Re: ANCESTRY QUESTION?
Geoffrey Watson (gwat@cs.uq.oz.au)
24 Jan 1995 23:21:30 GMT
maverick@cs.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes:
>In article <3fv7ps$70a@hammer.msfc.nasa.gov> whorton@berea.msfc.nasa.gov (Mark S. Whorton) writes:
>> 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.
>Because it's an irregular and *extremely sparse* sample of all the
>animals that have ever lived. (Also, as I'll say again below, it's not
>generally thought that all populations everywhere are at all times "on
>their way" to some new form.) What do you think are the chances that
>a given animal will be fossilized after death?
[ etc ..]
I read something about this only yesterday. In his foreward to the book
"Bones", Mark A Norell gives the following estimates:
number of extant species - between 1 and 10 million
number of fossils named by science - approx. 100,000
The former are alive today, the latter cover the previous 3.7 billion years.
"extremely sparse" is right!!
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Geoffrey Watson gwat@cs.uq.oz.au
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