Re: ANCESTRY QUESTION?
WIlliam C. Wilson (Wildbill@ilhawaii.net)
24 Jan 1995 03:42:55 GMT
> What is intriguing to me is that proponents of biological evolution
> fail to see the glaring deficiencies in their theories to which you
> have alluded. Namely, if there are no clear boundaries betweeen species,
> then why does the fossil record show such distinct boundaries.
Why do people think that every body that dies becomes a fossil?
Fossils form ONLY when a series of unusual events and locations
ideal for preservation happen to occur together. everything else
is recycled into the biological systems very quickly. Since fosslis
are the rare lucky few of course most of the variations and small steps
in adaptations disappear and you get snapshots sort of like looking
at a timelapse film of a butterfly. 3 frames as an egg, 5 frames
as a caterpiller, 2 frames as a chrysalis, and 6 frames as a butterfly;
only if you are lucky do you ever get a frame of it changing from
stage to another.
> Alternatively, for those who have recognized the clear implications
> of the fossil record and have jumped from the darwinian frying pan to
> the fire of *punctuated equilibrium*, isn't it amazing that the quantum
> leap in speciation produced coincident organisms of opposite sex (so
> as to allow reproduction). That takes a lot more faith than believing
> in special creation. You know, maybe the Cambrian explosion isn't so
> strange after all....
The example of the butterfly is really punctuated evolution think of the same
kind of film of a frog's development for regular evolution. Then imagine
that you have a bunch of eggs but your camera can only focus on one
frog at a time, we know that all the frogs are experience much the
same thing but we have a record of only a random few who happen
to pass the camera just when it is taking a picture. Evolutionary research
suggests that about 20 generations are needed to start to see clear
phenotypic changes in a population that amounts to something less
than a few thousand years even for species that are extremely
long lived. Since the number of fossils found is determined by
the number of individuals and the conditions present only those
organisms that have huge numbers are likely to produce many fossils
or show much variation with time.
William C. Wilson
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