Did Darwin get it wrong?

[Zone]

An interesting (though slightly old) video here. The fossil record doesn't appear to be gradual gradation of change and development over time other than the body size.





Aside from the Creationist they seem to be credible scientists making these observations. Also could some form of Lamarckian evolution on the genetic level be viable? That seems to be in vogue thing atm and is briefly covered in the video.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Can you post some sort of summary? It's an hour long, I've read a few articles of did darwin get it wrong kind of thing and they weren't very good. I'm not talking about creationists articles either. Lamarck has been disproven.

[Zone]

A new form of Lamarckian evolution by changes to the genetic structure of an organism acquired during it's lifetime is well on the agenda atm. Studies being carried out on identical twins, I have this book in the post.



The video is about gaps in the fossil record and the stability of individual species over great lengths of time. They also claim they lack a real lineage of evolution but just take different related species in different locations and times and order them to cosmetically fit in a sequence as they did with the evolution of the horse display. They may have found something more solid since 1980 though.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Oh, epigenetics. Epigenetics: changes in genome that occurs over lifetime. Lamarck: you can pass on these changes. 2 different things. And either way, epigenetics is in its infancy in terms of research, I'll hold off on speculation until more data pours in.

I'm confused, are you saying Darwin's theory of evolution isn't perfect or are you saying the theory of evolution as we know it now has been disproven?

[Zone]

They're saying Darwin may have made assumptions based on human artificial breeding of animals that may not operate the way he thought it would in nature through natural selection over millions of years. You can watch it in 10 segments or something.

[Minimalist]

Darwin knew nothing of genetics/dna/chromosomes/ etc. His work laid the foundation that others have built on.

The foundation remains sound. Unlike the fucking creatards and their stupid ass bible.

[Anomalocaris]

If you don't your own basic research and self-education and on the topic, and chose to pose any random junk sourced to all and sundry as legitimate question deserving of the time of people who have already answered it a million times, then you are likely to be ignored the polite condescension.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Oh ok. Uhm, I'm very familiar with the theory of evolution as we know it now, however, I'm very bad at history and don't exactly know Darwin's proposed theory in detail. I do know it's not perfect, but given what he had at the time I do think he was incredibly insightful. I won't be surprised if he got some parts wrong.

One more thing about Lamarck, his theory isn't about passing on traits unknowingly, he was talking about acquired traits. As in if I master the piano and then had a daughter, she'd be good at it, too. I think it was Soviet Russia that adopted his theory and rejected Darwinian and tried to "teach" seeds to grow in the cold, needless to say they failed. But Darwin's theory of selection does, as you know, allow farmers to cultivate crops that behave the way they want it to. That's what I mean about Lamarck having been disproven.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The fossil record doesn't appear to be gradual gradation of change and development over time other than the body size.

Really?



Boru

[Zazzy]

I don't have time to watch this all- but it's clearly about epigenetics. Darwin had a lot of specifics wrong because he knew nothing about DNA (gemmules, as he called it), but only if you're picky. He couldn't know that plants, for instance, routinely double their genomes and are fine with this. He didn't know about transposons, or resident genomes, or methylation of particular DNA sequences- all of which can have immediate and major effects on a genome or a phenotype. But he did damned well for someone in his position.

And Lamarck was likewise a fine scientist (and the real father of evolutionary theory, IMO), but it's a stretch to link epigenetics to him.