Evolve

[SomeRandom]

1. Just curious why some species went extinct and didn't evolve

2. Scientist don't know the evolutionary ancestor of Homo so that's a missing link

1) Species can go extinct for any number of reasons. Their habitat changes too drastically but too quickly for an organism to “keep up.”
Increased competition for prey or food.
The organism loses its ability to retain a niche in the food chain (specialised predators.)
A rather destructive event occurs in nature
Like the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs (which didn’t exactly do any favours for the other forms of life at the time either.)
Life is quite precarious but it’s also rather tenacious. See what happened after said comet.
2) It’s merely debatable. Never say never in science.

 

[King Phenomenon]

I did a little more research and found out today's chicken probably has multiple ancestors and T. Rex being one of them so I can see where it's very complex and probably not really able to be put into one book very easily
Evolution is some weird stuff

 

[King Phenomenon]

Don't get me wrong I've always known about this list

1 common ancestor aka the new missing link
2. Monkey man
3 erectus
4 Neanderthal
5. Me

I just find it odd that we can't find the missing link yet when we have all the other skulls

 

[SomeRandom]

Don't get me wrong I've always known about this list

1 common ancestor aka missing link
2. Monkey man
3 erectus
4 Neanderthal
5. Me

I just find it odd that we can't find the missing link yet When we have all the other skulls

“Missing link” is an unscientific and outdated term.
Fossilisation is actually like a super duper rare phenomenon. To put things in perspective. Out of the billions of organisms that have lived, less than one tenth of 1% of them have become fossilised.
How can I become a fossil?
Be thankful we have been able to find the skulls we have already.

I don’t think it’s a fair expectation to have a fossil record containing literally every single transitional species as it links to hominoids. (Since that is your primary focus.)
It’s quite an accomplishment to have this current one, I would think. Not to say we won’t find new fossils in the future, of course.

 

[King Phenomenon]

“Missing link” is an unscientific and outdated term.
Fossilisation is actually like a super duper rare phenomenon. To put things in perspective. Out of the billions of organisms that have lived, less than one tenth of 1% of them have become fossilised.
How can I become a fossil?
Be thankful we have been able to find the skulls we have already.

I don’t think it’s a fair expectation to have a fossil record containing literally every single transitional species as it links to hominoids. (Since that is your primary focus.)
It’s quite an accomplishment to have this current one, I would think. Not to say we won’t find new fossils in the future, of course.

Oh no doubt it's awesome stuff what we have it's just weird that we don't have the common ancestor. When we do find it we should name it Homo whereubeen

 

[SomeRandom]

Oh no doubt it's awesome stuff what we have it's just weird that we don't have the common ancestor. When we do find it we should name it Homo whereubeen

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it weird. It is most fortuitous that we have been able to find the fossils we have so far.
But I guess Homo Whereubeen has a certain ring to it lol

 

[King Phenomenon]

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it weird. It is most fortuitous that we have been able to find the fossils we have so far.
But I guess Homo Whereubeen has a certain ring to it lol

right now he's Homoinhidin

 

[Altfish]

So do the fossils form a believable timeline in our evolution?

Yes.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Because it isn't. That's a gross oversimplification. Even if it was based on chance, many people seem to have no problem accepting gambling (something that is actually based on chance), so I'm not sure how that's supposed to present some sort of issue.

All things in life are based on chance, even your next step.

1. Just curious why some species went extinct and didn't evolve

Ah! You never went to a school. Or perhaps to a Madarsa (Muslim school) in Pakistan. They don't teach biology there.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Don't get me wrong I've always known about this list:
1 common ancestor aka the new missing link
2. Monkey man
3 erectus
4 Neanderthal
5. Me

If that is what you have learnt, then you have learnt it wrong. Neanderthals were not our ancestors. They were cousins.

right now he's Homoinhidin

Are you talking of the theists? Yeah, they could soon be 'homoinhigin' with more and more people seeing the falsehood involved.

 

[Valjean]

Oh no doubt it's awesome stuff what we have it's just weird that we don't have the common ancestor. When we do find it we should name it Homo whereubeen

What common ancestor? Which link in the chain are you talking about?

 

[Valjean]

Look closely at this cladogram from Aup's post, Power Stone. Note that if you trace the "modern human" line backwards you will not find any chimps.

 

[Valjean]

here's a more focused Hominin cladogram:

Where in this map, is the missing link you're looking for?

 

[Vee]

It's not based on chance. Chance mutations is just one element. And it's been proven using the scientific method by genetics and many other disciplines. To deny evolution is to deny physics, biology especially genetics, chemistry and other disciplines.

Chance does exist, but most things that happen by chance tend to have not such great results. Once in a while a good thing happens by chance and people are happy about it, but when by chance a hurricane comes your way, your area gets hit by a hearthquake or a kid is born with a horrible disease because of a genetic mutation , that sucks.

 

[exchemist]

That's interesting. I assume you're talking about skulls and if you are how many more do you think it would take to to have somewhat of a complete timeline?

No, I’m talking about examples of fossils showing forms intermediate between two recognised types. Things like Archaeopteryx, which famously is ‘transitional’ between dinosaurs and birds.

 

[exchemist]

I read this in an article on the web and I really can't find any more information about it.

. "If you want a complete record, you are effectively asking for a fossil from every organism that ever lived. Second, why would you need a complete record? One does not need billions and billions of transitional forms and predecessors to see that the theory of evolution is sound. The thousands that we currently have should suffice, and they do".

So this isn't really helping me much. Actually I would like to see a book like that or actually see them in person.
that would be cool

That quote is spot-on. As I have tried to explain on another of your threads, evolution generally follows a continuum. It does not usually proceed in a series of sudden jumps from one form to a distinctly different one - though there is now some evidence that this can occasionally take place (the so -called ’hopeful monsters’ idea*). The fossils we have found are a series of data points along a (branching) line. You can ask for more data points if you like but you will still have gaps between them unless you have fossils from every generation of creatures that has ever lived.


* Hopeful monster - RationalWiki

 

[exchemist]

Fair enough.
I’m trying to think of RF posters who have that sort of academic background.
@exchemist? @Shadow Wolf?
@Quintessence?
You guys seem like science-y boffins.
Any good resources?
I’m pretty sure I got all my feeble knowledge from random YouTube educational videos.

I’m only a chemist. But there are people here with specialist biological knowledge. I think @Dan From Smithville may be one and maybe indeed @Shadow Wolf .

 

[exchemist]

According to Wikipedia scientist don't know which species is ancestral to homo so that's what makes me find evolution hard to believe. Is this irrational?

Yes.

It is apparent, depressingly, that you are just searching for something to give you an excuse to disbelieve evolution.

You are not telling the truth when you claim the uncertainty about which exact precursor led to H sapiens is the cause of your disbelief. You’ve only just found that out. You have a religious motive for disbelieving it and you want some kind of semi-scientific rationale to back that up.

The validity of the theory does not depend on having an exquisite chain of fossils all the way from one form to another. It depends on its power to predict what fossils to expect in future discoveries and at what geological age, what DNA relationships we should expect to see in current organisms, etc. The theory of evolution does that triumphantly in most cases. It is not called into question by some small gap or uncertainty, at one point, in the lineage of a single species. All that shows is that our data is still incomplete, not that the theory is wrong.

 

[exchemist]

I studied that in like 4th grade

Good, so you should understand what I’m talking about. In that book, there are another 200 or so similar examples.

The purpose of the list, in that book, was to provide examples to those rather silly creationists who ask where all the transitional fossils are.

The list is not exhaustive, and in fact all fossils can be said to be transitional, since evolution is in progress all the time. That list is just the ones that show a nice midway point between forms that are quite well known.

 

[exchemist]

Chance does exist, but most things that happen by chance tend to have not such great results. Once in a while a good thing happens by chance and people are happy about it, but when by chance a hurricane comes your way, your area gets hit by a hearthquake or a kid is born with a horrible disease because of a genetic mutation , that sucks.

Yes. This is why it is so very annoying when creationists persistently leave out half the mechanism of evolution: Natural Selection. I say again, Selection.