Evolution: early mammals (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 25, 2019, 22:51 (1856 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: A great article showing new fossils from China of early mammal like ancestors. Great illustrations of how the hyoid bone was formed and the ear bones developed. The hyoid allowed suckling and the ear bones gave great hearing. Look at the illustrations. The article cannot be condensed. These bony changes reek of design:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03170-7?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_c...

dhw: Very many thanks for this, David. It really is a massive eye-opener, and what struck me most is the variety and the emphasis on transitional forms. Here are some quotes:

“These forms really show a very transitional progression from things that are typically non-mammalian, to things that pretty much have all the features of early mammals.”

“The rat-sized fossil revealed three middle-ear bones, but they were still attached to the jaw by cartilage. “The hearing function and the chewing function were still not completely separated,” he explains. This was hard evidence of the evolutionary transition from jaw to ear.”

“These new discoveries document a huge, hitherto-undreamed-of ecological diversity,” says Richard Cifelli, a palaeontologist at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

"Much of the constellation of features we think of as defining mammals — complex teeth, excellent senses, lactation, small litter size — might actually have evolved before true mammals, and quite quickly.“More and more it looks like it all came out in a very short burst of evolutionary experimentation,” Luo says. By the time mammal-like creatures were roaming around in the Mesozoic, he says, “the lineage has already acquired its modern look and modern biological adaptations”. (dhw’s bold)

"If the flurry of discoveries has taught researchers anything, it’s that every fossil find has the potential to add a chapter to evolutionary history or even flip the prevailing narrative on its head."

dhw: I agree with you that it all “reeks of design”, but it also reeks of experimentation (see my bold). The one thing it doesn’t reek of is a designer who has just one goal in mind (H. sapiens), is in full control and knows exactly how to fulfil that goal. If he exists, your God may have been enjoying his own creativity, like a painter enjoying his paintings (your image), or he may have had a goal in mind and didn’t know how to reach it (hence all the experiments), or of course he may have given organisms (which consist of cell communities) the intelligence to conduct their own experiments. That is also design. What does emerge from all these discoveries is that transitional forms exist, and are clear evidence for the theory of common descent. I think Darwin would have cried “Yeehah!” or words to that effect.

What this tells me is that the rate of evolution is not a steady progression, as shown especially by the Cambrian, but also by this discovery. Of course there will be transitional forms. A steady rate of chance mutations will not do this.