Re: Evolution... The Unlikely Steps...

"TranslucentAmoebae" <transamoebae@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1182021379.709869.49000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

One odd thing that troubles me about Evolution is the amount of time
it's taken to get to humans from sponges.

Too long? Too short?

"If humans evolved from sponges, then how come there are still
sponges?"

At the time of the Precambrian Explosion,

Loki? The Cambrian "explosion" indeed would have its roots
in the Precambrian.

i would be willing to grant
that all the crazy animals that came out of that, were spawned by
somekind of worm that had all it's internal organs developed...

Early bilaterians would be more or less "wormlike", yes.

( it's been recently discovered that eyes, for example, did NOT evolve
many times, but only once! )

Not quite, but there are apparently underlying molecular homologies.
The eyes themselves may have evolved independently multiple times,
even though their light-sensitive pigment systems may have a common
origin.

So anyways, add on however much longer you'd like to 560 million years
from then to now, and allow 200 million years subtracted from that,
for the age of the dinosaurs, when evolution from sponges to humans
were put on hold... ( mammals were around when dinosaurs started, but
stopped evolving, for the most part during that period )

Sorry, but that last claim is nonsense. Just because Mesozoic mammals
were mostly small and "primitive" and inconspicuous compared to the
big dinos doesn't mean they weren't evolving just as much then as
before and after.

....so then
you have 360 million years, time 2 820 half-million years, or the
amount of time that any given animal stays 'that animal' before
becoming something else...

What does "the amount of time that any given animal stays 'that animal'
before becoming something else" mean? Are you talking about estimates
of the average time between successive speciation events in a lineage?

But then creationists would say that speciations don't turn an animal
[or plant] into "something else", but instead into just another
"So what? It's still a [whatever]".

so that's 820 steps from sponges to humans.

What's a "step"? A point mutation going to fixation in a population?
A speciation?

That's fewer pages that a Harry Potter book.

Then perhaps you've analyzed the problem incorrectly. You do recall
that multiple changes will undoubtedly be going on concurrently, that
they don't have to take turns and happen one at a time?

that just doesn't seem like enough to me.
Then if you consider after the dinosaurs, 65 million years, or 130
half-million years...

130 steps from shrews to humans...???

Again, what's a "step"? And shrews aren't our ancestors, but no doubt
you really mean vaguely shrewlike early placental mammals. Your age
estimates are incorrect anyway; the major modern lineages of
mammals apparently arose during the Cretaceous.

That's a new animal on each page of a graphic novel.
???

As I understand it, there's nothing very problematic about the
estimated rates of evolutionary change required over the fossil
record, compared to rates that can be measured as they happen today.

cheers


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Evolution... The Unlikely Steps...
    ... it's taken to get to humans from sponges. ... that all the crazy animals that came out of that, ... for the age of the dinosaurs, when evolution from sponges to humans ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution... The Unlikely Steps...
    ... One odd thing that troubles me about Evolution is the amount of time ... it's taken to get to humans from sponges. ... that all the crazy animals that came out of that, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution... The Unlikely Steps...
    ... it's taken to get to humans from sponges. ... that all the crazy animals that came out of that, ... for the age of the dinosaurs, when evolution from sponges to humans ...
    (talk.origins)