What does the fossil record say?

[Autodidact]

You'all might want to start a thread to discuss this rather obscure question.

 

[outhouse]

You'all might want to start a thread to discuss this rather obscure question.

agreed

http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...281-stone-work-ancient-sites.html#post2274150

 

[BIG D]

Aristotle was the first man to demonstrate that the earth was round, at about 600 B.C., by looking at lunar eclipses.

During the Medieval times, the round earth was the accepted model. Ever read the Divine Comedy?



Those simply came about by men experimenting. They were as possible thousands of years ago as they are now. Just like future technology is possible now; it only waits for us to learn how to utilize the necessary components.

How many people do you know of who knows how electricity works? How atomic bombs work? How guns work?

I've heard that the Mayan calender was more accurate than ours.

The Indus Valley Civilization had gridded streets and sewers. (And this was more than 4000 years ago).

How did the great Pyramids get built?

Ancient China created gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass.

Yeah, the ancients were really stupid compared to us. :sarcastic

let's be realistic here...people 1000 years ago did not have the transportation/communication/etc. to be as intelligent/informed/etc as 100 years ago....more people were just trying to feed themselves

 

[newhope101]

so, again, you believe, a fully developed human just MAGICALLY appeared???..it would have to be magic,no??no science,no math,etc

Big D....the thread reads "what does the fossil record say?". In fact creationist 'poofing' is no more magical than all your theories re abiogenesis.

How do you know God did not go off and create mankind and everything else in a huge petrie dish or lab, just like cloning nowadays?

Back to the topic.
Anoiapithecus shows that flat faced morphology 12 million years ago and is not unique to the human line. You've gone from a knuckwalking connection to primates that was solid at the time only to be replaced by a non knucklewalking ancestry,You've got Ardi standing there 4.2 million years ago with human hands, you've genetic dating that does not line up well with the fossil record, you're undecided if there is or is not a LUCA (thank goodness both ideas supports Toe), You expected smooth evolutionary transition but found staged evolution (thankgoodness both ideas prove evolution), You've got researchers that thinks Ardi's just an ape,There's conflicting research relating even to neanderthal and their human ancestry, you've got the Y human chromosome so different as to compare a chicken and human at over 300 millions years of divergergence, You've found that the actual chimp human comparison is only 96%, you can't agree on what gene families actually do, you have commonly held beliefs that have supported toe only to be replaced with the newest most commonly held belief that continues to 'prove' toe. And that's just a few examples of your undeniable, irrefutable evidence for ToE.

Is Anoiapithecus an example of convergent evolution? You go help these well credentialed researchers work it out and send them all your evidence just in case they missed something.

So you evos have finally had to bite the bit and admit that morphological features can arise indepedently. It appears to have done so in relation to flat faced features, it has occurred in the supposed evolution of knucklewalking. So as far as I am concerned your whole taxonomic ranking based on shared features is flawed. Shared features such as 'cloven hooved mammals' in Bovids is a scam to illustrate evolutionary relationships. The same goes for bipedalism, flat faces etc. As for brain sizes in relation to fossil skulls I think researchers are again grabbing at straws. See below.Bipedalism appears in non human primates and has been around for yonks and has nothing to do with becoming human, Many researchers do not like your current system anyway and are in favour of phylogenic clades these days. Clades are also problematic see Wiki.


Wiki Brain size:When the mammalian brain increases in size, not all parts increase at the same rate.[4] In particular, the larger the brain of a species, the greater the fraction taken up by the cortex. Thus, in the species with the largest brains, most of their volume is filled with cortex: this applies not only to humans, but also to animals such as dolphins, whales, or elephants.
The evolution of homo sapiens over the past two million years has been marked by a steady increase in brain size, but much of it can be accounted for by corresponding increases in body size.[5] There are, however, many departures from the trend that are difficult to explain in a systematic way: in particular, the appearance of modern man about 100,000 years ago was marked by a decrease in body size at the same time as an increase in brain size. Even so, it is notorious that Neanderthals, which went extinct about 40,000 years ago, had larger brains than modern homo sapiens.[6]
Not all investigators are happy with the amount of attention that has been paid to brain size. Roth and Dicke, for example, have argued that factors other than size are more highly correlated with intelligence, such as the number of cortical neurons and the speed of their connections.[7] Moreover they point out that intelligence depends not just on the amount of brain tissue, but on the details of how it is structured.


Seriously, these fossils are not convincing evidence to anyone other than those that wish to believe. It does not disporve toe. However I think you are errant in saying Toe is 'proven' or fact. Every fossil that is found is looked at in evolutionary terms.


The fossil evidence was more convincing 20 years ago. The current fossil evidence is good evidence of the huge variety of non human primates.

 

[outhouse]

In fact creationist 'poofing' is no more magical than all your theories re abiogenesis

wrong again, you just dont get it.

You cant keep nature down, there are to many materials and chemicals in the universe to NOT have life happen. Its nature as we see it happened or magic

It appears to have done so in relation to flat faced features

LOL are you quoting that nut job lloyd pye ??????????????? you sound allot like him

How do you know God did not go off and create mankind and everything else in a huge petrie dish or lab, just like cloning nowadays?

this is proof man/woman uses his imagination for questions he cannot answer.

 

[newhope101]

Well Outhouse..as I said ..you need to go tell all these researchers that challenge the Toe status quo. Loyd is not the only researcher that produces conflicting and debatable research. Side winding with some whimsical refute does not cut it.

You can pick at some examples which does not change the basis of my point that todays proof of Toe is tomorrows folley. See previous post.

In fact your researchers may have started to look at what stops one kind becoming another kind. See underline in article below.

You may also like to look up recent research connected to bacterial mutations in which ALL mutations were negative and this principle is likely similarly applicable in other species.

With all your deletions, horizonatal gene transfer, mutations and recent research into the Gene (see wiki gene), it appears to me that researchers have little idea of what they are looking at nor how it relates to cross 'kind' ancestry.

My previous post cites a pitance of the current dilemmas related to evolutionary evidence. Feel free to refute what does not suit you. Feel free to post refuting research, there is plenty out there to choose from.... There is no point putting up your simplified refutes. Obviously, all this is not that simple. Many here try to simplify these dilemmas, like as if these researchers are not privvy to your information or something. Quite pitifull, I think. Perhaps you think these challenging research guys and gals are ALL idiots.

...Better still go tell these leading researchers that have produced these conflicting research papers that you, and others on RF, have worked it out and there is no need to be concerned. Then tell 'em what's what!

Your refute is no refute at all. The fossil evidence only illustrates the huge variety of non human primates that were once here on earth.


Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content
Received 3 August; accepted 24 November 2009.
Published online 13 January 2010.
We found no new chimpanzee amp iconic genes. We did discover that, within the ampliconic regions,
three out of nine multi-copy, testis-expressed gene families present in human have been mutationally disabled or are simply absent in chimpanzee (Table 1). For example, the chimpanzee MSY contains
five loci homologous to the human XKRY gene family, but all five copies share a frameshift mutation that severely truncates the open leading frame and predicted protein (Supplementary Table 3).
We confirmed the presence of this disabling mutation in five other chimpanzees and two bonobos, close relatives of common chimpanzees (data not shown). Similarly, the HSFY and PRY gene families are well represented in the humanMSY but absent from the chimpanzee MSY. Although it is unclear whether the PRY family was gained in the human lineage or lost in the chimpanzee lineage, the presence of HSFY in the cat25, rhesus macaque and bull MSYs (H.S., personal communication)
leads us to conclude that this gene family was deleted outright in the chimpanzee lineage.
In aggregate, the consequence of gene loss and gain in the chimpanzee and human lineages, respectively, is that the chimpanzee MSY contains only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human MSY, and only half as many protein-coding transcription units (Table 1). In contrast, in the remainder of the genome, comparison of chimpanzee draft sequence with human reference sequence suggests that the gene content of the two species differs by ,1% (ref. 15).
Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310million years of separation26.

 

[outhouse]

you need to go tell all these researchers that challenge the Toe

No I could be called a researcher, you dont get together a bunch of people that dont know what there talking about to decide anything.

Real scientist and people that are educated, I can pick out and challenge all of pye verbatim in a open closed book debate, he cant get by me let along someone with real skills.

My previous post cites a pitance of the current dilemmas related to evolutionary evidence

There are no dilemmas, are there gray areas? sure there are but The overall picture is very very very clear.

you can attack gray areas all day long and we could give you every benifit of the dought and it still doesnt change TOE

TOE stands on its own two feet solid

what you fail to realize is evolution is fact, and human evolution is fact

 

[painted wolf]

newhope- Why don't we find any Cambrian mammals?

Why do egg laying mammals appear in the fossil record before marsupials... and why do they appear before placental mammals? Why do pro-simians appear before simians and simians before us?

If the fossil record is so unreliable, why does it give the appearance of evolution?

wa:do

 

[Riverwolf]

let's be realistic here...people 1000 years ago did not have the transportation/communication/etc. to be as intelligent/informed/etc as 100 years ago....more people were just trying to feed themselves

So, a culture's collective intelligence is measured by the kind of technology they have?

I disagree. The ancients had the potential intelligence to have all the technology that we have today. It's just that much of what we have today was birthed by flashes of inspiration leading to other technologies; without those flashes, tons of modern technologies wouldn't exist.

All the natural components to create modern technologies were always there; it's just that it was recently that we learned how to utilize them, not because we're more intelligent that people who came before us, but because one person managed to have a flash of inspiration.

 

[David M]

Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content
Received 3 August; accepted 24 November 2009.
Published online 13 January 2010.
We found no new chimpanzee amp iconic genes. We did discover that, within the ampliconic regions,
three out of nine multi-copy, testis-expressed gene families present in human have been mutationally disabled or are simply absent in chimpanzee (Table 1). For example, the chimpanzee MSY contains
five loci homologous to the human XKRY gene family, but all five copies share a frameshift mutation that severely truncates the open leading frame and predicted protein (Supplementary Table 3).
We confirmed the presence of this disabling mutation in five other chimpanzees and two bonobos, close relatives of common chimpanzees (data not shown). Similarly, the HSFY and PRY gene families are well represented in the humanMSY but absent from the chimpanzee MSY. Although it is unclear whether the PRY family was gained in the human lineage or lost in the chimpanzee lineage, the presence of HSFY in the cat25, rhesus macaque and bull MSYs (H.S., personal communication)
leads us to conclude that this gene family was deleted outright in the chimpanzee lineage.
In aggregate, the consequence of gene loss and gain in the chimpanzee and human lineages, respectively, is that the chimpanzee MSY contains only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human MSY, and only half as many protein-coding transcription units (Table 1). In contrast, in the remainder of the genome, comparison of chimpanzee draft sequence with human reference sequence suggests that the gene content of the two species differs by ,1% (ref. 15).
Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310million years of separation26.

Yes, chimps and humans diverged from a common ancestor, as this research shows.

 

[Dan4reason]

Well Outhouse..as I said ..you need to go tell all these researchers that challenge the Toe status quo. Loyd is not the only researcher that produces conflicting and debatable research. Side winding with some whimsical refute does not cut it.

You can pick at some examples which does not change the basis of my point that todays proof of Toe is tomorrows folley. See previous post.

In fact your researchers may have started to look at what stops one kind becoming another kind. See underline in article below.

You may also like to look up recent research connected to bacterial mutations in which ALL mutations were negative and this principle is likely similarly applicable in other species.

With all your deletions, horizonatal gene transfer, mutations and recent research into the Gene (see wiki gene), it appears to me that researchers have little idea of what they are looking at nor how it relates to cross 'kind' ancestry.

My previous post cites a pitance of the current dilemmas related to evolutionary evidence. Feel free to refute what does not suit you. Feel free to post refuting research, there is plenty out there to choose from.... There is no point putting up your simplified refutes. Obviously, all this is not that simple. Many here try to simplify these dilemmas, like as if these researchers are not privvy to your information or something. Quite pitifull, I think. Perhaps you think these challenging research guys and gals are ALL idiots.

...Better still go tell these leading researchers that have produced these conflicting research papers that you, and others on RF, have worked it out and there is no need to be concerned. Then tell 'em what's what!

Your refute is no refute at all. The fossil evidence only illustrates the huge variety of non human primates that were once here on earth.


Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content
Received 3 August; accepted 24 November 2009.
Published online 13 January 2010.
We found no new chimpanzee amp iconic genes. We did discover that, within the ampliconic regions,
three out of nine multi-copy, testis-expressed gene families present in human have been mutationally disabled or are simply absent in chimpanzee (Table 1). For example, the chimpanzee MSY contains
five loci homologous to the human XKRY gene family, but all five copies share a frameshift mutation that severely truncates the open leading frame and predicted protein (Supplementary Table 3).
We confirmed the presence of this disabling mutation in five other chimpanzees and two bonobos, close relatives of common chimpanzees (data not shown). Similarly, the HSFY and PRY gene families are well represented in the humanMSY but absent from the chimpanzee MSY. Although it is unclear whether the PRY family was gained in the human lineage or lost in the chimpanzee lineage, the presence of HSFY in the cat25, rhesus macaque and bull MSYs (H.S., personal communication)
leads us to conclude that this gene family was deleted outright in the chimpanzee lineage.
In aggregate, the consequence of gene loss and gain in the chimpanzee and human lineages, respectively, is that the chimpanzee MSY contains only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human MSY, and only half as many protein-coding transcription units (Table 1). In contrast, in the remainder of the genome, comparison of chimpanzee draft sequence with human reference sequence suggests that the gene content of the two species differs by ,1% (ref. 15).
Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310million years of separation26.

Aren't we supposed to look at the whole genome when comparing these two species? Why look at just one chromosome?

 

[Autodidact]

Big D....the thread reads "what does the fossil record say?". In fact creationist 'poofing' is no more magical than all your theories re abiogenesis.

Why on earth would you bring up abiogenesis in this thread?

How do you know God did not go off and create mankind and everything else in a huge petrie dish or lab, just like cloning nowadays?

One word: science.

So you evos have finally had to bite the bit and admit that morphological features can arise indepedently.

Of course, there's nothing controversial about that. By "evo" do you mean "scientists, and people who accept science?" It appears to have done so in relation to flat faced features, it has occurred in the supposed evolution of knucklewalking. So as far as I am concerned your whole taxonomic ranking based on shared features is flawed. [/quote] Well fortunately, scientific progress does not depend on your concern.

Seriously, these fossils are not convincing evidence to anyone other than those that wish to believe. It does not disporve toe.

Of course not. Nor does it raise any doubt about ToE. In fact, it has no relation to it whatsoever.

However I think you are errant in saying Toe is 'proven' or fact.

*sigh* I wish creationists would learn some basic terminology. Repeating oneself is so fatiguing. Theories are not proven. (though they can be disproven.) They are supported by the evidence. That's the situation with ToE. Supported by the evidence.

Every fossil that is found is looked at in evolutionary terms.

Only since ToE was shown to be correct, over 50 years ago.

The fossil evidence was more convincing 20 years ago. The current fossil evidence is good evidence of the huge variety of non human primates.

What? What on earth are you talking about?

Why would you think fossils of a single species, or single family, would be crucial to the fundamental correctness of evolutionary theory? The whole story of human evolution could be wrong, and ToE would still be correct, because it's supported by the totality of the evidence: fossils, DNA, morphology, homology, vestigiality, and much, much else. It's consistent with, and explains, all the facts. That's why it's the foundational theory of modern Biology. And nothing you have said has even come to bear on that fact.

 

[Amill]

Seriously, these fossils are not convincing evidence to anyone other than those that wish to believe. It does not disporve toe. However I think you are errant in saying Toe is 'proven' or fact. Every fossil that is found is looked at in evolutionary terms.

So no creationist has ever been convinced the theory of evolution is true?

Do you throw all scientific ideas and theories out the window? In what fields of science do we NOT find conflicting studies and competetive research? Sure some ideas get disproven and thrown out the window. That's how science works. We wind up with more and more accurate explanations. I don't see how you can believe in any scientific explanations because there either is or has been conflicting evidence in every one of those fields.

The current fossil evidence is good evidence of the huge variety of non human primates.

No doubt. But how does that fact alone create a cloud of doubt over evolution? It's not as if evolution doesn't allow for variety and diversity? Quite the opposite.

 

[painted wolf]

The variety in the pre-human lineage is actually very good evidence for the theory of evolution. Evolution is a bush not a ladder... finding a ladder of progression would be very disappointing indeed(not to mention boring).

wa:do

 

[BIG D]

Big D....the thread reads "what does the fossil record say?". In fact creationist 'poofing' is no more magical than all your theories re abiogenesis.

How do you know God did not go off and create mankind and everything else in a huge petrie dish or lab, just like cloning nowadays?

Back to the topic.
Anoiapithecus shows that flat faced morphology 12 million years ago and is not unique to the human line. You've gone from a knuckwalking connection to primates that was solid at the time only to be replaced by a non knucklewalking ancestry,You've got Ardi standing there 4.2 million years ago with human hands, you've genetic dating that does not line up well with the fossil record, you're undecided if there is or is not a LUCA (thank goodness both ideas supports Toe), You expected smooth evolutionary transition but found staged evolution (thankgoodness both ideas prove evolution), You've got researchers that thinks Ardi's just an ape,There's conflicting research relating even to neanderthal and their human ancestry, you've got the Y human chromosome so different as to compare a chicken and human at over 300 millions years of divergergence, You've found that the actual chimp human comparison is only 96%, you can't agree on what gene families actually do, you have commonly held beliefs that have supported toe only to be replaced with the newest most commonly held belief that continues to 'prove' toe. And that's just a few examples of your undeniable, irrefutable evidence for ToE.

Is Anoiapithecus an example of convergent evolution? You go help these well credentialed researchers work it out and send them all your evidence just in case they missed something.

So you evos have finally had to bite the bit and admit that morphological features can arise indepedently. It appears to have done so in relation to flat faced features, it has occurred in the supposed evolution of knucklewalking. So as far as I am concerned your whole taxonomic ranking based on shared features is flawed. Shared features such as 'cloven hooved mammals' in Bovids is a scam to illustrate evolutionary relationships. The same goes for bipedalism, flat faces etc. As for brain sizes in relation to fossil skulls I think researchers are again grabbing at straws. See below.Bipedalism appears in non human primates and has been around for yonks and has nothing to do with becoming human, Many researchers do not like your current system anyway and are in favour of phylogenic clades these days. Clades are also problematic see Wiki.


Wiki Brain size:When the mammalian brain increases in size, not all parts increase at the same rate.[4] In particular, the larger the brain of a species, the greater the fraction taken up by the cortex. Thus, in the species with the largest brains, most of their volume is filled with cortex: this applies not only to humans, but also to animals such as dolphins, whales, or elephants.
The evolution of homo sapiens over the past two million years has been marked by a steady increase in brain size, but much of it can be accounted for by corresponding increases in body size.[5] There are, however, many departures from the trend that are difficult to explain in a systematic way: in particular, the appearance of modern man about 100,000 years ago was marked by a decrease in body size at the same time as an increase in brain size. Even so, it is notorious that Neanderthals, which went extinct about 40,000 years ago, had larger brains than modern homo sapiens.[6]
Not all investigators are happy with the amount of attention that has been paid to brain size. Roth and Dicke, for example, have argued that factors other than size are more highly correlated with intelligence, such as the number of cortical neurons and the speed of their connections.[7] Moreover they point out that intelligence depends not just on the amount of brain tissue, but on the details of how it is structured.


Seriously, these fossils are not convincing evidence to anyone other than those that wish to believe. It does not disporve toe. However I think you are errant in saying Toe is 'proven' or fact. Every fossil that is found is looked at in evolutionary terms.


The fossil evidence was more convincing 20 years ago. The current fossil evidence is good evidence of the huge variety of non human primates.

PLEASE, a yes or no, do you believe creation as in a fully developed human just appeared???

 

[Big_TJ]

Well - I never laid eyes on that website. But you’re wrong!
The embarrassment is yours!
Now go back to Reply # 42. You will notice this at the end of the article: (AW g90 1/22 p. 7)
That’s Awake! 1990, Jan. 22nd issue, page 7.
Seems like whoever placed that on your link failed to give credit to the original writers like I did.

Actualy, you did this wrong. You quote the magazine in a way that it could be construed that the quotation refers only to the last paragraph of your post. One question for you: Do you only read the Awake! and Watchtower magazines? I noticed that all your quotes are from these "source." As a former JW, I would suggest that you try to get your hands on original materials, since we know that the Jehovah's Witnesses (and thier magazines) are well known for quote mining, misquoting and taking quotes out of context.

 

[newhope101]

Actualy, you did this wrong. You quote the magazine in a way that it could be construed that the quotation refers only to the last paragraph of your post. One question for you: Do you only read the Awake! and Watchtower magazines? I noticed that all your quotes are from these "source." As a former JW, I would suggest that you try to get your hands on original materials, since we know that the Jehovah's Witnesses (and thier magazines) are well known for quote mining, misquoting and taking quotes out of context.

It does not matter if I do not uphold any JW view. I think that phrase applies to the many churches that have changed their ideology to suit the public..and I am as free to think that as any other interpretation of scripture, including yours. JW's are advised by the 'descreet slave' to not visit these sites, yet there are many here.

I see many refutes to my post here. All I say is that the many refutes have addressed side points which is a great way to evade the main point I was making which is...

There is sufficient evidence to which I have spoken in previous posts here that suggests that anyone that does not accept the fossil evidence as convincing has good basis to do so. That does not mean you also should not accept it. You are free to do as you choose, as am I and all.

If you think you have the answers to the dilemmas I have posted, and there are any more, please tell the researchers because they have obviously missed something and you can tell 'em what's what.

If everything you find supports Toe, even if it contradicts the last most commonly held view eg human evolution from knuckle walkers, then basically what I say is that this is not convincing at all. As you have seen many times in toe and fossil evidence commonly held views of the majority change and researchers can irrefutably speak to convincing evidence for whatever...until that changes.

 

[painted wolf]

It does not matter if I do not uphold any JW view. I think that phrase applies to the many churches that have changed their ideology to suit the public..and I am as free to think that as any other interpretation of scripture, including yours. JW's are advised by the 'descreet slave' to not visit these sites, yet there are many here.

I see many refutes to my post here. All I say is that the many refutes have addressed side points which is a great way to evade the main point I was making which is...

There is sufficient evidence to which I have spoken in previous posts here that suggests that anyone that does not accept the fossil evidence as convincing has good basis to do so. That does not mean you also should not accept it. You are free to do as you choose, as am I and all.

If you think you have the answers to the dilemmas I have posted, and there are any more, please tell the researchers because they have obviously missed something and you can tell 'em what's what.

If everything you find supports Toe, even if it contradicts the last most commonly held view eg human evolution from knuckle walkers, then basically what I say is that this is not convincing at all. As you have seen many times in toe and fossil evidence commonly held views of the majority change and researchers can irrefutably speak to convincing evidence for whatever...until that changes.

What do you think of the fact that there are no mammals before the Triassic and that egg-laying mammals appear in the fossil record before marsupials and marsupials appear before placental mammals? Not to mention all the other such patterns.

Did God simply create "kinds" in order to give the appearance of evolution?

wa:do

 

[outhouse]

Did God simply create "kinds" in order to give the appearance of evolution?

excellent quote

And True

 

[Dan4reason]

It does not matter if I do not uphold any JW view. I think that phrase applies to the many churches that have changed their ideology to suit the public..and I am as free to think that as any other interpretation of scripture, including yours. JW's are advised by the 'descreet slave' to not visit these sites, yet there are many here.

I see many refutes to my post here. All I say is that the many refutes have addressed side points which is a great way to evade the main point I was making which is...

There is sufficient evidence to which I have spoken in previous posts here that suggests that anyone that does not accept the fossil evidence as convincing has good basis to do so. That does not mean you also should not accept it. You are free to do as you choose, as am I and all.

If you think you have the answers to the dilemmas I have posted, and there are any more, please tell the researchers because they have obviously missed something and you can tell 'em what's what.

If everything you find supports Toe, even if it contradicts the last most commonly held view eg human evolution from knuckle walkers, then basically what I say is that this is not convincing at all. As you have seen many times in toe and fossil evidence commonly held views of the majority change and researchers can irrefutably speak to convincing evidence for whatever...until that changes.

Evolution depends on the idea that fossils are ordered well in the fossil record. If they were not, evolution would be wrong. If the earth is young evolution would be wrong. Since primates have 24 pairs of chromosomes, and humans have 23, there must have been a chrmosome fusion somewhere in the human genome. This is what we see, and if there was none, the theory of evolution would be wrong.