Re: transitional fossils

Cornelius Hunter wrote:

> No, that is not what the evidence is telling us. The fossil record
> sometimes shows us minor morphological change for long time periods.

The fossil record shows us all kinds of variations in morphological change/

> In other words, the fossil record is giving us the kind of resolution
> we would need to test evolution. What we see is little or no change
> for long periods, even 500 million years in the case of,
> say, sipunculan worms. The minor change that we do observe is not what
> evolutionists need for their theory. Even they agree that,
> qualitatively, we would something else. We are learning from genetics
> how much change is resisted, and this is corroborated by the fossil
> record.

Actually, we are learning how despite resistance against change
evolution is happening. Much is being learned by scientists in the area
of development as well as the role of for instance gene duplications.

The fossil record, the genetic data all support evolutionary theory. Add
to this the evolvability theme and one has an overall explanation of the
periods of stasis (phenotype not genotype), and many other aspects of
evolution which may have been minor paradoxes before.

Such is science.

What's ID's contribution again Cornelius?

>
>
> Re the "change we observe is minor". While "minor" is a pretty
> subjective term, let's take any given time frame for these minor
> change for reference. Multiply it by some number N. How big does N
> have to be before the cumulative changes over the end-to-end
> period of N reference time frames are no longer minor? JimA
>
Received on Tue Dec 6 10:49:51 2005