Invertebrate to vertebrate fish?

Question

"Fishes are considered to be the most primative living vertabrate .............similarites in structure and embryological development show that fishes and modern inverabrate chordates PROBABLY DID EVOLVE from common invertabrate ancestors that lived many millions of years ago "

BIOLOGY, Miller and Levine, 2000, page 680

There is not one single intermediate in the text book to support this claim. And the phrase PROBABLY DID EVOLVE that's not science, but speculation.

Does anyone agree with me, if they have proof, they should show it, and not make and wild, unsubstantiate claims, especially in a science text book?

Answer 1

Theo............my best guess, you're not going to get many atheist to show their ignorance and question these authors.

Answer 2

The animal kingdom is divided into a large number of groups called phyla, such as molluscs and nematodes. One of these is the chordata - animals which at some stage in their life cycle have a rigid dorsal cord, a post-anal tail, gill clefts and muscle blocks. A subgroup of this is the vertebrates. All of the phyla are pretty different from each other, and within the phyla there are substantial similarities. The vertebrates basically work OK as a classification, though rather a small one - a subphylum or infraphylum - though in a sense hagfish are not vertebrates. The invertebrates, however, are basically all the phyla except most of the chordates thrown together in a random mess, when they are as different from each other as they are from the chordates which don't have backbones. It reflects the human prejudice towards their own group. However, it is true that there are many large and familiar animals which are vertebrates.

Answer 3

Ummm, is this a religious question?

Anyway, to answer it you need to explain what you mean by an "intermediate".

Do you mean, for example, something like the Cephalochordates that retain their dorsal nerve chord throughout their lives like the vertebrates, but not like Urochordates?

Or do you mean like hagfish, which have vertebrae in common with their other vertebrate cousins, but not one that encloses the nerve chord with bone and/or cartilage.

These examples aren't the historical intermediates, of course, they're currently living examples.

Remember that the fossil record is not the only source of evidence about evolution and the cladistic relationships between species. Your text cites similarities in structure and embryological development, for starters.

For main course, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_evidence


PS: done a bit of reading, and in fact the urochordates are, surprisingly, more closely related to the vertebrates than the cephalochordates, according to recent research

http://www.sars.no/research/chourroutPress.php

Answer 4

Good point my friend....they can't present proof because their is none in the fossil record!

It is amazing to me that those who push evolution theory so vehemently don't even know what most evolutionary scientists have said about the fossil record....

Even Charles Darwin was honest when he confesses in 'Origin of Species'; " But as by THIS THEORY innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we NOT find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" -Charles Darwin

To the above fact, even the most world renown (evolutionary) biologists agree...." New species almost always appear suddenly in the fossil record with NO intermediate links to ancestors in older rocks in the same region. The fossil record with its abrupt transitions OFFERS NO SUPPORT for gradual change". - Stephen J. Gould (Natural History , June, 1977, p.22)

"The extreme rarity (of transitional forms) in the fossil record persists as the 'trade secret' of palentology. The evolutionary tree (diagarms) that adorn our textbooks is.....NOT the evidence of fossils". - Stephen Gould (Natural History, 1977, vol.86, p.13)

According to Scripture NOTHING evolved but everything was created "AFTER THEIR KIND"....which is directly consistent with the fossil record.

The thing to remember is that evolution is just a theory, a speculation, an unproven assumption....not a proven fact.

Answer 5

That's one text book, dummy. Is it a fifth grade science book?
Besides, he may be pointing out that particular fossils Do, in fact, show this evolutionary advance, but the particular path that evolution took is not known for certain. The fact doesn't change,... evolution did take place.
So what's your point? That god did it??
Where is your "substance" to make THAT claim?

"The thing to remember is that evolution is just a theory, a speculation, an unproven assumption....not a proven fact. "
This comment, taken from an answer below, shows how stupid you people are about science and what a "scientific theory" is.

Answer 6

If you'd like to read the latest theories, they are apparently available here:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7079/edsumm/e060223-08.html

And yes, that quote is intentionally fuzzy because they apparently don't know the lineage. They're always rerunning these phylogenetic things and trying to figure out what came when and where. After all, we're dealing with millions of years ago here.

How would you write the passage?

Answer 7

Hey guys..........this looks like a lot of fun, making the Atheists here to sit down and shut up. Can I join you in make some of these postings? Looks like fun, and I want to make these Atheists in here appears as the fools they are.

Answer 8

yes i agree with you 100%. in supposedly 550 million yr. old cambrian rock there are fossils of trilobites, starfish, clams,etc..these have NO evolutionary ancestors. evolutionists are clueless on this one.