Whale evolutionists have some splaining to do, extinct whale found

Evolution can be reversed but certain conditions need to be in place. I read an article on that somewhere, it is why they think they can change a chicken back into a little T-rex or something.

reply to post by rickymouse


I saw that same thing discussed in a TED Talks. Here is a site that discusses it, also. (Sorry for the pop-up ad that spawns when you open it. The internet is an imperfect place)

I'm not sure if it's off-topic, but it seemed relevant to the main topic and is quite interesting.

www.livescience.com... te-dinosaur.html

My favorite quote from the article is:

The most important thing is that you cannot activate an ancestral characteristic unless the animal has ancestors. So if we can do this, it definitely shows that evolution works.

He makes a compelling point.

(I appreciate how most people in this thread have been able to discuss this topic without being condescending or belittling the various view-points. I really admire the level of maturity in this forum.)

reply to post by Druscilla

off from current models,

Current models ? Dru I have ZERO faith in current models. Except Cindy Crawford. Now there 's some endurance.

I Stopped reading the article when the arrogant morons said it is the last remaining animal alive. If they thought it has been extinct for 2 million years and they just found this one, why would they presume to know it is the last? Typical yet still infuriating when it comes to things like this.

reply to post by PrincessTofu


I've actually read that article by Horner. When I was researching this subject I must have read about twenty articles and research papers. It is possible that things can go backwards, there is plenty of science to prove it. Horner has researched this well.

Originally posted by Helious
I Stopped reading the article when the arrogant morons said it is the last remaining animal alive. If they thought it has been extinct for 2 million years and they just found this one, why would they presume to know it is the last? Typical yet still infuriating when it comes to things like this.

You misunderstood the article. They are referring to the evolutionary line of that type of whale, aka the species as a whole.. Similarly humans are the last survivor of our lineage, although we certainly aren't rare. Don't call people arrogant morons because you don't understand the science talk in an article, plus don't forget it's business insider, not exactly a science journal.

Originally posted by spyder550
This is how science works. Unlike the bible in which all knowledge was finalized in the ironage. Science "evolves" based on new information gathered through experimentation and observation.

To be giddy with excitement because a new fact has emerged to to challenge an belief is what makes science worth while.

To be giddy with excitement because a new fact has arrived that challenges existing theory, because you think it strengthens you ironage beliefs about creation is childish (I could have gone with moronic or idiotic but that would be harsh)

edit on 19-12-2012 by spyder550 because: (no reason given)

"This is how science works. Unlike the bible in which all knowledge was finalized in the ironage. Science "evolves" based on new information gathered through experimentation and observation."

If only science had paid closer attention to the scientific facts written in the Bible thousands or even hundreds of years ago - we probably have advance much much further that where we are now.

But as it is, science is trying to play catch up with the writers of the Bible had know long ago.

Case in point (just two out of hundreds):

The "Big Bang Theory".

The Universe and the Earth had a beginning!

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." -- Gen 1:1

That the earth is not being held by any physical means.

“He is . . . hanging the earth upon nothing.”—Job 26:7.

That the earth is round (a globe) not flat.

“It is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth.” -- Isa 40:22

need I say more?

p.s.

nice to be back from a long hiatus...

Originally posted by rickymouse
Evolution can be reversed but certain conditions need to be in place. I read an article on that somewhere, it is why they think they can change a chicken back into a little T-rex or something.

Let me tell you why this is considered a never-will-happen sort of thing.

Let's hypothesize an animal with a five base DNA strand. The basal form of that strand is ATTGA, for all members of the species right now. Let's assume reproduction by budding (sex would work the same but will only muddle the argument). Everything's going swimmingly for our friends; they're well positioned in their environment and functioning prosperously. Now, the chances of any particular change to the DNA through a single substitution is 1:1024, because there are 1024 possible expressions of the DNA..

Suddenly, an egg cell in one individual suffers a mutation. It might have been from a cosmic ray, or it may have been a chemical hiccup (something he ate), or a mitosis error. There are a lot of sorts of errors that could have happened: a duplication, a deletion, a swap, or inversion. We'll limit ourselves to simple substitutions. The cell's DNA now reads ACTGA. The egg cell goes on to bud and become an individual.

Several things could happen. The second spot on the DNA might be left over from an old virus attack thousands of years ago, and today have no function. In that case the new bud will look and function just like the old ones; no one will know there's been a change, because functionally there has not been one. Another possibility is that that base may have been part of the code for a vital protein, and is smack in the middle of the protein's active spot. The protein no longer works, or works differently. The chances are that the new bud probably dies, and the mutation dies with him. Since it only affected the bud, even his own mother won't have any greater probability to create such a mutant as any other species member would. The chance would be 1:1024 that the same mutation would happen in any new bud, including hers.

Or the protein created by the mutation might change the animal's function so that it tolerates fresh water better than it used to. The branch of the species living in fresh water can invade the estuary, lives a better life, buds prolifically and passes down the change, while the others can't bother them. We have the beginning of speciation.

Now, what was the chances of what happened happening? The chance of that particular change was 1:1024, but no one was looking for that particular change to happen before it did. Assuming some mutation happens, then the mutation occurring is just 1 - some change will happen if mutations are possible.It might have been ATTTA, but it actually was ACTGA, it worked, and the animal has expanded into a new niche. Whether that was good or not depends on the fresh water preditors, the existence of fresh water food, etc, etc.

Now, the fresh water preditors, small and disinterested in the new animal, themselves mutate to double their size. Suddenly the fresh water is not as good an environment for exploiting as it was before. What will happen?

Well, the mutant fresh water buds could fail, get eaten up, and they and the mutation die off. Or they could randomly develop a new mutation which might be neutral, detrimental or advantageous - say, they too double their size. Like the mutations before these will happen willy-nilly, and only natural selection will judge the results.

But there is your possibility - the mutation they had before that encouraged them to go fresh could reverse, and they would move back to the salt, evading the preditor. But what are the chances?

The chances of any change is 100%; mutations happen at a more or less fixed rate all the time. That could be any change at all to the DNA. But what you want is one particular change that would revert the DNA to ATTGA; that's a 1:1024 chance. It isn't likely that that change would happen; no more likely than ATTGT, or any other combination of the 1024 combinations.

The difference is that when going forward, mutations are bland, and any one will do as well as any other, from Mother Nature's disinterested viewpoint. But going backward requires an exact event to occur, only one of the 1024 possibilities. A low probability.

Finally, consider that a real genome has billions of base pairs, not five. And that most mutations visible in a species physiology or behavior require a long, multi-step process of individual changes, brought to the species by multiple members. You should be able to see that backtracking is hugely, hugely unlikely. Much more likely is that a different random mutation will in effect, remove their fresh water abilities since their environment doesn't favor going there, in a way completely independent of the way they got there.

No, reversal doesn't occur,not at the DNA level at least.

reply to post by puncheex


Well, I understand what your saying but that doesn't explain some of the things that are happening, especially in the modifications we see in species around the world. They seem to toggle based on food available to develop a certain way. If this was a random mutation this would basically not occur well. Seems to me that the effect of the epigenomics would steer the mutations in a certain defined way. The epigenomics is a history of evolution to food. This means if the environment goes backwards the evolution could basically preferrably go into the same direction. If the environment goes forward in an unrecognized way, a mutation would most likely occur randomly.

I'm trying to use structured patterns that would likely occur in my thoughts. Figures like one in a thousand odds have to be taken into consideration but when dealing with food and the recorded history in our Genomics the odds will change. We are constantly evolving to our food. Right now we are making too many changes too fast which will force a random mutation of our DNA instead of a reversal because these changes in the food have not existed in our past. If everyone ate the same foods for many generations, we would slowly start all looking the same but our genetic disposition would interfere with our perception and we might fight more. To maintain civility, we must eat to match our genetics, trouble is that this was ignored throughout history and especially now so we are getting more kranky (German for sick).

Originally posted by rickymouse
reply to post by puncheex

 

Well, I understand what your saying but that doesn't explain some of the things that are happening, especially in the modifications we see in species around the world. They seem to toggle based on food available to develop a certain way. If this was a random mutation this would basically not occur well. Seems to me that the effect of the epigenomics would steer the mutations in a certain defined way. The epigenomics is a history of evolution to food. This means if the environment goes backwards the evolution could basically preferrably go into the same direction. If the environment goes forward in an unrecognized way, a mutation would most likely occur randomly.

I'm trying to use structured patterns that would likely occur in my thoughts. Figures like one in a thousand odds have to be taken into consideration but when dealing with food and the recorded history in our Genomics the odds will change. We are constantly evolving to our food. Right now we are making too many changes too fast which will force a random mutation of our DNA instead of a reversal because these changes in the food have not existed in our past. If everyone ate the same foods for many generations, we would slowly start all looking the same but our genetic disposition would interfere with our perception and we might fight more. To maintain civility, we must eat to match our genetics, trouble is that this was ignored throughout history and especially now so we are getting more kranky (German for sick).

Quite often people think that being ambidextrous over food resources like that is a dichotomy, that the organism is either down the one path or the other and there are no other possibilities. This is not often the case in the real world; there are multiple possibilities, and that being "enabled" for more than one is often a good evolutionary strategy. In this case using one or the other is more a case of habit and expedience as it is of going down only one path when more then one is possible. This is the role of genetic diversity and adaptation, in which neutral potential changes are called upon to vital function as the result of a change in the environment. Epigenetics may play a part in that as well; in any case the DNA remains unchanged, having done its part to get the species roughly into its niche. But the statistics I presented above aren't time variant; nowhere is it important whether the changes happen fast (for genetics) or slow; reversal is just not in the cards. As to the outcome of this, I'll leave that to you