When did dinosaurs exist? How old is earth?

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Mintaka said:
Once you’re the toughest fish in your area, you don’t have to evolve much. 🙂
  1. The coelacanth may well have had internal genetic changes. That’s not something that’s going to be obvious in fossils, and we can’t very well go back millions of years to see if the fish tasted different back then.
  2. If you live in the middle of the ocean, very far away from everything else and fairly deep, but not quite on the bottom, you live in an environment that doesn’t change much.
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It seems every few months we learn of a living fossil. The list is becoming quite impressive.
 
buffalo said:
It seems every few months we learn of a living fossil. The list is becoming quite impressive.
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Something people should have observed is that all these living fossils have had no effect on evolution, beyond a, “Hey, that’s neat”. This is because living fossils just mean that we have discovered something we hadn’t found before but which has fossil ancestors. Evolution says that everything alive today has ancestors, so finding yet another species which has ancestors is not a problem for evolution.

What would throw evolution is the commonly cited “Cambrian rabbit”. Since the ancestors of rabbits appear long after the Cambrian, seeing a Cambrian rabbit would be an example of something appearing before its ancestors, and that would indeed be a huge problem for evolution.

YEC sites like to tout living fossils as a problem for evolution. As so often, the YEC sites misunderstand evolution. Living fossils are not a problem. We have known about sharks for a very long time, and they also qualify as a living fossil. A Cambrian rabbit would be a genuine problem for evolution. Finding an organism with fossil ancestors is not a problem. Another example of YEC sites giving incorrect information.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Something people should have observed is that all these living fossils have had no effect on evolution, beyond a, “Hey, that’s neat”. This is because living fossils just mean that we have discovered something we hadn’t found before but which has fossil ancestors. Evolution says that everything alive today has ancestors, so finding yet another species which has ancestors is not a problem for evolution.

What would throw evolution is the commonly cited “Cambrian rabbit”. Since the ancestors of rabbits appear long after the Cambrian, seeing a Cambrian rabbit would be an example of something appearing before its ancestors, and that would indeed be a huge problem for evolution.

YEC sites like to tout living fossils as a problem for evolution. As so often, the YEC sites misunderstand evolution. Living fossils are not a problem. We have known about sharks for a very long time, and they also qualify as a living fossil. A Cambrian rabbit would be a genuine problem for evolution. Finding an organism with fossil ancestors is not a problem. Another example of YEC sites giving incorrect information.

rossum
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What the record shows is abrupt appearance, stasis with limited variation. This is not incorrect information.
 
buffalo said:
What the record shows is abrupt appearance, stasis with limited variation. This is not incorrect information.
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Uh…no, that’s not even close to correct. The record clearly shows gradual change, with spurts of accelerated, but still obviously gradual, change. Please stop talking about evolution like you know a single thing about it. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. None at all.
 
Farsight001 said:
Uh…no, that’s not even close to correct. The record clearly shows gradual change, with spurts of accelerated, but still obviously gradual, change. Please stop talking about evolution like you know a single thing about it. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. None at all.
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If you say so. :nope:
 
buffalo said:
What the record shows is abrupt appearance, stasis with limited variation. This is not incorrect information.
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What the record never shows is appearance before ancestors.

Abrupt appearance is not a problem for evolution, see “punctuated equilibrium”. Abrupt appearance is not a problem for evolution - over much of the world the appearance of humans was abrupt due to migration. Limited variation is not a problem for evolution - successful variants tend to proliferate with minor variations. Beetles for example.

Show me a descendant appearing before its ancestor and we can talk about problems with evolution.

rossum
 
The Earth is thought to be 48 million years old from what I heard.

The dinosaurs existed before Abraham. They dies out because they missed Noah’s Ark. 😃
 
rossum said:
What the record never shows is appearance before ancestors.

Abrupt appearance is not a problem for evolution, see “punctuated equilibrium”. Abrupt appearance is not a problem for evolution - over much of the world the appearance of humans was abrupt due to migration. Limited variation is not a problem for evolution - successful variants tend to proliferate with minor variations. Beetles for example.

Show me a descendant appearing before its ancestor and we can talk about problems with evolution.

rossum
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Yup - PE was some story telling needed to resolve this.

Correct - variation/adaptation is micro-evolution. No one disagrees with adaptation.

The tree of life has fallen. Simply constructing ancestry based on assumptions will no longer hold. Genetics will put this all to the test.
 
buffalo said:
Yup - PE was some story telling needed to resolve this.
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Punctuated Equilibrium is not a “story”. As you yourself have frequently pointed out, the fossil record supports PE. However none of those fossils appear earlier than their ancestors in the fossil record.
The tree of life has fallen. Simply constructing ancestry based on assumptions will no longer hold. Genetics will put this all to the test.
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Genetics has put the tree of life to the test. The Linnaean tree, derived from appearances before the discovery of DNA, agrees with the tree derived from DNA sequencing to 12 decimal places. That is extremely accurate. Better than gravity, which is only accurate to about 8 decimal places. When two different methods agree to that level of accuracy, then you can be sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that you are onto something.

rossum
 
journey00 said:
My 12 yr old daughter wants to know when did dinosaurs exist. After Abraham? Did they live during the time of Jesus? How old is the earth? We are making a wall timeline from creation to present.

I.
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Genesis answers the question in the first account of creation. Animals are created before humans. It does not say how long before, as the days are God’s days, not Earth time.
 
puzzleannie said:
Genesis answers the question in the first account of creation. Animals are created before humans. It does not say how long before, as the days are God’s days, not Earth time.
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Thank you! 👍 That made sense to my 12yr old daughter. The other comments were way above her head.

God bless everyone who answered.
 
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