Evolutionists, how do you explain this?

a reply to: firefromabove

Well, hey, you're in luck. While I'm not an "evolutionist scientist" I do have a degree in Archaeology and I spent many an afternoon studying bones.

To the average person a bone is just a bone. How much can one learn from a thigh bone? An immense amount. Right off the bat the shape and angle of the femur head along with the length of the femur neck will tell you how an animal walked or stood.

A jaw bone is amazingly telling. The length of the jaw, position of the teeth, and position of the mandibular condyle (fancy words for the part of the jaw that fits into the socket of the skull) help determine the shape of the face.

Now to be fair most of the gaps filled in are through comparing and contrasting to the skeletons of other animals but is wholly reliable. There are subtle differences but nothing so dramatic as to mistake a thigh bone with an arm bone or the like.

It is not perfect but it is not done whimsically. It is a painstaking effort done with the knowledge that someone down the line might find another piece of the puzzle that completely changes everything we think we know as in the case with recent discoveries of dinosaurs. Instead of shying away from these discoveries, they are embraced, because it adds more to the knowledge pool. Boiled down, science is just the best known answer for now until the next breakthrough.

originally posted by: MonkeyFishFrog
Now to be fair most of the gaps filled in are through comparing and contrasting to the skeletons of other animals but is wholly reliable. There are subtle differences but nothing so dramatic as to mistake a thigh bone with an arm bone or the like.

Not to be a total pest, well not the worst one ever at least, I see so much head (skull, jaw, etc) variation just watching cinema & series, that the apparent diversity of 'everyday humans' is currently so immense that over thinking specific 'humanoid' fossils seems just as inherent as if we went and studied 1,000 skulls in se New York City.

originally posted by: Tinystarlight

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss
a reply to: Tinystarlight

So ONLY if a "missing link" is found, are we to believe that the earth is more than 5,500 years old?

No?

Good.

"Evolution" isn't adaptation as an inherent design???

Creatures (specific species) can only exist if the God of Abraham (with His male persona beard, testicle hormones, etc) stepped in and said "yey"?

F man, you're so prickly on this stuff, jeezus!

I just said the fossil record is millions of years old dude.

Thousands of millions actually, as in billions of years.

originally posted by: thekaboose
Proof is needed, if you do not offer sources, proof or anything else then you are just showing your own bigoted ignorance

Ande "proof" isnt even really possible on anything (outside of raw adaptation being an inherent design of life) that is likely to be mentioned herein, therefore agnosticism is the only true logical position to be taking.

originally posted by: Mandroid7
I sent my DNA to Ancestry.com.

They traced me back to an Amoeba in Siberia.

How do you explain that?

Your an amoeba posing as a person?

a reply to: MonkeyFishFrog

To the average person a bone is just a bone. How much can one learn from a thigh bone? An immense amount. Right off the bat the shape and angle of the femur head along with the length of the femur neck will tell you how an animal walked or stood.

I liked this part so I figured I'd help with a visual reference.



Now as we see we have 2 similar objects we can recognize, keys. Most people can discern the top key goes to a car and the bottom key goes to a door, but they are both keys. We can tell what goes to what because we have interacted with those objects regularly and are familiar with them.

That's how an archaeologist sees bones.

a reply to: firefromabove

What do artists renderings of what something might have looked like have to do with evolution? And do you need a picture of a thing to know that it existed? Of course not.

The question I believe you're actually trying to ask is not how can a paleontologist determine a species's morphology from a fragment. This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding on your part. Chiefly, that anyone is even claiming to know with certainty the morphology of an extinct species from a mandible.

That's not the case.

Like everything else, scientific understanding is always evolving. It's funny how on certain things religious folks just become instantly anti-science. You're communicating with people on a vast network that spans the globe from devices that are the result of tens of thousands of individual advances in scientific understanding.

Technology evolves.

But I digress, when it comes to a species, what's "known" is what can be observed. The rest is deduced but nobody is pretending otherwise. Imagine a scientists finds a jawbone. The jawbone is similar to other mandibles that have been observed but it also has differences that make it unique. The researcher might hypothesize that a new species has been found and estimate its relationship to known species but it's very preliminary. Then a second jawbone is found. And then somewhere else, several teeth. The two mandibles are very similar to one another and show the same unique variations from others known. Same story for the teeth in the mandibles and the other teeth that were found loose.

As the evidence mounts of many individuals, the new species gains acceptance. Researchers will try to classify it. This is where deductions can be made. Consider the case of Gigantopithecus which is known much in the way that I just described.

Now you might have seen artists renderings of what Gigantopithecus might have looked like but this is just a guess made by an artist drawing on input from researchers. In the case of Gigantopithecus, they can tell that it's an ape because on many many points of comparison, the mandible is similar to other known apes but it's different enough that they can deduce that it's not for instance a gorilla. They can also estimate the body size from these mandibles because there are known relationships between the size of an apes jaw and its overall body size.

This is where the knowledge gleaned from physiology come into play.

If a great ape with a jaw that is very similar to an orangutan has a mandible and teeth 2x the size of the biggest orangutan, we can deduce reasonably, that the original animal was 2x the size of the biggest orangutan. In the same way, there are known relationships between the size of primate's teeth and their jaws. So they can estimate the size of a mandible from the size of the teeth that are discovered and from there, the size the specimen might have been.

Having estimated the size and drawing on the knowlege of physiology of other apes (and also disciplines like physics which can help to illuminate things like the amount of surface area the animal would need in order to dissipate heat if it had a certain mass) other estimates can be made.

Then somebody comes along and wants to draw a picture of what Gigantopithecus might have looked like. So he asks about all these estimates/deductions/guesses and starts drawing the animal with what is known and then what has been estimated/deduced and finally, will fill in gaps with what is known of the most closely related species.

If we could travel back in time, would a Gigantopithecus look like the picture? It very well may but then again, maybe not. Different artists will arrive at different conclusions and make different decisions and produce a different picture. Some might be closer than others. They might all get it wrong. Gigantopithecus could have been purple though everything we know about coloration of apes suggests that a purple ape is highly improbably outside of cartoons.

But in terms of the validity of evolution, none of that really matters because evolution has little to nothing to with comparing artists' renderings of what what a species might have looked like.

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

originally posted by: thekaboose
Proof is needed, if you do not offer sources, proof or anything else then you are just showing your own bigoted ignorance

Ande "proof" isnt even really possible on anything (outside of raw adaptation being an inherent design of life) that is likely to be mentioned herein, therefore agnosticism is the only true logical position to be taking.

I do beg to differ, if proof isnt possible and you have to go on what we have in front of us -

Evolution side:

- Fossils
- DNA analysis
- Animal adaptation

God side:

- Some books

The logical side would be evolution.

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: MonkeyFishFrog

To the average person a bone is just a bone. How much can one learn from a thigh bone? An immense amount. Right off the bat the shape and angle of the femur head along with the length of the femur neck will tell you how an animal walked or stood.

I liked this part so I figured I'd help with a visual reference.

Now as we see we have 2 similar objects we can recognize, keys. Most people can discern the top key goes to a car and the bottom key goes to a door, but they are both keys. We can tell what goes to what because we have interacted with those objects regularly and are familiar with them.

That's how an archaeologist sees bones.

Just by chance, did someone make those keys? Because if they did. All you are saying is that someone studying something that was already made, can make a distinction between them.

Kinda proving the point that the bones were created, just like a key was.

a reply to: firefromabove

Perhaps they find a bone similar to, but slightly different from other animals known of. They know from their background in animal physiology, similar animals which are possibly related to the animal that had the bone fragment.

They then note the differences, the age of the animal when it died, the size of the bone, differences in tendon anchor points, balance and pivot points.

From the bone fragments there are certain things we can know about the creature. From similar creatures, we can surmise even more about the animal.

Yes, we can then, finally, fill in the spaces using imagination.

I'm not usually an apologist for evolution but I thought I should mention that there is some good science behind the assumptions drawn from fossils.

originally posted by: firefromabove
a reply to: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

I'm not sure how people drawing extinct animals disproves evolution

That's not what I said

How can a single jawbone be the basis for an understanding of what the creature may have looked like

Evolutionists just magically know everything, don't they.

No, they use books too. Just not one big scary book that tells you what to think, as opposed to telling you TO think.

Why is it so? I guess everything was just plopped down on the earth 2000+ years ago and god went for a nigh nigh..

a reply to: theantediluvian


Great post. A fantastic comparison to the artist rendition aspect is dinosaurs were scaled, yet new (well new to some that is) evidence is showing more and more they were likely feathered. That would render most depictions of dinosaurs as incorrect on the exterior, but structurally and internally correct.

originally posted by: Tinystarlight
But a human is always a human, he will always remain so.

Well, no. That's the point of evolution. The organism will experience mutations which, through natural selection, will continue to propagate down its generations until it no longer resembles the original and is a different species.

This isn't news. This is known. That's why we share so much DNA with a chimp and a pig and a flatworm. We *all* come from single celled organisms many hundreds of millions of years ago.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

that goes for every other living kind (species) that exists on earth. There is no evidence, visible or otherwise that any kind ever broke the barrier.

Things don't just break a barrier. You're assuming you can see : pig, pig, pig, pig --> donkey. It doesn't work like that. The change is so subtle you need to look at it from a very large view, as in over millions of years and look at what the animal started with, and where it is now.. (I'm not saying a pig becomes a donkey -- it was just an example to make a point)

So your point is mute.

No, his point isn't. You're just very, very wrong.

Tell us, what is your belief on why we have such a diversity of animal species on Earth? Where did they come from?

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: firefromabove

Perhaps they find a bone similar to, but slightly different from other animals known of. They know from their background in animal physiology, similar animals which are possibly related to the animal that had the bone fragment.

They then note the differences, the age of the animal when it died, the size of the bone, differences in tendon anchor points, balance and pivot points.

From the bone fragments there are certain things we can know about the creature. From similar creatures, we can surmise even more about the animal.

Yes, we can then, finally, fill in the spaces using imagination.

I'm not usually an apologist for evolution but I thought I should mention that there is some good science behind the assumptions drawn from fossils.

A lot of it is fantasy. When ape-man was drawn, it was literally a man fantasying it. No link. No bones. No nothing but fairy-tale imagination which so many skeptics believe today.

And they don't even realize they are skeptical of the wrong thing.

originally posted by: Tinystarlight

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: MonkeyFishFrog

To the average person a bone is just a bone. How much can one learn from a thigh bone? An immense amount. Right off the bat the shape and angle of the femur head along with the length of the femur neck will tell you how an animal walked or stood.

I liked this part so I figured I'd help with a visual reference.

Now as we see we have 2 similar objects we can recognize, keys. Most people can discern the top key goes to a car and the bottom key goes to a door, but they are both keys. We can tell what goes to what because we have interacted with those objects regularly and are familiar with them.

That's how an archaeologist sees bones.

Kinda proving the point that the bones were created, just like a key was.

Correct!

Bones were created from cellular division.

originally posted by: Tinystarlight
Just by chance, did someone make those keys? Because if they did. All you are saying is that someone studying something that was already made, can make a distinction between them.

Kinda proving the point that the bones were created, just like a key was.

Holy buckets... Bones evolved when we started needing a skeleton to move. Don't tell the crabs and lobster though, they're a bit behind the times.

And your ant bones don't exist.

No one MADE bones. our environment forced us to adapt our evolution. Now a key is not a requirement for evolution. It is a tool. Just like when Ugh the caveman used a brontosaurus bone to get his wife to marry him in his cave.

Let me ask, the words you speak, are they the same ones that were used thousands of years ago? hundreds? Did someone magically just implant us with all the words we know? why different languages? Why different accents? What if..... what if that language has evolved. kek rofl ikr.

originally posted by: noonebutme

originally posted by: Tinystarlight
But a human is always a human, he will always remain so.

Well, no. That's the point of evolution. The organism will experience mutations which, through natural selection, will continue to propagate down its generations until it no longer resembles the original and is a different species.

This isn't news. This is known. That's why we share so much DNA with a chimp and a pig and a flatworm. We *all* come from single celled organisms many hundreds of millions of years ago.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

that goes for every other living kind (species) that exists on earth. There is no evidence, visible or otherwise that any kind ever broke the barrier.

Things don't just break a barrier. You're assuming you can see : pig, pig, pig, pig --> donkey. It doesn't work like that. The change is so subtle you need to look at it from a very large view.

You can breed dogs, and have all kinds of dogs. You can breed horses and have all kinds of horses. You can breed bulls and have all kinds of bulls. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So your point is mute.

No, his point isn't. You're just very, very wrong.

Tell us, what is your belief on why we have such a diversity of animal species on Earth? Where did they come from?

In my, and billion of others' experience mutations are almost elusively bad. Meaning things like DNA defects and cancer, which almost always lead to death. Sorry 100% lead to death, I mean many lead to premature death. No genetic mutant has gotten around that yet has he?

originally posted by: Vector99

originally posted by: Tinystarlight

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: MonkeyFishFrog

To the average person a bone is just a bone. How much can one learn from a thigh bone? An immense amount. Right off the bat the shape and angle of the femur head along with the length of the femur neck will tell you how an animal walked or stood.

I liked this part so I figured I'd help with a visual reference.

Now as we see we have 2 similar objects we can recognize, keys. Most people can discern the top key goes to a car and the bottom key goes to a door, but they are both keys. We can tell what goes to what because we have interacted with those objects regularly and are familiar with them.

That's how an archaeologist sees bones.

Kinda proving the point that the bones were created, just like a key was.

Correct!

Bones were created from cellular division.

What created cellular division. A mind. Just like a mind created digital software like the one we are using.

i spent the first two pages of this thread screwing up my willpower to explain some science to some minds sorely in need of it, but the combo provided by Monkeyfishfrog, Vetor99, and theantediluvian has thankfully proved that unnecessary so instead i'll just point out that ""evolutionize"" is the most ridiculous term i've come across in a decade of ATS and i love it i'm gonna use it at all my friends thank you

originally posted by: continuousThunder
i spent the first two pages of this thread screwing up my willpower to explain some science to some minds sorely in need of it, but the combo provided by Monkeyfishfrog, Vetor99, and theantediluvian has thankfully proved that unnecessary so instead i'll just point out that ""evolutionize"" is the most ridiculous term i've come across in a decade of ATS and i love it i'm gonna use it at all my friends thank you

Nice. No response to the questions or anything else though. I like it. I knew it was not a real word when I wrote it. But there were several more made up words along the process if you noticed (by me).