Debate: Penguin vs Gyrene

[Nwbie]

One night in college during the early 70's, my roommate and I, with the help of Captain Trips, pondered this question all night and came up with the definitive answer to all of these questions.
After having discussed whether we are living on an atom and we may actually be part of another being, we decided that was heading to a bad trip...so we pondered other thought provoking anomalies and finalized our theories to a definitive conclusion.
Sadly, the next day, neither of us could remember what we had decided. So we agreed that life is a mystery and one day we may know if we were correct in our deductions, whatever they may have been. With much shaking of heads and staring off into space trying to recall exactly how we had red paint on our left hands and blue paint on our right hands.. an obvious important scientific experiment had taken place and whatever conclusions we had deduced where probably correct, due to the fact that the paint must have had important significance in our theoretical reasoning. If I ever have a chance to recall the conclusions, some may call that a flashback, I will look up this thread and post it.
This discussion reminded me of that day, lots of thoughts, a little bit of mind numbing facts..for example paint with no obvious definitive answer, and a lot of shaking of the head.
What I got out of this thread so far is: man did I have an interesting college education, and you can mask it anyway you want...but.. if you don't agree with evolution that this thread has already treaded all over Rule 14...
IN summation, I believe the answer will be addressed by Skuzzy's big stick today.

[gyrene81]

Your above comment isn't Personal?  You ask me to not be personal, when I simply point out your position is not based in already understood genetics?

Yes Moray, I did say to keep the personal attacks out of it...after you're first rant...in case you don't recall...

For all concerned parties in this "debate". Neither one of you has even the most simplistic idea of what you are arguing about.

Penguin, go back to reading, and graduate...etc...as you don't yet have a clue what you are talking about.  Gyrene will tear you apart, with dictatorial arrogance, with your current stance and weak factual basis.  You are so keen to stir the pot on this board, constantly, without even a base understanding of what you debate.  The world isn't 8th period biology class.

That's a slippery slope.  It depends upon whether you are talking allopatric or sympatric speciation. Also, there needs to be a reproductive isolating mechanism in place, either prezygotic or postzygotic.

In general, a few thousand generations can conduct a fully separate species, with the right pressures.

A breed is different from a species, btw Gyrene.  All dogs are the same species, Canis lupus familiaris, and can interbreed.  A poodle can reproduce with a great dane, though it's not necessarily recommended.  To become a new species, barriers to interbreeding and habitat must be put into place for many thousands of generations.  7 generations are not going to make a new species....and without an extreme amount of pressure, won't even make a trait recessive or dominant.

First, it doesn't always take that many generations or "extreme amount of pressure" to create a separate species, or sub-species. Limited population is essential, some hybrid population 1 or 2 generations prior to the isolation is enough, a good number of dormant genetic anomalies, and fast reproductive rates...it can occur in far less. It's been seen in fruit flies and tropical fish.

Speaking of which I know a breed is different from a species and I use dogs to illustrate the ease of rapid genetic mutation within a species...sorry if I worded it incorrectly or used it in the wrong context professor...and not all dogs can interbreed...the Bassett hound cannot breed with a Poodle or Chihuahua and several other breeds.

So when faced with odds that mean death unless we adapt to an enviroment it seems logical that our bodies can follow suit. Take Africans for example, their continetn is hot and dry, it has been like that for thousands of years. The human race originally inuit and sheet white for living in polar conditions during the Ice Age change their skin pigmentation to resist the sun and heat of a desert climate, why have Asians got exceedingly light build and an exceptional fluid retention capability, because they evolved in a tropical climate, why are europeans white as sheets and put on weight easily, to resist long winteers and blizzards of a european climate. Animals do the same and so do amoeba. The mutations shown by moray prove the existance of genetics and therefore evolution as a whole.

At least that is my take. Ok time to put my hazmat and flame resistant clothes on.

LOL...no need for the hazmat or flame resistant clothing...but uh did you just insinuate that the human race originated from Inuits? Please tell me you didn't.

The mutations shown by Moray prove the same thing they have always proven...dormant genetic anomalies that randomly appear through popluations with no pattern...nothing more, think about it this way...if all life on this planet started with a single organism, all life shares the basic genetic code from that organism...in the process of mutation, some traits had to be suppressed in order for the next level of mutation to continue...and not all traits can co-exist if the new mutation is to propagate. That is the reason that although humans are primates and share many genetic traits, we cannot breed with lower order primates. The ultimate question then becomes, what caused the mutations in the first place, if it was environmental, the amount of diversity would not exist...if it was caused by manipulation from other organisms, that would explain the diversity but that eliminates the idea of a single ancestral organism...or it could indicate intelligent design.

[saantana]

Penguin, you most probably don't know what I'm talking about, but some participants of this board need more of the Wednesday babe and the thoughts that accompany her.

And yes gentlemen, believe it or not she:



is related to:



thought evolution.

I thought adding pictures would better explain this difficult concept.

[druski85]

Penguin, you most probably don't know what I'm talking about, but some participants of this board need more of the Wednesday babe and the thoughts that accompany her.

And yes gentlemen, believe it or not she:

(Image removed from quote.)

is related to:

(Image removed from quote.)

thought evolution.

I thought adding pictures would better explain this difficult concept.

That's one fine primate. 

[Dragon]

Although similar, these two did NOT evolve from a common ancestor.







Just sayin..

[FireDrgn]

That's a slippery slope.  It depends upon whether you are talking allopatric or sympatric speciation. Also, there needs to be a reproductive isolating mechanism in place, either prezygotic or postzygotic.

In general, a few thousand generations can conduct a fully separate species, with the right pressures. For humans, figure ~640,000 years based on 8,000 generations(currently).  For Fruit Flies, ~657 years, based on 8,000 generations.  All of this is contingent upon the right isolation mechanisms in place, as well.  (meaning no way to intermingle on a long term scale)

A breed is different from a species, btw Gyrene.  All dogs are the same species, Canis lupus familiaris, and can interbreed.  A poodle can reproduce with a great dane, though it's not necessarily recommended.  To become a new species, barriers to interbreeding and habitat must be put into place for many thousands of generations.  7 generations are not going to make a new species....and without an extreme amount of pressure, won't even make a specific trait recessive or dominant.

 Im talking going from a fish to the next full life form  that came next.  or say from an ape to human.    Ok i understand 8,000 generations.   Is that one family tree for 8,000 gererations?  or are we talking 10,000 family trees for 8,000 generations or 8 billion family trees for 8,000 generations.?


Ill be gone foe a few days hope fully this does not get locked ...

[Plawranc]

I didnt mean Inuits as in a literal sense, I am saying that life forms adapt to suit their enviroment, all do like viruses and Amphibians and of course Mammal's. We use physical adaptions like clothing or blankets to resist cold and shade combined with cold fluid to resist heat. So the need for us to evolve is nil. But in the prehistoric ages the need to make biological change for survival was evident.

Now genetics is a known and confirmed FACT. We share DNA with primates and 5% of it is unique to us, the other 95% of our genetics is primate. Does it mean that we evolved from these creatures, Most probably. But it is not established as fact as their is no way to provide, CONCLUSIVE proof without a single experiment lasting thousands of years.

And like I said earlier, when Humans cannot prove existance, they MAKE UP something and use that to explain it. And lo and behold here comes religion.

I will say what I think. Science is right, the big bang happened, matter formed and rebounded etc etc to form the universe, dinosaurs and mammals and all life forms on this earth evolved from amoeba and built up over trillions of years to create the life we have today.

But here is my argument for both sides, who lit the fuze?

[bozon]

But here is my argument for both sides, who lit the fuze?

You suggest a defined moment of "beginning". There was no beginning because there was no time before the big bang - or at least any information about what was before (e.g. the pulsating universe option that lost favor in recent decades) was erased, cleared and started from the same condition including time itself.

Now genetics is a known and confirmed FACT. We share DNA with primates and 5% of it is unique to us, the other 95% of our genetics is primate. Does it mean that we evolved from these creatures, Most probably. But it is not established as fact as their is no way to provide, CONCLUSIVE proof without a single experiment lasting thousands of years.

We didn't evolve from these creatures, we had a common ancestor. There is a big difference. They evolved too since that ancestor.
Conclusive proof rarely exists in science. There is only "highly probable" and "wrong". Wrong is easy to tag, you only need one good prediction of the theory and a good measurement for what is predicted - if they do not match, theory labeled wrong. "Correct" (i.e. highly probable) is a theory that produced many predictions and non could be labeled wrong by a measurement. If no one can come up with a competing theory that also pass all the prediction tests, the one theory becomes the standard in science - and will stay as such until one of its predictions is found to be wrong or that a new theory pops up.
Examples for such theories are indeed the big bang, relativity, the standard-model of elementary particles and evolution.

Even when a theory produces a wrong prediction, it is often easy to adapt to include the new measurements. Such an example is the standard model fo rthe elementary particles. It initially included only 3 quarks. Then new particles were discovered that could not be explained. The same theory was expanded to include 6 quarks. It also produced prediction to what will happen if there were more quarks - until now all were proved wrong and it is not likely that we will find more than the current 6.

The same can be said about evolution. I am no expert on that so the other people here may expand this argument, but the current version of it is a little different from Darwin's original. It evolved you might say. Darwin didn't know anything about DNA and the finer mechanisms at work. He did install the main envelope and driving force in the theory which is the natural selection. Natural selection is not just survival by the way, it is also the ability to reproduce the mutated creature. Even if humans use blankets cloths and medicine we are still subject to natural selection. We are not outside nature.

[SPKmes]

to be honest...How much have we really evolved....



sure we are harder to kill off now so  some evolution I spose
 

[MORAY37]

We didn't evolve from these creatures, we had a common ancestor. There is a big difference. They evolved too since that ancestor.

Someone got it. Others will view this as semantics, but that initial statement is the key to beginning to understand the much broader concept of population genetics. Evolutionary pressure does not allow progenitor species to remain stably fixed for long, in general.... they will continue to split and fragment away within families.  The key to cladistics is understanding the first line of your statement, while the true underlying relationships are conveniently tucked away in the familial genome.

Traced through DNA it looks like this.

[MORAY37]

Im talking going from a fish to the next full life form  that came next.  or say from an ape to human.    Ok i understand 8,000 generations.   Is that one family tree for 8,000 gererations?  or are we talking 10,000 family trees for 8,000 generations or 8 billion family trees for 8,000 generations.?


Ill be gone foe a few days hope fully this does not get locked ...

The short answer is kind of like change in human behavior... evolution doesn't happen until it must, just like human behavior doesn't change until it must.  There is no systematic, timely procession for evolution; it moves with fits and starts bookended with long periods of relative inactivity. 

When the right amount of pressure is exerted, evolution can move rather rapidly.  Otherwise, it kind of lazily experiments with mutations each generation, without natural selection conferring any advantage on a single new trait. 

I think what you're looking for is a hard and fast rule....."X amount of time for Y to happen."  Life doesn't work like that.

I simply used 8,000 generations as a baseline.....each separate species has a host of things that determine evolutionary rate, not the least of which is the average number of cellular replications during the lifespan of one generation of a given species....you get the point,.... it gets very complicated.  There is no universal molecular clock determining species birth.


 

[MORAY37]

The mutations shown by Moray prove the same thing they have always proven...dormant genetic anomalies that randomly appear through popluations with no pattern...nothing more,

You're just not getting it.  Atavisms are not genetic anomalies.  They ARE NOT mutations.  They are expressions of genetic traits that every member of that species carries within their DNA.  The difference is that the gene gets turned "on" instead of "off" at some point of development.  

AGAIN.... they are a part of every single member of the species' genetic code.  They are not mutations.  They are NOT anomalies, at least in DNA terms...morphologically they are anomalies, not genetically.   Atavisms are simple genes, or clusters of genes, that are switched on that are usually off, resulting in some morphological change.
http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/handle/2246/4849

Complete femur through tarsal, as found protruding from a Humpback whale during necropsy.  Non-functional, and attached to the hip girdle.  Your position rests in that you think this is completely a chance occurrence, and the fact it looks amazingly like a horse's (the two could possibly share a relative)...

....is purely a coincidence?  Attached to the hip girdle?


I'm sorry, but you are completely incorrect in your position, factually.  

[Plawranc]

Can I just say I am having, to quote Adam Savage from mythbusters, a huge "nerdgasm"

this thread rocks. 

[Masherbrum]

This is one amazing pontification.   

[ozrocker]

This thread is quite a collection of INteresting evolution, from one idea to the next. My theory is Skuzzy will lock this today
Or, it may be like "The Dress", and drag on and on
                    
                                                                                          IN and
                                                                                                  <S> Oz