I could be snarky and quote you as quoting something as being "suggested" and wonder why you're not talking about something definitive. I'll just instead point out you're a complete hypocrite and are perfectly fine with the phrasing when it supports your point of view, and use it as a weapon when it doesn't.
In any case, let's start the discussion by having a quick look at reality. The age of the strata where Tiktaalik was found was predicted to be roughly the age at which key intermediate steps in the origin of tetrapods took place. Thus, we'd expect to find creatures with intermediate features there. We did. That was not a case where a prediction of evolution "falls apart", as the blog post suggests. (Off by a couple million years at those ages is a tiny percent error, and they got the location right by inferring ecosystems.)
Evolutionary theory does not view any specific fossil as representative of an intermediate; any individual with intermediate traits is assumed to be part of a population from which descendants branched off. The precise timing of that branch can't always be determined, and the branching could take place prior to the existence of the particular sample. All of that was true before Tiktaalik, and it remains true after. So, assuming the trackways at issue really are tetrapods, then we can't be certain whether tetrapods split off from a Tiktaalik ancestor, or tiktaalik was just a relative that shared a lot of features with the true tetrapod ancestor.
Anybody that represented this sample as the actual intermediate made a mistake. I do not dispute this whatsoever. And it definitely looked like some of the quotes do misrepresent it. That says nothing about the underlying science; it just shows people using incautious language when communicating with the public. Something that's an unfortunate but ongoing issue.
The blog post fallaciously presents this as a failing, presents incautious language as an indication that there were serious scientific mistakes made, and accuses people who are trying to explain the details of evolutionary theory, as i did just here, as making excuses for the failing. Anybody reading the post without knowing all this would be convinced that there were major problems with evolutionary theory.
And you, Lee, said "Tiktaalik is unclear", which misrepresents it too.
In any case, let's start the discussion by having a quick look at reality. The age of the strata where Tiktaalik was found was predicted to be roughly the age at which key intermediate steps in the origin of tetrapods took place. Thus, we'd expect to find creatures with intermediate features there. We did. That was not a case where a prediction of evolution "falls apart", as the blog post suggests. (Off by a couple million years at those ages is a tiny percent error, and they got the location right by inferring ecosystems.)
Evolutionary theory does not view any specific fossil as representative of an intermediate; any individual with intermediate traits is assumed to be part of a population from which descendants branched off. The precise timing of that branch can't always be determined, and the branching could take place prior to the existence of the particular sample. All of that was true before Tiktaalik, and it remains true after. So, assuming the trackways at issue really are tetrapods, then we can't be certain whether tetrapods split off from a Tiktaalik ancestor, or tiktaalik was just a relative that shared a lot of features with the true tetrapod ancestor.
Anybody that represented this sample as the actual intermediate made a mistake. I do not dispute this whatsoever. And it definitely looked like some of the quotes do misrepresent it. That says nothing about the underlying science; it just shows people using incautious language when communicating with the public. Something that's an unfortunate but ongoing issue.
The blog post fallaciously presents this as a failing, presents incautious language as an indication that there were serious scientific mistakes made, and accuses people who are trying to explain the details of evolutionary theory, as i did just here, as making excuses for the failing. Anybody reading the post without knowing all this would be convinced that there were major problems with evolutionary theory.
And you, Lee, said "Tiktaalik is unclear", which misrepresents it too.
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