RufusAtticus

<a href="http://www.nhm.ukans.edu/cc.html" target="_blank">http://www.nhm.ukans.edu/cc.html</a>

It appears to be a great resource. Save a copy to your harddrive today!

-RvFvS

Ergaster

I second the motion. Anyone who wants to learn how cladistics works can't do much better than working through the problems.

Of course, I had to *buy* my copy when I took my macroevolution course...

(and yes, my university DOES teach a course called "Introduction to Macroevolution", which seems strange considering how creationists insist that macroevolution DOESN'T EXIST!!! Bwahahah!!)

<a href="http://zardoz.zoo.utoronto.ca/zooweb2/undergrad/ugcoursedescr.asp?ID=47" target="_blank">http://zardoz.zoo.utoronto.ca/zooweb2/undergrad/ugcoursedescr.asp?ID=47</a>


[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Ergaster ]</p>

Dr.GH

Thanks for the link. Gary

John Solum

Thanks for posting the link, I forwarded it to all the members of Geological Sciences department here (and got a few sarcastic responses from the non-paleontologists)

If any of you are interested in paleomagnetism there's an entire intro paleomag book online:

<a href="http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Paleomag/book/" target="_blank">http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Paleomag/book/</a>

RufusAtticus

I came across this again today, so I am bumping it.

ex-robot

This confused me for the longest time. You have one branch of evolutionists who are very dogmatic about how there is no such thing as macroevolution. You have others who seem to accept the word but find it trivial. Now you have a class in it!

Do the "majority" of evolutionists find that macroevolution is a figment of creationist's imagination and is simple observable changes now over millions of years, or do they accept it as a legitimate word for common descent? Or is it something else?

xr

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks for bumping it Rufus. I was wondering where that was

Cheers, Oolon

RufusAtticus

Ex-robot, you definately appear to be confused. I suspect that you have an erronous concept of macroevolution in your head. Creationists throw it around without having the foggiest undersanding of what it actually means in science. It's no suprise how you might be confused. Could you please tell us what you think of when encountering the term "macroevolution?" That way we can determine if (and where) your problem lies in your understanding of the term or something else.

After you do that, you might also find these links worthwhile.

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jul01.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jul01.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/punc-eq.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/punc-eq.html</a>
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html</a>

-RvFvS

RufusAtticus

PH34R MY L33T PR0PH3S1Z1N SK1LLZ.

[ April 03, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Ergaster

It's not that there's no such thing as macroevolution; it's that there is no such thing as macroevolution the way creationists redefine it.

Macroevolution is generally defined as "change at or above the species level". However, since all categories above "species" are human constructs for the purposes of classifying and do not exist as "real" evolutionary entities in nature, all evolutionary change must occur at or below the species level--i.e. via the well-known processes of microevolution. Speciation occurs, because species are real evolutionary units, but there is no such thing as "genusation" or "familiation" because genera and families are not "real" evolutionary units. They are categories invented by humans.

Essentially, studying macroevolution means studying evolutionary patterns, while microevolution is the study of process. Microevolution occurs over a short-enough term in some organisms that it can be observed and studied, but microevolution over the very long term cannot be directly observed. We predict that, if microevolution and speciation occur over a long enough time span, we should see certain patterns emerge in the history of life, and macroevolution is the reconstruction of those patterns. Cladistics is an important methodology, because it allows us to (more or less) objectively create testable hypotheses of relationships among a set of taxa. The formal course in Macroevolution that I referred to is basically the study of cladistic methodology and its applications to the study of speciation and evolutionary patterns.

To make a long story short: macroevolution is simply a term used to specify evolutionary patterns over the long term: ie the rise of higher categories (families, orders, etc.). These patterns are understood to arise via the normal microevolutionary processes (plus some contingent, more-or-less random stuff like plate tectonics or extraterrestrial impacts or mass extinctions that can influence patterns) that creationists all claim to accept. Creationists pretty much insist that macroevolution must involve different evolutionary processes altogether. They fail to grasp the distinction between pattern and process. It could be partly because most of them do not accept the time scale necessary, but I know of OECs who reject it as well, for no reason I've been able to extract.

I'd recommend Robert Carroll's 1997 book Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, Cambridge University Press, especially Chapter 15: "Conclusions and comparisons". This basically addresses the whole macroevolution/microevolution question and summarizes the important features of what we know about the patterns and processes of vertebrate evolution, and compares it to our knowledge of invertebrate and plant evolution.

Deb

[ April 03, 2002: Message edited by: Ergaster ]</p>