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Author Topic:   Why are there no human apes alive today?
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 241 of 1075 (621117)
06-23-2011 8:34 PM
Reply to: Message 240 by DBlevins
06-23-2011 8:28 PM


success
I was measuring success by how long the critter has been around and how it has successfully survived so many changing filters. If someday the cockroach is gone and humans still around, I'm more than happy to change my position.
Not I did not say more evolved, simply more successful.
Edited by jar, : fix subtitle

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

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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ZenMonkey
Member (Idle past 4510 days)
Posts: 428
From: Portland, OR USA
Joined: 09-25-2009


Message 242 of 1075 (621118)
06-23-2011 8:39 PM
Reply to: Message 234 by Portillo
06-23-2011 7:34 PM


Re: More evolved?
Portillo writes:
So every living and perhaps non living thing are all 100% equally evolved?
Have you read any of the replies to your messages so far?
There is no such thing as "more or less evolved."
Evolution is change over time. That's all. You can talk about how closely or distantly two different organisms are from their common ancestor. For example, we're more closely related to chimpanzees than we are to chipmunks, but more closely related to chipmunks than we are to chickens. Or you can talk about how well something has adapted to its environment. Or you can compare how much change one organism has experienced since it diverged from the common ancestor it shares with another organism. For example, I would hazard a guess that we primates have gone through a few more changes than rats have since the Jurassic. Witness the thrinaxodon, one of the first mammal-type beast from back in the day:
Anyway, the point that everyone has been trying to make is that there is no ladder or chain of being or grades of development, nothing that really makes any one organism "superior" to another. There's just life, and all the different ways life has managed to express itself over time.

Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs.
-Theodoric
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven Colbert
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill

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DBlevins
Member (Idle past 3775 days)
Posts: 652
From: Puyallup, WA.
Joined: 02-04-2003


Message 243 of 1075 (621119)
06-23-2011 8:55 PM
Reply to: Message 241 by jar
06-23-2011 8:34 PM


Re: success
Your measure is still arbitrary. Others might consider high taxonomic diversity to be a sign of success in evolution.
By your measure, the Coelacanth is a more successful creature than humans. Or horseshoe crabs, or nautiloids, or crocodiles. the fact is that we are JUST as successful as any species living today. Until we are not.
By the way, I never said you said "more evolved" but you're still wrong in saying "more successful."

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 Message 241 by jar, posted 06-23-2011 8:34 PM jar has replied

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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 244 of 1075 (621120)
06-23-2011 8:57 PM
Reply to: Message 243 by DBlevins
06-23-2011 8:55 PM


Re: success
Okay, that is your opinion.
And I'd agree that all of the examples you mention are demonstrably more successful than humans.

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

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bluescat48
Member (Idle past 4189 days)
Posts: 2347
From: United States
Joined: 10-06-2007


Message 245 of 1075 (621138)
06-24-2011 2:34 AM
Reply to: Message 242 by ZenMonkey
06-23-2011 8:39 PM


Re: More evolved?
Good post and totally correct.
Particularly
There is no such thing as "more or less evolved."

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 246 of 1075 (621153)
06-24-2011 7:16 AM
Reply to: Message 228 by Mazzy
06-23-2011 2:31 PM


Hi Mazzy,
Others have already responded to the portions of your post that appear to be misconstruals of both the evidence and processes of evolution, so I'll just mention that I wasn't advocating gradualism as the sole rate of evolution. I was making a different point. I guess I'm not sure how you're using the word "disappearance". I thought you were referring to missing intermediates in the fossil record, but you didn't detect that intermediates was my main point, so I guess you must have meant something else. Extinctions, perhaps?
All species, one could even argue all individuals, are transitional. They're intermediate between what came before and what will come after. The pace of change, the tempo at which a species transitions to another species, the rate at which intermediate stages are traversed, does not affect this fact. Gould would completely agree that all species are transitional (except species that go extinct, of course), and so would everyone else in biology, and certainly everyone here in this thread except maybe you and Portillo.
This is because reproduction is imperfect. No species ever breeds true because of copying mistakes during reproduction (genetic errors can pop up at other times too, but there's no need to descend into too much detail). The errors perpetuate and carry forward into following generations. Each generation is slightly different than the one before. Change is inevitable. Whether fast or slow, change will happen.
By the way, like everyone else I'm wondering what on Earth moved you to say this:
What your research tells you is that humans are not related to any species of ape alive today.
--Percy

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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 247 of 1075 (621174)
06-24-2011 10:17 AM


more evolved / less evolved
Take two species today and their last common ancestor. Quanitfy the differences in genomes between the current species and the ancestor. The species with more changes to its genome is more evolved than the other.
Problema?

Replies to this message:
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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 248 of 1075 (621183)
06-24-2011 10:50 AM
Reply to: Message 247 by New Cat's Eye
06-24-2011 10:17 AM


Re: more evolved / less evolved
Problema?
Oh, yes.
"More" change does not mean "more" evolved. It means evolved differently.
The semantics between the two uses of the word "more" are key.
In your case the useage is quantity. In Portillo's case the usage is direction, purpose, quality.
Your usage can be seen as technically correct. Portillo's is most certainly not.
The regulars here know you understand this, CS, so I have to question the quibble.
Edited by AZPaul3, : afterthought

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Replies to this message:
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frako
Member (Idle past 305 days)
Posts: 2932
From: slovenija
Joined: 09-04-2010


Message 249 of 1075 (621186)
06-24-2011 11:01 AM
Reply to: Message 247 by New Cat's Eye
06-24-2011 10:17 AM


Re: more evolved / less evolved
The Amoeba has more gens then a human so comparing the changes that acured with our last common ancestor the first cell would make the amoeba more evolved then humans ???
The only way i see to measure how evolved something is would be to measure its reproductive success in a given environment. And i still doubt this method would be good enough.

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Taq
Member
Posts: 9972
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.5


Message 250 of 1075 (621187)
06-24-2011 11:12 AM
Reply to: Message 247 by New Cat's Eye
06-24-2011 10:17 AM


Re: more evolved / less evolved
Take two species today and their last common ancestor. Quanitfy the differences in genomes between the current species and the ancestor. The species with more changes to its genome is more evolved than the other.
More divergent does not equal more evolved. Selection of already existing features is as much evolution as selection of new features.

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Mazzy 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4590 days)
Posts: 212
From: Rural NSW, Australia
Joined: 06-09-2011


Message 251 of 1075 (621209)
06-24-2011 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 198 by jar
06-21-2011 5:03 PM


Re: More evolved?
Darls at the risk of being disrespectful you are free to consider your self an ape and no different than a chimp. I on the other hand reserve the right to say that my reasoning and perceptual abilities are very different to that of an ape.
It takes an evolutionists to line up a 5 primates, including humans, and say they cannot tell the difference and that the human is not the odd one out. This is a simple game really that most children over the age of 7 years can conceptualise and achieve successfully.
Guess what...??...I can to. Too bad that you cannot..

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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 252 of 1075 (621211)
06-24-2011 1:33 PM
Reply to: Message 251 by Mazzy
06-24-2011 1:28 PM


Re: More evolved?
Odds are that if they have been educated they can identify each of the different apes including the human ones.

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

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 Message 251 by Mazzy, posted 06-24-2011 1:28 PM Mazzy has not replied

Mazzy 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4590 days)
Posts: 212
From: Rural NSW, Australia
Joined: 06-09-2011


Message 253 of 1075 (621212)
06-24-2011 1:41 PM
Reply to: Message 242 by ZenMonkey
06-23-2011 8:39 PM


Re: More evolved?
Oh good one dear...NOT.
I spoke to the fossils rather than the misrepresentation of ambulocetus natans
One of the reasons I do not frequent here much is because I am unabe to post pictures, while others can.
Do please source some pictures of the FOSSIL of ambulocetus natans and a picture of a crocodile fossil and you will see they are almost identical. Once again common sense must leave the buiding when discussing TOE. Rather than theorise natans is a variety of crocodile they have 'poofed' it into some intermediate that just looks like a crocodile.
Now I will also remind you of the misrepresentations put forward for Neanderthal the ape man. It suited your evo sketch artists to represent Neanderthal this way. You had heaps of fossils also and still Neanderthal was an ape man. With all the science and fluffing around that is what these 'smart' ones came up with.
However, with DNA retrieved from Neanderthal his has 'poofed' into a human not unlike us In fact many scientists classify Neanderthal as a subspecies of Homo sapiens. So it was not the fossils that made neanderthal human, it was not your scientists that could work this out from the fossils. The representation changed as a result of the DNA sequencing.
Now you do not have DNA from natans. The representation has been likewise misrepresented.
I note that I clearly spoke to the fossils/skeleton of natans being similar to a modern day crocodile. I wonder why you did not post these up? Answer: I am correct.
Edited by Mazzy, : No reason given.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 254 of 1075 (621213)
06-24-2011 1:48 PM
Reply to: Message 251 by Mazzy
06-24-2011 1:28 PM


Re: More evolved?
Hi Mazzy,
Ape (Hominoidea) is a classification that includes several different species. When we say that both humans and chimps are apes we only mean that they hold certain identifying characteristics in common. Saying that humans and chimps are both apes does not imply we're "no different than a chimp." If we were really the same as chimps then we'd be the same species, but we're not.
We could modify the classification system so that chimps, gorillas and orangutans were in one group and humans in another, and in fact it was not uncommon to do that not so long ago, but that wouldn't change the characteristics we have in common with them, and that's all the classification of Apes is saying.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 255 of 1075 (621216)
06-24-2011 2:04 PM
Reply to: Message 253 by Mazzy
06-24-2011 1:41 PM


Re: More evolved?
Mazzy writes:
One of the reasons I do not frequent here much is because I am unabe to post pictures, while others can.
Usually this will work pretty well, it's pretty standard at most discussion boards, except that here you can also specify the width, in this case I've set it to 300:
[img=300]http://www.superchrist.com/images/fish_black.gif[/img]
That should give you this:
If you hover over the image you'll see a little magnifying glass with a "+" inside. Click on it to display the image at full size.
Click on "peek" to see all the dBCodes and HTML of any message.
The dBCodes are documented over at EvC Forum: dBCodes.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
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