(Example of a transitional form between angiosperms and gymnosperms)
Amborella trichopoda, for one. Mostly like an angiosperm, but lacks some features of angiosperms, such as specialized vascular tissues. In the stem, it's anatomically more like gymnosperms. The primitive flowers have several features that are consistent with modified gymnosperm structures. Particularly, the bracts are similar in structure to those forming scales in gymnosperms.
By definition, it does. It has apomorphies of both groups. Hence, a transitional.
The rapid rise and early diversification of the angiosperms occurred during the Cretaceous time and was called 'an abominable mystery' by Charles Darwin."
Yep. He wasn't aware of this transitional.
I find it positively imbecilic that any botanist can look at Amborella and call it a 'primitive, ancestral' plant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amborella
It's merely "primitive" in the sense of having both gymnosperm and angiosperm characteristics. Can't be ancestral, since it's living now. But the fact of a living transitional is sufficient.
It therefore is not and cannot be ancestral to them.
You've been misled, I'm afraid. Transitionals aren't necessarily the specific ancestor. It would be remarkable if we were ever lucky enough to find the individual from which both groups appeared. The transitional you have merely shows that there was a time when there was an intermediate from from which both arose.
There is such a large difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes that the creation of eukaryotes is virtually a total re-design, a second creation on a par with with the original creation of prokaryote life.
Gymnosperms aren't prokaryotes. I thought you knew.
(Barbarian chuckles)
Two major groups said to be evolutionarily connected. Evolutionary theory is not about the origin of life. If you want to imagine God magically made the first living things, that doesn't affect evolutionary theory.
A nice cop-out, don't you think?
It's the way science works. Theories are accountable for the things they predict. You might as well be angry at chemistry for not telling you the origin of atoms.
Suppose tomorrow, they managed to create some life in a lab somewhere.
If it was by conditions existing in the early Earth, a lot of geochemists and biochemists would be interested.
Don't you think there'd be enormous evolutionary chortling and trumpeting everywhere?
Wouldn't support evolutionary theory any more than any other origin of life. It doesn't matter to evolutionary theory.
I promise you, there would.
That's one of the reasons I know you don't do science.
But haven't you heard of 'pre-biotic evolution' and such like? What do you make of them?
I've read a lot about abiogenesis. But until there are living things, evolutionary theory has nothing to say.
BTW
I note that you airily wave away Dobzhansky's statement that new species by way of mutations are non-starters.
Seeing as Dobzhansky himself documented the evolution of a new species, I'd say you really, really got his message wrong.
Now we have 6.000.000 or so species extant to account for. You want to handwave them into existence somehow?
I'm thinking they probably evolved pretty much the way the one Dobzhansky observed did.
