>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
William_E._Hamilton@notes.gmr.com
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX) | whamilto@mich.com (home email)