It seems that is exactly what he wants to say:
If Bechly could show that the rate of the evolution of new forms was constant throughout all of history and then abruptly halted just when humans appeared on the stage, sure, maybe that would merit his conclusion. But his challenge shows nothing of the sort. At best it shows that evolution doesn’t happen as quickly all the time, and the last 10 Ma happens to be one of the times when it isn’t happening as quickly. 
Holy crap. I must have been reading too fast as that failed to make an impression on me the first time I saw this. I should think that before he complains about vitriol he should probably ask himself whether he has not already rendered himself too absurd for words. What use is demolition against a self-destructive showing like that?
It implies, I think the logic goes, that evolution as we know it can’t account for the changes we’ve observed in the more distant fossil record. The point is that there is that if whales evolved in the past over 5 million years (or so), we should be seeing the same sorts of evolutionary changes now.
There does seem to be some interesting science here.
As I understand it, phenotypic change is not always constant. In times of ecosystem shifts from an equilibrium, phenotypic change can be far quicker.
So, my question: Were there any large ecosystem/climate/geographical shifts driving whale evolution faster than normal? Excluding the last 500 kya so, were there any particular ecosystem/climate/geographical shifts that would similarly accelerate phenotypic change?
Can we define “humans” for this purpose?
That makes no sense unless you assume, as does Bechly, that these sorts of changes have abruptly ceased in the recent past, because on the 7th day God rested.
Where?
Recovery from the K/T extinction, perhaps? All the large, amniote, marine animals went extinct.
Yep.
Intelligent design proponents can easily explain this pattern: there was creative intelligent intervention in the history of life, but this creative activity deliberately ceased with the arrival of humans as the final telos. Any further explanation would have to transgress the methodological limits of the design inference, …
I suppose we could test the hypothesis that evolutionary processes stopped 10Myr ago (but why?), but it’s not possible to test if design processes stopped without first stating what those processes are. We can’t know that creative activity was deliberately ceased without asking the designer (who had been notably reluctant to answer questions). “Design Inference” is code for “we haven’t got a hypothesis to test”. The tacit implication is that Biblical claims are somehow supposed to be scientifically testable.
With all due respect, no.
This, exactly this.
The previous occupier of the niches went extinct, leaving it wide open for adaptation by survivors. Do you think it is just some inexplicable accident that Basilosaurus is so similar to Mosasaurs? No role for natural selection in adapting the new occupant in a similar way?
I would think that as a terrestrial animal begins to exploit the oceans or the air, that they have introduced a tremendous shift in their environment which does not attend the more stable world of the kinfolk remaining behind. Change can then happen quickly until that niche is saturated.
Yes, indeed. It’d be quite another thing if that design inference WERE a testable hypothesis.
But these guys always seem to have it in mind that they have arrived at the inference, and that it is the FINAL inference: that beyond that there be dragons, or ineffability, or something. Hence, as I pointed out in my review, Meyer’s book The Return of the God Hypothesis is really something more like The Return of the Goddidit Assertion. He calls it a “hypothesis” but there is not one whiff of a research proposal to EXAMINE the hypothesis and test it. You’re just supposed to say, “well, other explanations don’t satisfy me, but this one does, and so I’m done.” That’s an inference – a terrible one, especially if you’re relying on the evidence and arguments offered by Meyer – but it’s not a hypothesis in any operative sense of the term.
I hear a faint cry from the offices of the DI, just four miles or so from mine: “Common Design!” I wouldn’t mind the noises, but when the wind blows north…
but when the wind blows north Hey, watch what you wish for, I am NNE of them!
More like due NW here. But I have the benefit of being close to the sewage treatment plant, which can mitigate it somewhat.
It’s just silly.
In hindsight the differences between Cambrian invertebrates would seem to us as being a wide impassable gulf given what we now know regarding how they would evolve. But if we were looking at them at the time with no future knowledge of how their descendants would diversify or what traits would form the basis of these body plans the differences wouldn’t seem all that great.
Legless lizards evolved independently more than once within their legged cousins, some comparatively recently. I would say having no legs versus legs is a different body plan.
Then there’s amphipods and isopods - crustaceans with legs bent in different directions in amphipods and the same direction in isopods - a body plan difference. In that case we know the developmental genes responsible for the difference between an amphipod and isopod body plan and can tweak them to make one look like the other. Is there some reason these genes can’t evolve like any other? Of course not.
Life shares a single common ancestry. The available evidence for this model is overwhelming. Virtually the only people still unconvinced of this have narrow religious beliefs that are incompatible with that conclusion. That should tell you everything you need to know.
I mean jeesh what’s the big difference between Pakicetus and Basilosaurus? Legs versus no legs?
Vertebrates lose legs all the time! Legless lizards are in at least 6 to 7 different families. There are legless amphibians. Snakes themselves are just very old legless lizards. Then if we are just thinking about appendages in general think about different eel-like fishes that have evolved entirely independently of one another, or the loss of wings in birds, or insects. If the big difference between the body plan of Pakicetus and Basilosaurus is just losing limbs then it seems like that change in body plan happens all the time in vertebrate animals.
Worse than that: Basilosaurids hadn’t even lost their hind limbs. They were just reduced. No good for walking around on, but still there. I don’t think that qualifies as a “body plan” modification even in the broadest sense.
But if that DOES qualify as a new “body plan,” what doesn’t? I would think that pretty much any difference in the details of the limb structures between any two related vertebrates would then be just as much a “body plan” modification as this.
I asked basically this same question of an ID proponent in a discussion about Bechly’s challenge over on Facebook, and their response was to assert that there had to have been significant changes in organ systems to support the transition to an aquatic lifestyle, pointing to adaptations that modern whales have. And sure, Basilosaurus probably did have some such changes… but obviously modern whales have had significantly more time to become further adapted!
I think it’s fair to say that Pakicetus and Basilosaurus probably couldn’t hybridize like the silverswords still can. But it seems plausible to me that the divergences between the silverswords are at least qualitatively of the same kinds as those between Pakicetus and Basilosaurus, and maybe even in the same order of magnitude quantitatively. If the only acceptable answer to Bechly’s challenge is to point to a literal pig and a literal whale whose MRCA lived 5 million years ago, I have to say think the game is rigged!
Bechly, oddly, refers to a countercurrent exchange system. I have no idea how he proposes to tell if Basilosaurus had such a system while Pakicetus did not.
I guess he would say plants don’t have a body plan. Notice with creationists they are almost always concerned with animals, and usually vertebrate animals. I thought Bechley was an invertebrate paleontologist so I would think he would be more creative in his examples.
I mean this is just ridiculous. Geckos like Nephrurus and legless geckos like Lialis can’t reproduce either. They have all kinds of differences besides just legs. They are evolved for different lifestyles. They clearly differ in their body plan. That should cover the bet, if it were a sincere bet to begin with, and always with these creationist “challenges” it’s not.
Yabut, muh 5 million years.
If it happened at some other, older geological period, it doesn’t count. Bechly wants the same thing to have happened within the last 5 million years and if it hasn’t, he (a former professional paleontologist) literally cannot even imagine a reason for that in his wildest fantasies.
No conceivable reason he says. It is beyond his capacity to conceive of.
Well, Puck, this nostril migration happens during whale ontogeny, so they yet might over the course of their lifetime