Evolution: early mammals (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 26, 2019, 12:43 (1856 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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:

I have bolded the salient bits:

“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.”

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

“More and more it looks like it all came out in a very short burst of evolutionary experimentation,” Luo says.”.

"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 . 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.

DAVID: 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.

I note that you have ignored the whole of my comment. We have long since agreed to discount chance mutations.