Re: Fossil Records Show Biodiversity Comes and Goes

From: George (george_at_wtfiswrongwithyou.com)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 17:14:54 GMT

"John Harshman" <jharshman.diespamdie@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:vYB_d.11638$C47.5213@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
> George wrote:
>
>> "John Harshman" <jharshman.diespamdie@pacbell.net> wrote in message
>> news:oPo_d.24046$OU1.17168@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
>>
>>>George wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>"John Harshman" <jharshman.diespamdie@pacbell.net> wrote in message
>>>>news:f_l_d.11486$C47.9372@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>George wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>"John Harshman" <jharshman.diespamdie@pacbell.net> wrote in message
>>>>>>news:mvh_d.19664$Pz7.10093@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>George wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>"darthpup" <amchitka@mailexcite.com> wrote in message
>>>>>>>>news:1111068702.868751.160260@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>SJ Gould published a paper in Science in the early seventies after an
>>>>>>>>>exhaustive inventory of all collected fossils and showed that diversity
>>>>>>>>>is in fact random and not controlled by any correlative factor.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I seem to recall something about this. Do you have a link to this
>>>>>>>>paper?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I swear he's referring to Gould's entirely data-free simulations of
>>>>>>>clade shape evolution. But we'll see.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Oh God. Not that one.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Actually, that paper is relevant to your claim to find some particular
>>>>>pattern, which implies some kind of mechanism. Gould showed in that
>>>>>paper that such patterns would appear with reasonable frequency even if
>>>>>speciation and extinction were entirely stochastic.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>The idea I espoused about specialists being more vulnerable to extinction is
>>>>not
>>>>a new one. Moore talked about it in his 1952 treatise on invertebrate
>>>>paleontology.
>>>
>>>And that's an argument in favor of what? Are ideas good because they
>>>aren't new, or are they bad because they aren't new, or is their age
>>>irrelevant?
>>
>>
>> I was simply pointing out that this is an idea that has been thought about so
>> quite some time. That's all.
>>
> Ah, but what was your purpose in pointing that out? Just making
> conversation?
>
My purpose in pointing it out was that it has been accepted for quite some time,
so I don't understand your objection to it.

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