Help! What organs have good fossil records?

[camoguard]

I want one example of an organ whose development has good records. I've seen the eye arguments against irreducible complexity but I'm wondering if you folks know of an organ development (including the eye) where I can see a proper journal dating the transitions or some similar piece of data.

I'm proevolution like a reasonable person, but I was asked if I could identify one organ that was developed with recorded transitions and I thought I would try.

[Berthold]

Would the skull, and limbs, be satisfactory examples? The skull includes the nice detail of the ear bones evolving from bones with quite different functions.

[Feck]

Teeth .

[devogue]

[camoguard]

Of those options I like the ears the best. I'm arguing with an idiot but I'd like to think that sensible answers in public clue other ignorant but sensible people into reality. You can see for yourself what I'm dealing with in the comments section of my blog. I'm not the most knowledgeable, so I don't mind being corrected on my own misstatements.

[GenesForLife]

He is confusing evolution and universal common ancestry, Camo.

Evolution = change in allele frequency due to selection.
Universal common ancestry = postulate arising from common descent and speciation.
Of which we do have a potent statistical test too

Universal common ancestry (UCA) is a central pillar of modern evolutionary theory1. As first suggested by Darwin2, the theory of UCA posits that all extant terrestrial organisms share a common genetic heritage, each being the genealogical descendant of a single species from the distant past3, 4, 5, 6. The classic evidence for UCA, although massive, is largely restricted to ‘local’ common ancestry—for example, of specific phyla rather than the entirety of life—and has yet to fully integrate the recent advances from modern phylogenetics and probability theory. Although UCA is widely assumed, it has rarely been subjected to formal quantitative testing7, 8, 9, 10, and this has led to critical commentary emphasizing the intrinsic technical difficulties in empirically evaluating a theory of such broad scope1, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Furthermore, several researchers have proposed that early life was characterized by rampant horizontal gene transfer, leading some to question the monophyly of life11, 14, 15. Here I provide the first, to my knowledge, formal, fundamental test of UCA, without assuming that sequence similarity implies genetic kinship. I test UCA by applying model selection theory5, 16, 17 to molecular phylogenies, focusing on a set of ubiquitously conserved proteins that are proposed to be orthologous. Among a wide range of biological models involving the independent ancestry of major taxonomic groups, the model selection tests are found to overwhelmingly support UCA irrespective of the presence of horizontal gene transfer and symbiotic fusion events. These results provide powerful statistical evidence corroborating the monophyly of all known life.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... ml?lang=en

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The skull provides a nice mold for making images of the organs inside it. Brain mostly, of course. You can get a lot of information from a cast made from a skull. Size of brain, shape of lobes, etc.

[GenesForLife]

Check your blog, camo

[camoguard]

Thanks man. I didn't know you could confuse Evolution and common ancestry. I've got two Ph.D friends at the JF Crow Institute who didn't mention that either. If it's not much trouble to list, and actual evolutionary theories you know of would speed up my googling because I have a blog post that I intend to do on the subject of supporting theories.

[camoguard]

The skull provides a nice mold for making images of the organs inside it. Brain mostly, of course. You can get a lot of information from a cast made from a skull. Size of brain, shape of lobes, etc.

I remember something about brains that Sagan went on about in "Dragons of Eden". That would probably be a good contender because of all the animals that have brains. I might go that route. Or include it in a list of organs that have more steps figured out.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The skull provides a nice mold for making images of the organs inside it. Brain mostly, of course. You can get a lot of information from a cast made from a skull. Size of brain, shape of lobes, etc.

I remember something about brains that Sagan went on about in "Dragons of Eden". That would probably be a good contender because of all the animals that have brains. I might go that route. Or include it in a list of organs that have more steps figured out.

Soft organs can be inferred by different methods. The size and location of muscle attachment points give us muscle arrangement and strength estimates. The location of the eye sockets tell us something about their capabilities. And "incidentals", like gastroliths, tell us a bit about other organs.

[GenesForLife]

Thanks man. I didn't know you could confuse Evolution and common ancestry. I've got two Ph.D friends at the JF Crow Institute who didn't mention that either. If it's not much trouble to list, and actual evolutionary theories you know of would speed up my googling because I have a blog post that I intend to do on the subject of supporting theories.

Common ancestry is one of the postulates that the framework of evolutionary biology postulates based on divergence by speciation, which is a consequence of evolution under differential selective pressures and by the prevention of gene flow between organisms in a population.

If you are looking to support evolution it is quite simple, and I will be along with some papers over the next few days
[1] Talk about processes that can cause mutations.
[2] Talk about genes and the role of genes in development.
[3] examples of genes involved in development and effects of mutations in them.
[4] Evidence for speciation
[5] The empirical basis of phylogeny
[6] confirmation of evolutionary hypotheses with technology such as ancestral gene ressurection.
[7] Corroboration of phylogeny with the fossil record.

[camoguard]

Being raised by wolves to the point of just recently (at 31) getting my chromatic scales explained to me, pardon me for attempting to rephrase my question. I definitely think your points are good points and I'm storing them. However, as a lay person, I wonder about the spin offs from natural selection and UAC (which I didn't really see as different until today).

Let's say a person just stumbled on evolution, googled around and checked out the University of California site. What are some other topics to go to next? Mendel figured out the gene after Darwin but that's easy to remember to google. I just stumbled across Paleobiology for an example topic. It's relatively new as a discipline so whatever theories or core concepts it has have to be based on dating mechanisms, inorganic sciences, and evolution, right? What are other niches and things that spin off or explain categories of stuff?

It's a bit rhetorical but honest of a question. I've downloaded a Molecular Biology book and I'm going to read it. I've just been thinking about digesting some of the harder to know about stuff into my blog so there are more examples of what comes next after "accepting evolution". Being science oriented I kind of dig getting the next odd fact...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Two books helped me get grounded.

The Complete Idiots Guide to Evolution and Evolution for Dummies. One explained evolution is simple terms, the other looked at the, ahem, evolution of the theory. Great "starter" books.

[camoguard]

Are you serious? I could interpret your comment as a joke.