Originally Posted by RAZD
Still complaining that scientists actually do science, eh CTD?

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You said
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Originally Posted By: RAZD
What does it predict about the genetic record? That it will match the fossil evidence for common ancestry exactly.

There is not an exact match for whales.
So when there is a mismatch, scientists look to see if one or the other (or both) was wrong.

You like to highlight words to emphasis them:

The prediction is that - when both trees are fully developed - that they will match exactly.
And you like to misportray things. I copied and pasted your exact words. They're still there, naturally.

Now you effectively change it to "when all sides have reached a consensus" their results will match. Duh! It could not be otherwise. Do you predict such a day will ever come? Is such a prediction falsifiable?

By the way, is this your own prediction, or do you have a source? We know Darwin didn't predict anything about DNA, after all. How could he? He was totally ignorant about it.
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Ah yes, whenever things don't turn out to suit CTD, fall back on the world wide conspiracy theory.
You equate divided opinions among evolutionists with conspiracy? On my behalf, no less?
Originally Posted by RAZD
The (new) fossil evidence invalidates the mesonychid lineage.
Your source admits it involves a new interpretation of fossils.
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Field work in Pakistan was initiated in 1975 to investigate sites previously reported as yielding Eocene land mammals. This led to the suggestion that some fossils there interpreted as mesonychids might really be archaeocetes (Gingerich, 1977). Our 1977 field work in marine strata yielded more archaeocetes, which, foolishly, we were not very interested in at the time (Gingerich et al., 1979). Pelvic bones that we found that year in the Sulaiman Range were attributed, questionably, to land mammals, because it was impossible to imagine that whales had such robust hind limbs. In the field we joked that these might be 'walking whales', but the idea seemed preposterous because there were no whales known then that were primitive enough to have walked. Our first important contribution was discovery of the remains of a new archaeocete, Pakicetus inachus, in the late 1970s. Pakicetus, known only from the skull and lower jaw, was then the oldest known archaeocete (Gingerich et al., 1983— this distinction now belongs to Himalayacetus; see Bajpai and Gingerich, 1999).
They have new "finds" which they say "support" the new interpretation. Now which came first, the DNA tree discrepancies, or the new story?

My preliminary, superficial research results in a tie. 1994. Your source published about an "important" find in 1994, and wiki lists "Grauer, D. and D. Higgins. 1994. Molecular evidence for the inclusion of cetaceans within the order Artiodactyla. Molecular Biology and Evolution" as a source for their article.

That's really all the time I care to waste. Unless you desire to present a case that the fossils were reinterpreted independently, you should drop it.

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Curiously you still have not shown that whales have some unique to whales DNA,...
What's so curious about that? If I had made the claim, it would be curious.

Perhaps it could be easily done? Perhaps that's what makes it curious? Ah well, I've done enough; I don't need to go chasing down every clue you drop in my lap. Even when your own sources support exactly what I say, it has no impact, let's not forget.
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...Sadly, for you, the evidence shows both DNA relationships and homology\morphology relationships between whales and other early artiodactyla mammals quite clearly.
Then why is there no consensus? Are those evolutinists on the other side of the controversy just too stubborn to give up? What about the neutral, non-committal group? Are they just afraid, or (even worse) too blamed independent to be intimidated?

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This is how Gingerich sorts it out:
Good for him.... How do the others sort it out? Indohys fits in where, exactly?
[Linked Image]

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Want to make any bets about the next intermediate fossils found?
I wouldn't bet against the paleontologist faction on that score. What about betting on the next DNA analysis? Is whippomorpha the future, or just a transient phenomenon?

I see wiki's not keeping cats in bags. You need to police it a little more closely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetartiodactyla
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Later molecular analyses included a wider sampling of artiodactyls and produced a more complete tale. Hippos were determined to be the closest relative of whales, ruminants were related to a whale/hippo clade, and pigs were more distant. In addition to producing the controversial whale/hippo clade, these analyses suggested that hippos and pigs were not closely related. This had been a popular taxonomic hypothesis (Suiformes) based on similarities in morphological (physical) characteristics.
So they got pigs wrong too, I see. Anyone surprised? Anyone at all?

Matching trees is quite the issue. I came across this Supertree project.
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The supertree is based on a large set of stringently-selected source trees derived from analyses of a very wide range of characters and character types (including morphology, mitochondrial genes and nuclear genes) analysed using improved coding [32,37], searching [57] and robustness-checking [26] methods from those used in the previous supertree assessment of placental phylogeny by LEA. It appears from our subsidiary analysis that at least some of the key differences between our supertree and the original LEA study lie with the selection of independent source trees and in the avoidance of a priori assumptions of monophyly. This finding confirms that the inclusion of poor or duplicated data is not inherent to supertree construction (as implied by [11]; see [33]), although, as in all areas of science, it remains an issue of which researchers need to be mindful.
Looks like other evolutionists think it's important to take and compare independent trees when making evaluations. But what would they know? "Supertree" is clearly second-rate. Just compare it to "absolute dating". It's okay, as these things go, but nothing to brag about.

I'll suggest cutting to the chase, just so you can refuse. Do you have any objective standard relating to "transitionals" which would falsify any version of evolutionism?

Dark Matter + Dark Energy = Dark Truth

"We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution." - Judge Jones Kitzmiller case
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Falsify.cfm

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