tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935061765415342554.post5746806883897488572..comments2023-10-21T09:16:44.830-07:00Comments on Coherent Lighthouse: If a cladogram falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it still annoy a creationist?Dicing with Dragonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03132972790091524968noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935061765415342554.post-18487822111716635372008-05-07T13:06:00.000-07:002008-05-07T13:06:00.000-07:00Hmmm...interesting box analogy, sir. Common ancest...Hmmm...interesting box analogy, sir. Common ancestors are never knowable because, honestly, they don't exist in the knowable sense. Is Archaeopteryx an ancestor, or a sidebranch? Well, it's both. Every species on Earth is simultaneously a transitional form AND a final endpoint. Get two animals in the same room, and I can tell you something about their ancestor. I cannot identify that ancestor, but I can tell you how those two animals are related, and which is more basal than the other, given those ancestral characteristics.<BR/><BR/>Look at my geckos. I have leopard geckos and a wonder gecko. Both burrowing geckos with basal foot morphology. They share many derived characters, but is one ancestral to the other? Probably not. Do they share a recent common ancestor? Sure. Are they more related to each other than either one is to, say, wall-climbing geckos? That's harder to tease out.<BR/><BR/>The basal foot morphology suggests that both leopards and frog-eyes are early side-branches of gecko evolution, closer to the ancestral squamate than tokay and skunk geckos. Leopard geckos have eyelids, but the frog-eye does not. What does that mean? Does it mean that leopard geckos are the basalmost geckos, while wonder geckos are closer to "true" geckos? Or did leopard geckos regain their eyelids to deal with sandstorms? Both scenarios make sense.<BR/><BR/>I'm rambling, but the point is you can never actually know. I can generate several potential phylogenetic trees linking leopards, frog-eyes, and wall-crawlers together in various combinations, but those combinations are based solely on anatomical evidence. More evidence can get you closer to the truth, but you will never have ALL the evidence.<BR/><BR/>So I agree with you.Zachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08692080707969333711noreply@blogger.com