Creation vs. Evolution

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That the authors of the study are perplexed, if not disappointed, by their own research results is affirmed by a paper they collaborated on in 2014 that pointed to the possibility of “a single global population crash – “almost a Noah’s Ark hypothesis,” they wrote dismissively. “This appears unlikely.” Instead, they explained their findings thusly: “Perhaps long-term climate cycles might cause widespread periodic bottlenecks.”

The Phys.org report did eventually get around to what it characterized as perhaps “the study’s most startling result … that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.”

“How does one explain the fact that 90 percent of animal life, genetically speaking, is roughly the same age?” posed the report. “Was there some catastrophic event 200,000 years ago that nearly wiped the slate clean?”


The answer is almost certainly the 100,000 year Ice Age cycle. That might answer what bottlenecked animal life. But what reseeded it? Panspermia?
 
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That would be a bit prior to the recent ice age cycle, but the idea is the same. Survivors adapted and flourished as conditions improved.
 
Or, you know... the life that survived. Hence no more dinos but lots of little mammals.
90% of animal life that came before the "event" became extinct in terms of mitochondrial DNA. All those species of animals that arose afterward had its mitochondria DNA barcode simultaneously reset to a new base specification - "mitochondrial uniformity" . The dinos went extinct 65 million years prior. The "event" in question was supposedly from within the period 100,000 years ago to 200,000.

Elsewhere it is said all humans are descended from an original "mitochondrial Eve", perhaps from 200,000 years ago. It appears the same can be said for about 90% of current animal species, the way I read the articles.

So the question seems to be, how did all those surviving species, apparently arising in small groups, simultaneously receive brand new genetic coding?

Electromagnetic radiation damages mitochondrial genes and causes gene mutations. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are more susceptible to external stimuli than nuclear DNA.

So perhaps solar flare or cosmic radiation was responsible in some way?
 
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Hmmm. If the research is correct, there appears have been a creation event ~200,000 years ago for all but ~10% of species. I wonder what happened?

Or, there was a cataclysm that wiped out all but that 10%. We know that there have been multiple mass extinctions in the past. That there could have been one ~200,000 years ago that we haven't seen geological evidence for doesn't seem that far fetched.

Elsewhere it is said all humans are descended from an original "mitochondrial Eve", perhaps from 200,000 years ago.

Read up on mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosomal Adam. You will like it, it's very much the sort of theory that I think will appeal to you.

So the question seems to be, how did all those surviving species, apparently arising in small groups, simultaneously receive brand new genetic coding?

They didn't.
 
NEWSFLASH
---------------
Mark Stoeckle from the Rockefeller University in New York and David Thaler at the University of Basel in Switzerland, both evolutionary scientists, published in the Journal of Human Evolution the results of their meticulous and sweeping genetic study of the DNA barcodes of more than 100,000 animal species and humans showing man and all the animals seem to have sprung to life spontaneously no more than 200,000 years ago.

https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf

Hope this is the correct thread.

Possibly this piece makes what they've said and done a little simpler to understand https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html
Look up mass extinction events.
 
NEWSFLASH
---------------
Mark Stoeckle from the Rockefeller University in New York and David Thaler at the University of Basel in Switzerland, both evolutionary scientists, published in the Journal of Human Evolution the results of their meticulous and sweeping genetic study of the DNA barcodes of more than 100,000 animal species and humans showing man and all the animals seem to have sprung to life spontaneously no more than 200,000 years ago.

https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf

Hope this is the correct thread.

Possibly this piece makes what they've said and done a little simpler to understand https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html

I think it is time to ring up @John Crellin for this.

Or, there was a cataclysm that wiped out all but that 10%. We know that there have been multiple mass extinctions in the past. That there could have been one ~200,000 years ago that we haven't seen geological evidence for doesn't seem that far fetched.

If there was a mass extinction event 200,000 years ago we would most certainly see it in the rock record whether it is through fossil evidence or through carbon rich rocks.
 
I think it is time to ring up @John Crellin for this.

If there was a mass extinction event 200,000 years ago we would most certainly see it in the rock record whether it is through fossil evidence or through carbon rich rocks.
Extinction events come in different ways. There was an extinction of virtually all large land animals in North and South America during the relatively recent Younger Dryas, yet there is no definitive, agreed-upon answer as to the cause. If a solar storm or cosmic ray bombardment was sufficiently strong, it could kill or genetically damage animals exposed, yet perhaps be undetected in the rock record?

I have searched mainstream media for reaction or response of any kind to the Stoeckle/Thayer research, but aside from PhysOrg, there appears to be none at all. I expect the paper is too shocking to be taken seriously until there is confirmation from other authority figures. Darwin's theory of slow, steady uninterrupted evolution still has a hold on the paradigm.
 
Extinction events come in different ways. There was an extinction of virtually all large land animals in North and South America during the relatively recent Younger Dryas, yet there is no definitive, agreed-upon answer as to the cause. If a solar storm or cosmic ray bombardment was sufficiently strong, it could kill or genetically damage animals exposed, yet perhaps be undetected in the rock record?

I have searched mainstream media for reaction or response of any kind to the Stoeckle/Thayer research, but aside from PhysOrg, there appears to be none at all. I expect the paper is too shocking to be taken seriously until there is confirmation from other authority figures. Darwin's theory of slow, steady uninterrupted evolution still has a hold on the paradigm.

If we were talking about millions or perhaps billions of years, then it is plausible (but very unlikely) to be completely wiped from the rock record.

200,000 years is very quick geologically speaking. I cannot imagine why it would not be there.

If 90% were wiped out, that would be one of the largest mass extinction events ever. There would be evidence for it.

I have not read the paper yet. Something seems off about it... I'm hoping @John Crellin will put his input on it. He can speak about the biological aspects better than any of us.
 
Hmmm. If the research is correct, there appears have been a creation event ~200,000 years ago for all but ~10% of species. I wonder what happened?
I don't think it is so much a question of whether their research is correct as opposed to whether the interpretation (and reporting) of it by others is accurate - it is all too easy for someone to post a misleading comment and then for that article to be cited as if that is what the researchers are saying - the article cited above from Phys.org is a case in point. The paper itself is pretty heavy, but it categorically does not support the assertion of "a creation event" or even (as far as I can see) any sort of extinction event.

PZ Myers wrote about the article on his blog and does a much better job of explaining what the research is about...
 
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From a earlier paper by Stoeckle/Thayer:

Conclusion
COI barcode variation within avian species is uniformly low regardless of census population size. This finding directly contradicts a central prediction of neutral theory and is not readily accounted for by commonly proposed ad hoc modifications. As an alternative model consistent with empirical data including the molecular clock, we propose extreme purifying selection, including at synonymous sites, limits variation within species and continuous adaptive evolution drives the molecular clock.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0100755

From the more recent paper, they seem to suggest that the molecular clock was reset for 90% of all animal species sometime between 100k -200k years ago. I interpret this to mean that 90% of all species were subject to "extreme purifying selection".
 
If we were talking about millions or perhaps billions of years, then it is plausible (but very unlikely) to be completely wiped from the rock record.

200,000 years is very quick geologically speaking. I cannot imagine why it would not be there.

If 90% were wiped out, that would be one of the largest mass extinction events ever. There would be evidence for it.

I have not read the paper yet. Something seems off about it... I'm hoping @John Crellin will put his input on it. He can speak about the biological aspects better than any of us.
I dont really know what you want me to add. I mean we have fossil records of early hominids predating australopithecus which was around 3-4million years ago. The end of the last ice age was an extinction event but no where near the level of a mass extinction event of which there were only 5 (last one was 66 million years ago, the K-T boundary...you know Dinosaurs), and many animal species are still around that are much older than that.

The closest thing to what @Dotini was talking about to a 90% extinction event was the Permian extinction at 250million years ago but even then only 85% of the genera went extinct. They call it the "Great Dying"
 
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I'm not sure what you mean by 'reset'.
By "reset" I mean mitochondrial uniformity.
From the recent paper:
Several convergent lines of evidence show that mitochondrial diversity in modern humans follows from sequence uniformity followed by the accumulation of largely neutral diversity during a population expansion that began approximately 100,000 years ago. A straightforward hypothesis is that the extant populations of almost all animal species have arrived at a similar result consequent to a similar process of expansion from mitochondrial uniformity within the last one to several hundred thousand years.
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A positively selected allele has the potential to sweep through a population and by hitchhiking [113, 114] or genetic draft [115] carry the entirety of the linked genome along thereby resetting mitochondrial variation to zero. This scenario requires a single maternal lineage replace all others [113]. It is reasonable to hypothesize that somewhere on the mitochondrial genome there arises a positively selected amino acid substitutionleading to the replacement of the entire linked genome in the entire population. Oneshould not mince words about what a mitochondrial genome sweep requires: the entire population’s mitochondrial genome must re-originate from a single mother.
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Modern humans are a low-average animal species in terms of the APD. The molecular clock as a heuristic marks 1% sequence divergence per million years which is consistent with evidence for a clonal stage of human mitochondria between 100,000- 200,000 years ago and the 0.1% APD found in the modern human population [34, 155, 156]. A conjunction of factors could bring about the same result. However, one should not as a first impulse seek a complex and multifaceted explanation for one of the clearest, most data rich and general facts in all of evolution. The simple hypothesis is that the same explanation offered for the sequence variation found among modern humans applies equally to the modern populations of essentially all other animal species. Namely that the extant population, no matter what its current size or similarity to fossils of any age, has expanded from mitochondrial uniformity within the past 200,000 years.
The earlier paper discusses the molecular clock in more detail.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4079456/
 
By "reset" I mean mitochondrial uniformity.
From the recent paper:

The earlier paper discusses the molecular clock in more detail.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4079456/

Where does this article mention a 'molecular clock'?
It did say:

The ad hoc modifications to neutral theory commonly proposed to account for low variation in individual cases, namely, recurrent bottlenecks or selective sweeps, struggle as general mechanisms. If bottlenecks limit variation, then a universal low ceiling implies recent population crashes for all species. This appears unlikely–almost a Noah’s Ark hypothesis–although perhaps long-term climate cycles might cause widespread periodic bottlenecks [38]. If selective sweeps limit variation, then a universal low ceiling implies a dynamic view of evolution, with all species adapting all the time [39], in contrast to the equilibrium model at the core of neutral theory.

Which in fact negates the point you are making
 
I dont really know what you want me to add. I mean we have fossil records of early hominids predating australopithecus which was around 3-4million years ago. The end of the last ice age was an extinction event but no where near the level of a mass extinction event of which there were only 5 (last one was 66 million years ago, the K-T boundary...you know Dinosaurs), and many animal species are still around that are much older than that.

The closest thing to what @Dotini was talking about to a 90% extinction event was the Permian extinction at 250million years ago but even then only 85% of the genera went extinct. They call it the "Great Dying"

I was mostly referring to what ever paper they are quoting from thats mentioning this mass extension event 200,000 years ago.

I haven't read it yet myself. I wasn't sure if maybe you had heard or come across the paper in your classes or if you were aware of the authors reputations.

I'll have a look at it later this evening
 
Where does this article mention a 'molecular clock'?
It did say:

The ad hoc modifications to neutral theory commonly proposed to account for low variation in individual cases, namely, recurrent bottlenecks or selective sweeps, struggle as general mechanisms. If bottlenecks limit variation, then a universal low ceiling implies recent population crashes for all species. This appears unlikely–almost a Noah’s Ark hypothesis–although perhaps long-term climate cycles might cause widespread periodic bottlenecks [38]. If selective sweeps limit variation, then a universal low ceiling implies a dynamic view of evolution, with all species adapting all the time [39], in contrast to the equilibrium model at the core of neutral theory.

Which in fact negates the point you are making
Please take a closer look. The term molecular clock is used numerous times. But if you wish to reject everything I say out of hand, I have no problem with that.
 
Please take a closer look. The term molecular clock is used numerous times. But if you wish to reject everything I say out of hand, I have no problem with that.
Ill apologize for being late to this conversation, and im not dismissing off-hand.

I remember reading something about this in Richard Dawkins "The Ancestors tale." I dont remember in great detail but there was something about how they sequenced DNA from some of the most genetically isolated tribes in Papua New Guinea as a reference point to find at when our most recent common ancestor lived who we all descended from, and the result was surprisingly recent (200,00 years sounds right)

But this isnt due to an extinction event but rather a result of gene shuffling amongst a relatively small population over a very long time. The important thing to note here though is that this doesnt preclude the existence of adjacent ancestors to current extant populations. in other words all of our mitochondria contain a gene that came from through one woman 200,000 years ago who existed amongst a population individuals who also contribute genetic information to future generations which are still here today. So its a misnomer to assume "Mitochondrial eve" was analogous to a biblical eve
 
But this isnt due to an extinction event but rather a result of gene shuffling amongst a relatively small population over a very long time. The important thing to note here though is that this doesnt preclude the existence of adjacent ancestors to current extant populations. in other words all of our mitochondria contain a gene that came from through one woman 200,000 years ago who existed amongst a population individuals who also contribute genetic information to future generations which are still here today. So its a misnomer to assume "Mitochondrial eve" was analogous to a biblical eve

This is why you're the man. 👍👍👍
 
Ill apologize for being late to this conversation, and im not dismissing off-hand.

I remember reading something about this in Richard Dawkins "The Ancestors tale." I dont remember in great detail but there was something about how they sequenced DNA from some of the most genetically isolated tribes in Papua New Guinea as a reference point to find at when our most recent common ancestor lived who we all descended from, and the result was surprisingly recent (200,00 years sounds right)

But this isnt due to an extinction event but rather a result of gene shuffling amongst a relatively small population over a very long time. The important thing to note here though is that this doesnt preclude the existence of adjacent ancestors to current extant populations. in other words all of our mitochondria contain a gene that came from through one woman 200,000 years ago who existed amongst a population individuals who also contribute genetic information to future generations which are still here today. So its a misnomer to assume "Mitochondrial eve" was analogous to a biblical eve
The authors of the two articles repeatedly mention a "bottlenecking" of population which may have winnowed down to a single matriarchal lineage. But please explain more about how gene shuffling could satisfy the author's claim for a mitochondrial uniformity.
BTW, I'm not a bible thumper, nor a member of any religion, so there's no need to equate a mitochondrial Eve with a biblical Eve as far as I'm concerned. Have you read The Selfish Gene, by the same Richard Dawkins you mention? IMO, it may be his best work.
 
The authors of the two articles repeatedly mention a "bottlenecking" of population which may have winnowed down to a single matriarchal lineage. But please explain more about how gene shuffling could satisfy the author's claim for a mitochondrial uniformity.
BTW, I'm not a bible thumper, nor a member of any religion, so there's no need to equate a mitochondrial Eve with a biblical Eve as far as I'm concerned. Have you read The Selfish Gene, by the same Richard Dawkins you mention? IMO, it may be his best work.


yep i read selfish gene. good book. I'm not much of a hardcore gradualist though, but then again i never really understood why i had to choose between the two mechanisms (gradualism vs punctuated equilibrium) its probably a mixture between the two. (RIP Gould; btw i highly recommend Pandas Thumb if you havent cracked that one yet)

For what i can tell, bottle necking is a controversial topic that i admit i dont know much about. So i wont get into that.

The MRCA (most recent common ancestor) on the other hand, is really just a quirk of statistics. In fact, they probably existed amongst millions of other people after the migration out of Africa and the subsequent formation of isolated populations on other continents. Basically to oversimplify, as genes flow in a population through time, some genes get sifted out either through natural selection or genetic drift. If one gene is competitively favored over another, its just a matter of time until the unfavored gene is gone from the gene pool. Given this logic, genetic composition will change until the isolated populations become genetically diverse. If you follow that process in humans, there should be a time when there was an individual who had the last common gene that linked all humans together through a shared gene.

Correct me if im wrong. Im not an evolutionary biologist, but this is what i remember from genetics class and some selected readings
 
I was mostly referring to what ever paper they are quoting from thats mentioning this mass extension event 200,000 years ago.
The paper doesn't mention a mass extinction event - rather it observes that 90% of species alive today show the same low level of genetic diversity in their mitochondrial DNA (though not their nuclear DNA) suggesting that all of these species have undergone a 'bottleneck' event at some point within the last 200,000 years where the entire population had the same mitochondrial DNA at one juncture - though there is no implication that any of these were connected or happened at the same time, i.e. an 'extinction event' is not being implied at all. The blog article I linked to above made the analogy that just because most people are less than 100 years old, it is not valid to conclude that everyone alive today was born in 1918 - similarly, just because most species had mitochondrial uniformity in the last 200,000 years or so doesn't mean that there was a 'creation event' or an extinction event 200,000 years ago.

As I alluded to earlier, I think the reason the paper has been quite controversial is more to do with inaccurate reporting and interpretation of what is an interesting evolutionary observation, but really doesn't have the 'creationist' implications that many commentators appear to believe it has.
 
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The paper doesn't mention a mass extinction event - rather it observes that 90% of species alive today show the same low level of genetic diversity in their mitochondrial DNA (though not their nuclear DNA) suggesting that all of these species have undergone a 'bottleneck' event at some point within the last 200,000 years where the entire population had the same mitochondrial DNA at one juncture - though there is no implication that any of these were connected or happened at the same time, i.e. an 'extinction event' is not being implied at all. The blog article I linked to above made the analogy that just because most people are less than 100 years old, it is not valid to conclude that everyone alive today was born in 1918 - similarly, just because most species had mitochondrial uniformity in the last 200,000 years or so doesn't mean that there was a 'creation event' or an extinction event 200,000 years ago.

As I alluded to earlier, I think the reason the paper has been quite controversial is more to do with inaccurate reporting and interpretation of what is an interesting evolutionary observation, but really doesn't have the 'creationist' implications that many commentators appear to believe it has.

As I understand it, 90% of animal species on Earth go back no further than 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. The bottleneck event need be no more cataclysmic than an Ice Age, which last ~100,000 years.

During the last 144,000 years, it is estimated that there have been no fewer than 20 individual events which in themselves were 3 orders of magnitude more catastrophic than Hurricane Katrina. In other words, events large enough to destroy 1000 major cities.

The most recent major catastrophic event of this sort came at the beginning of the Younger Dryas about 12,900 years ago, a controversial episode lasting over 1000 years in which fires and floods altered especially North America, Europe and parts of the Middle East in dramatic ways. By the time this event ended, the world ocean was about 400 feet deeper. The cause of the Younger Dryas remains controversial, involving a longstanding debate between uniformitarian and catastrophist factions in geology, geo-physics, etc. There is a growing accumulation of data that suggest a comet broke up in the atmosphere over the ice sheet then covering Canada and parts of North America to a depth of two miles. The megalithic site of Gobekli Tepe began construction almost exactly when the Younger Dryas event concluded, featuring the most advanced architecture and symbolism with the very first of the eventual 20+ enclosures eventually constructed there. It is speculated that survivors of the YD, possibly Swiderians, built Gobekli Tepe and went on to spread agriculture and other aspects of civilization.
 
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As I understand it, 90% of animal species on Earth go back no further than 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

That definition can lead to erroneous conclusions/conflations - a 'species' can (as we know) be evolved from another species. A species that evolves into a form where it can subsequently be reclassified as another species has technically become extinct although that extinction is arguable through changes in suitability-for-environment rather than a cataclysm that destroyed the original species. If that all makes sense :)
 
That definition can lead to erroneous conclusions/conflations - a 'species' can (as we know) be evolved from another species. A species that evolves into a form where it can subsequently be reclassified as another species has technically become extinct although that extinction is arguable through changes in suitability-for-environment rather than a cataclysm that destroyed the original species. If that all makes sense :)
Yes, and since the time of this mtDNA re-speciation episode, there has been remarkably little additional evolution of mtDNA in animals. It is all very puzzling. So puzzling, that it can and does lead to potentially unsound conclusions as you suggest. Only more research can clear up the matter.
 
The Stoeckle and Thaler data can be interpreted as consistent with more than one explanation. There is a limit to what genomic data can tell us about the past.

Stoeckle and Thaler's findings would have us believe that 90 per cent of species are less than 200,000 years old. I don't think their mitochondrial DNA data is enough to show that, and studies of whole genomes and fossils will give us more reliable dates that I would expect to be older. But they won't be that much older. Given that the planet has been in and out of glacial periods over the last 2.5 million years, plus all the upheavals caused by humans and our extinct relatives, the finding that most species alive today are fairly young shouldn't surprise us.

What about our own species? First, Stoeckle and Thaler only ever said that their data was "consistent" with the existence of a founding pair. That doesn't mean much, and they immediately conceded that the same pattern could have arisen "within a founding population of thousands that was stable for tens of thousands of years". The fact is, genomic data doesn't do a great job of revealing the sizes of past populations except in broad-brush terms. The human population was probably pretty small for a long time, but there is no reason to think it was two.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/deloit...if-our-footprints-arent-visible/#6ff9426435e8
 
The Stoeckle and Thaler data can be interpreted as consistent with more than one explanation. There is a limit to what genomic data can tell us about the past.
Stoeckle and Thaler's findings would have us believe that 90 per cent of species are less than 200,000 years old. I don't think their mitochondrial DNA data is enough to show that, and studies of whole genomes and fossils will give us more reliable dates that I would expect to be older. But they won't be that much older. Given that the planet has been in and out of glacial periods over the last 2.5 million years, plus all the upheavals caused by humans and our extinct relatives, the finding that most species alive today are fairly young shouldn't surprise us.

What about our own species? First, Stoeckle and Thaler only ever said that their data was "consistent" with the existence of a founding pair. That doesn't mean much, and they immediately conceded that the same pattern could have arisen "within a founding population of thousands that was stable for tens of thousands of years". The fact is, genomic data doesn't do a great job of revealing the sizes of past populations except in broad-brush terms. The human population was probably pretty small for a long time, but there is no reason to think it was two.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/deloit...if-our-footprints-arent-visible/#6ff9426435e8

I think you've posted the wrong URL.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...uple-who-lived-200000-years-ago/#43a8b5987cd8
 
No, that is the one I meant to cite. But please do post any information about the Stoeckle and Thaler paper that you find interesting. I'm very interested in getting to the bottom of the murky story of human evolution in the last million years, and also in the evolution of nuclear DNA and mtDNA. Also of course the role played by regional/planetary catastrophes and population bottlenecks/extinctions.
 
No, that is the one I meant to cite.
I don't get it. The Forbes link you posted didn't mention Stoeckle and Thaler at all. I'm not sure what it has to do with creation or evolution. The one I posted contained your quote above. But never mind.
 
I don't get it. The Forbes link you posted didn't mention Stoeckle and Thaler at all. I'm not sure what it has to do with creation or evolution. The one I posted contained your quote above. But never mind.
Whoops, yeah you're right! Somehow I messed that up.
 
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