Mammalian Middle Ear Evolution

This hints at a serious misunderstanding of concepts and terms."ToE" stands for the "theory of evolution". It is a scientific model of how the world works. It is an explanation of the facts (like the various stages of the MME). However, the exact timing is subject to many contingent variables so it isn't going to be very good at predicting a specific time frame.The time frame is determined not by theory but by looking in the fossil record. The ToE may tell us what kind of patterns to expect but not the timing.An analogy: I have a theory that explains how humans may get from one place to another. It clearly states that they don't (on their own) fly. It understands they are capable of picking good routes. To decide how long a human will take to get across a valley no amount of details about general human locomotion will help me. I have to know what the particular human is capable of, what the terrain is like and how motivated he/she is. In fact, to determine travel time I have to measure it not theorize about it.Then if I find the human traveled in accordance with my theory it is confirmed to a small degree. She/he may take a few hours strolling across the valley or a couple of days. No problem. But if the human took only a half hour my theory has a serious problem. I didn't include cars and superhighways perhaps. In a similar manner the fact that the nature of the MME was noted in relation to reptiles decades before Darwin and over a century later the fossil record matched that is a powerful confirmation for the theory. A serious mismatch would have been a problem like leaving cars out of my human locomotion theory.But the MME evolution falling anywhere over a much bigger range than 125 to 70 Mya is still within expectations. Like a human taking days to cross the valley or only an afternoon.

Why would that be in conflict?

This is an obvious prediction of the ToE.Well over a century ago it was noted that the ear bones develop like reptilian jaw bones.The ToE says that if mammals were not around for all times then they developed from existing animals. When we look for likely candidates for mammals ancestors there isn't much choice but reptiles. In addition, the development pathways suggest that reptiles are a good candidate.Therefore, we expect to find the various things which characterize the modern definition of what a mammal is in various stages of transitions. This we have found.The ToE predicts that there will be transitional forms between what are currently end branches of the 'tree of life'. The early mammals, therapsids and reptiles before them are just such a chain of transitional forms.As far as predicting the time frame it would be determined after dates are applied to know fossils NOT directly from theory. Then the theory can give a time frame to look in.This is the case with Tiktalik. We had fish with some amphibian traits on one side of a 10 million year gap and amphibians with clear fish like traits on the other side of the gap. It isn't rocket science to figure out that somewhere in that 10 million years there should be something so transitional that we could no longer call it fish or amphibian (so the half joking -- fishaphibian). The theory then tells us where to look: where would selection act to push the path from fish to amphibian along? -- certainly not in deep oceans.In the case of the MME we have fully developed mammals at one point in time. If there is going to be an evolutionary path to them (which the ToE predicts there will be) then the transitionals will be before the fully developed forms (duh!). Then just like the Tiktalik case we bracket the time from on the older end. These transitional forms would be after some of the precursors were already extant.I think in the case of the MME evolution I don't think we had to focus so hard to find the transitionals. This is correct, of course. If we define a mammal as a vertebrate animals with a particular ear construction then all of the development had to happen (but only by definition) in earlier pre-mammal forms. But that would be caught in a trap of thinking about things only from the current perspective. It is solved a bit by using the term as you have -- "modern mammals". The mammal vs non-mammal dividing line is over evolutionary time scales not so sharply defined.It is similar in the Tiktalik case just as the ToE tells us. We had fish. We had funny fish with sort of legs. We had amphibiany like fish. We had fishaphibians that are so in between they are hard to put in either taxon. Then we had very fishy amphibians and less fishy amphibians. Once the lineages have gone on the independent ways for a few years (millions, 10's of millions) it is easy to draw taxonomic boundaries. It isn't so easy while the transitions are happening.In the case of reptiles and mammals we used to call the therapsids "mammal like" reptiles. That term is now out of favour. I don't now why but maybe one reason is that we'd end up with (as we filled in more transitionals) with reptile like mammals. And, like in the semi facetious Tiktalik case above, all sorts of other "inbetween" forms. It seems the choice is to put something like a transitional taxon in between so we can put all the mammal like reptiles, very very mammal like reptiles, the reptimals, the very reptile like mammals etc into it. This appears to be the therapsids but I'm not an expert so I don't know. It's too late. We have the fossils already. We know about when the transition was taking place. I think you want a Tiktalik like prediction that is done before the discovery. Like I said, that we would find the transitional forms was a strong prediction but when we would find them required some fossil record to fit them into.What do you expect?

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