Let's study ID: common descent or common design? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 25, 2021, 20:50 (1123 days ago) @ David Turell

An example of setting up an early design for vision in jumping spiders:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jumping-spider-vision-eyes-color-senses-hearing-mat...

"Unlike bees and flies, which have compound eyes that merge information from hundreds or thousands of lenses into a single, pixelated mosaic image, the jumping spider has camera-type eyes, similar to those of humans and most other vertebrates. Each of the spider’s eyes has a single lens that focuses light onto a retina."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider#Fossils

"Very few jumping spider fossils have been found. Of those known, all are from Cenozoic era amber. The oldest fossils are from Baltic amber dating to the Eocene epoch, specifically, 54 to 42 million years ago."

Comment: 'Nuff said. Our camera eyes are old. Ask the octopus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye

"Those supporting a convergent evolution state that this common ancestor would have preceded both cephalopods and vertebrates by a significant margin. The common ancestor with the expression for camera-type eye would have existed approximately 270 million years before the evolution of camera-type eye in cephalopods and approximately 110 to 260 million years before the evolution of camera-type eye in vertebrates.[11] Another source of evidence for this is the differences of expression due to independent variants of Pax6 arising in both cephalopods and vertebrates. Cephalopods contain five variants of Pax6 in their genomes which independently arose and are not shared by vertebrates, although they allow for a similar gene expression when compared to the Pax6 of vertebrates."

Comment: as noted, lots of old preparations for a camera eye. Designed evolution is step by step. So much for dhw's illogical worry about precursors and phenotypic 'Darwin gaps.'