The only thing I want to respond to now is the constant assumption as seen
in the following quote from Ashby:
> Unfortunately, the readers of _Science_ are not told that the
>mesonychid shown in the series is _Mesonyx obtusidens_, the drawing
>having been taken from Plate 5 of W. B. Scott's "On Some New and
>Little Known Creodonts," _Journal of the Academy of Natural
>Sciences of Philadelphia_ 9:155-85 (1888). This is a crucial
>omission because the genus of which that creature is a member
>(_Mesonyx_) first appears in the fossil record in the Middle Eocene
>(See, Frederick S. Szalay and Stephen Jay Gould, "Asiatic Mesony-
>chidae [Mammalia, Condylarthra]," _Bulletin of the American Museum
>of Natural History_ 132:168-70 [1966]; see also, Robert L. Carroll,
>_Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution_ [New York: W. H. Freeman,
>1988], 643). This makes it too late to be the ancestor of
>_Ambulocetus_, which its discoverers place in the Lower to Middle
>Eocene (J. G. M. Thewissen, et. al., "Fossil Evidence for the
>Origin of Aquatic Locomotion in Archaeocete Whales," _Science_
>263:210 (1994).
and
> The claim that _Ambulocetus_ was ancestral to the archaeocetes
>cannot be correct because, as Thewissen, et. al., point out,
>_Ambulocetus_ was found 120 meters *higher* than the oldest
>archaeocete, _Pakicetus inachus_. In other words, _Pakicetus
>inachus_ appears before _Ambulocetus_ in the fossil record. Since
>the little that we know about _inachus_ (it is known only from an
>incomplete skull and jaw fragments) suggests that it was very
>similar to the archaeocetes of the early Middle Eocene, _Ambulo-
>cetus_ is too late to be ancestral to that group.
Can you cite one single evolutionist who says that the parent species must
die and be removed from the surface of the earth when a new species is split
off of it? Much of modern biogeography would be absolutely rubbish under
such an assumption.
This is false on the face of it. When a farmer develops a new breed of
cattle, or a breeder produces a new type of dog, does the parent breed cease
to exist? Of course not.
Corn is believed to have been the polyploid of teosinte (see G. W.
Beadle, Ancestry of Corn, Scientific American Jan. 1908, p. 112.). Corn is a
new species but teosinte is still in existence. By your reasoning, today's
existence of teosinte is proof positive that corn did not come from that
grass. If you want another example, the grain triticale is a polyploid cross
between wheat and rye. This was a man-made cross from the 1970's[?} Wheat
and rye are still with us. Does there existence disprove that they were the
parent species of triticale? Of course not. That logic is flawed.
Geology tells us that the odds of an individual being preserved are quite
slim. Thus it is unlikely that the first specimen of any species would be
preserved at all much less in a place that man would find it. Only when the
species became more wide spread would it become more probable that a specimen
would be fossilized. Your assumption is an addition to evolution and geology
that no one would agree to.
I will respond to the rest when I get all the articles in.
glenn