Evolving Long Legs

[rogue06]

On another thread m004 made (and repeated) a rather astonishing claim:

Since I am not the one positing Evolution, it is not I who needs to support my theory.

If you assert that mutations lead to traits- given that a modern horse has traits such as long legs , which an earlier form of horse lacked, then we should expect to find, either extinct or living, a 'horse' with one long leg, a 'horse' with two long legs, a 'horse' with three long legs and our usual horse, as well as every combination of leg lengths in-between.

It's not my system - it's evolution.
Start with a 'horse ' with four short legs.
End up with a horse with four long legs.
What is in between?

Answer- all sorts of mutations. Every conceivable and inconceivable mutation.

The story as Evolutionists want us to see it -
First comes a horse with four short legs,
Then comes a horse with four slightly longer legs -

Whoa! Silver. Stop right there.

Wrong. Next must come a horse with one leg slightly longer, unless mutations posess some remarkable symmetry. And then they wouldn't be random.

Magellan

There are two quite different issues in your post.
1. A horse with short legs mating with a horse with long legs has nothing to do with mutations/evolution.

2. According to evolution, two 'horse' parents with short legs gave birth to a mutant with one long leg or four long legs . Now if, as is more likely (as unlikely as it is) the child had one long leg, then one of it's descendants somewhere down the line was a parent to a child horse with two long legs. And so on.

But why would anyone think that a mutant foal with four long legs or one long leg could survive and florish?

Have you seen any evidence to support such a notion? I haven't.

Magellan

I look forward to you outlining and linking to a study that demonstrated a pair of animals with short legs giving birth to a child with symmetrically long legs, that child having a mutation that resulted in all legs being equally long and that child becoming a successful ancestor.

Magellan

I’ve been wondering where M004 might have come up with such a bizarre view of how evolution works and I think I might have found it:


00octopus_origins_chart.png
Major League Fail

[DuraGizer]

With a chart like that, who needs parodies? YECs are so good at making themselves look stupid.

[magellan004]

On another thread m004 made (and repeated) a rather astonishing claim:


I’ve been wondering where M004 might have come up with such a bizarre view of how evolution works and I think I might have found it:


00octopus_origins_chart.png
Major League Fail

Yet more material where no source is given - Attachment 64506

Magellan.

[Tiggy]

Yet more material where no source is given - Attachment 64506

Magellan.

Why do you want to know Clownshoes? If you're going to sue them for plagiarism, don't bother. I'm pretty sure stupidity like that is public domain.

- T

[rogue06]

Yet more material where no source is given - Attachment 64506

Magellan.

You could ask you know.

chart itself

[MooseOnTheLoose]

evolution works

A contradiction in terms, surely?

[magellan004]

You could ask you know.

chart itself

Thanks for that.
So the truth of the octopus matter is that ancient octopussesses /pies/pi were the same as modern octopus hence 'But the newfound fossils, like modern octopuses, lack these fins, a discovery that pushes back the origins of modern octopuses by tens of millions of years.'.

But what is a few dozen million years to an evolutionist? 'Push it all back' - like putty.

Source - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...l-picture.html - Courtesy of Rogue.

Magellan

[Tiggy]

But what is a few dozen million years to an evolutionist? 'Push it all back' - like putty.

It's about 0.4% of the total time span that life has been on Earth.

You blew it Clowshoes. If you were going to argue that each leg of an animal had to evolve one at a time, instead of a horse you should have gone with a millipede.



- T

[rogue06]

Thanks for that.
So the truth of the octopus matter is that ancient octopussesses /pies/pi were the same as modern octopus hence 'But the newfound fossils, like modern octopuses, lack these fins, a discovery that pushes back the origins of modern octopuses by tens of millions of years.'.

But what is a few dozen million years to an evolutionist? 'Push it all back' - like putty.

Source - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...l-picture.html - Courtesy of Rogue.

Magellan

If you want something you wish to attribute to me on the subject then the least you could do is quote what I’ve said.

An incredibly well-preserved fossil of something that rarely if ever fossilize has caught the attention of the world’s paleontologists. The fossil question is from an octopus (a “paleoctopus”?) dating back to roughly 95 mya (Cretaceous) and were found in the famous fossil beds of Hâkel (or Haqel) and Hâdjoula, Lebanon north of Beirut.

Further, it is one of five specimens representing three previously unknown species of extinct octopus. Previously only one species was known in the fossil record, which isn’t really surprising when you consider that usually upon death the body, primarily made up of flesh and muscle, rapidly decomposes into a slimy mass.

The rare instances when the actual body of a cephalopod of any sort fossilizes you usually end up with a nearly indecipherable smear that at best vaguely looks anything like the creature in question. Not this time.

As I said these are some incredibly well-preserved fossils that have maintained the fine details of the soft parts including all eight arms or tentacles still with traces of muscle on which you can still make out the rows of suckers on them. Further, things like gills and ink sacs were also preserved and even membranous fins were observed on the mantle of a couple of the specimens.

Apparently the specimens managed to make it to the sea bottom untouched which must have been anaerobic (lacking oxygen) making it impossible for scavengers to exist there. This combined with a rapid sedimentation rate prevented decay and preserved them for posterity.

The beds that they were unearthed in have long been famous for its numerous fish fossils going back at least as far as the 4th century AD when the Bishop of Palestine, Eusebe de Césarée cited the fish fossils as evidence in support of Noah’s Flood.

The lead author of the paper describing these octopods in the science journal Palaeontology, Dr. Dirk Fuchs of the Freie University Berlin remarked at how similar these extinct specimens are to octopi found today: "these things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species." This might be a bit of an overstatement.

As University of Minnesota biologist and cephalopod enthusiast P.Z. Meyers has noted, “we can see transitional features all over the place. This is not a modern octopod at all.”

Meyers points to the chitinous chunk of vestigial shell called the gladius. Being that octopi are a form of mollusk and all mollusca have a shell of one form or another though in modern forms it has been reduced to merely a delicate little rod-like bar.

When we examine the gladius on the newly discovered octopus specimens (Styletoctopus annae, Keuppia levanter, Keuppia hyperbolaris) and compare it to what we find on even older cephalopods, we get a clear picture of an “evolving morphology from an ancestral unpaired shell to a divided form to spread-apart lateralized stylets to the modern, even more reduced form,” with the Lebanese examples fitting perfectly into it.

As Meyers summarizes: “Don't be fooled by the superficial resemblance — there are more subtleties to being an octopus than simply having eight arms.”

In any case, the finds definitely push the origin of modern octopus back by tens of millions of years.



Further Reading:

NEW OCTOPODS (CEPHALOPODA: COLEOIDEA) FROM THE LATE CRETACEOUS (UPPER CENOMANIAN) OF HÂKEL AND HÂDJOULA, LEBANON Abstract

Cretaceous Octopus With Ink And Suckers -- The World's Least Likely Fossils?

Octopods from the Cretaceous!

Rare fossil octopuses found

Or

Take, for example the fossil record of cephalopods. Last March an exquisitely well-preserved 95 myo (Late Cretaceous) octopus was found in Lebanon which pushed their origin back 10 million years. Some YECs crowed that since the fossils showed they changed little since then (though there were changes) that this disproved evolution.

What they ignored is earlier cephalopod fossils that show a great deal of evolution taking place from their forms to what we see in octopi. Like the kite-shaped 505 myo (Middle Cambrian) Nectocaris pteryx that possessed only two tentacles.

Beyond that, if something reaches optimum design for a specific ecological niche and that niche remains relatively stable over a long period of time then there is little evolutionary pressure to change and adapt. In fact, there might even be selective pressure against any significant change during periods like that.

Even when Darwin proposed his theories concerning evolution he recognized that different things evolve at different paces. Not everything is evolving at the same rate.

[magellan004]

If you want something you wish to attribute to me on the subject then the least you could do is quote what I’ve said.


Or

1. Why would I, by default, need to be aware of every post you have made in TWEB?
2. The issue with the octopus was that 'It "PUSHES BACK' (whatever that means) claims that evolutionists themselves have made. In other words - the claims of evolutionists about evolution of octopus/pi/podiatry were wrong, wrong, wrong.

In other words the claim that evolution is evidenced by the fossil record are wrong.

Magellan

[Faid]

1. Why would I, by default, need to be aware of every post you have made in TWEB?
2. The issue with the octopus was that 'It "PUSHES BACK' (whatever that means) claims that evolutionists themselves have made. In other words - the claims of evolutionists about evolution of octopus/pi/podiatry were wrong, wrong, wrong.

In other words the claim that evolution is evidenced by the fossil record are wrong.

Magellan

You fail Logic forever:

[Tiggy]

1. Why would I, by default, need to be aware of every post you have made in TWEB?
2. The issue with the octopus was that 'It "PUSHES BACK' (whatever that means) claims that evolutionists themselves have made. In other words - the claims of evolutionists about evolution of octopus/pi/podiatry were wrong, wrong, wrong.

In other words the claim that evolution is evidenced by the fossil record are wrong.

Magellan

That's the Clownshoes that we all know and love!

1. Scientists find an 85 MYO octopus fossil with somewhat modern morphology, establishing that the modern form has been around for at least 85 MY.

2. Scientists later find a 95 MYO octopus fossil with somewhat modern morphology, which PUSHES BACK the known date that the modern form has been present by 10 MY, for at least 95 MY.

3. Clownshoes screams "everything scientists know about evolution is wrong! wrong! wrong!"

That's the kind of weapons-grade stupidity we've come to expect from you Clownshoes. Good job!

- T

[ericmurphy]

Magellan has, as usual, entirely missed the point.

The diagram Rogue posted has nothing to do with when the octopus first evolved (and evolutionary theory makes no predictions about when the octopus first appeared in any event, other than to make the rather obvious prediction that octopuses must have appeared after their ancestors).

The (wildly incorrect) claim Rogue's graphic makes is that evolutionary theory predicts each appendage of the octopus must have evolved independently, just as Magellan thinks it predicts equines' legs must have gotten longer independently. Evolutionary theory makes no such prediction, but apparently Magellan's stupidity is not unique. At least one other creationist is under the same misapprehension.

[rogue06]

1. Why would I, by default, need to be aware of every post you have made in TWEB?

I never said you had to be aware of "every post" but rather if you're going to attribute something to me it might help if you actually knew what I actually said. Seems like common sense, but then that might be the problem.

And if you had bothered you might find that there were significant differences between the fossil cephalopod and modern ones despite the headlines.

You might have noticed this pertinent portion:

As University of Minnesota biologist and cephalopod enthusiast P.Z. Meyers has noted, “we can see transitional features all over the place. This is not a modern octopod at all.”

Meyers points to the chitinous chunk of vestigial shell called the gladius. Being that octopi are a form of mollusk and all mollusca have a shell of one form or another though in modern forms it has been reduced to merely a delicate little rod-like bar.

When we examine the gladius on the newly discovered octopus specimens (Styletoctopus annae, Keuppia levanter, Keuppia hyperbolaris) and compare it to what we find on even older cephalopods, we get a clear picture of an “evolving morphology from an ancestral unpaired shell to a divided form to spread-apart lateralized stylets to the modern, even more reduced form,” with the Lebanese examples fitting perfectly into it.

As Meyers summarizes: “Don't be fooled by the superficial resemblance — there are more subtleties to being an octopus than simply having eight arms.”

Or this:

What they ignored is earlier cephalopod fossils that show a great deal of evolution taking place from their forms to what we see in octopi. Like the kite-shaped 505 myo (Middle Cambrian) Nectocaris pteryx that possessed only two tentacles.

So the recently discovered octopus fossil, while superficially resembling modern octopi (they have eight arms), also revealed transitional features between earlier octopi and modern ones. Moreover, their earlier ancestors have to be totally ignored to maintain the claim that they haven’t changed much since their appearance in the fossil record.

Nectocaris_pteryx.jpg
Nectocaris pteryx
Does this look like a modern octopus to you?

2. The issue with the octopus was that 'It "PUSHES BACK' (whatever that means) claims that evolutionists themselves have made. In other words - the claims of evolutionists about evolution of octopus/pi/podiatry were wrong, wrong, wrong.

In other words the claim that evolution is evidenced by the fossil record are wrong.

Magellan

Its utterly stupid statements like this that make you what you are.

[Catholicity]

Magellan I'll say this clearly. and I'll use small words so that MAYBE you can understand it. Science operates using three excellent and basic types of reason:

Deductive which says that if A=C and B=A then A and B must also be equal.
Abductive reason is used in fields such as medical science. Lets take a a patients medical symptoms for example: Patient is running a fever of 101 degrees, Patient is having some trouble breathing, Patient is having severe headaches and body aches, Patient has upset stomach and loss of appetite, Patient has been in contact with others who have the flu: therefore it is a logical conclusion that Patient has the flu.
Finally we come to Inductive Reasoning which uses a set of known rules to draw a likely conclusion such as: An apple fell from a tree. An acorn falls from a tree. If we drop something from a height, it hits the ground. Some kind of external force causes it to hit the ground. We cannot see this external force that Sir Isaac Newton called Gravity, but we know it to be.
USE YOUR HEAD MAN!!!!!!!