Fossil discovery helps bridge gap between Ediacaran animals & those from the Cambrian

[shunyadragon]

It doesn't. The two are independent.

Maybe you should stop guessing and try research or logic instead.

Lee uses logic to justify a religious agenda. He does not understand the research provided, nor what he selectively cites out of context.

[shunyadragon]

There's a problem here, though, and that's that reconstruction of evolution by comparative studies does not demonstrate how the putative changes took place.

Source: dev.biologists.org

The complexity of GRNs has increased during the past 600 Ma through an increase in promoters and transcription start sites and the increasing hierarchical structuring of GRNs as subcircuits have been co-opted for new functions (Sabarís et al., 2019).

© Copyright Original Source

I respond with this excerpt from Darwin's Doubt:

Source: Darwin's Doubt

mutations that are expressed early in the development of animals have probably the only realistic chance of producing large-scale macroevolutionary change. As evolutionary geneticists Bernard John and George Miklos explain, “macroevolutionary change” requires changes in “very early embryogenesis.” Former Yale University evolutionary biologist Keith Thomson concurs: only mutations expressed early in the development of organisms can produce large-scale macroevolutionary change.

Yet from the first experiments by geneticist T. H. Morgan systematically mutating fruit flies early in the twentieth century until today, as many model species have been subjected to mutagenesis, developmental biology has shown that mutations affecting body-plan formation expressed early in development inevitably damage the organism. ... As one of the founders of neo-Darwinism geneticist R. A. Fisher noted, such mutations are “either definitely pathological (most often lethal) in their effects,” or they result in an organism that cannot survive “in the wild state.”¹¹

11. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, 44.

© Copyright Original Source

So changes to regulatory DNA would have to affect early development, yet such mutations seem to be invariably pathological or fatal.

Blessings,
Lee

Unbelievably bizarre as usual.

[TheLurch]

Because the edge of evolution, Behe places at two new protein-protein interactions.

Aside from not being a complete sentence, it's utter garbage.
A) Behe's argument has been trashed repeatedly, including here. Remember all those discussions about how evolution works in parallel, and this "limit" assumes it doesn't. They still apply.
B) Even if it were right, there's utterly no evidence that the generation of new species or body forms is limited by protein-protein interactions. So you're just making stuff up.

No, you misunderstand me, I mean that the important point is that we don't see a Darwinian diversification of animals in the Cambrian and pre-Cambrian. Moving the boundary around does not explain this.

But we do. That's the whole point of discoveries like this one - they reinforce previous evidence that Cambrian species evolved through common descent. That's specifically what this discovery shows.

The only sense in which I don't understand you is that i don't understand why you just make up nonsense all the time with no evidence to support it.

[rogue06]

Why doesn't it? If there are open niches that no previously existing body plan can exploit, why wouldn't a new one figure out how to exploit it?

You're mistaking an evidence-free assertion for an argument.

And, coincidentally and on the topic of this thread, the more bilaterians we discover in the Ediacaran, the fewer body plans that actually arose in the Cambrian. Which is precisely the thing you said wasn't important just a page or two ago, back when you wanted to dismiss the significance of this find. In other words, you dismissed a finding's implications as unimportant, only to turn around and say it's a problem that we don't have evidence of what you just said was unimportant.

I'd consider it highly dishonest if it weren't for the fact that you seem to be pathologically incapable of remembering what you wrote two days ago.


For those whose feet are more firmly planted in the real world, i'd note the the implications of Precambrian bilaterians is more important in this regard than it might appear. We tend to find that organism's like this have features that show up in diverse groups of organisms in the ensuing period, much like early mammals have features that are now present in everything from whales to bats. So, a single example early on often represents an ancestral form of many different branches in the evolutionary tree a few million years later.

I'd also like to point out that "body plan" is a vague term, and if it's being used for this type of argument, it really needs to be made well defined and quantitative.

If an ecological niche opens up life will fill it. It is as simple as that.

This sort of thing typically happens after a mass extinction event like those that took place at the end of the Permian and the Cretaceous, and of course at the end of the Proterozoic Period immediately prior to the start of the Cambrian.

The organisms still left will begin to move into and adapt to the niches vacated and thereby made available. This is a process known as adaptive radiation which is defined as the evolution of an animal or plant group into a wide variety of types acclimatized to specialized modes of life.

Essentially it is the rapid evolutionary diversification of a single ancestral line that takes place when it occupies a different distinct niche (or niches) with different environmental conditions. Inevitably, they evolve different morphological features (adaptations) in response to the different selection pressures found in these niches.

Probably the best known and understood example of such rapid diversification is the one that took place after the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous. This resulted in basal mammalian stock forms expanding into empty ecological niches where they adapted to become better and better at running, climbing, flying, swimming etc. in order to exploit the resources available^[1]. And specialization often will subdivide a single niche into many new niches further dividing the organism that filled it into separate species, genre and even families.

Consequentially, these of course resulted in new "body plans" as anyone looking at a cheetah, a whale and a bat can plainly see.

Another thing that can trigger an adaptive radiation is the evolution of a new resource to exploit. For instance, the emergence of angiosperm (flowering plants) which apparently began during the Carboniferous Period roughly 300 mya and really took off during the early Cretaceous (140 to 120 mya) likely triggered the enormous beetle radiations^[2] as they started to feed on them.

And bees would have never evolved from their predatory (carnivorous) wasp ancestors if angiosperms hadn't evolved. They first appeared as flowering plants started their rapid radiation during the early Cretaceous.

The point is that those who gain beneficial mutations that allow them to better exploit the resources are the ones most likely to survive and thrive, outcompeting their relatives who don't have this advantage. And this is a continuing process.






1 There are other, much smaller and substantially less expansive examples known such as the cichlid fish which have diversified in East African lakes into more than 600 species and of course Darwin's observation in the Galapagos concerning the wide variety of finches.

2. 400,000 species consisting of 40% of all known insects

[rogue06]

Because the edge of evolution, Behe places at two new protein-protein interactions.

Have you already forgotten that this supposed "edge of evolution" was based upon a false premise -- namely that mutations must take place simultaneously? Something that you FINALLY acknowledged even starting a thread admitting that this was the case: A retraction on Behe

Sheesh.

[lee_merrill]

A) Behe's argument has been trashed repeatedly, including here. Remember all those discussions about how evolution works in parallel, and this "limit" assumes it doesn't. They still apply.

No, the limit does not assume evolution works in sequence. And my latest thread on Behe's edge has gone unanswered.

Source: Edge of Evolution

Since we see no new protein-protein interactions developing in 10²⁰ [malarial] cells, we can be reasonably confident that, at the least, no new cellular systems needing two new protein-protein interactions would develop in 10⁴⁰ cells—in the entire history of life... The principle we use to make the extrapolation—that the odds against two independent events is the multiple of the odds against each event—is very well tested.

© Copyright Original Source

B) Even if it were right, there's utterly no evidence that the generation of new species or body forms is limited by protein-protein interactions. So you're just making stuff up.

Well, protein interactions are rather fundamental, and relatively simple compared to the molecular machines in the cell.

Source: Edge of Evolution

The physical forces between proteins do not vary from organism to organism, nor does protein shape space depend on species. Since the criterion we are using to determine the edge of evolution is the development of specific protein-protein interactions, which is one of the most fundamental features of life, in that regard malaria is no different from any other organism.

© Copyright Original Source

But we do. That's the whole point of discoveries like this one - they reinforce previous evidence that Cambrian species evolved through common descent. That's specifically what this discovery shows.

Not a Darwinian diversification, though. Small, successive, selectable modifications, no abrupt appearances.

Blessings,
Lee

-

[lee_merrill]

Have you already forgotten that this supposed "edge of evolution" was based upon a false premise -- namely that mutations must take place simultaneously? Something that you FINALLY acknowledged even starting a thread admitting that this was the case: A retraction on Behe

Well, the new protein-protein interactions were proposed to include a few neutral mutations, and two singly-deleterious mutations. The neutral mutations were assumed to have spread and been fixed in the population, before the deleterious mutations. Because the last two mutations were considered deleterious singly, they must then occur together. But the other mutations could occur previously.

Blessings,
Lee

[rogue06]

No, the limit does not assume evolution works in sequence. And my latest thread on Behe's edge has gone unanswered.

How many times do your gross misunderstandings and the same PRATTs need to be beaten into a fine pink mist? You just come back and repeat the same garbage over and over, again and again figuring that if you tweak the verbiage oh so slightly that it somehow changes everything.

[lee_merrill]

News flash! Evolution News is going to publish an evaluation of this paper. For what has been published so far, we read:

Source: Evolution News

If a layman were to look at the figures of the fossil remains and even the 3D-reconstructiuons, he would be quite unimpressed and conclude that you can’t see much and surely nothing definitive. If I as a professional paleontologist look at the published images, I can only come to the same conclusion. Even the authors themselves seem to be aware that the evidence is far from compelling. The article is full of language expressive of doubt: “may be homologous,” “possible,” “putative,” “can be interpreted,” “can be inferred,” “might correspond,” “may/could represent,” “suggesting that this may have been,” etc. Only in their abstract and the two final paragraphs of the discussion section, which is the only thing that most readers will remember or even read, the authors suddenly become more confident.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Like what I had said before, their language is hesitant in the paper itself.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

How many times do your gross misunderstandings and the same PRATTs need to be beaten into a fine pink mist? You just come back and repeat the same garbage over and over, again and again figuring that if you tweak the verbiage oh so slightly that it somehow changes everything.

But claiming victory is not the same as attaining victory. And my latest thread on Behe's edge has gone unanswered.

Blessings,
Lee

P.S. You can get an indication as to who has the better argument, by who feels a need to resort to venom, and who does not!

[TheLurch]

No, the limit does not assume evolution works in sequence. And my latest thread on Behe's edge has gone unanswered.

Remember what i said about your ability to produce garbage outpacing the ability to respond to it? Guess why nobody's responding.

Source: Edge of Evolution

Since we see no new protein-protein interactions developing in 10²⁰ [malarial] cells, we can be reasonably confident that, at the least, no new cellular systems needing two new protein-protein interactions would develop in 10⁴⁰ cells—in the entire history of life... The principle we use to make the extrapolation—that the odds against two independent events is the multiple of the odds against each event—is very well tested.

© Copyright Original Source

Behe's assumptions are all wrong, which means his statistics are meaningless. We've gone over it - recently.

Well, protein interactions are rather fundamental, and relatively simple compared to the molecular machines in the cell.

That's not addressing the point. What evidence do you have that protein-protein interactions are necessary for speciation?

My bet is that you have none, since, as Rogue keeps pointing out, you would flunk a basic biology class.

Not a Darwinian diversification, though. Small, successive, selectable modifications, no abrupt appearances.

Yes, a Darwinian diversification. There are features on this organism that are later found on different groups of organisms in the Cambrian. It is precisely what you'd predict to see from common descent, and you don't get more Darwinian than that.

Repeating something that's false doesn't somehow make it true. Please stop doing it and actually engage with the evidence, instead of just repeating what you want to believe.

[rogue06]

My bet is that you have none, since, as Rogue keeps pointing out, you would flunk a basic biology class.

Bluntly, he would need after school instruction just to squeak through a High School course on it. The ignorance he keeps displaying almost seems willful. But if it isn't at least it can be remedied. Unlike old fashion stupidity, ignorance can be overcome just by becoming educated. But as long as he continues to wallow in sources that propagate ignorance like Evolution News, he has no chance.

[shunyadragon]

Because the edge of evolution, Behe places at two new protein-protein interactions.


No, you misunderstand me, I mean that the important point is that we don't see a Darwinian diversification of animals in the Cambrian and pre-Cambrian. Moving the boundary around does not explain this.

Blessings,
Lee

There in reality is not a distinct boundary. Cite good sound academic sources and understand what you are citing.

[TheLurch]

Source: Edge of Evolution

The physical forces between proteins do not vary from organism to organism, nor does protein shape space depend on species. Since the criterion we are using to determine the edge of evolution is the development of specific protein-protein interactions, which is one of the most fundamental features of life, in that regard malaria is no different from any other organism.

© Copyright Original Source

You know, this stuck in my brain last night. It's striking because Lee knows it's wrong. Because he commented on a thread in which results made it clear that protein-protein interactions showed up multiple times in a randomized population of 100 million proteins. That's a probability that's a vanishingly small fraction of the 10^20 that Behe is claiming.

And, if you think about it, that shouldn't be surprising, given that Behe's argument is fundamentally ludicrous. He takes a sample of 1*, and tries to claim that the lessons he derived from it apply to every single protein everywhere. Contrary to his statements, there are absolutely no reasons to think that would be the case. Proteins have a truly vast range of properties, some of which undoubtedly influence their ability to interact with others. Yet Behe just hand-waves away all that reality.

This is the quality of the people you believe, Lee.


* think about that - trying to derive rules for all of life from a single sample! With absolutely no attempt to look at other examples or - just imagine - doing experiments himself. It's almost comical.

[rogue06]

You know, this stuck in my brain last night. It's striking because Lee knows it's wrong. Because he commented on a thread in which results made it clear that protein-protein interactions showed up multiple times in a randomized population of 100 million proteins. That's a probability that's a vanishingly small fraction of the 10^20 that Behe is claiming.

And, if you think about it, that shouldn't be surprising, given that Behe's argument is fundamentally ludicrous. He takes a sample of 1*, and tries to claim that the lessons he derived from it apply to every single protein everywhere. Contrary to his statements, there are absolutely no reasons to think that would be the case. Proteins have a truly vast range of properties, some of which undoubtedly influence their ability to interact with others. Yet Behe just hand-waves away all that reality.

This is the quality of the people you believe, Lee.


* think about that - trying to derive rules for all of life from a single sample! With absolutely no attempt to look at other examples or - just imagine - doing experiments himself. It's almost comical.

To a degree it is excusable for folks like Lee who have absolutely no understanding about biology to believe the crap that he posts but it indefensible for someone like Behe to peddle it. There is no way that Behe can't know that what he says is unadulterated codswallop but that doesn't stop him from continuing to say it. Behe knows that his followers don't understand enough about what he says to realize that he is lying to them because he knows it is what they want to hear and it helps to line his pockets.

What's disheartening is that most of them that do this, like Behe, claim to be Christians and they largely target Christian audiences. They are effectively "flock fleecers."

But at some point, when shown over and over and over that the sources he relies on are at best as ignorant as he is and far more likely lying through their teeth, Lee needs to start taking responsibility for aiding and abetting folks like Behe and the hucksters at Evolution News. As the old adage goes

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.