Paleontologist Gays
- Thread starter Shadows
- Start date
Are you taking a general course or is it more specified? What are you dealing with right now?
Statement: I've always thought that the mere notion of a "transitional fossil" was bullshit and could only be conceived by people that don't understand evolution.
Am I wrong on this? Jokey, you know about this stuff too, chime in. The gay stuff is done anyway.
Statement: I've always thought that the mere notion of a "transitional fossil" was bullshit and could only be conceived by people that don't understand evolution.
Am I wrong on this? Jokey, you know about this stuff too, chime in. The gay stuff is done anyway.
We just finished up trilobites today. Its a pretty specified course, but that being said you could go way deeper than we do as paleo is an enormous topic. I epic failed my midterm, btw.
A transitional fossil is transitional but not in the way your thinking. Say you have a pretty simple organism that came into existence 900 million years ago and was only suited to live in one specific environment, such as the bottom of a water column. Now, over a period of 750 million years that organism evolves and adapts to to be better suited for more than that one type of environment, i.e maybe it can now live in the water column or burrow into the ocean floor etc. Now at the end of the 750 million year period a mass extinction event occurs and all forms of the organism go extinct. A transitional fossil would be one that existed ~600 million years ago, whose flagellum (essentially an organ for locomition) wasn't as developed as the one that existed 300 million years ago.
Hope that makes sense. I've been on the go since 8:30, my brain is fried.
A transitional fossil is transitional but not in the way your thinking. Say you have a pretty simple organism that came into existence 900 million years ago and was only suited to live in one specific environment, such as the bottom of a water column. Now, over a period of 750 million years that organism evolves and adapts to to be better suited for more than that one type of environment, i.e maybe it can now live in the water column or burrow into the ocean floor etc. Now at the end of the 750 million year period a mass extinction event occurs and all forms of the organism go extinct. A transitional fossil would be one that existed ~600 million years ago, whose flagellum (essentially an organ for locomition) wasn't as developed as the one that existed 300 million years ago.
Hope that makes sense. I've been on the go since 8:30, my brain is fried.
To be fair, a discussion on transitional fossils, organism adaptation, evolutionary biology, or any other of the myriad of topics that can be discussed with the inclusion of paleontology really piques my interest more than the debate of should I wear a certain color of the rainbow tshirt on this day to show my support for the rainbow. No offense Shadows.
The notion of a "missing link" is BS, but talk of transitional fossils is legitimate, only if one knows what one is talking about, which most creationists don't. They want us to show them fossils at one moment in time that were a cross between one thing and another, but that's not the way evolution works. It works in stages, and transitional stages are well documented in the fossil record. So creationists are not bringing any challenge worth answering. So, yes, their notion of transitional fossils is BS. Also, a better term is intermediates. None is at THE transition point because there is no transition point. No two parents ever gave birth to a transition between two species. And there was no first specimen of any species. Species, genera, families, etc, are just names we use to help organize fossils, not reality. The reality is that every fossil we find is an intermediate linking what came before to what came after. Every fossil of early man we've found is an intermediate linking modern humans to the common ancestor we share with chimps. Evolution is one long exercise in intermediacy, and even we are an intermediate form.
Thanks. That pretty much says what I've been thinking but you put it in much better words. Your post also neatly compliments Da_Funks, as I assume he just explained what a transitional fossil is in evolutionary terms.
That also explains how creationists use the term. It does exist in the scientific world, but on a whole other definition than the creationist contorts it to.
Thanks fellas, cleared up a bunch. :thumb:
That's within a species, as Da_Funk was talking about. As I was talking about, between what we call species, everything is a transitional fossil, and some of them at some point do kind of look like a cross between one type and another, as recent fossil research shows up a number of feathered dinosaurs.
Yes, your thought sort of captures what I was thinking myself. Evolution is non-stop proces, every organism is a phase in itself, every generation a step on the way. It's only in our very limited fossil record that some fossils turn into "transitionals", the scientific definiton of which Funk explained.
Because current day monkies aren't evolving into humans. Not every ape evolves into a human.
Doesn't mean they're not evolving right now, though. Into fuck knows what. Yes, you can go to the zoo and watch monkies evolve. It's just a very slow process so you're not actually gonna see anything.
It's hard to answer such questions by religious idiots like O' Donnell who don't have a goddamn clue.
Doesn't mean they're not evolving right now, though. Into fuck knows what. Yes, you can go to the zoo and watch monkies evolve. It's just a very slow process so you're not actually gonna see anything.
It's hard to answer such questions by religious idiots like O' Donnell who don't have a goddamn clue.
Yeah. I understand the environment has a lot to do with it, how it influences evolution, but it's a question I don't think was answered in the biology classes that I have taken so far. Well, only one actually dealt with issues that this question would pertain to, the rest was microbiology and even genetics didn't quite delve into apes too often.
She asked a good question, but it couldn't serve as proof against evolution.
She asked a good question, but it couldn't serve as proof against evolution.
I don't think she asked a good question at all. It's clearly the question of someone who doesn't understand fuckjack of it and is taking no effort whatsoever to educate herself. Asking "why aren't monkies still evolving into humans" to an evolutionary biologist is like asking an electrician "Why can't I drink electricity?"
It's just a totally inane question imo.
It's just a totally inane question imo.
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