On Monday, June 14, 2021 at 2:53:45 PM UTC-7, Glenn wrote:
> On Monday, June 14, 2021 at 11:31:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, June 14, 2021 at 10:52:50 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> > > On 6/14/21 4:45 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 5:08:53 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> > > >> On 6/11/21 10:02 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > > >>> On Friday, June 11, 2021 at 8:23:52 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > >>>> On Friday, June 11, 2021 at 10:55:08 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> > > >>>>> On Friday, June 11, 2021 at 6:04:54 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > >>>>>> On Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 7:49:25 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> > > >>>>>>> On Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 3:35:21 PM UTC-7, Glenn wrote:
> > > >>>>>> Showing great restraint, I've deleted something that I dealt with vigorously in talk.origins.
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> This being over two months after the incident, I decided to let bygones be bygones.
> > > >>>>>> I hope Erik follows suit.
> > > >>>>>>>> Sound to me like you're trying to ditch integrity, so you can satisfy your evolutionary bias by desperately trying to prove animals existed before the Cambrian Explosion.
> > > >>>>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>> You misunderstand. I'm not trying to prove anything about Precambrian animals. I'm simply very curious about the *possible*
> > > >>>>>>> relationships between the Ediacaran biota and "life as we know it" inthe Cambrian.
> > > >>>>>> Your Subject: line, "Dickinsonia is very likely an animal" belies this disarming claim.
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> IOW, how many reverse gears does your bicycle have?
> > > >>>>>>> I have very little concern for what ID does or
> > > >>>>>>> does not say about that subject.
> > > >>>>>> Nothing, AFAIK.
> > > >>>>>>> The people involved with ID aren't well-represented among paleontologists.
> > > >>>>>> That is an accident, due to the fact that involvement with ID is mostly by creationists,
> > > >>>>>> most of whom are uninterested in all but the most superficial paleontology.
> > > >>>>>>>> You should know that ID does not prohibit primitive life you want to call "animals", or even primitive animals existing in the Ediacaran, nor do I. ID does, as well as I, not tolerate speculation that changes with the wind of what exactly occurred and existed more than a half billion years ago, before a well documented, obvious explosion of the appearance of the many advanced forms of life in a geological blink of an eye.
> > > >>>>>> Glenn is right about the well documented, obvious explosion. The early Cambrian fossils include
> > > >>>>>> representatives of almost every phylum known from fossils; there was only one "holdout" by
> > > >>>>>> the end of the Cambrian, the bryozoa, and that appeared in the next period, the Ordovician.
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> At least as mysterious as this is the question: why no more fossilizable phyla in the next
> > > >>>>>> 500 million years, after an explosion less than one-tenth as long, by most geologists' reckoning?
> > > >>>>>>>> Most everyone has given up on trying to discredit that fact. Now you're left with "maybe one or a few might" have been "kinda pseudo like" what we'd like to call "animal" rising from non-animal life a "little bit" before the explosion.
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>> "speculation that changes with the wind"? Does that mean data?
> > > >>>>>> Partly data, partly interpretations of already known data. People were once confident that Dickinsonia
> > > >>>>>> was an annelid. The latest speculation doesn't quite know where to place it, does it?
> > > >>>>>>> I *really* don't care what ID doesn't tolerate, nor am I concerned with your limits of toleration.
> > > >>>>>> Looks like ID has higher standards than you do. I take it Glenn was talking about what ID theorists
> > > >>>>>> will tolerate within ID.
> > > >>>>>>>> I'll leave you with a thought. Plant-like protists are called algae.
> > > >>>>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>>> Are algae plants? Plenty of pictures for you here:
> > > >>>>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>>> https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2018/2/20/are-algae-plants
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>> Nice pictures. The text belies your confident assertions.
> > > >>>>>> In what way? We've already seen how your text belies your confident
> > > >>>>>> assertion in the Subject line: "Dickinsonia is very likely an animal"
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>> Stick with pictures.
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> Where did you justify this comment?
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> Peter Nyikos
> > > >>>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > >>>>>> University of South Carolina
> > > >>>>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>>> I have zero interest is discussing anything with Glenn, and I suspect the lack of interest is
> > > >>>>> mutual. You apparently hold him in some regard?
> > > >>>> I hold the topics in high regard. You and Glenn are a good foundation for organizing my thoughts on
> > > >>>> the fascinating subjects you were discussing: the status of Dickinsonia and the Cambrian explosion.
> > > >>>>> I find that somewhat strange. Alas, I also
> > > >>>>> have no interest in discussing your contentious objections to the title of the thread, but I encourage
> > > >>>>> you to read the recent relevant material.
> > > >>>> I've read a very long treatise exploring the status of Dickinsonia, which you don't seem to have read
> > > >>>> very carefully (and Glenn might not have understood enough of it):
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/why-dickinsonia-was-most-probably-not-an-ediacaran-animal/
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Did you dismiss it out of hand because it was written by a convert from atheism?
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Be that as it may, I will write about it on Monday. It's too close to my bedtime now.
> > > >>>>> I'm not going to dig through my files looking for all the relevant
> > > >>>>> papers, because I don't see that this will lead to any clarity, and most likely would only lead to another
> > > >>>>> angry meltdown. (It's actually fun to track down the references; at least I find it fun).
> > > >>>> So do I. One of the main reasons I went into my office today (the only time I did it this week) was
> > > >>>> so that I could get past the paywall erected around the _Nature_ article on a gliding Jurassic mammal
> > > >>>> that Oxyaena had brought to my attention on the "For Peter" thread.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> It was well worth the trouble, and I'll be reporting on it on Monday too.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Peter Nyikos
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I do not dismiss Bechly's review out of hand, but I don't find it useful, and it's pretty obvious from both
> > > >>> its tone and its provinance where his sympathies lie.
> > > >>>
> > > >> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
> > > >> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
> > > >> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
> > > >> including human relationships to chimps. He's all over the place.
> > > >>
> > > >> But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously.
> >
> > > > Please confine this attitude to talk.origins, where it belongs.
> > It belongs in talk.origins because the main emphasis there is political rather than scientific.
> > The "on topic" focus is on discrediting individuals, e.g. creationists, as opposed to refuting arguments
> > or discussing on topic issues on which there is significant disagreement.
> > > Why doesn't it belong here?
> > Because s.b.p. is a science newsgroup, and unscientific dismissals of material
> > containing scientific data (of which there is plenty in the article on Dickinsonia linked above)
> > are counterproductive to progress in understanding the science being discussed here.
> >
> in the two weeks since Eric posted the OP, there has been zero discussion of the science behind this attempt to place animals evolving millions of years before the Cambrian Explosion. A google search will find hundreds of claims, many in the titles, that Dickinsonia has been proven to be an animal.. Wiki describes it as a "basal" animal.
>
> Yet, for instance,
>
> '‘We’re not saying it wasn’t sponges or it wasn’t protists [non-animal organisms that also produce small amounts of C30 steranes]3, we just say we have to be agnostic in this regard,’ says Hallmann." "‘We think that the safest thing to do right now is to indeed not use molecular fossils anymore as a collaboration point for earliest animals, but to revert back to the earliest [body] fossils."
>
> https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/steroid-fossilisation-discovery-opens-new-chapter-in-debate-around-oldest-animal/4012869.article
>
> As I said earlier, no one in this thread has directed their attention and discussion to what I said in my first post, and as another impetus now this:
>
> "But now, two research teams have discovered that C30 steranes might not be of animal origin but might come from ancient algae, with the compounds’ unusual substitution pattern byproducts of geological alteration."
>
> (From the previous url)
>
> I think for now that Bechly's article is a fair and balanced skepticism of the loud voices cheering for the early origin of animals.
>
> But even that article was thrown out by default by the "conversers" of science here.

The point of the first reference in the OP (Bobrovskiy et al) is the differential chemistry seen in on- and off-fossil samples, NOT
simply detection of steranes. As for the "cheering", it may matter to you if Dickinsonia is an animal, but I have no emotional
investment. A conculsive determination of its affinities would be equally ineresting either way.