New whale fossil represents intermediate stage between foot-powered and tail-powered swimming

a reply to: Quadrivium

pretty sure I already stated "who" considers science religion..

Fortunately we know science makes mistakes... its far from perfect... but we learn from them...

a reply to: Quadrivium

IMO saying "Science is..." Right or Wrong is a bit dubious. I mean "Science" covers an awful lot of ground.

Aeronautics is a type of science that we've figured out pretty well. We're making some pretty damn amazing progress in medical science as well. When you get to Cosmology and Quantum Physics things get more theoretical. But still based on research. Evolution I would assume would have it's own areas where things get theoretical too.

Doesn't mean you can just say Science is wrong. You can't even say "Evolution" is Right or Wrong. I mean which part???

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: Quadrivium

pretty sure I already stated "who" considers science religion..

Fortunately we know science makes mistakes... its far from perfect... but we learn from them...

Why are you telling me?
Maybe you need to reply to strongfp.
Again, science is not a religion.
People treat it as such.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: Quadrivium

IMO saying "Science is..." Right or Wrong is a bit dubious. I mean "Science" covers an awful lot of ground.

Aeronautics is a type of science that we've figured out pretty well. We're making some pretty damn amazing progress in medical science as well. When you get to Cosmology and Quantum Physics things get more theoretical. But still based on research. Evolution I would assume would have it's own areas where things get theoretical too.

Doesn't mean you can just say Science is wrong. You can't even say "Evolution" is Right or Wrong. I mean which part???

Not sure the point you are making....

originally posted by: Quadrivium
I have had a thought for YEARS.
Evolutionists (yes it's a word, get over it) believe in natural selection.
Evolution is only adaptation. Life is given the ability to survive. It is based on environmental influence. If the climate changes in an environment animals will start changing according on a microscopic level.
Some science(tist) are starting to show just that.
Life WAS GIVEN the ability to change, to adapt, to survive.

Natural Selection isn't just Adaptation though. Adaptation might be one way something survives over time but for some things it's not their adaptation at all but their ability to thrive in a niche environment where almost no adaptations at all occur.

originally posted by: muzzleflash
a reply to: Barcs
There cannot be an intermediate blow hole. It literally had to form completely in one jump.

Sure their can be an intermediate blow hole

It would be a normal nostril at the tip of the snout that developed the ability to open an close when submerging in water. The ability to close your nose when entering the water to hunt for fish would be an important improvement and not a difficult one; we humans have the musculature to fan out our nostrils, a little more skin and muscle and its not hard to imagine closing your nose.

After the ability to close the nostril, all that would be needed is the gradual movement of the nostril up the face until it was in the optimal spot for longer and longer submersion.


It is correct that non of this speculation is proof of evelution. but your utter disbelief that a blow hole could possibly evolve is more proof of your lack of imagination than it is proof that evolution could not have created a blow hole.

originally posted by: mOjOm

originally posted by: Quadrivium
I have had a thought for YEARS.
Evolutionists (yes it's a word, get over it) believe in natural selection.
Evolution is only adaptation. Life is given the ability to survive. It is based on environmental influence. If the climate changes in an environment animals will start changing according on a microscopic level.
Some science(tist) are starting to show just that.
Life WAS GIVEN the ability to change, to adapt, to survive.

Natural Selection isn't just Adaptation though. Adaptation might be one way something survives over time but for some things it's not their adaptation at all but their ability to thrive in a niche environment where almost no adaptations at all occur.

Which is another proof for the thought.
The environmental conditions haven't changed much so there is no need to adapt.

a reply to: Quadrivium

Proof of what thought?? You lost me.

Are we still talking about whales and blowholes??

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: muzzleflash

It wasnt a single jump... it was a long drawn evolution. Do you even know how evolution works?

Did they begin the process by dipping their pinky in the cold water from the shore every day?

a reply to: Puppylove

That’s ludicrous, science is not faith
Science is based on repeatable observable and testable evidence

Irrespective, this is about a fossil and it’s validity as scientific evidence of evolution and it has no evidence at all

Predictions? just listen to yourself.

You are an adult, make your own decisions about walking across the road or not, where you put your faith.
I don’t see any scientific evidence in a fossil being anything but proof of life and death

As I said to the previous poster, science me into submission
I hold no fear of evolution, it may be a fact, just prove it as a fact before I jump on the evolution wagon

Your post is really a strawman

a reply to: Raggedyman

If you see no proof from fossils besides life and death, that's on you. Most people aren't that stunted intellectually and can compare, contrast and draw conclusions.

You've already said all a fossil could ever prove to you is life and death. Which means even if we found whole skeletons that covered the full transition of every whale from land based to today, it wouldn't be evidence to you. Because fossils mean nothing to you. What do you want people to do, build a time machine and make a time lapse video of the evolution of whales? I mean are you incapable of piecing together evidence from smaller fragments and drawing conclusions? There are countless upon countless of fossils out there in various transitive states between varying beings. We can even make such connections using genetics now involving fossils that still have such material.

What do you require, to be able to observe and see it with your own eyes? Do you need to be granted immortality and be allowed to observe evolution over millions of years until you can observe something long enough for it to change enough for you to accept it as evolved?

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: Quadrivium

Proof of what thought?? You lost me.

Are we still talking about whales and blowholes??

I was replying to this post: www.abovetopsecret.com... Where you quoted an earlier post of mine.

a reply to: Quadrivium

Speaking of blowholes I have seen a skull from a whale like ancestor in which the nose was half way up the face along the snout. Not sure where though. Just an interesting tidbit.

a reply to: mOjOm

Naw it's faith, just not blind faith. I could still get hit by a meteor, have not known a car was about to speed around a corner, could get shot by some hooligan. Many things could still kill me crossing the street. Hell our very senses are faulty, we can see, hear and believe things that aren't true or real without knowing it. Every action is based on some level of faith no matter how much that faith is backed by observation that confirms it's likeliness.

It's all a game of odds, with the goal being to take the actions that have the greatest odds of success or being true and taking any evidence to the contrary and adding it to the calculation.

a reply to: mOjOm

Your right there are many sciences I can think of that show evolution occurs, paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and many more I can't think of I'm sure. Each having their own set of proofs that it occurs. Evolution is a confirmed fact we have seen it occur in labs field studies and of course paleontology. Evolution could be disproved if you can find 1 instance of a species that had spontaneous generation from inanimate matter. Find a creature that suddenly came to life and it instantly disproves evolution.

People want to argue evolution doesnt exist because scientists will argue over details, none deny evolution they simply argue over specific details like how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans. Every branch of science will do this from physics or astronomy even medical sciences. Science continually strives to refine details of our current knowledge base.

Now where there is an area science cant prove. The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Problem is just because we can prove this in a lab doesnt mean thats how it happened on earth. But evolution was never meant to explain the origins of life people just make that mistake through lack of understanding.


oh and if someone really wants to learn about the evolution of whales here is a good place to start.

evolution.berkeley.edu...

originally posted by: Puppylove
a reply to: Raggedyman
We can even make such connections using genetics now involving fossils that still have such material.

Sorry, didn’t you say to me science was faith?
Didn’t I correct you

I don’t think talking to someone who discusses science, evolution and time machines is a wise choice
Nor DNA in fossils, unless you believe in a young earth...
Go make a time machine, do something, count me out

a reply to: Quadrivium

This is the problem a lot of people have when it comes to evolution.

For one, it's a very complex and broad subject that spans from basically physics all the way to our complex brains. To understand it fully it takes quite at bit of dedication and understanding of several fields of science, the best way to start is physical traits and similarities, this is why I kept bringing up taxonomy.

Second the language you use to describe how people view science with 'faith', is all based on the context, if I am part of a team of people playing hockey, I have faith in my teammates that they will fulfill their dedication to play at their highest peak of physical fitness to win the game. In the context of science I will have faith that my hypothesis will be correct and the experiments will go according to plan. If they don't I don't loose my faith in science, it actually stregnthens it even more that perhaps the mistakes made I learned from and I build upon them, the faith I am putting in is in ME and other people who contributed to such scientific finds.

You are giving it a religious context, and that's it. It's not the same.

But lets go back a bit and see why evolution still stands the tests of time, to even back when Darwins natural selection was first presented.

www.nationalgeographic.com... is a good article that built off the principles of evolution and added more data and niche finds within the evolutionary theory.

A few quotes from the article:

Question:

A 2009 headline in the British magazine New Scientist said “Darwin was wrong” and was immediately seized upon by creationists. Explain the issues and how the latest science is rewriting the idea of natural selection.

Answer:

It’s not rewriting the idea of natural selection. Rather, it’s rewriting our understanding of evolution, of which natural selection is still a very important part. There are two phases in classic Darwinian evolution. First, there is the arising of variations from one creature to another or one individual population to another. That was thought to occur incrementally, in very slow stages, by mutations in the genome. Once there are variations among individuals, natural selection, the survival of the fittest, acts upon those variations.

What is new, and caused New Scientist to run that over-stated and provocative headline, “Darwin Was Wrong,” is that we now understand there is another, hugely significant form of variation. It’s not just incremental mutation, but horizontal gene transfer, bringing entirely new packages of DNA into genomes.

One of the axioms in Darwin’s day, natura non facit saltus, which your good Latin training [laughs] will tell you means nature does not make leaps; things happen incrementally. But horizontal gene transfer has revealed that nature does sometimes make leaps, whereby huge lumps of DNA can appear in an individual or population quite suddenly and then natural selection acts on them. That can be a very important mechanism in the evolution of new species.

Another interesting quote:

We now understand that we humans, along with most other creatures, are composites of other creatures. Not just the microbiome living in our bellies and intestines, but creatures that have over time become inserted in our very cells. Every cell in the human body contains, for instance, little mechanisms that help package energy. Those are called mitochondria. We now realize that those mitochondria are the descendants of captured bacteria that were either swallowed by, or infected, the cells that became complex cells of all animals and plants. Likewise, 8 percent of the human genome, we now know, is viral DNA, which has come into our lineage by infection over the last 100 million years or so. Some of that viral DNA is still functioning as genes that are important for human life and reproduction.

You can see even when evolution seems to be at the end of it's road, it just becomes stronger and stronger.

Is that because of religious faith or what?

a reply to: Raggedyman

You're the one making unreasonable demands. I'm just trying to figure out what you would accept as evidence. As for genetics in fossils, not all fossils are from millions of years ago. Take mammoths for example. I think your issue is you over simplify the evidence, and deny the context around it.

a reply to: dragonridr

Can you show me repeatable observable and testable science for evolution
Sounds easy to you
The argument ends

Go do science and win it for evolutionists everywhere

Talk big but it’s just talk in the end

a reply to: Puppylove

Listen Pups, go get science, your opinion is irrelevant
As are your fossils with DNAA,
I asked for real scientific evidence and that’s unreasonable, really

DNA in fossil, I never 😬, show me🤫🤣