Re: Speciation (was Lung Fossils Suggest Dinos Breathed in Cold

Bill Hamilton (hamilton@predator.cs.gmr.com)
Fri, 16 Jan 1998 09:30:41 -0500

Glenn wrote:
>GM>First, no one is denying that dogs came from wolves. But we
>>know that from history. Suppose all you had were the bones and
>>the bones were really old. Suppose further you didn't know the
>>history of the dog. In such a case, you would have difficulty saying
>>that a chihuahua is related to a St. Bernard. The bone shapes are
>>quite different the ratios of various skeletal measurments are quite
>>different. One might note that they are related but the same
>>species? Without prior knowledge, I doubt that any future person,
>>creationist or evolutionists would place them in the same species.
>>>REMEMBER when RESPONDING TO THIS THAT THE HISTORY
>>>OF THE DOG IS UNKNOWN TO THEM. Put yourself in that position.
>
Stephen Jones responded

>Yes. I have. So what is your point? Obviously if there are poorly preserved
>fossils bones, it is harder to tell what species they came from. But
>even if these bones were perfectly preserved, we still couldn't see
>the point where the wolf-dog split happened. It could have taken
>100, 5000, or 50000 years, or it could have taken only 1 year - the
>fossil record cannot (unless we are incredibly lucky) reveal the
>wolf-dog speciation event(s).

This is not what I'm responding to, but first for accuracy's sake, I need
to ask, "what wolf-dog speciation event?" I believe wolves and dogs are
the same species.

I've read "Reinventing Darwin" and accept Eldredge's claims about the
difficulty of detecting events that required less than 50K years or so. (I
also accept that there are places on earth where the resolution is finer.
But perhaps the fossils of interest are elsewhere :-). But it seems to me
that the important point is not the length of time required for speciation,
but the difficulty of determining from morphology _whether_ two animals are
related.

Bill Hamilton
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William E. Hamilton, Jr, Ph.D. | Staff Research Engineer
Chassis and Vehicle Systems | General Motors R&D Center | Warren, MI
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