Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 01:08 (2278 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So do please let us have your own theory to explain the pointy-shaped eggs.

Tony: If A then B programming. I don't know what the parameters are, but I would hazard a few guesses and say that perhaps certain dietary or environmental inputs (A) are the parameters that determine the output of the eggshape (B). I would also guess that when we find out what those inputs are, they will be ubiquitous between all pointy egg bird species.

David: It is not diet, etc. It takes a specially shaped cloaca to make pointed eggs.

I think you misunderstand. I was referring to the parameters that trigger the formation of pointed eggs. Let's assume for a moment that the information on how to make both round and pointy eggs were available (I am not at all certain it is), then the question would be 'how would the organism know which instructions to use?' Perhaps the trigger is environmental, i.e. diet, temperature, EM field, etc.

TONY: What about 10% of the whales that did not go into the water but survived? Where did they go? Where is the record of them? And don't tell me another damn fairy tale that has no objective evidence, no record, no traceable, documented process that took them from form A to form B.

dhw: I never said anything about 10% that didn’t go into the water. But if it all began with a local crisis,I would assume that any pre-whales stuck on land would have died. We have fossils that show different stages of development from pre-whales to whales. Here is a website that traces all the known stages.

Whale Evolution - AMNH
https://www.amnh.org/.../whales-giants-of-the-deep/whale-evolution

Tony: That link will not open, but here is one of my own: The Evolution of Whales

I love the opening statement, which makes me both want to laugh and cry at the sheer lunacy:

"The first thing to notice on this evogram is that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales, but they are not the ancestors of whales. In fact, none of the individual animals on the evogram is the direct ancestor of any other, as far as we know. That's why each of them gets its own branch on the family tree."

And almost as laughable:

From the outside, they don't look much like whales at all. However, their skulls — particularly in the ear region, which is surrounded by a bony wall — strongly resemble those of living whales and are unlike those of any other mammal. Often, seemingly minor features provide critical evidence to link animals that are highly specialized for their lifestyles (such as whales) with their less extreme-looking relatives

So, this is how we got whales, but they aren't direct ancestors, and we have no trail of direct ancestry. How do we know? Cause they all got dem der ear holes bubba. Dey musta all been in da same family cuz dey all got da same ears. Don't matter that the other bits don't look nuthin like'n each other. Look at dem ears!

Please. Such claims are an insult to intelligent people everywhere.

Use of phenotype similarity is a holdover from pre-DNA days. The entire conversion line needs genetic studies and we'll be closer to some truth about the issue. Note this genetic study article that totally rearranges bacteria:

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-scientists-bacterial-tree-life.html

"Bacterial classification has been given a complete makeover by a team of University of Queensland researchers, using an evolutionary tree based on genome sequences.

"The study, led by Professor Philip Hugenholtz from UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences and the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics (ACE), relied on a technique called metagenomics, where bacterial genomes are obtained straight from environmental samples, to create a more complete picture of the structure of the bacterial kingdom."

"The research team then used these genomic blueprints to construct a giant evolutionary tree of bacteria based on 120 genes that are highly conserved across the bacterial domain."

Unfortunately, it starts with the same assumption of common descent.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.