Did We Have "Reptilian" Ancestors?

BTW, contrary to what that paper says, there does seem to be a pretty obvious sequence of ALX3 present in chickens. If the annotation is correct it seems to be reduced, so it may not be functional, but the sequence is clearly there:

It’s also right where it should be in terms of synteny, between SLC6A17 and STRIP1 (also known as Fam40a).

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Another analysis (in mVISTA) confirms it: Chickens have ALX3 (the full sequence), but it definitely seems to have been lost in Lizards and Xenopus. At the very least it’s missing from the “proper” place in the synteny in these organisms.

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maybe. but they are still missing in some species between them. so here is how your hierarchy is broken.

ok but the point is that it doesnt fit with the suppose evolutionery hierarchy.

In what way? Be specific.

in terms of nested hierarchy. such cases actually break that hierarchy.

That’s not very specific. Are you suggesting that the “supposed evolutionary hierarchy” is supposed to be 100% perfect, with absolutely no secondary losses or parallel events? Do you also happen to believe that convergent evolution of body shapes between dolphins and ichthyosaurs is real challenge for evolution?

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no but this is the problem actually. by this criteria any finding will not falsify common descent.

The criteria is statistical models which incorporate both signal and noise. If there were no signal that rose above the expected noise in biological systems then that would falsify common descent. This is standard scientific modeling that is used throughout the sciences.

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I do not expect there to be a perfect correlation between these 2 variables. That does not mean that the statement “there is a positive correlation between the variables” cannot be falsified beyond reasonable doubt.

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you mean something like this?:

take a look at this (image e). its look almost random, and yet no one is claiming that evolution is false.

(image from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2014.0677)

Actually, it doesn’t look random at all. I’ll bet r^2 is pretty good. Am I right in my assumption that you have no idea what that figure is about?

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as far as i aware the figure compare the molecular date with the fossil one. and not for free the paper called “Flying rocks and flying clocks: disparity in fossil and molecular dates for birds”. but evolution is a fact, right?

Well, I’m glad you can read titles. What’s the problem for evolution here? What point, if any, were you trying to make?

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so first we see that you were wrong with your assumption about me. second: its just show that even when we find something that doesnt fit with evolution- evolution is still fine. and this isnt fine.

No, all we see is that you can read titles. There’s no evidence that you understand the figure, so far. In what way doesn’t this fit with evolution?

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the molecular date doesnt fit with the fossil one. its like finding that chimp and human were split off about 7-10 my ago (by the fossil evidence) and the molecular clock point to say 30-40 my.

It doesn’t fit in a very limited way, i.e. the dates don’t match. That indicates a problem with the calibration methods, not with evolution itself.

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Did you read the discussion to see what the authors said could be cause of this disparity? They’re all more plausible than “evolution isn’t true”.

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again: this is the probelm- anything can fit with evolution.