Evolving the Musculoskeletal System

I don't see why you think that what Percy wrote is double talk. It is not a law of biology that genera can't interbreed. And, in fact, it's untrue.It may surprise you to learn that you regularly eat the product of interbreeding between genera. Bread wheat is the result of crosses between three species, crossing two genera. The wild emmer wheat is itself a cross between Triticum urartu and a wild goatgrass (of unknown species, but closely related to the modern Aegilops speltoides). Later, during domestication this cross-genera hybrid then interbred with yet another species, Aegilops cylindrica, to form the ancestor of the kinds of wheats we now use in breadmaking.How do we know this? We know this because bread wheats unlike us, and most plants and animals, have not just two copies of their chromosomes but six (are hexaploid, in the parlance), and those six form three distinct pairings. One pairing can be recognised as very similar to T. urartu, one pairing as similar to A. speltoides and one as very similar to A. cylindrica.Almost the entire Orchid family (Orchidacaeae) can be induced to breed. And it's not just plants, Butterflies are famous for producing viable cross-genera hybrids. Genetic transfer among bacteria can leap even higher categories. Well, yes, a line has been drawn but I'm not sure why you feel its necessarily unchangeable or, indeed, any kind of problem for evolution. Reproductive separation is a very important part of the evolutionary process, without reproductive separation, different species would lose their individual identity and instead form a mix of subspecies.

And we wonder why creationists have a hard time believing us scientists

Bolder-dash's question was not specific enough to warrant a more in-depth answer. If he'd specified an exact scenario of relative sudden large change it would have been easier to answer him.But his question is flawed. Even if I saw a hippo turn into a porcubine in a flash of light this would not disprove evolution. Magic doesn't contradict evolution.Respectfully,-Meldinoor

As Meldinoor later noted, it depends upon what kind of large steps you're asking about.If, as in Meldinoor's example in Message 228, we saw a "hippo turn into a porcupine in a flash of light," then that would be magic, and it wouldn't have any implications for evolution.If a millipede of 20 segments gave birth to a millipede with 22 segments, assuming a genetic basis, then that's a fairly large step with new structures popping into existence, but it's still evolution because they're just copies. The gene that said "create 20 segments" mutated into a gene that said "create 22 segments."If a horse were born with wings, and we looked at the underlying genetics and found genes for wings where neither parent had any such thing, that would pretty much prove intelligent design. It wouldn't disprove what we already know about evolution, but quite obviously there's another process we were unaware of, and we would have to begin figuring what events of natural history had been wrongly attributed to evolution.--Percy

Evolution and all of science are just attempting to describe what we find in nature and how it works. I don't know what you mean by "broad assertions," so can you be more specific? Is there some aspect of evolutionary theory in particular that says something about nature that isn't true? Do you ever find birds hatching from lizard eggs? Do you ever find large steps such as entire new structures like a new limb or a new organ evolving in a single generation? Do you ever find less fit organisms being more successful at producing progeny than more fit organisms? Do you ever find instances of poorly adapted creatures outcompeting well adapted creatures?We never see these kinds of things, and that's why they're not part of evolutionary theory. What we do see is gradual change over time with the better adapted passing more of their genes on to the next generation, and since that's what we see, that's what evolution says.Obviously it would make no sense to observe something happening and then ignore it when you formulated the theory. That's why all successful theories have gone through a period of making successful predictions about the natural world, because that's how they prove that they really do describe the natural world and are not made up.--Percy

Almost word-for-word and example-for-example what I was trying to type this morning, only mine was coming out as gibberish so I abandonded it Nicely put...

My head was sore of butting up against the stone wall of the EvC yesterday. I would like to make a better closing statement if I could please. Yes. Everything I see has huge gaps and holes. I never see drawings of the step by step progression for the skeletal system bone by bone. Its always, "Here is what it was, and here is what it became". I want to see all the details and here how all the bones formed all the way through the process.Evolution claims changes come as a result of selective pressures. One of the things that strikes me is that changes that would result from these "pressures" happen at such a slow rate, by the time the thousands of years (or more) transpire into the resulting changes everything has drastically changed making the reasons the changes happened void.On the one had you say these changes happen because of the immediate environment yet all change is so extremely slow you can't even point to anything other than Genomes for some type of evidence that it happened.I don't see one shred of evidence that selective pressure along with rm/ns is capable of creating new designs. None.You 'claim' it happened but it is sooo slow we can't show it to you.
That in a nutshell is your argument and I say you lose this debate by way of forfeit.If you ever come up with anything tangible be sure to let us Creationists know won't you?May you some day come to know Christ the Savior,ICDESIGN

Part of the problem there is your thinking that there was a goal for the changes. There isn't. It is also a continuous process. The result is just what we see, stuff that i just good enough to get by.The reason bones fit in their sockets is really simple, critters born with bones that don't fit in the sockets die off and do not pass on their genes.The critters that are born with something that is just a little better than the rest of the population over time come to dominate the population.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

The evolution of the bones in the mammalian inner ear which have been shown to originate from some of the bones which make up the reptilian jaw. This can be seen in embryology, where the jaw bones develop from the first branchial arch, then two of these bones later migrate to their final position in the inner ear. This was first noted by Karl Reichert way back in 1837. The transition is also beautifully illustrated in the fossil record with the Therapsid series of transitional fossils.
I realise that this comes late to a topic that's already run its course, but what issues do you see with this example?

The skeletal system didn't evolve "bone by bone", though. You have this notion of how a skeleton is assembled - say, by medical supply houses assembling one of those "house of horrors" hanging skeletons, or according to that old song "the ankle bone's connected to the, knee bone" - built up bone by bone, each joint connected to the next, and the finally you have a complete skeleton. The notion here is one of teleology; the doctor is putting each bone in a specific place because he's working towards an ultimate end - a complete reconstructed human skeleton.That's how doctors put skeletons together, like puzzle pieces, but that's not how skeletons grow or evolve; a developing fetus isn't assembled bone by bone and then skinned and filled with blood. All that stuff develops simultaneously, each bone developing from a single stem osteoblast cell that migrates, divides, replicates, grows out to a "bone-shape", and then begins to calcify (this process is not complete by the time the infant is born), all according to a genetic program.Skeletons evolved from simple bony plates to highly-shaped mechanical structures by random genetic mutation of this program, and natural selection of organisms whose skeletal-related adaptations gave them a survival advantage in the environments in which they lived. Not selected for adaptations that made them more like humans, but for adaptations that were useful to them at the time. Primitive hagfish didn't evolve skulls because humans would need them millions of years later, they evolved them because there was a benefit to doing so for the hagfish. There's no teleology in evolution. Hey, me too! Unfortunately the evolution of skeletons happened millions of years before humans even existed so there was nobody around to get all the details for us. There's a lot we can discern from developmentology - morphological adaptations like skeletal structure happen by changes to the prenatal development program, so studying that program can provide clues to evolution, that field is "evo-devo" - and a lot we can discern from comparative zoology, though there aren't any "primitive" organisms any more, all living things have been subject to millions of years of evolution by now.You want to see the complete evolution of skeletons in pictures, but the evolution of skeletons happened millions of years before photography even existed. And even if we could show you, what would be the point? You'd simply abandon skeletons as a fruitful avenue for creationist attack, and move on to nerves, or blood vessels, or some other system with exactly the same origin as skeletons - random mutation and natural selection. And you'd be just as hampered by your complete ignorance of biology in that thread as you've been in this one, as you ridiculously continue to insist that "common sense" is just as good as a doctorate in the life sciences. Have you ever heard people say "geologic time" to refer to time periods of millions of years or more? The reason we say that is that environments change, for the most part, very slowly, so no - "everything" usually doesn't "drastically change". Environments usually impose the same pressures for hundreds of thousands of years or more. When drastic change does occur - say, the conversion of the fertile Sahara area into desert over a period of about 10,000 years - then extinctions are inevitable, just as you suggest.99% of all species that have ever lived are extinct. The organisms we observe today, therefore, are necessarily the descendants of organisms who did not experience drastic, sudden environmental change. So what's wrong with genomic evidence? Ultimately this is the same game creationists always play: "you have no evidence." "Well, we have this genomic evidence." "Ok, but besides the genomic evidence, you've got nothing!" "Well, there's this evidence from stratigraphic comparison." "Well, besides the genomic and stratigraphic evidence, you've got nothing!" Call it the fallacy of the looming caveat, or maybe just creationists assembling their invincible wall of ignorance. After all, you never have to explain away the evidence if you refuse to even listen to it. Ok, but you're the one retreating.

The objection to evolution was that if there was a smooth transition between categories then there'd be no different categories. I used colours to show that this principle is false. There is one similarity: There are no objective 'lines' separating living things or colours. Any line drawing may be done with reasons - but an equally good argument could be made for drawing a line in a slightly different place.

Hi, ICDESIGN. How do you know that the environment is going to change faster than species can evolve under random mutation and natural selection?----- Nobody actually said this, IC.Several of us claimed that it happened sooo long ago that we never got to see it, and can thus only put together a few slides in the slideshow.It’s like that famous sequence of photos from the Mt St Helen’s eruption in 1980.This is a YouTube video of the photo sequence that was actually taken:And, with a little application of logic (and some nice computer technology), someone filled in the gaps to make this reasonable recreation of the event as it actually happened:That’s what we’re doing with evolution, IC: we have found a series of snapshots (fossils, in this case), and have put the pieces together using what evidence we have, using the principles of the world’s operation that we have learned from our study of the world around us to fill in the gaps.It’s not a perfect system, and nobody claims that it is. But, you have to admit that it makes sense to do things this way! For the life of me, I can't understand why this is such a hard thing for creationists to realize! P.S. I never learned how to embed videos, and don't have the time to try to learn it now, so if an admin wants to edit this for me to make it easier on everybody, go right ahead.Edited by Bluejay, : "to fill in the gaps"Edited by Bluejay, : Embed videos. Thanks, Huntard

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

It's very simple really, under the video there is a button that says "embed", click this, and a code will appear, copy this code into your reply box and voila, embedded video.Can't do it for you now, since youtube is blocked at work.

You mean something like this? Show your working. Actually "everything" does not change in "thousands of years".For example, the laws of optics stay the same, so more acute vision remains more acute vision.The laws of hydrodynamics stay the same, so a more streamlined form remains a more streamlined form.The laws of aerodynamics stay the same, so a better wing remains a better wing.The laws of thermodynamics stay the same, so better insulation remains better insulation.But apart from the laws of nature, the fossil record shows that many things do stay much the same for long periods of time. This is, of course, not true: there are many lines of evidence besides genetics for evolution. How do you think Darwin thought of it in the first place. You mean, apart from all the evidence? If by this you mean that we can't show you directly the sorts of changes that the fossil record tells us take a million years, then the fact that we can't would actually be a prediction of the theory, would it not? No. Do creationists also lose by way of forfeit when they say that they can't show us God making new organisms poof into existence by magic? You mean tangible things like fossils and genes and morphology and embryology and biogeography and stuff like that?Do let us know if you ever see God doing magic.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

can the ocean life alone produce enough oxygen to sustain an atmosphere with ozone if there was no life on land?