The Missing Links in the Fossil Record

[The Barbarian]

You post a picture with no name, or source.

Spriggina.
Like many of the Ediacara biota, the relationship of Spriggina to other groups is unclear. It bears some similarity to the living polychaete worm Tomopteris and Amphinomidae,[7] but its lack of chaetae, along with other lines of evidence, suggests that it cannot be placed in this phylum.[8] It was also compared to the rangeomorphs,[9] frondose members of the Ediacara biota that may represent a separate kingdom.[10] While its glide symmetry may suggest otherwise, Spriggina is considered by some other researchers to be an arthropod; its superficial resemblance to the trilobites may suggest a close relationship to this class.[9] Or this similarity can be another example of convergent evolution.[11] Spriggina may have been predatory, and may have played a role in initiating the Cambrian transition.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spriggina

The transitional nature of Spriggina between polychaete worms and arthropods is backed up by genetic data:

Extensive data now exist for at least three types of divergent arthropod (insects, branchiopod crustaceans and centipedes) and for members of a few related phyla (onychophorans and annelids). The most complete set of data is available for insects, where studies have been conducted for a number of years and in a few different species [5]. All insects apparently share the same set of eight Hox genes, each with well-conserved functions in establishing a set of segmental identities found in the bodies of all insects. Work on a brine shrimp, Artemia, has shown that the same set of Hox genes is carried by branchiopod crustaceans, although these animals have very different (and simpler) patterns of segmental specialization [6]. Similarly, there is preliminary evidence from a horseshoe crab that very similar types of Hox gene may exist in chelicerates [7]. The latest data bearing on this issue demonstrate that centipedes and onychophorans also share an identical set of eight Hox genes, with distinct homologues found for each of the Drosophila Hox genes [8].
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982206003216

Folks don't know if Ediacaran fossils are plants or animals.

Don't know any plants that move around, as this organism did. The transitional form of the organism suggests that it gave rise to arthropods and annelids. (worms,including polychaetes)



A bit more info please.

 

[The Barbarian]

Anyone else want to try? Two major groups said to be evolutionarily connected, without a transitional form being known to exist.

There still are a few of those, so you might get lucky.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Sounds like you've gotten misled on that. Let's see what He has to say about it...

Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Yep. You got some weird misdirection there. But unless you think the Earth is alive (Yes, I know there are "Gaia worshipers") God says that life came from non-life.
let

not prevent or forbid; allow:
"my boss let me leave early" · [more]
synonyms: allow to · permit to · give permission to · give leave to · authorize to

Yep. God created non-living material, and let it form living things. That was the plan. Life came from non-life, according to God.

 

[iouae]

Spriggina.
Like many of the Ediacara biota, the relationship of Spriggina to other groups is unclear. It bears some similarity to the living polychaete worm Tomopteris and Amphinomidae,[7] but its lack of chaetae, along with other lines of evidence, suggests that it cannot be placed in this phylum.[8] It was also compared to the rangeomorphs,[9] frondose members of the Ediacara biota that may represent a separate kingdom.[10] While its glide symmetry may suggest otherwise, Spriggina is considered by some other researchers to be an arthropod; its superficial resemblance to the trilobites may suggest a close relationship to this class.[9] Or this similarity can be another example of convergent evolution.[11] Spriggina may have been predatory, and may have played a role in initiating the Cambrian transition.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spriggina

The transitional nature of Spriggina between polychaete worms and arthropods is backed up by genetic data:

Extensive data now exist for at least three types of divergent arthropod (insects, branchiopod crustaceans and centipedes) and for members of a few related phyla (onychophorans and annelids). The most complete set of data is available for insects, where studies have been conducted for a number of years and in a few different species [5]. All insects apparently share the same set of eight Hox genes, each with well-conserved functions in establishing a set of segmental identities found in the bodies of all insects. Work on a brine shrimp, Artemia, has shown that the same set of Hox genes is carried by branchiopod crustaceans, although these animals have very different (and simpler) patterns of segmental specialization [6]. Similarly, there is preliminary evidence from a horseshoe crab that very similar types of Hox gene may exist in chelicerates [7]. The latest data bearing on this issue demonstrate that centipedes and onychophorans also share an identical set of eight Hox genes, with distinct homologues found for each of the Drosophila Hox genes [8].
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982206003216



Don't know any plants that move around, as this organism did. The transitional form of the organism suggests that it gave rise to arthropods and annelids. (worms,including polychaetes)

That was very interesting. Thank you Barbarian.

This is certainly the most complex Ediacaran organism that I have ever seen.

My explanation would be as follows...
The Ediacaran was the period that God was experimenting with organisms which would fill the earth starting in the Cambrian. Most Ediacaran organisms never continued as species of the future. Thus they represent failed experiments. Even Spriggina, which you posted info on, has only been found in Australia, not worldwide. Then it too was a failed experiment and disappeared in the Cambrian, possibly reappearing, in improved form, as a Trilobite. I am perfectly happy with that.

Likewise, just before the appearance of modern humans, I see God playing with prototype apemen, in the period immediately before Adam and Eve. All the hominid fossils besides Homo sapiens all died out in a mass extinction, as God settled on the improved version of Homo, or Homo sapiens.

If Spriggina was a proto-Trilobite, then it still needs answering how such "advanced" features such as multicellularity, (nearly) bilateral symmetry, cephalisation, legs, eyes, sense organs, a through gut, exoskeleton and all the complex structures as are found in Arthropoda were present right from the start.

But thanks for bringing Sprigging to my attention.

 

[Stripe]

If you have legitimate evidence then I won't be able to deny it. I'm not dishonest

Then you'll show some decency and extend that assumption to me.

Sent from my SM-A520F using TOL mobile app

 

[Hawkins]

There is the "E" word. Evidence. And even many creationists admit that there is massive evidence for evolution. As long as God has the ability to use evolution, any claim that He didn't remains your own speculation.

You don't have a good grip on how science works. Evidence is a subjective human interpretation of existence. Science is something else. There's a reason behind why science is accurate.

======
Science is about the prediction of an end-to-end repetition. Science is accurate because it's always about something which can repeat infinitive number of times for humans to observe and most importantly to predict how it repeats to draw a conclusion. The methodology ToE employed is completely different from any other science. This is so simply because it takes millions of years for a end-to-end evolution to possibly repeat itself. We don't have that time to observe and predict how it repeats to draw any scientific conclusion.

If you implicitly claim that a human can be evolved from in the end a single cell organism, then you have to make the single-cell to human process repeats itself infinitive number of times for humans to do enough observations, and most importantly predictions on how this repeats in order to draw a scientific conclusion. That's how each and every single science works.

This is so because humans are creatures of the present. We don't have the capability to reach the past, and we don't have the capability to reach the future. It is because we have no capability to reach the future that if we can correctly and repeatedly predict how a phenomenon repeats itself into the future, we know that we hit a truth in terms of how we make use of a "theory" to predict the repetition. This is the nature of science and why it is accurate. In a nutshell, science is the making use of prediction repeatedly to identify a truth (which can repeat). ToE is a valid hypothesis in suggesting that evolution (from single cell to fully grown) can be a repeating process (of natural selection). However it's not up to the scientific accuracy as long as you can't make it repeat itself (to the extent of infinitive number of times) for the prediction of its repetition to be made correctly and repeatedly.


That said, to me the theory of common ancestry is a joke in concluding that everyone has an invisible common ancestor without knowing who it is. In terms of how things work, the genes are so if you would like that animal to have its appearance and behavior. If you want a chimp to have its current appearance and behavior, you need the genes to be so disregarding whether the genes share anything in common with that of humans. Everything else can be anything, not necessarily be a result of evolution. It can be a result of interbreeding or a mixture of interbreeding and adaptation. The difference between adaption and evolution is that species can be selected by the nature, however this may not be the way how they are brought to their current state from a single cell.


An analogy is that whenever to see someone in uniform sitting in the cockpit, you draw the conclusion that he's a pilot. This can be true however it's a pure speculation. He's a pilot when he launches and lands a plane from one airport to another repeatedly as we predict. Then he's a pilot. This what science is and how it makes a difference from the pure speculation. Similarly, when you see how nature changes a species to draw the conclusion that nature can drive a single cell to that species, it's a pure speculation. If you can predict repeatedly how a single cell turns into that species without error, only then you have a science!

 

[The Barbarian]

You don't have a good grip on how science works.

Well, let's take a look at your argument.

Evidence is a subjective human interpretation of existence.

Nope. Evidence is factual data.

Science is something else.

Specifically, it's inferences from data. Guess how we all know you aren't a scientist.

Science is about the prediction of an end-to-end repetition.

No. It's a way of investigating the physical universe.

Science is accurate because it's always about something which can repeat infinitive number of times for humans to observe and most importantly to predict how it repeats to draw a conclusion.

Nope. It's drawing inferences from evidence.

The methodology ToE employed is completely different from any other science.

If you think so, you have no idea about either. Evolution is observed directly by scientists.
Perhaps you don't know what "evolution" means.

This is so simply because it takes millions of years for a end-to-end evolution to possibly repeat itself.

How long will it take to repeat the Rocky Mountains? So geology works like evolutionary theory. How long does it take a gas cloud to become a supernova? So astronomy works like evolutionary theory.

The reason evolutionary theory is accepted by almost all scientists, is that it makes testable predictions that can be determined by observation or experiment.

If you implicitly claim that a human can be evolved from in the end a single cell organism,...

Then you're a young Earth creationist. Humans evolved from other hominins.

That said, to me the theory of common ancestry is a joke in concluding that everyone has an invisible common ancestor without knowing who it is.

Many thousands of years ago, all humans had a common female ancestor. We don't know who the last common female ancestor was, but genetics shows she existed.

You seem to be similarly confused about what "adaptation" means. How about you define that one for us, too.

Meantime, how about trying to find any two major groups that are said to be evolutionarily connected, that lack a transitional form?

Do you have enough confidence in your new belief to test it?

 

[6days]

Barbarian "Humans evolved from other hominins.


God's Word "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

Barbarian observes:
Sounds like you've gotten misled on that. Let's see what He has to say about it...

Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Yep. You got some weird misdirection there. But unless you think the Earth is alive (Yes, I know there are "Gaia worshipers") God says that life came from non-life.
let



Yep. God created non-living material, and let it form living things. That was the plan. Life came from non-life, according to God.

Wrong on so many levels.

One being that even water has in it the breath of life.

1 John 5:8 KJV: And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

Barbarian "Humans evolved from other hominins.


God's Word "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

:thumb:

 

[Stripe]

:mock: Blablabarian.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian "Humans evolved from other hominins.


God's Word "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

True. The problem for you, is that you don't like the way He did it.

 

[The Barbarian]

That was very interesting. Thank you Barbarian.

This is certainly the most complex Ediacaran organism that I have ever seen.

My explanation would be as follows...
The Ediacaran was the period that God was experimenting with organisms which would fill the earth starting in the Cambrian. Most Ediacaran organisms never continued as species of the future. Thus they represent failed experiments. Even Spriggina, which you posted info on, has only been found in Australia, not worldwide. Then it too was a failed experiment and disappeared in the Cambrian, possibly reappearing, in improved form, as a Trilobite. I am perfectly happy with that.

If Spriggina was a proto-Trilobite, then it still needs answering how such "advanced" features such as multicellularity, (nearly) bilateral symmetry, cephalisation, legs, eyes, sense organs, a through gut, exoskeleton and all the complex structures as are found in Arthropoda were present right from the start.

Legs are not in evidence in Spriggina. Nor are eyes, antennae, or hard exoskeleton. In fact, the Cambrian explosion coincided precisely with the appearance of whole-body exoskeletons. There were sclerites on Precambrian organisms, but so far as I know, no one has found a complete exoskeleton from that time.

So there were some important changes from the Precambrian to the Cambrian.

But thanks for bringing Sprigging to my attention.

My pleasure. The vast majority of Precambrian multicellular organisms do not resemble much of anything we see today in living things.

 

[Stripe]

You don't like the way He did it.

From the dust of the Earth on day 6.

 

[The Barbarian]

Likewise, just before the appearance of modern humans, I see God playing with prototype apemen, in the period immediately before Adam and Eve.

It appears now that H. erectus lived on here and there for a long time after anatomically modern humans. And Neandertals are younger than the earliest modern humans, having become adapted to the extreme cold of ice age Eurasia.

And it turns out that genes from Denesovans were essential to the evolution of high-altitude life by the Tibetans. So it's messy.

All the hominid fossils besides Homo sapiens all died out in a mass extinction, as God settled on the improved version of Homo, or Homo sapiens.

Essentially, we had a bottleneck event,and all but a few thousand of one particular race survived. We remain one race today.

 

[6days]

The problem for you, is that you don't like the way He did it.(create humans)

It doesn't matter if we like how God created. What matters is that we believe what He says. Here is how He made woman... "So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man."

 

[iouae]

It appears now that H. erectus lived on here and there for a long time after anatomically modern humans. And Neandertals are younger than the earliest modern humans, having become adapted to the extreme cold of ice age Eurasia.

And it turns out that genes from Denesovans were essential to the evolution of high-altitude life by the Tibetans. So it's messy.



Essentially, we had a bottleneck event,and all but a few thousand of one particular race survived. We remain one race today.

And the Bible describes two such "bottleneck events". The first is Genesis 1 where we restart human existence with 2 Homo sapiens. The second is after the flood where we restart with 8,

Science verifies that all humans today come from only a few recent ancestors.

The human genographic/genome project and mitochondrial DNA support this evidence which essentially agrees with Genesis.

Likewise, the very recent rise of civilisations like Sumeria also agree with the Bible, with a few thousand year discrepancy, maybe. And Sumer is located near where Nimrod is described as building his first world-ruling civilisation, after the flood. Why did humans leave so little marks of civilisation on the world before Sumer? The Bible answers that. a) There was a worldwide flood which washed away the evidence b) all cultures tell of how they arose after a great flood, including the Sumerian culture.

For some reason, the earlier hominids did not leave stone buildings, houses, pyramids etc. They were not into anything bigger than stone tools and rock paintings. The desire to build civilisations I believe was built into modern man or Homo sapiens (viz. Adam and Eve) for the first time in hominid history. This is a dramatic difference from all other hominids.

 

[The Barbarian]

Actually, the Megalith culture, along the Atlantic coast of Europe, was building huge stone structures as early as 5000 years BC, about 1500 years before we see Sumerian monumental architecture.

And there are structures in Turkey, much older than that, maybe 9000BC.

Someone spread a nation or a culture which built huge stone structures, all around the western Atlantic coast of Europe long before the civilizations you cite.

 

[iouae]

Actually, the Megalith culture, along the Atlantic coast of Europe, was building huge stone structures as early as 5000 years BC, about 1500 years before we see Sumerian monumental architecture.

And there are structures in Turkey, much older than that, maybe 9000BC.

Someone spread a nation or a culture which built huge stone structures, all around the western Atlantic coast of Europe long before the civilizations you cite.

I would call the rise of mankind "an explosion", in the last few thousand years. Would you agree?
We go from it being almost impossible to find traces of humans, to a world changed by humans in just a few thousand years. This is the blink of an eye in geological time.

From the Cambrian explosion to the human explosion, the fossil record is one explosion after the other, such that they name each explosion Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian... etc, each with their own distinctive ecology, all fossilised separately.

I tried Googling megalith culture which you mentioned, and it seems you are right that there are thousands of these standing stones scattered everywhere. An example would be Stonehenge which I visited a few years ago, and at that time they struggled to explain its function. I think it had something to do with calculating the seasons.

It would be hard to date stones, but I remember there were holes for wooden poles among the stones, so maybe they found wood which maybe they could date. That is the trouble with stone axes, cave paintings and megaliths - I don't think these can be accurately dated. Nor can hominid fossils. Its the layers they are found in which dates these, but again, not accurately.

 

[6days]

And the Bible describes two such "bottleneck events".

That is dishonest. The Bible tells us that most of humanity was destroyed in the flood. The Bible does NOT describe any other bottleneck. I will withdraw my claim of dishonesty if you wish to say you mis-spoke.

Science verifies that all humans today come from only a few recant ancestors.

Even atheist anti-creationist, Steve Jones (geneticist prof) says you could wander into any village and find you are related to everyone.

For some reason, the earlier hominids did not leave stone buildings, houses, pyramids etc.

If you are suggesting that some form of humanity existed before Adam and Eve, then you are promoting a Gospel destroying belief system. A belief in pre-humans has the same theologal problems as the belief in aliens. Last Adam died for the descendants first Adam. A belief in intelligent life forms apart from Adam is a belief in a rather cruel God. These 'people' would suffer from pain and death for no reason other than a cruel Creator. From God's Word, we know humanity and all creation suffers because of one man's sin. We live in a corrpted creation. Creation was not a re-do. In so days God created the heavens and the earth and EVERYTHING in them. To believe earth and life pre-existed is anti-Biblical.