ok. but that is indeed out of place fossil (at least according to my definition, remember that you ask for my opinion). since we have no fossil that represent species number 2 we need to assume that such a fossil exist and we just didnt find it yet. so we can call it “ghost lineage” how much we want but its still out of place.
indeed. the first appearance is what counts. so fish appear before mammals and reptiles and thus are the more primitive lineage.
indeed at the species level. at the family level i think that the story is a bit different. so or so it doesnt change the fact that a specific fossil is still out of place.
I don’t know what the “mix idea” is. But it should be obvious: if evolution doesn’t happen all at once (like magical poofing), then different traits should evolve at different times, scattered through evolutionary history. You may have a big brain, but you also have five fingers, a primitive trait, while horses for example are highly derived in having only one.
Then there are many millions of “out-of-place” fossils by your definition, including - since they all post-date the evolution of land creatures - every marine fossil after the Carboniferous.
This is not the slightest problem for evolution.
It does make it remarkable that even though there are millions of fossils that are “out-of-place” by your definition, the examples you provided earlier aren’t among them, so you have failed to name even one.
no, since they appearing before mammals for instance. but if they were appeared after the first mammal- then yes. i would say that they are out of place in such a case.
by checking its traits i guess. the same way we know that a specific fossil represent a mammal for instance.
i dont think so since we have many marine fossils before the land fossils. so its still the right order (marine and then land). unless there are fossils that suppose to be more primitive.
I think @scd has this part right. It’s the first appearance of a trait that we should count, not every appearance. In this case, fins ought to appear before legs. If the first animal with legs appears before the first animal with fins, that should count as an “out of place fossil”.
Now of course the record is incomplete, and we do expect to see a certain percentage of such fossils. But we should also expect there to be a statistically significant pattern in which the first instance of a primitive state precedes the first instance of a derived state for any particular character. And that is indeed what we observe.
And, in more general terms, only evolution would predict that we see a fossil record in which it is even conceivable to determine the first instance of any particular attribute. Whereas if creationism was true and every “kind” was just magically poofed into existence fully formed, there would not be even the bare semblance of such a pattern.
While I mostly agree with you here, YEC would say that kinds were programmed with the ability to evolve rapidly based upon environmental changes. OEC would say that God may have stepped in to steer the process from time to time. So, there should still be a similar record in either case. Unless I misunderstand what you are saying.
This argument overlooks an important point: YEC would not predict the appearance of fins prior to the appearance of fingers in the fossil record, but evolution does. Score: evolution 1, YEC 0.
This is a philosophical interpretation rather than a scientific hypothesis that makes predictions. I have no objection to OEC as you have formulated it; I just want to make sure we keep our categories clear.
They are emphatic, however, that a given “kind” will never evolve into another “kind”. That should still predict a fossil record with at least all the various higher taxa jumbled together, so no KT boundary or other extinction transitions by geologic strata.
YEC also only recognizes one extinction event, the flood, where the majority of fossils were formed, so regardless of their order of appearance, all the derived kinds also should be found together.
Good points Chris. The point I was intending to make is that both of these camps would say that, based upon their models, they would expect to see a pattern or some patterns, but not no pattern.
Agreed and understood. When Faizal commented above, I was reminded of a conversation about evidence of age due to volcanism with a YEC who explained that his camp “also accepted volcanoes.” So similar terms are used, but in different ways, so clarity is required.
i dont think so. depend on its evolutionery state. if for instance the first tiktaalik was date to about 10 my- it will be out of place since it appearing to late. but if it was a carp then not since the carp belong to a group that is much older.
We can find fossils of teleost fish that should come before lobed finned fish, and some of those fossils are 10,000 years old. Are they out of place? We can still find lobed finned fish in the modern day. Why couldn’t there be a modern species that preserved the less derived features found in Tiktaalik?
if they have traits that suppose to predate the tiktaalik, and they first appeared about 10,000 years ago, then yes. at least according to my definition.
Good point. Perhaps non-lobed finned bony fish would be a better term. Better yet, non-terrestrial Sarcopterygians might work, if my cladistic-fu is powerful enough.
What you need to do, and unfortunately the literature doesn’t generally realize this either, is talk about primitive vs. derived character states, not primitive and derived species. Fins should precede legs in the fossil record. They do.
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