punctuated equilibria.

Burlyman wrote:cosmology and biology... two of the saddest stories in science, as far as I'm concerned. at least the former utilizes math.

biology utilizes statistics and probability (which is how evolution works IMO), as all other sciences do. these are math in my book.

DCrazy wrote:1. Evolutionary theory dictates punctuated equilibrium (for an empirical demonstration of this fact, see this video).

that was awesome!

Kilarin wrote:Evolution really SHOULD produce a fairly smooth continuum of change. But what we see is very long periods of stability in any particular form, and then a sudden leap to a very different form, with only a few scattered forms that might be transitional. The graph of change should be a curve like rolling hills, but instead it's bluffs and buttes with steep or almost vertical cliffs. The Naturalists try to explain this with "Punctuated Equilibrium", but the Creationists feel that this is just an excuse to try to explain away data that does not match with the predictions.

Again, I'm NOT a Young Earth Creationist, but I do agree that the general lack of gradual change in the fossil evidence is a difficulty in evolutionary theory. Not an insurmountable one, but I find Punctuated Equilibrium a bit weak.

There is absolutely no reason why evolution should create a smooth transition of forms. It can be as radical as the organism can mutate. Larger animals would have a smoother line, but we'll never see it because not enough fossils are made. Also don't forget that for every species of rabbit that survived, 50 species of rabbit did not. If we trace today's rabbit through the fossil line, we can expect to see rifts and jumps because we're also looking at the 50 failed species as well.


Neo, just because you don't use your brain, doesn't mean others follow your lead. Once you clear third grade textbooks maybe you'll get a better idea.

Evolution really SHOULD produce a fairly smooth continuum of change.

just to add what testi and Dcrazy have been saying. I found the notion of fitness landscapes very helpful in understanding why the theory of evolution actually PREDICTS relatively long stable states, with intermittent radical changes.

Imagine a species that is very well adapted to its environment. It sits at a local peak of its fitness landscape. There might be other, even higher peaks around, but to reach these the organisms would have to travel, in evolutionary terms, through fitness valleys. In other words, any small mutations that happen will reduce its reproductive success and will therefore be selected against --- the system is relatively stable for a long time, and does not progress to another state. An example is wheel-based species. They might be better adapted to the environment (a high local peak), but to reach this state, a current organism would first have to de-evolve its legs, which would be quite detrimental to its survival and reproduction (a fitness valley).

There are two things that can change this scenery and let the organism evolve further. First, there might be a very drastic mutation that, in more or less one go, moves the mutated organism onto a higher peak. This new mutation will have more reproductive success and will therefore quickly outcompete the base species. You will not find many transitional fossils in this case, and of course such drastic mutations should happen VERY rarely.

The second possibility is that due to an external event the fitness landscape changes (think meteorite hit, or invasion of a new well adapted species). Now the organism is not at a fitness peak anymore, and suddenly small mutations that would previously been weeded out can prosper, and lead the organism onto a new peak, where it is well adapted. Again, compared to the long static phase, you will not find many transitional fossils, because this transitionary stage is quite short.

Not sure if all this is too clear. I am very tired at the moment. Hope to write more in the next days.

Viruses are also part of the 'fitness landscape' that can invade an organism and alter it's genetic code, for good, or bad. Some mutations via these invaders can strengthen the organism for better survival as well as end up killing it outright. I wonder how much of a part viruses play in evolution?

Edit: By the way, the fossil called 'Ida' has fingernails (not claws) on all five fingers and not the lower tooth comb or grooming claw on the index finger characteristic of Lemurs. A very early offshoot of the primate lineage when it split into 2 paths millions of years ago.

Quite a find! The detail of the fossil was so good, they could tell it was young, female, broke it's right wrist and got partial bone regrowth before death.

Then of course there are killer asteroids that destroys all the fitness theory and everything starts over.

DCrazy wrote:Evolutionary theory dictates punctuated equilibrium (for an empirical demonstration of this fact, see this video).

A very cool demonstration, but a bit recursive, in that the smashed watch argument is creationist, not ID. At least I've never heard it from any legitimate ID scientist. So, it seems to me his straw man is a straw man.

If each small step has an advantage over the previous step, evolution works.

DCrazy wrote:Your friend disagrees with this premise, so replaces it with a new, incorrect one: "Evolution should result in gradual change."

I should point out that many evolutionist have problems with Punctuated Equilibrium as well. Even Dawkins has some gripes with how it is applied.

During times of crisis and stress, such as significant changes in the environment or encountering a new species, evolution should happen at an accelerated rate. But punctuated equilibriam seems to claim that this is the most common way for evolution to occur, and that's the point I find a bit weak. A VERY common evolutionary pressure should be simple predator/prey competition.

Pandora wrote:just to add what testi and Dcrazy have been saying. I found the notion of fitness landscapes very helpful in understanding why the theory of evolution actually PREDICTS relatively long stable states, with intermittent radical changes.

But when a predator and prey are interacting, the fitness landscape is constantly shifting, and shifting in small steps. The prey mutates to be a bit better at avoiding being caught, the predator mutates to adjust. Fitness landscapes are not stable in such situations. And since this should be one of THE most common evolutionary pressures, it seems to me that we ought to see more gradual and less punctuated changes in many creatures over large spans of development.

Again, just to be clear, I do NOT think that punctuated equilibrium is false, only that it is not adequate to fully explain all we see in the fossil record.

Kilarin wrote:A very cool demonstration, but a bit recursive, in that the smashed watch argument is creationist, not ID. At least I've never heard it from any legitimate ID scientist. So, it seems to me his straw man is a straw man.

I pointed to the video not for its overall message but because it discusses things like "the era of pendulum clocks." You are correct in that it is a rebuttal of creationist arguments, but I linked to it because it provides empirical evidence of punctuated equilibria when correctly following the rules of natural selection and evolution.

Kilarin wrote:If each small step has an advantage over the previous step, evolution works.

Why say you "small"? There is a nonzero probability of an X-Men scenario, in which large numbers of humans undergo highly advantageous radical mutations. It's not large, and in most cases radical mutation causes the death or failure of the organism (and on a large scale the death of the species; typically this is due to localized catastrophic events such as radiation poisoning).

Kilarin wrote:During times of crisis and stress, such as significant changes in the environment or encountering a new species, evolution should happen at an accelerated rate. But punctuated equilibriam seems to claim that this is the most common way for evolution to occur, and that's the point I find a bit weak. A VERY common evolutionary pressure should be simple predator/prey competition.

You're extrapolating from individualized pressure to population-wide crisis. A predator-prey scenario is an equilibrium, just as the triple point of a substance is an equilibrium. When matter reaches the cusp of a state transition (like its boiling point), there are equal numbers of molecules transitioning states (like 1mol gas -> water while 1mol water -> gas). Even though individuals in the population will experience stress from the predators, on the whole the two populations exist in an equilibrium. (You're also neglecting that two individual populations don't exist in a vacuum. There are untold numbers of other players in the long-term health of a population.)

Kilarin wrote:But when a predator and prey are interacting, the fitness landscape is constantly shifting, and shifting in small steps. The prey mutates to be a bit better at avoiding being caught, the predator mutates to adjust.

Given what I was referring to before, most visible mutations are radical enough to be harmful to the organism. Most mutations are minor and do not affect the organism at all.

Evolution happens so animals can adapt to their environment. So why are we trying to stop our evolution by controlling the weather?