Barbarian observes:
You cited Gish as an authority; and with that, you put his credibility on the table. That's how it works. If you'd rather go with evidence instead of quotes, it won't happen.
And yet, you, quite hypocritically, began this thread with a huge quote from evolutionarily biased palaeontologists.
And their credibility is also on the table, but as you see, they have their facts straight, and Gish got it completely wrong.
Example of Gish's competence to discuss biology:
"But, on the other hand, if you look at certain proteins, you will find that man is more closely related to a bullfrog than he is to a chimpanzee."
Whether Gish said so or not is a moot point.
Nope. It merely demonstrates that Gish is an ignoramus in biology.
"As mentioned earlier, evolutionists believe that as the bones in the reptilian jaw, except for the dentary, gradually became relieved of their function in the jaw they were now free either to evolve out of existence or to assume some new function. "
Gish is apparently unaware that those bones connect to the middle ear, even though they are attached to the lower jaw.
This is again sheer nonsense.
C'mon. It's a fact. It's still there in living reptiles.
“The reptilian middle ear connected to the jaw can pick up the ground vibration, whereas the middle ear fully separated from the jaw is certainly much better at receiving the air-borne sound,” said Luo, who collaborated on the study with experts at the University of Nanjing in China.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/humans-ear-bones-began-reptile-jaws/
Yet a snake can detect these small ripples. If it rests its head on the ground, the two sides of the lower jaw are brought into vibration by the incoming wave. These vibrations are then transmitted directly into the inner ear by means of a chain of bones attached to the lower jaw. This process is comparable to the transmission of auditory signals by the ossicles in the human middle ear. The snake thus literally hears surface vibrations.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080221105350.htm
As the following diagram shows, the connection is at best tenuous.
See above. No point in denying the fact.
Your diagram is very misleading.
It's a very accurate depiction of the location of these bones.
Here are two better ones.
Another diagram of reptilian ear with the quadrate and articular deleted. But as you see, in reptiles, these bones conduct sound to the middle ear.
You don't learn anything, do you?
Even if you're frustrated, personal attacks are a bad idea. Try to put together a good argument with facts, and you'll do better.
Just look. In the reptile there is a single bone connecting the eardrum to the inner ear. The stapes.
See above, the two bones in the lower jaw of reptiles conduct sound to the middle ear. As you see in the diagram, they connect to the middle ear; if they didn't, they couldn't conduct sound into it.
Notice that the quadrate and the articular are nowhere to be seen.
Because they were deleted. But a more accurate diagram that includes those bones clearly shows how closely they are associated in reptiles.
They perform no function whatsoever in hearing by the reptile.
See above. It's a fact that they do.
Paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History and the Chinese Academy of Sciences announce the discovery of Liaoconodon hui, a complete fossil mammal from the Mesozoic found in China that includes the long-sought transitional middle ear. The specimen shows the bones associated with hearing in mammals - the malleus, incus, and ectotympanic- decoupled from the lower jaw, as had been predicted, but held in place by an ossified cartilage that rested in a groove on the lower jaw..."People have been looking for this specimen for over 150 years since noticing a puzzling groove on the lower jaw of some early mammals, " says Jin Meng, curator in the Division of Paleontology at the Museum and first author of the paper. "Now we have cartilage with ear bones attached, the first clear paleontological evidence showing relationships between the lower jaw and middle ear."
http://www.amnh.org/science/papers/fossil_2011.php
They may receive vibrations, but it is certainly wrong to say that they play a part in hearing.
No, that's wrong, as you learned earlier. See the facts noted above, and take a look at a diagram without those bones deleted:
As you see, the reptilian jaw is connected to the ear, via the quadrate and articular bones. This is why reptiles put their lower jaws to the ground to better pick up sounds.
Your diagram is duff, and has misled you. In any case, you have failed to notice that the articular is not connected to the quadrate. It is in fact a part of the LOWER jaw.
So your argument is that lower jaws are not connected to upper jaws? Bones are connected by soft tissue. I thought you knew.
Your diagram maker is trying his hardest to falsify the evidence and make it look as if there is a close connection between the tympanic membrane and the quadrate. This is entirely false, as you can see. If the quadrate COVERED the tympanic membrane as in that ridiculous diagram, then the animal simply couldn't hear.
In many reptiles the quadrate supports the lower margin of the tympanium, as this diagram shows. It's not over the tympanium, it's around it. Moreover, some reptiles, even today, lack a tympanium:
http://books.google.com/books?id=h5fIP1X7YvoC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=reptile quadrate support tympanium&source=bl&ots=fS3Lc6bw4v&sig=D0MEPCjKiFuLnNMisTKZyT_0aPw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OGSuUsiZC-nA2AWB54DgCQ&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=reptile quadrate support tympanium&f=false
First, the quadrate AND the articular are BOTH OUTSIDE THE MIDDLE EAR in reptiles. The articular is firmly attached to the lower jaw, and the quadrate equally firmly attached to the upper jaw.
And, as you just learned, conduct sound to the middle ear. That was, from a very early time, a function of these bones.
Neither is loose, and capable of rattling round in the animal's head. Far less are they capable of "migrating" into the middle ear.
Comes down to evidence. And as you see from the fossil transitionals, that's what happened. Liaoconodon hui has a form precisely intermediate, showing how it happened.
Does it seem possible given that it is only genetic mistakes, otherwise known as mutations, that are responsible for the entire reconstruction of the reptilian ear?
That was Gish's other major goof. He completely forgot about natural selection. You see why most creationists don't quote him, these days? Look at this again, from Gish:
"Thus, the quadrate and articular bones of the jaw became free (they were, by the way, firmly attached to the dentary in Morganucodon) and somehow worked their way into the middle ear to eventually become the incus and malleus, respectively."
"Now the anatomical problems associated with such a postulated process are vastly greater than merely imagining how two bones precisely shaped to perform in a powerfully effective jaw-joint could detach themselves, force their way into the middle ear, reshape themselves into the malleus and incus, which are precisely engineered to function with a remodeled stapes in a vastly different auditory apparatus, while all at the same time the creature continues to chew and to hear! "
Now let's take a look at a very precise drawing of these bones in Morganucodon:
Notice the location and connection of the quadrate and stapes. This is why I suggested to you that depending on Gish was a mistake. He hasn't a clue about the anatomy of this animal.
Come Barbarian. Give it up. You're on to another loser here.
I wouldn't call him a loser. "Ignoramus" sums it up nicely.
I'm not going on tonight with this nonsense. I'm going to wax lyrical about evolutionary optimism and general stupidity, and going to get infracted again.
I'll let it pass this time. But try to do better.
Do you notice in your diagram above, THERE IS NO TYMPANIC MEMBRANE (eardrum) in the reptile ear? Where is it?
The gray strip. Take another look. It's not found in all reptiles, of course, but it's in most of them.
We have discussed this before. Gish just didn't realize how it worked.
You obviously don't realise that reptiles have an eardrum!
I just showed you that reptiles generally have a tympanium. Not all of them, of course. We assume that most of the fossil therapsids had them, but it's not absolutely known.
