Living fossils such as the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs do an enormous amount of damage to the evolutionary theories. These currently living species appear almost identical to their fossil counterparts. The question is, how did these “living fossils”...animals and plants ...survive the many millions upon millions of years with virtually no change? Perhaps they could last a few hundred thousand years unchanged, but according to evolutionary theories certainly not millions upon millions of years.
Some evolutionist will argue that these species found a special “ecological niche” and despite the enourmous amount of mutations that they say would have occurred naturally in those millions upon millions of years they were some how not exposed to the pressures presented by normal evolutionary change.
According to the old earth uniformitarian theory the whole world was upset in an iridium nightmare when a big time major world wide ecological “niche” changing event happened after a meteorite slammed into the earth, ...but, some how, species such as the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs apparently weren't effected at all by the catastrophic event.
Despite this catastrophic event it is amazing that the evolutionist still claim that these living fossils conformed to their very own particular ecological niche. Some how they were able to pass through this world wide niche changing catastrophic event at the K/T boundary. It was at this time, 65 million years ago, that the evolutionist claim that 75% or so of all species from a wide range of taxonomic groupings on the land, in the skies and under the seas were wiped out forever.
It’s interesting to note that each of the above mentioned living fossils are claimed to have pre-dated this catastrophic event by tens of million years with virtually no change prior to or after the catastrophic event.
Certainly after an event such as the supposed mass extinction mentioned above, the changed environment, disappearing food chains on land and in the seas, tsunamis crashing into continents, fire scorched landscapes, sun blocked “winters” and their temperature changes would have caused the tempo of evolution to increase all over the surface of the globe, in the air and under the seas. This increased evolutionary tempo would have allowed for the selection of new beneficial mutations while scrambling to create new dramatically varied species that thrived in the new environmental biomes created on the land, in the air and under the seas.
Despite the argument that time coupled with mutations, and the normal pressures of evolutionary change should have been more than enough to introduce major morphological change into the living fossils. Considering the above, the event surrounding the K/T boundary and the massive change to the earth and the insignificant changes to the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs make the likelihood of living fossils impossible and unfounded.
To perplex the issue even more, besides the mutational/natural selective changes mentioned above that should have occurred during the last 65 million years there is yet another mechanism that the evolutionist claim introduces major morphological changes into animals. This mechanism is Genetic Drift. Apparently in the last 65 + million years this process also produced no significant change where according to their theories a considerable change should have occurred to the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs as their niches were upset.
The evolutionist say that change does happen. Shortly after the catastrophic event that supposably happened 65 million years ago at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, in a period of less than 50 million years a four legged wolf like animal Andrewsarchus (or what ever the latest evolution scenario is) is claimed to have evolved into a sleek sea creature. In this time period Andrewsarchus lost its legs as they turned into flippers, developed a spout with a new breathing system that contained special valves for shutting the nostrils, echo location system with a transmitter and receiver, blubber and other whale like features.....all while the living fossil Crocodile watched from the swamp as the Tuatara peeped his head out of his borrow under the shade of a the Ginko tree and Wollemi Pine. Meanwhile, the Horseshoe crabs scurried along the bay floors and the Coelacanth swam by in the oceans and didn't change outside of their normal genetic variations ...despite the morphological mutations and genetic drift that would have occurred over the millions upon millions of years as the species felt the massive environmental change to the fauna in it’s biome at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary that the evolutionist tell us happened 15 million years prior.
The existence of the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs are great example of creation. It shows that animals reproduce after their “kind” and don’t really change in the fashion in which the evolutionist claim. It seem as if the DNA and genetic code for the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs has been resistant to change through out it’s history....as expected.
It is just one more indication that scientist should view the geological column and the animals trapped in the fossil record as contemporanious rather than seperated by long time frames.
K/T Nightmare
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Yarr the Pirate
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Post #52
Assuming that the reference to 65 million years ago is a reference to the meteor impact, we can suggest what some of the environmental consequences would be.jimspeiser wrote:I would, however, like to see some more specific answers, perhaps a specific scenario or two. Let's take horseshoe crabs. What environmental pressures that affected other organisms 65 mya would a horseshoe crab be immune to and why?
1. A lot of dust sent high into the atmosphere and taking a long time to settle down.
2. Consequent cooling of the climate and obscuring of sunlight.
3. Impact on green plants--which need the sunlight, and on plants, animals and other species which depend on warmer temperature.
How much of this would apply to hermit crabs? Do they need as much sunlight as green plants? Does their own food need as much sunlight? Or can it survive with less sunlight?
What about temperature?
Would the water get as cold as the air? Or would it protect somewhat from the drop in average temperature? Certainly any cooling of the ocean would occur much more slowly than the cooling of the atmosphere. Water might also protect from any toxic fumes resulting from the impact.
The different ecological niches and needs of different species would definitely mean a different impact on their survival.
Certainly the mutation rate is high enough.When the creationist objects to the amount of change that has occurred in the x billion years that life has been extant, he is told that the rate of mutation is great enough, and a billion years is long enough, to provide this great variety. Yet when he applies this same argument to a shorter period, like 65 my, on the surface, he might be justified in expressing a little incredulity at the argument that "well, evolution happens very slowly." Yet it happens quickly enough to produce tens of millions of very different animal types over a billion years.
Here is an excerpt from a series of notes I am making on the whole process of evolution.
What raises confusion, I believe, is that although the frequency of mutations is high enough to allow for fairly rapid evolution, the frequency of variations can be much lower. And the frequency of variations is not constant, but very dependent on the current match between species and ecological niche. And on the intensity of the struggle for survival.How often do mutations happen?
From one perspective mutations are very rare. It is estimated that in mammals, a copying error occurs in a base nucleotide in only one out of 50 million cases. But we also have to put this figure into perspective.
How many base nucleotides are in a cell? In a human cell the number is estimated to be 6 billion. That is 120 times 50 million. So with a mutation rate of 1 per 50 million and a base nucleotide population of 6 billion per cell, it is more likely that there will be over 100 mutations per cell reproduction than just one.
Of course, simple unicellular organisms have smaller genomes. They may also have a more conservative mutation rate. Is it likely they will have a harder time establishing variants in the population? Not really. For we can also ask another question. How large is the population of the species?
Interestingly, the current human population is also around 6 billion. If the mutation rate was as low as one per 50 million people (instead of base nucleotide), we would still likely get 120 mutations per generation. Bacterial and other unicellular populations are often much larger than 6 billion--sometimes numbering in the trillions. So, in spite of the fact that mutations are rare, the high number of base nucleotides combined with a high population means that thousands, even millions of mutations occur in a species every generation. And in many cases, more than one mutation occurs even in a single cell, during each reproduction.
So nature is, one the one hand, stingy with mutations--very few per base nucleotide; very few in light of the size of the genome. Yet at the same time nature is profligate with mutations--hundreds per cell; thousands and millions per population, in each generation.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultran ... _Mutations
Mutations are the fundamental source of variations, but for many reasons a lot of mutations do not result in a variation in the organism.
Silent mutations
A silent mutation occurs because several amino acids can be coded for by the same codon (three-nucleotide sequence) of DNA. If a codon specifiying valine is replaced by another codon specifying valine, the protein which is built from the gene containing that codon will be no different from what it was before the mutation.
Synonymous mutations
Some amino acids are like twins in that their chemical properties are so alike they can substitute for each other. If a mutation substitutes one of these amino acids for another, there will be no perceptible variation in the organism.
Non-coding DNA
Most of the genome doesn't code for proteins anyway. It seems that at least some of this DNA has some sort of function, but scientists are not sure what it is yet. A lot seems to do nothing at all and has be nick-named Junk DNA. Mutations in non-coding DNA do not create variations in the organism.
Gene interactions
The best known of these is the Mendelian dominant/recessive interaction that may occur in an organism that has a heterozygous pair of alleles for a given trait. This interaction fully or partially represses the function of one of the alleles, masking the expression of the gene. A mutation can remain hidden through several generations before it appears in an individual who is homozygous for the recessive gene.
Another typical interaction is the trigger mechanism whereby one gene remains dormant until a different gene triggers it. Again, no variation may be evident if nothing causes the trigger to activate.
Environmental conditions
Some genes only express themselves as a variation within certain environmental parameters: a particular range of temperature, or Ph or salinity, or in the presence of a particular chemical.
All of these factors and no doubt others means the rate of variation in an organism can be significantly less than the rate of mutations in its genome.
Furthermore, natural selection acts on variations---not directly on mutations. So unless genes are expressing as variations---and often they are not--the rate of change in a species will not match the frequency of mutations.
Finally, even when we do get variations for natural selection to work on--how natural selection will work depends on local contingencies.
Most variations have a neutral impact on fitness and will simply contribute to the variability of the species. Some variations lower fitness while others improve fitness. Individuals exhibiting these variations will show differing reproductive success, either reducing or increasing the proportion of such variations in the next generation.
But the rate at which this will take place will depend on several factors
how harmful or beneficial is the variation?
how strong is the current level of environmental pressure generally? Are there significant changes in the environment which demand adaptation?
how intense is the local struggle for survival within the species? Has it come to the point of outstripping its resource base?
Given the frequency of mutations, evolution can take place in a geological "instant" if the conditions are ripe. But it may slow it an imperceptible stasis over millions of years when there is no strong push to adopt new variations.
Post #53
Here is where you made such claims:YEC wrote:st88 posted the following:I suggest you go re-read my opening post...I never made such claimsST88 wrote:The iridium layer you talk about points to an otherworldly collision (or multiple collisions) that would create a number of natural disasters. It is a great leap to expect that this event would have wiped out life on earth, as you seem to imply.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you seem to be saying that there can be no possibility for life to exist as it did before the K/T event, afterwards. If true, then you need not limit your examples to living fossils. For exactly the same reasons, it would be necessary to wipe out all life on earth in order to wipe out these species, according to the logic you use.YEC wrote:Considering the above, the event surrounding the K/T boundary and the massive change to the earth and the insignificant changes to the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs make the likelihood of living fossils impossible and unfounded.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but it seems as if you believe the K/T event was a fiction because we have fossils (& living examples) that show up in our conception of both "before" and "after" this event, and since it was such a cataclysm, there should be no possibility for survival of these species. What is it about those other species that made them able to survive through this event if you did not mean to imply that all life would have been wiped out?
Do you allow for the idea that these species had been able to survive up until that point because their designs were so successful? After all, there had been many environmental changes in Earth's history before the K/T event, including the movement of tectonic plates through different climate zones and the advancements and recessions of oceans on continents.
Post #54
No, you understand YEC perfectly - the K/T event MUST be fiction, because a)it's not in the Bible, and b)anything that supposedly happened more than 6,000 years ago is fiction by definition.ST88 wrote:Maybe I'm misunderstanding you (YEC) here, but it seems as if you believe the K/T event was a fiction ....
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
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Yarr the Pirate
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Post #56
Yes, the view that the K/T event is a fiction was pretty clear, but what I want to know is the rationale (rationalization) behind it, specifically from YEC's point of view (YEC the character, not the movement). I presume that the lineage of fossil evidence both before and after this event leads YEC to believe that such an event could not have happened, because such an event would have been too destructive to allow that. Though this is clearly a wrong-headed approach to the problem, it is not out of the realm of possibility that YEC believes it to be true. If so, it throws YEC's whole theory out the window in a very specific way. I'd just like to know which window to unlatch beforehand.perfessor wrote:No, you understand YEC perfectly - the K/T event MUST be fiction, because a)it's not in the Bible, and b)anything that supposedly happened more than 6,000 years ago is fiction by definition.ST88 wrote:Maybe I'm misunderstanding you (YEC) here, but it seems as if you believe the K/T event was a fiction ....
Post #57
I'm just now coming to this thread, having been out of touch for a while... It looks to me as if YEC, as with many others, sees evolution as a necessary progression from one point to another, rather than a simple interaction of mutation and environmental selection. I think YEC's model is that evolution moves progressively forward (you know, the Ladder of Evolution idea). According to this model, a stable phenotype should not be possible because evolution must change it over time.
In the hope that YEC is still following this thread, I'll describe the alternative: mutations occur at some more-or-less constant rate, with the environment selecting which ones are passed on, and which are not. The coelacanth's environment (deep water) is pretty stable, even during surface-level catastrophes like meteor impacts at Chixulub. Mutations that change the coelacanth significantly may make it less well suited for that particular niche, so those mutations are selected against. They occur, but are selected against, so little outward change occurs.
We can use similar logic for the two species of crinoids that still exist. Again, it's deep water, with a relatively constant temperature.
We would predict that "living fossils" are either very well adapted to their niches, or are adapted to niches that are pretty stable, or both. Cockroaches seem to be really good at what they do, living in the environments they inhabit (usually forests), where they eat just about anything. They are good enough that they have out-competed others that might have been able to invade their niche. Mutations that might have changed them into other forms were selected against. So, their environment must have been stable enough, and their adaptations good enough, that natural selection kept them more-or-less the same.
We call this "stabilizing selection," but the concept is a bit tricky. People seem to be primed to think of evolution as a relentless forward-moving engine. When taught about stabilizing selection, they tend to memorize the term for the exam, but not internalize the concept. These "living fossils" are great illustrations of stabilizing selection, because without it (as YEC implied), such things should not exist. I much prefer not to use the term "stabilizinng selection," but instead consider examples to illustrate how selection most commonly selects against new mutations. [I suspect that this issue underlies the difficulty with "punctuated equilibrium" vs "gradualism"--but that's another topic.]
To understand some of these "living fossils," we need to know enough about their environments/niches to be able to discern how they are so stable, and how they might have survived the K/T boundary with little perturbation. I've mentioned a bit about coelacanths, crinoids, and cockroaches; I defer to gluadys' earlier post for horseshoe crabs. Apparently, a number of niches, at least in a few places, were not greatly perturbed during the mass extinctions.
In the hope that YEC is still following this thread, I'll describe the alternative: mutations occur at some more-or-less constant rate, with the environment selecting which ones are passed on, and which are not. The coelacanth's environment (deep water) is pretty stable, even during surface-level catastrophes like meteor impacts at Chixulub. Mutations that change the coelacanth significantly may make it less well suited for that particular niche, so those mutations are selected against. They occur, but are selected against, so little outward change occurs.
We can use similar logic for the two species of crinoids that still exist. Again, it's deep water, with a relatively constant temperature.
We would predict that "living fossils" are either very well adapted to their niches, or are adapted to niches that are pretty stable, or both. Cockroaches seem to be really good at what they do, living in the environments they inhabit (usually forests), where they eat just about anything. They are good enough that they have out-competed others that might have been able to invade their niche. Mutations that might have changed them into other forms were selected against. So, their environment must have been stable enough, and their adaptations good enough, that natural selection kept them more-or-less the same.
We call this "stabilizing selection," but the concept is a bit tricky. People seem to be primed to think of evolution as a relentless forward-moving engine. When taught about stabilizing selection, they tend to memorize the term for the exam, but not internalize the concept. These "living fossils" are great illustrations of stabilizing selection, because without it (as YEC implied), such things should not exist. I much prefer not to use the term "stabilizinng selection," but instead consider examples to illustrate how selection most commonly selects against new mutations. [I suspect that this issue underlies the difficulty with "punctuated equilibrium" vs "gradualism"--but that's another topic.]
To understand some of these "living fossils," we need to know enough about their environments/niches to be able to discern how they are so stable, and how they might have survived the K/T boundary with little perturbation. I've mentioned a bit about coelacanths, crinoids, and cockroaches; I defer to gluadys' earlier post for horseshoe crabs. Apparently, a number of niches, at least in a few places, were not greatly perturbed during the mass extinctions.
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Post #58
Jose,
My opening post pointed out that things were not very stabilized.
To assume they were, is just that. An unsupported asumption.
According to you evos, mutation occur and quite frequently as evidensed by all the different species of animals and the many interesting characteristics they all present.
Now all of a sudden..they stopped for the living fossils..despite the niche changing?
Some people want their cake and eat it too.
My opening post pointed out that things were not very stabilized.
To assume they were, is just that. An unsupported asumption.
According to you evos, mutation occur and quite frequently as evidensed by all the different species of animals and the many interesting characteristics they all present.
Now all of a sudden..they stopped for the living fossils..despite the niche changing?
Some people want their cake and eat it too.
Post #59
I suggest you read jose's post more carefully. He did not say that mutations stopped. Note the bolded sections:YEC wrote:Jose,
My opening post pointed out that things were not very stabilized.
To assume they were, is just that. An unsupported asumption.
According to you evos, mutation occur and quite frequently as evidensed by all the different species of animals and the many interesting characteristics they all present.
Now all of a sudden..they stopped for the living fossils..despite the niche changing?
Some people want their cake and eat it too.
jose wrote:In the hope that YEC is still following this thread, I'll describe the alternative: mutations occur at some more-or-less constant rate, with the environment selecting which ones are passed on, and which are not. The coelacanth's environment (deep water) is pretty stable, even during surface-level catastrophes like meteor impacts at Chixulub. Mutations that change the coelacanth significantly may make it less well suited for that particular niche, so those mutations are selected against. They occur, but are selected against, so little outward change occurs.
Post #60
You helped prove my point gluadys....as you evos claim, the mutations did not stop.
The coelacanth environment may have been less effected...by the event(s)....but I provided examples of surface animals and plants that surely would have been.
Remember, there is always better. There is always more fit...so the argument about those mutations that are selected against doesn't really seem to hold much water...unless you can provide a scientific example.
The coelacanth environment may have been less effected...by the event(s)....but I provided examples of surface animals and plants that surely would have been.
Remember, there is always better. There is always more fit...so the argument about those mutations that are selected against doesn't really seem to hold much water...unless you can provide a scientific example.
