Another Surprise
by MikeGeneEarth's first animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, not the simple sponge, according to a new find that has shocked scientists who didn't imagine the earliest critter could be so complex.
[...]
"This was a complete shocker," said study team member Casey Dunn of Brown University in Rhode Island. "So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong."
Dunn's team checked and re-checked their results and came up with the same result every time: the comb jelly came first. The results are detailed in the April 10 issue of the journal Nature, a journal that, like most respected journals, requires other scientists review a paper prior to publication.
[...]
The finding was unexpected because evolutionary biologists had thought that less complex animals split off and evolved separately first. Dunn says that two evolutionary scenarios can explain why the comb jellies would actually have been first among animals. The first is that the comb jelly evolved its complexity independent of other animals after branching off to forge its own path.
The second is that the sponge evolved its simpler form from the more complex form. This second possibility underscores the fact that "evolution is not necessarily just a march towards increased complexity," Dunn said.
Read the rest here.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:27 am
wow
Comment by Guts — April 11, 2008 @ 3:27 am
April 11th, 2008 at 5:20 am
C'mon, MikeGene – you think you can get away with just posting this without comment? I thought this lined up squarely with what you advocated in TDM?
Or did I misinterpret things?
Comment by nullasalus — April 11, 2008 @ 5:20 am
April 11th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Nullasalus, he's saving up material for his next book!
Mebbe by then, his points will be so self-evident that he won't hafta be anonymous anymore.
Comment by Lutepisc — April 11, 2008 @ 8:44 am
April 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
It's kind of interesting how the tables have turned.
In the 19th century when evolutionists were telling people they were descended from ascideans, annelids, and other slimy creatures, I suspect they relished (just a wee bit) the shocked response. I suspect that nowadays the general public is so jaded that it couldn't possibly be shocked by anything anyone says, and news like this is more likely to be greeted with a politely suppressed yawn.
Nowadays it's the biologists who are "shocked"!
(Didn't Darwin speculate that it would be some sort of ascidian? Or was it Haeckel? Ascidians are pretty complicated animals too, aren't they? Maybe Darwin (Haeckel?) was a closet "Front-Loader"?)
Comment by Rock — April 11, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
April 11th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Hi Mike,
Yeah! More science stuff!!!!
I will try to look at it in more detail later.
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 11, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
April 11th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
1st animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, then the 2nd was the zebra. Trotted right out of the ocean. Then the wonderful diverse array of life spawned from there.
*****
Then I'd be all for unguided evolution. My only requirement is wacky. It's got to be wacky. I'm talking snails right to cats. Lemurs to Ruth Buzzi. Tit mouse to waffle iron.
Comment by Doug — April 11, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
April 11th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Nooooo Then I'd have to throw away all the masks I made for Mike Gene's conferences:
Comment by Guts — April 11, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
April 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
To think that billions of years of evolution led to the waffle iron.
That strikes me funny.
Comment by kornbelt888 — April 11, 2008 @ 2:24 pm
April 12th, 2008 at 7:17 am
From the article quote
end quote:
negative prediction no "simple" comb jelly will be found
positive prediction a comb jelly without connective tissues and a nervous system will not be viable
Second prediction Zach will say this is not a valid prediction
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — April 12, 2008 @ 7:17 am
April 12th, 2008 at 8:08 am
fifth monarchy man,
I will venture a third prediction: no flying comb jelly will be found.
Comment by olegt — April 12, 2008 @ 8:08 am
April 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Doug wrote:
That's just like something a stupid creationist would say. Every rational, intelligent person knows that all we need to do is simply look at genotypes to see it was the chicken that was the second animal. Strutted right out of the ocean into a large cardboard bucket. Duh.
So now that this question is answered, we're trying figure out how the cardboard bucket arises from natural selection.
Comment by angryoldfatman — April 12, 2008 @ 11:54 am
April 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Angry, "So now that this question is answered, we're trying figure out how the cardboard bucket arises from natural selection."
Hey, I thought the cardboard bucket crossed the road?
Comment by bFast — April 12, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
April 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
So in other words you are predicting that the first animal has no predecessor? And thus you are denying that the shared gene sequences between the comb jelly and singled celled organisms are explained by evolution. Well, at least it follows from this that you also disagree with Mike's Front-Loaded Evolution theory so at least we agree on something
.
Comment by Todd Berkebile — April 12, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
April 12th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
My predictions are offered as a test of the authors hypotheses where does yours flow from?
No just that the predecessor would not simply be a simpler version of it
You are reading a lot into a simple prediction
actually I'd expect the predecessor to have the genetic potential for producing things like a nervous system and connecting tissue already present. That is what I thought frontloading was all about. Perhaps I'm mistaken
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — April 12, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
April 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Well, six posts earlier, I noted, "I think our understanding of evolution is still at a primitive level." Nice timing, eh?
Comment by MikeGene — April 12, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
April 13th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I just finished reading Evolution under the microscope by David W. Swift. Remarkable book that I recommend highly. He happens to reflect on how "simple" the sponge is (p 261-262) in terms of the sophistication required to construct their skeletons:
So even if the "simple" sponge was the words first animal, they would still have some splaining to do.
Comment by endoplasmicMessenger — April 13, 2008 @ 4:47 pm