Apparently dolphin fins/flippers are out-of-place in the fossil record, but dolphins are not, even though the flippers/fins are in the same place as the dolphins.
You aren’t honest enough to justify the effort.
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This doesn’t explain why dolphin flippers are out of place, since they succeed both fish fins and terrestrial limbs.
Dolphin flippers aren’t out of place. They’re a derived state relative to the more primitive state of artiodactyl forelimbs. Simple.
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I’m not sure is that is the definition we are using or, more to the point, that Dawkins was using. It would be quite foolish of Dawkins to make such a claim (not that he is immune to saying foolish things), since there is no reason to expect that ages of the fossils we are fortunate enough to find will always coincide with the relative ages of the first appearance of a particular derived state. Tiktaalik was deliberately sought in geological strata that would have been predicted to belong to dates long after the first appearance traits in question, in order to increase the odds of finding a specimen that demonstrates those traits. Trying to find a specimen that was close in time to its first appearance would be to grossly defy the odds of success.
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@scd seems to think they are fins. That’s what his statement clearly implied, anyway.
Dawkins? When were we talking about Dawkins?
Well of course. But how is that relevant to the definition of “out of place fossil”? Naturally, given that the record is incomplete, we expect a certain proportion of out of place fossils.
Can you back that up? It doesn’t fit the story as I know it.
He’s not always coherent, you know.
so what are you suggesting? that the tiktaalik isnt the first with this kind of transitional fin and we have many other such fish before tiktaalik and the tetrapod tracks?
if so i already showed here such fossils. but biologists just push back their origin or claiming for a ghost lienage. this is why i want to hear your definition of out of place fossil, so i will try to find such a fossil that according to your definition will falsify common descent as dawkins claimed.
i actually agree with you about that john. and thus the famous claim that a precambrian rabbit will falsify evolution (as dawkins and other biologists think) is simply wrong.
sound like an excuse to me but ok.
ok but according to the evidence we do have the tiktaalik (and some close species) suppose to be the first one with a transitional fin.
This entire line of discussion arose out of @scd responding to a quote from Dawkins, in which he said evolution would be falsified by a single “out of place” fossil.
Exactly. According to this definition, then, evolution is not falsified by a single out of place fossil. So either Dawkins was using a different definition of “out of place”, or he was just wrong.
Once we have researched all the fossils relevant to the water-to-land transition, we begin to get an idea of what timeframe this transition happened in. We know the lobe-finned fish are from 390-380 million year old rocks. The first tetrapods appear around 363 million years ago. Common sense tells us that the transitional form must have arisen 380-363 million years ago. In order to find our transitional fossil, we’ll need to find rocks that are between 380 and 363 million years old.
https://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/searching4Tik2.html
If they’d wanted to find the first transitional form, they would have looked at around 380 mya or earlier. But they would have had to be very, very lucky to find it.
Yes. Or, more accurately, that such forms existed and we just haven’t found their fossils yet.
Oh. So you agree with Dawkins and say you could find this one fossil that will falsify evolution if we just give you the right definition. But you disagree with Dawkins and don’t believe you could falsify evolution with a single fossil.
Make up your mind.
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That wasn’t Dawkins. J. B. S. Haldane, I think. But yes, it’s wrong.
Can we agree that Dawkins (Haldane, actually) was wrong?
That quote actually shows that your claim was wrong. What do you mean by “first transitional form”? They were looking for an intermediate, so they looked in the middle. That’s all it says.
That’s false. None of the evidence supports the idea that Tiktaalik is the first species with the transitional fin.
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Sure, if that is the definition of “out of place” that Dawkins intended. I am not sure that he was not, instead, referring to a fossil demonstrating a combination of traits that would defy placement in an nested hierarchy. Although I accept that I may be mistaken in thinking there is a difference between the two definitions.
The earliest organism possessing the derived characteristics demonstrated by Tiktaalik. @scd’s argument is based on the presumption that specimen of Tiktaalik that was found is that organism.
What makes you think they weren’t looking for just that? What makes you think such an organism ought to be closer to 380ma than 360ma?
That’s not at all the point of a Precambrian rabbit. That’s more in the flying pig vein.
Because, it appears to me, that would be such a long shot that no one would even bother trying.
However, finding a good example of the transitional form, from any point of the chronology, is considerably more likely, and no less scientifically significant.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be. However, if you want to find the earliest possible example of something, it only makes sense to look at the earliest possible point in the timeline to find it. If you only look at rocks from 363 mya, someone looking at rocks from 380 mya might scoop you.
Dawkins did not specifically refer to a “Precambrian rabbit” at least as paraphrased by @scd . Just to a fossil that would be “out of place.” I have no idea if he specified exactly what he meant by that, as I figure it is @scd’s job to clarify that.
Here is the comment where @scd first brought it up:
It seems quite clear that @scd was referring to the Precambrian rabbit sort of scenario. And so was Dawkins. The flying pig is quite different and not relevant to the current discussion.
I won’t even pretend to be clear on what @scd is referring to at any given time.
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This still doesn’t make sense. The penguin ancestors spent more time in the water, and those whose wings that were more flipper like were better swimmers, passing on those characteristics.
Why should another evolutionary formation of a fin be out of place? It’s not the fin of a fish, and neither is the fin of a dolphin. Now that would be out of place
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Understandable, given that he probably isn’t sure himself.
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im just saying that dawkins is wrong when he say that a single out of place fossil will falsify evolution. its incorrect.
do you have any reference for an earlier such fossil? remember that it should also be earlier than the tetrapod tracks.
are you suggesting that according to evolution it will be impossible to evolve a fish fin twice?
OK. Well, @John_Harshman has helped convince me that is true, if we are defining “out of place” in the manner you are.
How do you explain the fact that so many fossils are in place? What kind of pattern of fossils would be predicted by creationism?