Would discovery of species previously thought to be extinct impact the theory of evolution?

[metis]

The world might be thousands of years old or trillions of years old, but life on earth is not more than a few thousands years old. A sure fact.

Nah.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I was just reading a story about a guy in Florida that would dive looking for fossil shark teeth. He was attacked by an alligator that bit him on the head and was able to fight it off and survived the attack. I think I would prefer the beach as well.

Oh my! Bit on the head? My nephew is going to love that story!

Western Kansas is a great place to find fossil shark teeth I'm told. This is the result of ancient, shallow seas that once covered that part of what is now the plains.

That sounds really cool. I think I've got a little trip in my future. Thanks!

 

[SkepticThinker]

I remain unsure what an evolutionist is. Is it an evolutionary biologist? Is it a scientifically literate lay person that accepts the theory? Is it some vacuous name applied as a pejorative to those that a religious literalist applies to anyone that speaks positively about science? Is it someone that really likes change over time?

There is no evolutionist major in colleges and universities. There is not job called evolutionist. It is science that is accepted by both theists and atheists, so it is not a religious title.

I never read anything that casts light on the use of the term.

All of the above? I don't know either.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Oh my! Bit on the head? My nephew is going to love that story!


That sounds really cool. I think I've got a little trip in my future. Thanks!

My father passed away about my junior year of college. After that, my family and I began taking summer/fall trips out west ever so often. Mom and Dad used to take us on all sorts of little, local trips when we were younger. I guess mom wanted to continue that on a bigger scale in order to enjoy life with her family. We fell in love with the west. It was so different than what we had grown up with in the Ozarks. So large and stark on a scale we had never experienced. At least not my siblings and I. My mother had lived for a brief time in Corpus Christi in the 1950's and she had made trips to Vegas in her younger days. My father had travel widely in his youth. Compared to them, my siblings and I were little, provincial villagers.

Sorry for dawdling over personal history. On one of the first trips, we stopped in this little town of Oakley in western Kansas. There was a small museum there named the Fick Fossil and History Museum. It was built on the collections and the folk art of local citizen, Vi Fick and her husband Ernest. I think Vi was primarily the artist and crafted some of her folk art using fossil bones, sharks teeth and other artifacts she and husband collected from their property and around the local area. It has been quite a while, but apparently it is still thriving.

The museum boasts art objects and collections accounting for over 10,000 fossil sharks teeth, pioneer artifacts and other fossils as well as the oldest fossil mosasaur skull.

As I recall, it was a nice little museum and worth the stop. Being new territory for me, I remember liking the feel of the little town, though it probably isn't much different from a lot of small, rural towns in the area. Nothing really exciting, but new and interesting to me at the time.

I always wanted to find time to look around and do some fossil hunting there, but I never did. Now, I wouldn't mind adding insect collecting to my imaginary itinerary.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Oh my! Bit on the head? My nephew is going to love that story!


That sounds really cool. I think I've got a little trip in my future. Thanks!

Yeah, nephews love those kinds of stories.

 

[SkepticThinker]

My father passed away about my junior year of college. After that, my family and I began taking summer/fall trips out west ever so often. Mom and Dad used to take us on all sorts of little, local trips when we were younger. I guess mom wanted to continue that on a bigger scale in order to enjoy life with her family. We fell in love with the west. It was so different than what we had grown up with in the Ozarks. So large and stark on a scale we had never experienced. At least not my siblings and I. My mother had lived for a brief time in Corpus Christi in the 1950's and she had made trips to Vegas in her younger days. My father had travel widely in his youth. Compared to them, my siblings and I were little, provincial villagers.

Sorry for dawdling over personal history. On one of the first trips, we stopped in this little town of Oakley in western Kansas. There was a small museum there named the Fick Fossil and History Museum. It was built on the collections and the folk art of local citizen, Vi Fick and her husband Ernest. I think Vi was primarily the artist and crafted some of her folk art using fossil bones, sharks teeth and other artifacts she and husband collected from their property and around the local area. It has been quite a while, but apparently it is still thriving.

The museum boasts art objects and collections accounting for over 10,000 fossil sharks teeth, pioneer artifacts and other fossils as well as the oldest fossil mosasaur skull.

As I recall, it was a nice little museum and worth the stop. Being new territory for me, I remember liking the feel of the little town, though it probably isn't much different from a lot of small, rural towns in the area. Nothing really exciting, but new and interesting to me at the time.

I always wanted to find time to look around and do some fossil hunting there, but I never did. Now, I wouldn't mind adding insect collecting to my imaginary itinerary.

Oh wow my nephew would go nuts in there! Now that travel bans have been lifted and such, it's time to start travelling again. That sounds like a nice little summer trip to me.
Thanks for sharing!

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yeah, nephews love those kinds of stories.

They do! I already told him about it and he wanted more details LOL

 

[YoursTrue]

I see your problem. One of them anyway. Natural selection is the same now as when Darwin formulated his theory of evolution. Natural selection is the environment acting on populations. You have consistently been confusing the definitions you post as definitions of natural selection. They are not. Darwin supported a gradualist mode of evolution. It does not mean that evolution does not occur if Gould and Eldridge observed punctuations followed by periods of stasis. That is another mode of evolution. There is no fixed rate of evolution for all taxa and all environments.

Darwin's theory is not false. It is incomplete. That was fixed by the synthesis of the early 20th Century. His theory of natural selection still stands.

You can continue to pretend otherwise and find reasons to convince yourself to maintain denial, but it doesn't make any difference. That sort of view hasn't slowed down science in over 150 years.

Question -- are there noticeable gaps genetically, that is, between species?

 

[YoursTrue]

There always seems to be a pick and choose method to many things that people believe strongly about. The literalist that demands the Bible be viewed literally while it contains contradictions, poetry, parables and an entire book built on symbolism that cannot be read literally always confounds me.

It all depends on to whom it's talking...

 

[YoursTrue]

I did a very short investigation and I found something that indicates Darwin was using that term as far back as the 1840's in some of his unpublished letters.

I am not bothered by it or the use. It does denote the general basis for a particular antagonism to the science. However, I am trying to find a better term, since, as a Christian, ultimately I would fall under the umbrella of that term. I have considered and sometimes use biblical literalist, but that only captures those rejecting science from one specific religion and misses those placing their rejection on a different religious basis.

In the end, despite those flaws, creationist does apply to most of those that are generally in opposition to the theory and crosses religious boundaries.

See, I can't figure out yet from the theory if different branches developed from different sources, according to the theory. Branches such as: plants or animals. Maybe I just don't read enough...what do you think about the beginnings of plants and animals?

 

[YoursTrue]

I see your problem. One of them anyway. Natural selection is the same now as when Darwin formulated his theory of evolution. Natural selection is the environment acting on populations. You have consistently been confusing the definitions you post as definitions of natural selection. They are not. Darwin supported a gradualist mode of evolution. It does not mean that evolution does not occur if Gould and Eldridge observed punctuations followed by periods of stasis. That is another mode of evolution. There is no fixed rate of evolution for all taxa and all environments.

Darwin's theory is not false. It is incomplete. That was fixed by the synthesis of the early 20th Century. His theory of natural selection still stands.

You can continue to pretend otherwise and find reasons to convince yourself to maintain denial, but it doesn't make any difference. That sort of view hasn't slowed down science in over 150 years.

We have water. We need water to live. Same as we need food to live. True, dogs must eliminate from their intestines, other species may be different, and so in that respect we humans are similar. But really we are very different. I mean like dogs don't cook food, do they?

 

[YoursTrue]

Title and author please. I've never see a college level science textbook that didn't have references.

oops, I hope I didn't get rid of the book, but I'll look. The writers of the book obviously make comments. But I'll try to look for it.

 

[YoursTrue]

Title and author please. I've never see a college level science textbook that didn't have references.

I'm sure it does have references, except that as I started reading it, it made statements I didn't see references for. But I'll check. On the other hand -- there is always the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" idea, which was taught as true by many educational systems until abandoned.

 

[YoursTrue]

You have been given substantial proof.

Only as far as those believing the theory is concerned.

 

[YoursTrue]

That is why science does not hold proof as a standard. The chance that there may be another explanation.

200 years ago people would not believe that one day we would be able to take living organs from one person and transplant them into another saving the recipients life. Time changes everything. Even our understanding evolves.

You say understanding evolves. Right now, that's a slanted statement because true knowledge overturns what is not true. But that is also what makes humans different from, um, those that came before them. (Like even from the supposed "stone age" that was considered prehistoric, yes?)

 

[Subduction Zone]

Only as far as those believing the theory is concerned.

Do you remember how we went over the concept of evidence?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Question -- are there noticeable gaps genetically, that is, between species?

I'm not certain what you mean. To be sure, there are genetic differences between species. There are also conditions where two species can share certain genes, but they are only expressed in one of the species and are silenced in the other.

There are also indicator methods to determine relationships. ERV's (endogenous retroviruses) are one such means. We share some with chimps, but not all. Those that we share arose in the common ancestor. Those we do not share were acquired after divergence from that ancestor.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It all depends on to whom it's talking...

I agree.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

We have water. We need water to live. Same as we need food to live. True, dogs must eliminate from their intestines, other species may be different, and so in that respect we humans are similar. But really we are very different. I mean like dogs don't cook food, do they?

Characters shared by dogs and humans. We are both vertebrates. We are both mammals. We feed our young with milk produced by the female mammary glands. We both have hair. We have four limbs. Warm blooded. We have live birth. We both have a complex brain.

Dogs don't cook food and I cannot find bombs or drugs or lost people with my nose. The differences are less important than the similarities.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You say understanding evolves. Right now, that's a slanted statement because true knowledge overturns what is not true. But that is also what makes humans different from, um, those that came before them. (Like even from the supposed "stone age" that was considered prehistoric, yes?)

The most basic definition of evolution is change. Our knowledge, our technology, our culture, and so much more that is known, of interest or appreciated by us changes over time.

New knowledge can overturn existing understanding or it can reinforce or enhance it without replacing it.