FearlessLeader2 said:
Archaeology is not a science. It is the study of the remnants of the past. At best it is a semi-science of librarianism, of cataloguing and verifying artifacts as belonging to certain cultures. Cosmology, OTOH, is real science. The astophysicists who predicted a 3 kelvin background radiation in the 60s proved that.And you are making the far more common 'mistake' of believing that a useless 'prediction' that is subsequently 'proved' by 'new data' is a valid falsification attempt.
You appear to have a very weird definition of science.....
If you've got a string of fossils that show a progression from proto-cat A to proto-cat Z, but proto-cats G, M, and T are not in the progression, predicting that someone will find them is not predicting anything more significant than predicting that I will get wet if I forget my umbrella on a rainy day.
ahem, now you say if we have a dog-like animal that shares a few plesiomorph characters with whales, lacks mayn whale autapomorphois, but shares some whale autapomorphies (i.e. I claim it is a whale ancestor) and we have whales, then it is not surprising to find in intermediate forms?
did I get that right?
Where, pray tell, is the link from fish to amphibian? From amphibian to reptile? From reptile to mammal? You've got some feathered dinos that help you a little with the reptile to bird progression, but even that is pretty thin.
first: Not fish - 'fish'. Not reptile - 'reptile'. All not monophyletic clades, except for the mammals........
'fish' to 'amphib': in the Sarcopterygii! To be more specific: in the Dipnoi! On to
Ichtyostega, oh, heck, check this:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/amphibians.jpg
(caution, large image!)
sorry it is in German, it is from the book quoted below. It lists all the groups and their relations as far as can be properly determined. It is a bit old, so expect slight changes due to new finds.
'amphib' to 'reptile': this is a tough one, I admit! To quote Carroll, R. (1993):
Paläontologie und Evolution der Wirbeltiere. (translation of a standard book from the English; I re-translate freely here):
Before the Upper Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) no sediments are known containing a real terrestrial fauna., and there are no earlier proofs of reptiles or their ancestors. The early amniotes are so different from all paleozoic amphibs that their exact descendence can't be pinned down.
a problem of preservation as you see.
from 'reptile' to mammal: this one is the mother load
I am tempted just to refer you to Kemp, T. (1982):
Mammal-like reptiles and the Origin of Mammals. - Academic Press, London.
But heres a tiny bit of info for you just a very quick glance
..
so far for the not-yet-mammals
and on to the first mammals: a pic of the skeleton and a life-reconstruction of a morgonucodontid.
Very close to the first mammals. Looks kinda rodent-
like, doesnt it?
Well, not to me, but to the untrained guy off the street
For the record, BTW, devolution is going backwards up the tree. Where is the regression from complexified(man for example) to simple(australiopithecus, or some common ancestor of both if aussie's not one of them)? Why doesn't the simpler version ever get chosen by the blind watchmaker?
hu? what is that supposed to mean?
devolution
.. how can anything go exactly back? What nonsense is this?
and, the term primitive does NOT necessarily mean less sophisticated or less complex. Rather, it means ancestral.
As for simpler: if a more complex form kicks out a simpler one, then the complex one oviosuly had an advantage. But lotsa primitive crocodiles run around today, while some highly sophisticated forms of crocodiles from the Mesozoic are gone.
about your 'vacation' - had I known I wouldn't have hassled you. Sorry
