Molecular paleontology: Dickinsonia is an animal

[Pandora]

Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of
the earliest animals.

The enigmatic Ediacara biota (571 million to 541 million years ago)
represents the first macroscopic complex organisms in the geological
record and may hold the key to our understanding of the origin of
animals. Ediacaran macrofossils are as “strange as life on another
planet” and have evaded taxonomic classification, with interpretations
ranging from marine animals or giant single-celled protists to
terrestrial lichens. Here, we show that lipid biomarkers extracted
from organically preserved Ediacaran macrofossils unambiguously
clarify their phylogeny. Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246

[Oxyaena]

*Dickinsonia* itself has recently been reclassified as not only
belonging to Eumetazoa, but to Bilateria as well. But what I don't get
is if they have been able to find the head or anal part of
*Dickinsonia*'s body yet? From what I've read the anatomy of
*Dickinsonia* is too ambiguous to fully determine where the anus and
mouth lie, perhaps it lie outside of the Protostome-Deuterostome
division then.

--
"The great thing about science is that it's true whether you believe in
it or not." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

[John Harshman]

On 9/22/18 5:03 AM, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 9/22/2018 7:53 AM, Pandora wrote:
>> Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of
>> the earliest animals.
>>
>> The enigmatic Ediacara biota (571 million to 541 million years ago)
>> represents the first macroscopic complex organisms in the geological
>> record and may hold the key to our understanding of the origin of
>> animals. Ediacaran macrofossils are as “strange as life on another
>> planet” and have evaded taxonomic classification, with interpretations
>> ranging from marine animals or giant single-celled protists to
>> terrestrial lichens. Here, we show that lipid biomarkers extracted
>> from organically preserved Ediacaran macrofossils unambiguously
>> clarify their phylogeny. Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
>> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
>> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
>> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
>> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
>>
>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
>>
>> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
>>
>
> *Dickinsonia* itself has recently been reclassified as not only
> belonging to Eumetazoa, but to Bilateria as well.

By whom? As far as I know it has no mouth or anus and isn't quite
bilaterally symmetrical (glide reflection).

> But what I don't get
> is if they have been able to find the head or anal part of
> *Dickinsonia*'s body yet? From what I've read the anatomy of
> *Dickinsonia* is too ambiguous to fully determine where the anus and
> mouth lie, perhaps it lie outside of the Protostome-Deuterostome
> division then.

Finding a mouth/anus wouldn't help. You would have to find a series of
embryos.

[Oxyaena]

On 9/22/2018 9:45 AM, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/22/18 5:03 AM, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 9/22/2018 7:53 AM, Pandora wrote:
>>> Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of
>>> the earliest animals.
>>>
>>> The enigmatic Ediacara biota (571 million to 541 million years ago)
>>> represents the first macroscopic complex organisms in the geological
>>> record and may hold the key to our understanding of the origin of
>>> animals. Ediacaran macrofossils are as “strange as life on another
>>> planet” and have evaded taxonomic classification, with interpretations
>>> ranging from marine animals or giant single-celled protists to
>>> terrestrial lichens. Here, we show that lipid biomarkers extracted
>>> from organically preserved Ediacaran macrofossils unambiguously
>>> clarify their phylogeny. Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
>>> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
>>> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
>>> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
>>> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
>>>
>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
>>>
>>> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
>>>
>>
>> *Dickinsonia* itself has recently been reclassified as not only
>> belonging to Eumetazoa, but to Bilateria as well.
>
> By whom? As far as I know it has no mouth or anus and isn't quite
> bilaterally symmetrical (glide reflection).

Hmmm... It appears I was mistaken, their phylogeny is up for debate, but
they definitely are more derived than sponges.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pala.12393

The paper I just linked (pay-walled of course) classifies Dickinsoniids
as being a sister taxon to Eumetazoa, but other studies place them
within Eumetazoa.

Stem bilaterians perhaps?

>
>> But what I don't get is if they have been able to find the head or
>> anal part of *Dickinsonia*'s body yet? From what I've read the anatomy
>> of *Dickinsonia* is too ambiguous to fully determine where the anus
>> and mouth lie, perhaps it lie outside of the Protostome-Deuterostome
>> division then.
>
> Finding a mouth/anus wouldn't help. You would have to find a series of
> embryos.

Well yes, but the difference between protostome and deuterostome anatomy
is the placement of the anus and mouth.

[John Harshman]

On 9/22/18 6:56 AM, Oxyaena wrote:
> Well yes, but the difference between protostome and deuterostome anatomy
> is the placement of the anus and mouth.

No, the difference is the embryonic fate of the blastopore and the
origin of the anus and mouth. The placements are the same: mouth at
front, anus at rear.

[Oxyaena]

Excuse my confusion, it's been a while since I read up on the difference
of between protostome and deuterostome anatomy. Now that you've
explained that my memory is clearer.

[erik simpson]

Droser and others have established that some (not all) Dickinsoniids are
bilaterally symmetric, but that's not sufficient evidence that they're
Bilaterian. There is little if any indication that Dickinsoniids have any
internal structures like a gut, nervous system, or really much of anything
inside. It's led some to propose a possible connection to Placozoans who do
their feeding externally, like amoebae. The best current phylogenies indicate
that the sister group to Bilateria is Cnidaria, both of which are much more
highly derived than Dickinsoniids.

[Peter Nyikos]

I almost forgot about this thread. When I first saw it, I was at
home, and decided to take a closer look at my office where certain
links were not paywalled. And indeed they are not, but I forgot to
look again until now.

And I'm glad I did.

On Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 7:53:13 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of
> the earliest animals.

That's an awfully thin peg on which to attach such a huge issue
as to relationships, and it gets even thinner here:

Although the sterol composition of some choanoflagellates and
filastereans falls within the range observed for Dickinsonia and Andiva,
they are unlikely precursor candidates because these groups are only ever
represented by microscopic organisms, leaving a stem- or crown-group metazoan
affinity as the only plausible phylogenetic position for Dickinsonia and
its morphological relatives.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246

This is almost comical. We know so little about life before the
Cambrian even now, and we are supposed to imagine that we have
a sample of all the major life forms. The almost solitary position
of Kimberella, believed by many to be a mollusk or at worst a
basal protostome, among all pre-Cambrian eumetazoans, should
give anyone pause. Where are all the other basal eumetazoans, including
cnidarans and ctenophores, if that is the case?

Consider also, how many phyla have no fossil record at all.

> The enigmatic Ediacara biota (571 million to 541 million years ago)
> represents the first macroscopic complex organisms in the geological
> record and may hold the key to our understanding of the origin of
> animals. Ediacaran macrofossils are as "strange as life on another
> planet" and have evaded taxonomic classification, with interpretations
> ranging from marine animals or giant single-celled protists to
> terrestrial lichens. Here, we show that lipid biomarkers extracted
> from organically preserved Ediacaran macrofossils unambiguously
> clarify their phylogeny.

How confident this sounds! But consider the following.
Where are we to place the two utterly
different kinds of organisms commonly called "slime molds"?
Wikipedia even gives them different names:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxobacteria

The first kind have very enigmatic affinities, and are said in Wikipedia
to be polyphyletic. Wikipedia does not provide a phylogenetic tree,
only a Linnean style classification.

If this is how enigmatic present day organisms are, how much
more careful authors ought to be when basing a classification
on sterols!

> Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
>
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
>
> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246

This is yet another example of Science Magazine favoring authors
with lots of chutzpah.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 9:56:05 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 9/22/2018 9:45 AM, John Harshman wrote:
> > On 9/22/18 5:03 AM, Oxyaena wrote:

> >> *Dickinsonia* itself has recently been reclassified as not only
> >> belonging to Eumetazoa, but to Bilateria as well.
> >
> > By whom? As far as I know it has no mouth or anus and isn't quite
> > bilaterally symmetrical (glide reflection).
>
> Hmmm... It appears I was mistaken, their phylogeny is up for debate, but
> they definitely are more derived than sponges.

"definitely" is at best premature. I've looked briefly at the
following paper, to which I have full access here, and it
is very hard to make out how well supported the phylogenetic
tree is. Also keep in mind what I wrote in my reply to the OP.

> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pala.12393

> The paper I just linked (pay-walled of course) classifies Dickinsoniids
> as being a sister taxon to Eumetazoa, but other studies place them
> within Eumetazoa.

Which studies? The long-discredited ones that put them in total Annelida?


> Stem bilaterians perhaps?

If they can't figure that out for Kimberella, what chance
does Dickinsonia have?

>
> >
> >> But what I don't get is if they have been able to find the head or
> >> anal part of *Dickinsonia*'s body yet? From what I've read the anatomy
> >> of *Dickinsonia* is too ambiguous to fully determine where the anus
> >> and mouth lie, perhaps it lie outside of the Protostome-Deuterostome
> >> division then.
> >
> > Finding a mouth/anus wouldn't help. You would have to find a series of
> > embryos.
>
> Well yes, but the difference between protostome and deuterostome anatomy
> is the placement of the anus and mouth.

Harshman corrected you on this. You continue to suffer from
foot in the mouth syndrome when trying to show off your
knowledge of biology.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Oxyaena]

On 10/16/2018 3:13 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 9:56:05 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 9/22/2018 9:45 AM, John Harshman wrote:
>>> On 9/22/18 5:03 AM, Oxyaena wrote:
>
>>>> *Dickinsonia* itself has recently been reclassified as not only
>>>> belonging to Eumetazoa, but to Bilateria as well.
>>>
>>> By whom? As far as I know it has no mouth or anus and isn't quite
>>> bilaterally symmetrical (glide reflection).
>>
>> Hmmm... It appears I was mistaken, their phylogeny is up for debate, but
>> they definitely are more derived than sponges.
>
> "definitely" is at best premature. I've looked briefly at the
> following paper, to which I have full access here, and it
> is very hard to make out how well supported the phylogenetic
> tree is. Also keep in mind what I wrote in my reply to the OP.

I only skimmed over it before replying to this one, but I'll make sure
to read it in full *after* this response. I'll find a cite soon, I can
promise you that.

>
>
>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pala.12393
>
>> The paper I just linked (pay-walled of course) classifies Dickinsoniids
>> as being a sister taxon to Eumetazoa, but other studies place them
>> within Eumetazoa.
>
> Which studies? The long-discredited ones that put them in total Annelida?

Don't remember. I'll look it up later, I have more pressing issues to
engage in right now, one of which is the Good DrDr.

>
>
>> Stem bilaterians perhaps?
>
> If they can't figure that out for Kimberella, what chance
> does Dickinsonia have?

There is dispute about this, some authors place *Dickinsonia* outside of
Rumetazoa entirely, placing it with placozoans instead.

>
>>
>>>
>>>> But what I don't get is if they have been able to find the head or
>>>> anal part of *Dickinsonia*'s body yet? From what I've read the anatomy
>>>> of *Dickinsonia* is too ambiguous to fully determine where the anus
>>>> and mouth lie, perhaps it lie outside of the Protostome-Deuterostome
>>>> division then.
>>>
>>> Finding a mouth/anus wouldn't help. You would have to find a series of
>>> embryos.
>>
>> Well yes, but the difference between protostome and deuterostome anatomy
>> is the placement of the anus and mouth.
>
> Harshman corrected you on this. You continue to suffer from
> foot in the mouth syndrome when trying to show off your
> knowledge of biology.

My memory of the topic was faulty. I`m going to refrain from insulting
you because of my proposition. Have you even seen it yet? It's worth a look.

[Oxyaena]

There are some suggestions that the small shelly fauna of the latest
Ediacaran include some basal mollusks, and *Spriggina* has been proposed
to be a stem-arthropod, but that's disputed.

[Oxyaena]

Damn typos. That should be "Eumetazoa", not "Rumetazoa".

[John Harshman]

On 10/16/18 11:34 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> This is almost comical. We know so little about life before the
> Cambrian even now, and we are supposed to imagine that we have
> a sample of all the major life forms.

I don't actually think we are. The particular set of sterols is
currently peculiar to eumetazoans. There could easily be extinct groups
that had those, but the same could apply to any diagnostic characters of
any taxa. We work with what we have and infer what we can.

> The almost solitary position
> of Kimberella, believed by many to be a mollusk or at worst a
> basal protostome, among all pre-Cambrian eumetazoans, should
> give anyone pause. Where are all the other basal eumetazoans, including
> cnidarans and ctenophores, if that is the case?
>
> Consider also, how many phyla have no fossil record at all.

Doesn't the one-sentence paragraph refute the bit right above it? We
don't expect to see cnidarian or ctenophore fossils except under very
exceptional conditions. They hardly show up at all in the Burgess Shale,
for example.

>> The enigmatic Ediacara biota (571 million to 541 million years ago)
>> represents the first macroscopic complex organisms in the geological
>> record and may hold the key to our understanding of the origin of
>> animals. Ediacaran macrofossils are as "strange as life on another
>> planet" and have evaded taxonomic classification, with interpretations
>> ranging from marine animals or giant single-celled protists to
>> terrestrial lichens. Here, we show that lipid biomarkers extracted
>> from organically preserved Ediacaran macrofossils unambiguously
>> clarify their phylogeny.
>
> How confident this sounds! But consider the following.
> Where are we to place the two utterly
> different kinds of organisms commonly called "slime molds"?
> Wikipedia even gives them different names:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxobacteria
>
> The first kind have very enigmatic affinities, and are said in Wikipedia
> to be polyphyletic. Wikipedia does not provide a phylogenetic tree,
> only a Linnean style classification.
>
> If this is how enigmatic present day organisms are, how much
> more careful authors ought to be when basing a classification
> on sterols!

Agreed. This is not conclusive, but it's decent data.

>> Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
>> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
>> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
>> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
>> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
>>
>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
>>
>> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
>
>
> This is yet another example of Science Magazine favoring authors
> with lots of chutzpah.

They certainly like bold claims. Nature is even worse.

[John Harshman]

Correction: the small shelly fauna is mostly Cambrian. Only a couple of
taxa are Precambrian. But the main fauna does predate the fossil record
of trilobites and the early Cambrian Lagerstätten.

[Oxyaena]

Then it was only a partial correction, since the range of the small
shelly fauna includes the latest Ediacaran.

> But the main fauna does predate the fossil record
> of trilobites and the early Cambrian Lagerstätten.

Obviously, that's why I cited it as an example.

[John Harshman]

Just barely, only a couple of species. And I don't know of any
suggestion that the Precambrian species include basal mollusks. Do you?

>> But the main fauna does predate the fossil record of trilobites and
>> the early Cambrian Lagerstätten.
>
> Obviously, that's why I cited it as an example.

Yes. You just shouldn't have called it "Precambrian"; that distorts the
record.

[Oxyaena]

Nope.

[Peter Nyikos]

Do you have any candidates for "the best current phylogeny" that are
different from the one Oxyaena gave us? The credits for it are peculiar --
just look at the first line:

Palaeontology Volume 0, Issue 0
Rapid Communication Free Access
Cambrian petalonamid Stromatoveris phylogenetically links Ediacaran biota to later animals
Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill
Jian Han
First published: 07 August 2018
https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12393

It doesn't look very promising so far. For one thing, its phylogenetic tree
doesn't break down Eumetazoa, so I'm wondering where your sister group
claim for Cnidaria comes from.

Maybe John Harshman could tell us how well supported its tree is.
Since the only recognized phyla [1] in it are "sponges," [2] and "placozoans,"
I'm not holding my breath.

[1] Besides the detailed breakdown of some Ediacarans, with the
sister group "eumetazoans" for the whole shebang of Ediacarans,
the non-phylum groups are: "fungi," "algae," and "protozoans [*sic*]"

[2] Conspicuous by its absence is Ctenophora, which presumably is
among the "eumetazoans", in defiance of what may be the most
favored hypothesis currently: that Ctenophora is basal to all of
metazoa, including sponges.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS With such lavish support, one might expect the two (2) authors to have
done a more professional job on their phylogenetic tree. Just
look at the blurb at the end:


Acknowledgements

Supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (nos 41672009,41621003, 41772010, 41720104002, JH), Ministry of Science and 111 project of Ministry of Education of China (no. D17013, JH), Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (no. XDB26000000, JH), ELSI Origins Network (EON) Research Fellowship (JFHC) supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and Palaeontological Association Research Grant (PA‐RG201501, JFHC). We thank D. Shu (Northwest University), J. Gehling and M.‐A. Binnie (South Australian Museum) and H. Mocke (National Earth Science Museum, Geological Survey of Namibia) for access to museum specimens and discussion; S. Conway Morris for discussion of the manuscript; H.‐J. Gong, W.‐Q., Yang M.‐R. Cheng and J. Sun for technical assistance with SEM spectroscopy; and reviewers S. Jensen, D. McIlroy and M.A.S. McMenamin for their constructive comments.

[Oxyaena]

On 10/17/2018 9:53 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 11:11:48 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
>> On Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 7:13:39 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
>>> On 9/22/2018 10:09 AM, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 9/22/18 6:56 AM, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>>> Well yes, but the difference between protostome and deuterostome
>>>>> anatomy is the placement of the anus and mouth.
>>>>
>>>> No, the difference is the embryonic fate of the blastopore and the
>>>> origin of the anus and mouth. The placements are the same: mouth at
>>>> front, anus at rear.
>>>
>>> Excuse my confusion, it's been a while since I read up on the difference
>>> of between protostome and deuterostome anatomy. Now that you've
>>> explained that my memory is clearer.
>>
>> Droser and others have established that some (not all) Dickinsoniids are
>> bilaterally symmetric, but that's not sufficient evidence that they're
>> Bilaterian. There is little if any indication that Dickinsoniids have any
>> internal structures like a gut, nervous system, or really much of anything
>> inside. It's led some to propose a possible connection to Placozoans who do
>> their feeding externally, like amoebae. The best current phylogenies indicate
>> that the sister group to Bilateria is Cnidaria, both of which are much more
>> highly derived than Dickinsoniids.
>
> Do you have any candidates for "the best current phylogeny" that are
> different from the one Oxyaena gave us?

Why the scare quotes, and I suggested that dickinsoniids be aligned with
placozoans, which appears to me to be the best phylogeny. The placement
of Ctenophora is irrelevant to the placement of Dickinsoniidae.

> The credits for it are peculiar --
> just look at the first line:
>
> Palaeontology Volume 0, Issue 0
> Rapid Communication Free Access
> Cambrian petalonamid Stromatoveris phylogenetically links Ediacaran biota to later animals
> Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill
> Jian Han
> First published: 07 August 2018
> https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12393
>
> It doesn't look very promising so far. For one thing, its phylogenetic tree
> doesn't break down Eumetazoa, so I'm wondering where your sister group
> claim for Cnidaria comes from.
>
> Maybe John Harshman could tell us how well supported its tree is.
> Since the only recognized phyla [1] in it are "sponges," [2] and "placozoans,"
> I'm not holding my breath.

Congratulations, you are able to tell shoddy research apart from quality
research. Have a cookie.

>
> [1] Besides the detailed breakdown of some Ediacarans, with the
> sister group "eumetazoans" for the whole shebang of Ediacarans,
> the non-phylum groups are: "fungi," "algae," and "protozoans [*sic*]"
>
> [2] Conspicuous by its absence is Ctenophora, which presumably is
> among the "eumetazoans", in defiance of what may be the most
> favored hypothesis currently: that Ctenophora is basal to all of
> metazoa, including sponges.

Ctenophores aren't as derived as even cnidarians are, and they lack many
of the features even cnidarians possess. They literally consist of only
differentiated groups of cells overlayed by a single layer of muscle,
and they have a digestive track running through their body which food
seeps through.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 4:38:02 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/16/18 11:34 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[repost from (paywalled?) article snipped by you:]

Although the sterol composition of some choanoflagellates and
filastereans falls within the range observed for Dickinsonia and Andiva,
they are unlikely precursor candidates because these groups are only ever
represented by microscopic organisms, leaving a stem- or crown-group metazoan
affinity as the only plausible phylogenetic position for Dickinsonia and
its morphological relatives.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246

[end of repost]

> > This is almost comical. We know so little about life before the
> > Cambrian even now, and we are supposed to imagine that we have
> > a sample of all the major life forms.
>
> I don't actually think we are. The particular set of sterols is
> currently peculiar to eumetazoans.

"currently" makes this sentence almost worthless. It assumes, for
one thing, that in eons gone by, there weren't any multicellular
relatives of choanoflagellates and filastereans. And I could find
no evidence that the Ediacarans listed were NOT just those kinds
of organisms.

> There could easily be extinct groups
> that had those, but the same could apply to any diagnostic characters of
> any taxa. We work with what we have and infer what we can.

You are behaving like a commander telling a pilot with a badly damaged airplane
to take to the air and continue its combat mission; "We go with what we got."

>
> > The almost solitary position
> > of Kimberella, believed by many to be a mollusk or at worst a
> > basal protostome, among all pre-Cambrian eumetazoans, should
> > give anyone pause. Where are all the other basal eumetazoans, including
> > cnidarans and ctenophores, if that is the case?
> >
> > Consider also, how many phyla have no fossil record at all.
>
> Doesn't the one-sentence paragraph refute the bit right above it?

No. You are ignoring everything except the rather late Burgess shales below.

> We don't expect to see cnidarian or ctenophore fossils except under very
> exceptional conditions. They hardly show up at all in the Burgess Shale,
> for example.

But there is a beautiful ctenophoran fossil in the Chengyang Conservat
Lagerstaete, and there were quite a number of Conservat Lagerstaetten
in the Late Ediacaran:
White Sea, Ediacaran Hills, Mistaken Point, Charnian Forest, ...

>
> >> The enigmatic Ediacara biota (571 million to 541 million years ago)
> >> represents the first macroscopic complex organisms in the geological
> >> record and may hold the key to our understanding of the origin of
> >> animals. Ediacaran macrofossils are as "strange as life on another
> >> planet" and have evaded taxonomic classification, with interpretations
> >> ranging from marine animals or giant single-celled protists to
> >> terrestrial lichens.

Different interpretations are strong for different biota. Here is
one reference to one of the enigmatic Erniettomorphs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteridinium
[excerpts:]
Fossils are common in late Precambrian deposits in South Australia,
Namibia, and the White Sea region of Russia. It has also been found
in North Carolina and is reported from California and the Northwest
Territories of Canada.

The three-lobed body is generally flat such that only two lobes are visible.
Each lobe consists of a number of parallel ribs extending back to the main
axis where the three lobes come together. Even on well-preserved specimens,
there is no sign of a mouth, anus, eyes, legs, antennae, or any other
appendages or organs. The organism grew primarily by the addition of new
units, probably at both ends, with the inflation of existing units
contributing little to its growth.[1]

> >> Here, we show that lipid biomarkers extracted
> >> from organically preserved Ediacaran macrofossils unambiguously
> >> clarify their phylogeny.
> >
> > How confident this sounds! But consider the following.
> > Where are we to place the two utterly
> > different kinds of organisms commonly called "slime molds"?
> > Wikipedia even gives them different names:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxobacteria

The latter are called "slime bacteria" and I may have been mistaken
in thinking they are commonly called "slime molds." They are
prokaryotes, whereas the others are eukaryotes.

> > The first kind have very enigmatic affinities, and are said in Wikipedia
> > to be polyphyletic.

Now that I've consulted one of the best biology textbooks [2], it would seem
that it's no contest: the cellular slime molds are haploid for their
entire life cycle except the gametes, while the plasmodial (or: acellular)
slime molds are diploid for IIRC all the parts of their life cycle where we
humans are diploid -- every point except meiosis.

The Wikipedia entry for slime molds treats all slime molds as though
they were haploid for most of their life cycle.

[2] Campbell, Reese, et. al., _Biology_.

> > Wikipedia does not provide a phylogenetic tree,
> > only a Linnean style classification.
> >
> > If this is how enigmatic present day organisms are, how much
> > more careful authors ought to be when basing a classification
> > on sterols!
>
> Agreed. This is not conclusive, but it's decent data.

Recklessly optimistic. How long has it been since you last
practiced as a professional biologist?

>
> >> Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
> >> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
> >> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
> >> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
> >> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
> >>
> >> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
> >>
> >> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
> >
> >
> > This is yet another example of Science Magazine favoring authors
> > with lots of chutzpah.
>
> They certainly like bold claims. Nature is even worse.

I'm glad we agree on something! [Insignificant nitpick: I'm not sure
which of the two is worse.]


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[Oxyaena]

On 10/17/2018 10:28 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 4:38:02 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 10/16/18 11:34 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [repost from (paywalled?) article snipped by you:]
>
> Although the sterol composition of some choanoflagellates and
> filastereans falls within the range observed for Dickinsonia and Andiva,
> they are unlikely precursor candidates because these groups are only ever
> represented by microscopic organisms, leaving a stem- or crown-group metazoan
> affinity as the only plausible phylogenetic position for Dickinsonia and
> its morphological relatives.
> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
> [end of repost]
>
>>> This is almost comical. We know so little about life before the
>>> Cambrian even now, and we are supposed to imagine that we have
>>> a sample of all the major life forms.
>>
>> I don't actually think we are. The particular set of sterols is
>> currently peculiar to eumetazoans.
>
> "currently" makes this sentence almost worthless. It assumes, for
> one thing, that in eons gone by, there weren't any multicellular
> relatives of choanoflagellates and filastereans. And I could find
> no evidence that the Ediacarans listed were NOT just those kinds
> of organisms.

The problem is, is that we'll most likely never know, dipshit. Baseless
speculation is useless without any evidence to back it up.

>
>
>> There could easily be extinct groups
>> that had those, but the same could apply to any diagnostic characters of
>> any taxa. We work with what we have and infer what we can.
>
> You are behaving like a commander telling a pilot with a badly damaged airplane
> to take to the air and continue its combat mission; "We go with what we got."

Then riddle me this:

What happens when a crime scene contains no evidence of the perpetrator,
but they convict someone anyways because of baseless speculation. "It
was him, I know it in my gut. What? No evidence? Screw the evidence, I
just *know* he committed the crime."

Do you now see the problem with your line of thinking?

>
>
>>
>>> The almost solitary position
>>> of Kimberella, believed by many to be a mollusk or at worst a
>>> basal protostome, among all pre-Cambrian eumetazoans, should
>>> give anyone pause. Where are all the other basal eumetazoans, including
>>> cnidarans and ctenophores, if that is the case?
>>>
>>> Consider also, how many phyla have no fossil record at all.
>>
>> Doesn't the one-sentence paragraph refute the bit right above it?
>
> No. You are ignoring everything except the rather late Burgess shales below.
>
>
>> We don't expect to see cnidarian or ctenophore fossils except under very
>> exceptional conditions. They hardly show up at all in the Burgess Shale,
>> for example.
>
> But there is a beautiful ctenophoran fossil in the Chengyang Conservat
> Lagerstaete, and there were quite a number of Conservat Lagerstaetten
> in the Late Ediacaran:
> White Sea, Ediacaran Hills, Mistaken Point, Charnian Forest, ...

Yeah, that fits with what he wrote. Just because they *rarely* fossilize
doesn't mean its impossible, only that *very* specific conditions must
occur for ctenophorans and cnidarians to fossilize (except for coral,
for obvious reasons).


[snip]

[John Harshman]

The tree doesn't break down Eumetazoa, but the analysis did. According
to the analysis, Eumetazoa is monophyletic and is the sister group
(among taxa analyzed) of rangeomorphs, or whatever you want to call
them. Eumetazoans analyzed include both a cnidarian and a ctenophore.

> Maybe John Harshman could tell us how well supported its tree is.
> Since the only recognized phyla [1] in it are "sponges," [2] and "placozoans,"
> I'm not holding my breath.

Again, the figure doesn't show the complete tree of the analysis. It
does show very good support for monophyly of the ingroup, but no support
to speak of for any of the outgroup nodes. Support, if any, for
Eumetazoa is not shown or described.

> [1] Besides the detailed breakdown of some Ediacarans, with the
> sister group "eumetazoans" for the whole shebang of Ediacarans,
> the non-phylum groups are: "fungi," "algae," and "protozoans [*sic*]"
>
> [2] Conspicuous by its absence is Ctenophora, which presumably is
> among the "eumetazoans", in defiance of what may be the most
> favored hypothesis currently: that Ctenophora is basal to all of
> metazoa, including sponges.

That's not what the data in that paper show.

> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>
> PS With such lavish support, one might expect the two (2) authors to have
> done a more professional job on their phylogenetic tree.

This is you mistaking what the figure shows and what their analysis was.
You need to read a little of the text to find that.

[John Harshman]

What are you insinuating here?

>>>> Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
>>>> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
>>>> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
>>>> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
>>>> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
>>>>
>>>> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
>>>
>>>
>>> This is yet another example of Science Magazine favoring authors
>>> with lots of chutzpah.
>>
>> They certainly like bold claims. Nature is even worse.
>
> I'm glad we agree on something! [Insignificant nitpick: I'm not sure
> which of the two is worse.]

I am. Nature is in fact considerably worse.

[John Harshman]

Doesn't "dipshit" violate your most recent promise?

[Oxyaena]

Peter all but stated he wasn't going to follow the terms which sent
several red flags to me. I do intend to keep my promise of not engaging
him when he trolls me so as to not clutter up the newsgroup, but that
doesn't mean I have to be "nice" about it.

[Peter Nyikos]

Oxyaena's Aspergers is probably at work here: she is falling afoul
of what I call the Forensic Fallacy. This takes a valid principle
for high school and college debates, "The burden of proof rests
with the affirmative" and tries to extend it beyond such contexts.

The principle is valid for forensic leagues because "the affirmative"
is arguing for *changes* in the status quo. The Forensic Fallacy
invalidly extends this to debates over what the status quo IS,
and it often makes a completely arbitrary choice as to one side
being "the affirmative."

> Doesn't "dipshit" violate your most recent promise?

No, that was just an offer which was slanted strongly in favor
of Oxyaena. I rejected it but gave hints as to how to word
an offer I could accept. But Oxyaena was oblivious to that in her reply,
and reverted to some of the worst "Feed me! Feed me!" style trolling
I've ever seen from her. I reluctantly fed most of it, but reined
myself in at the most blatant case of them all. See:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/cN_EnpMigdA/Ou_xZZptBwAJ
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 08:43:17 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <82a7b67c-8bc0-4610...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Proposition for Peter


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

How is my autism at play here? You have no valid rebuttal to what I
wrote, and must create some bullshit excuse as to why you refuse to
address my argument.

> she is falling afoul
> of what I call the Forensic Fallacy. This takes a valid principle
> for high school and college debates, "The burden of proof rests
> with the affirmative" and tries to extend it beyond such contexts.
>
> The principle is valid for forensic leagues because "the affirmative"
> is arguing for *changes* in the status quo. The Forensic Fallacy
> invalidly extends this to debates over what the status quo IS,
> and it often makes a completely arbitrary choice as to one side
> being "the affirmative."

Again, you have no valid rebuttal. Just admit that.

>
>
>> Doesn't "dipshit" violate your most recent promise?
>
> No, that was just an offer which was slanted strongly in favor
> of Oxyaena. I rejected it but gave hints as to how to word
> an offer I could accept. But Oxyaena was oblivious to that in her reply,
> and reverted to some of the worst "Feed me! Feed me!" style trolling
> I've ever seen from her.

I didn't troll you at all, you responded with the negative. What you
wrote consisted of pure lies, do you expect me to just play dead when
you libel me? No, I`m not going to do that. Deal with it.

I reluctantly fed most of it, but reined
> myself in at the most blatant case of them all. See:

If only that were true.

>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/cN_EnpMigdA/Ou_xZZptBwAJ
> Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 08:43:17 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <82a7b67c-8bc0-4610...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: Proposition for Peter
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>
>
>
>>>>> There could easily be extinct groups
>>>>> that had those, but the same could apply to any diagnostic characters of
>>>>> any taxa. We work with what we have and infer what we can.
>>>>
>>>> You are behaving like a commander telling a pilot with a badly damaged
>>>> airplane
>>>> to take to the air and continue its combat mission; "We go with what
>>>> we got."
>>>
>>>
>>> Then riddle me this:
>>>
>>> What happens when a crime scene contains no evidence of the perpetrator,
>>> but they convict someone anyways because of baseless speculation. "It
>>> was him, I know it in my gut. What? No evidence? Screw the evidence, I
>>> just *know* he committed the crime."
>>>
>>> Do you now see the problem with your line of thinking?

[crickets]

[Peter Nyikos]

You have a childlike faith in slogans like "the burden of the proof
rests with the affirmative" which runs afoul of the Forensic Fallacy
the way you use it, as indicated below. You also have a
childish faith in your ability to know the boundaries of numerous
other fallacies, and in the magic of just naming them in
allegations that people are falling into them, without any
effort to show that you aren't way outside the boundaries.

You have a similar childish faith in the magic of the term
"Dunning-Kruger," and in the magic of names like Popper and Kuhn.


<snip wishful thinking by Oxyaena here>

> > she is falling afoul
> > of what I call the Forensic Fallacy. This takes a valid principle
> > for high school and college debates, "The burden of proof rests
> > with the affirmative" and tries to extend it beyond such contexts.
> >
> > The principle is valid for forensic leagues because "the affirmative"
> > is arguing for *changes* in the status quo.

The general principle behind this burden is sometimes expressed in
the slogan, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

As a radical leftist in addition to your Asperger's, you may have a
childish faith that the burden of proof is on those who
claim something "ain't broke". If so, perhaps it is because
of a verse in Fizgerald's "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,"
which goes like this (or almost exactly like this):

Ah, love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To mend this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remold it closer to the heart's desire?

The sentiment is beautiful, but it doesn't work out too well
in real life, as the history of revolutions shows:
the Reign of Terror, the Great Purges, the "1000 Year Reich,"
the Killing Fields of Kampuchea, etc.

> > The Forensic Fallacy
> > invalidly extends this to debates over what the status quo IS,
> > and it often makes a completely arbitrary choice as to one side
> > being "the affirmative."
>

<snip more wishful thinking by Oxyaena>

> >
> >> Doesn't "dipshit" violate your most recent promise?
> >
> > No, that was just an offer which was slanted strongly in favor
> > of Oxyaena. I rejected it but gave hints as to how to word
> > an offer I could accept. But Oxyaena was oblivious to that in her reply,
> > and reverted to some of the worst "Feed me! Feed me!" style trolling
> > I've ever seen from her.
>
> I didn't troll you at all,

You are trolling right now, as anyone who reads my treatment of your
trolling can tell from the post I linked at the end.

> you responded with the negative. What you
> wrote consisted of pure lies,

What I wrote when responding in the negative is accurately
described by myself above. What you call "pure lies"
was my "feeding of the troll" AFTER you demonstrated your ulterior
motives in having made the offer which I rejected, but with hints
described above.

You indirectly revealed that you wanted to go on flaming certain people
mercilessly without being constrained to support your blatant
assertions about them. All this is plain to see in the post
I linked below.


<snip more trolling by Oxyaena>

> > I reluctantly fed most of it, but reined
> > myself in at the most blatant case of them all. See:
>
> If only that were true.

Fallacy of Poisoning the Wells. One of your big current benefactors
in talk.origins mangled this concept in a blatantly Oxyaena-serving
way just this past week, but it does apply here. Explanation on
request.

> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/cN_EnpMigdA/Ou_xZZptBwAJ
> > Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 08:43:17 -0700 (PDT)
> > Message-ID: <82a7b67c-8bc0-4610...@googlegroups.com>
> > Subject: Re: Proposition for Peter
> >
> >

Peter Nyikos

PS In the purely on-topic part of what Oxyaena wrote below, we seem to be
in agreement. If anyone besides Oxyaena and her faithful ally
Erik Simpson thinks Oxyaena's "crime scene" analogy below has any merit, they
are welcome to say why they think so, and I will respond.

That is, unless their "why" is obviously irrelevant to its alleged validity
[as in e.g. "I don't think Oxyaena has ever done any trolling."]

[Oxyaena]

How is it childish? Does the burden of proof not rest on the one who
make's the claim? You obviously don't know what the hell you're talking
about, my autism has nothing to do with anything, and you're showing
that you're an ableist prick by even suggesting such a thing. Would you
dare call Temple Grandin childish?

> which runs afoul of the Forensic Fallacy
> the way you use it,

A butt-hurt excuse/escape hatch to use when the Burden of Proof lies on
yourself. Grow up.

> as indicated below. You also have a
> childish faith in your ability to know the boundaries of numerous
> other fallacies,

You are talking out of your ass again. You've committed several logical
fallacies, and have now poisoned the well. Anyone with half a brain can
see that.

> and in the magic of just naming them in
> allegations that people are falling into them, without any
> effort to show that you aren't way outside the boundaries.

Now I know you're being deliberately dishonest. Logical fallacies have
no boundaries, they apply to fallacious argumentative styles, such as
the ones you so often like to commit, and no logician worth their salt
would recognize the so-called "Forensic Fallacy."

>
> You have a similar childish faith in the magic of the term
> "Dunning-Kruger,"

You have a childish faith in the competence of your DP hypothesis. You
have a childish faith in your ability to supposedly call out others on
their flaws. You have a childish faith that people actually respect you.

> and in the magic of names like Popper and Kuhn.
>
>

Another attempt at poisoning the well by Butthurt the Bulgarian, so when
every conceivable philosopher of science disagrees with you, they must
be wrong. How pathetic.

> <snip wishful thinking by Oxyaena here>
>

Repost text that Nyikos cowardly, and dishonestly like the weasel he is,
dismissed as mere "wishful thinking":

"You have no valid rebuttal to what I wrote, and must create some
bullshit excuse as to why you refuse to address my argument.

> she is falling afoul
> of what I call the Forensic Fallacy. This takes a valid principle
> for high school and college debates, "The burden of proof rests
> with the affirmative" and tries to extend it beyond such contexts.
>
> The principle is valid for forensic leagues because "the affirmative"

> is arguing for *changes* in the status quo. The Forensic Fallacy

> invalidly extends this to debates over what the status quo IS,
> and it often makes a completely arbitrary choice as to one side
> being "the affirmative."

Again, you have no valid rebuttal. Just admit that.

>
>

>> Doesn't "dipshit" violate your most recent promise?
>
> No, that was just an offer which was slanted strongly in favor
> of Oxyaena. I rejected it but gave hints as to how to word
> an offer I could accept. But Oxyaena was oblivious to that in her reply,
> and reverted to some of the worst "Feed me! Feed me!" style trolling
> I've ever seen from her.

I didn't troll you at all, you responded with the negative. What you
wrote consisted of pure lies, do you expect me to just play dead when
you libel me? No, I`m not going to do that. Deal with it."

This attempted smoke-screen of yours to avoid confronting your own lack
of a valid rebuttal didn't work, coward. You should brush up on basic
rhetoric.

[snip more of the typical poisoning of the well by Butthurt the Bulgarian]
>

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 10:48:28 AM UTC-4, John Harshman:

You don't seem to have much to say about the numerous new things
I added this time around. This may be symptomatic of the
rustiness of which I write below.

> >> Agreed. This is not conclusive, but it's decent data.
> >
> > Recklessly optimistic. How long has it been since you last
> > practiced as a professional biologist?
>
> What are you insinuating here?

That you are getting rustier and rustier in the art of thinking
like a professional. Your wording "This is not conclusive"
shows a lack of a sense of proportion that a biologist engaged
in research ought to be mindful of.

You might retort that the two authors of that paper seem
to have a worse sense of proportion than yourself, but the
lure of having a paper published in _Science_
evidently was too much for them. Privately, of course,
they might have admitted to themselves that they were
going out on a limb.

>
> >>>> Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
> >>>> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
> >>>> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
> >>>> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
> >>>> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
> >>>>
> >>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
> >>>>
> >>>> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> This is yet another example of Science Magazine favoring authors
> >>> with lots of chutzpah.
> >>
> >> They certainly like bold claims. Nature is even worse.
> >
> > I'm glad we agree on something! [Insignificant nitpick: I'm not sure
> > which of the two is worse.]
>
> I am. Nature is in fact considerably worse.

I don't read these two journals often enough to tell, but thanks for the
tip; I'll keep it in the back of my mind from now on whenever I do
read what they have to offer.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

Before answering your post, John, I want to let you know that tomorrow
begins our Fall Break, in which my time will mostly be spent with my
family and finishing one of the best research papers in my specialty
that I have ever written . So I doubt that I will do any posting either
here or to talk.origins until Monday, once I'm done here and in t.o.
tonight.

Ah, so the article is not paywalled, eh? That saves me a lot
of trouble.

> According
> to the analysis, Eumetazoa is monophyletic and is the sister group
> (among taxa analyzed) of rangeomorphs, or whatever you want to call
> them. Eumetazoans analyzed include both a cnidarian and a ctenophore.



> > Maybe John Harshman could tell us how well supported its tree is.
> > Since the only recognized phyla [1] in it are "sponges," [2] and "placozoans,"
> > I'm not holding my breath.
>
> Again, the figure doesn't show the complete tree of the analysis. It
> does show very good support for monophyly of the ingroup,

The enigmatic Ediacarans? That comes as no surprise.

> but no support
> to speak of for any of the outgroup nodes. Support, if any, for
> Eumetazoa is not shown or described.

You mean for its monophyly? I'm especially interested in what
I wrote in [2] below.

> > [1] Besides the detailed breakdown of some Ediacarans, with the
> > sister group "eumetazoans" for the whole shebang of Ediacarans,
> > the non-phylum groups are: "fungi," "algae," and "protozoans [*sic*]"
> >
> > [2] Conspicuous by its absence is Ctenophora, which presumably is
> > among the "eumetazoans", in defiance of what may be the most
> > favored hypothesis currently: that Ctenophora is basal to all of
> > metazoa, including sponges.


> That's not what the data in that paper show.

How extensive is their data that is relevant to [2]? And how does
it stack up to the much-ballyhooed papers that show otherwise?

> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
> >
> > PS With such lavish support, one might expect the two (2) authors to have
> > done a more professional job on their phylogenetic tree.
>
> This is you mistaking what the figure shows and what their analysis was.
> You need to read a little of the text to find that.

Are you going to make everyone read the paper for themselves without giving details we can all appreciate?

Let me ask you this much: how do YOU think it stack up to the much-ballyhooed papers that show otherwise?

If your replies are going to be as curt as what you've written here,
I'm not going to regret taking a posting break for the next four
days. If perchance you manage to cobble together an in-depth
presentation, you will be giving something to look forward to
on my return.

> > Just
> > look at the blurb at the end:
> >
> >
> > Acknowledgements
> >
> > Supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (nos 41672009,41621003, 41772010, 41720104002, JH), Ministry of Science and 111 project of Ministry of Education of China (no. D17013, JH), Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (no. XDB26000000, JH), ELSI Origins Network (EON) Research Fellowship (JFHC) supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and Palaeontological Association Research Grant (PA‐RG201501, JFHC). We thank D. Shu (Northwest University), J. Gehling and M.‐A. Binnie (South Australian Museum) and H. Mocke (National Earth Science Museum, Geological Survey of Namibia) for access to museum specimens and discussion; S. Conway Morris for discussion of the manuscript; H.‐J. Gong, W.‐Q., Yang M.‐R. Cheng and J. Sun for technical assistance with SEM spectroscopy; and reviewers S. Jensen, D. McIlroy and M.A.S. McMenamin for their constructive comments.
> >

Auf Wiedersehen!

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics
U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer --

[John Harshman]

Yes, that's what I mean.

>>> [1] Besides the detailed breakdown of some Ediacarans, with the
>>> sister group "eumetazoans" for the whole shebang of Ediacarans,
>>> the non-phylum groups are: "fungi," "algae," and "protozoans [*sic*]"
>>>
>>> [2] Conspicuous by its absence is Ctenophora, which presumably is
>>> among the "eumetazoans", in defiance of what may be the most
>>> favored hypothesis currently: that Ctenophora is basal to all of
>>> metazoa, including sponges.
>
>> That's not what the data in that paper show.
>
> How extensive is their data that is relevant to [2]? And how does
> it stack up to the much-ballyhooed papers that show otherwise?

I don't know. I would have to re-run the analysis using their data set.
However, support for the nodes separating Porifera from Eumetozoa is
poor, which is a clue.

>>> Peter Nyikos
>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>> University of South Carolina
>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>>>
>>> PS With such lavish support, one might expect the two (2) authors to have
>>> done a more professional job on their phylogenetic tree.
>>
>> This is you mistaking what the figure shows and what their analysis was.
>> You need to read a little of the text to find that.
>
> Are you going to make everyone read the paper for themselves without giving details we can all appreciate?

No. You have the option of just believing what I told you.

> Let me ask you this much: how do YOU think it stack up to the much-ballyhooed papers that show otherwise?

Well, it's morphological data and there are only 66 characters. The
much-ballyhooed papers use molecular data, which includes many more
characters. Depends on how much you prefer morphological data to
molecular. I see no reason to assume that any of these analyses are not
professional.

One problem is that the relevant nodes are just so old, so there are all
manner of potential pitfalls in any analysis. You need to find
consilience of independent analyses of independent data.

[John Harshman]

Well, of course you don't have to. But wouldn't it be more mature of you?

[John Harshman]

I resent this unwarranted implication. Not helpful.

> You might retort that the two authors of that paper seem
> to have a worse sense of proportion than yourself, but the
> lure of having a paper published in _Science_
> evidently was too much for them. Privately, of course,
> they might have admitted to themselves that they were
> going out on a limb.

I might not retort any such speculation.

>>>>>> Dickinsonia and its relatives solely produced
>>>>>> cholesteroids, a hallmark of animals. Our results make these iconic
>>>>>> members of the Ediacara biota the oldest confirmed macroscopic animals
>>>>>> in the rock record, indicating that the appearance of the Ediacara
>>>>>> biota was indeed a prelude to the Cambrian explosion of animal life.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920160954.htm
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This is yet another example of Science Magazine favoring authors
>>>>> with lots of chutzpah.
>>>>
>>>> They certainly like bold claims. Nature is even worse.
>>>
>>> I'm glad we agree on something! [Insignificant nitpick: I'm not sure
>>> which of the two is worse.]
>>
>> I am. Nature is in fact considerably worse.
>
> I don't read these two journals often enough to tell, but thanks for the
> tip; I'll keep it in the back of my mind from now on whenever I do
> read what they have to offer.

This is not to say that the don't publish good papers. Even the
over-hyped ones are often solid science, just not as revolutionary as
the hype would claim.

[Peter Nyikos]

You still have nothing to say about this. Below, looks to me like
your wounded pride is more important to you than any on-topic
discussion.

> >>>> Agreed. This is not conclusive, but it's decent data.
> >>>
> >>> Recklessly optimistic. How long has it been since you last
> >>> practiced as a professional biologist?
> >>
> >> What are you insinuating here?
> >
> > That you are getting rustier and rustier in the art of thinking
> > like a professional. Your wording "This is not conclusive"
> > shows a lack of a sense of proportion that a biologist engaged
> > in research ought to be mindful of.
>
> I resent this unwarranted implication.

Which "implication"? lack of a sense of proportion about your
wording is 100% warranted by your failure to add anything on topic
to what I've been writing.

As for the "rustier and rustier," your ducking of the question
and failure to counter it in any way [this includes failure to
write ANYTHING on topic] lends "warrantry" to it. As does the
following:

About 5 years ago I saw how you were trying to use LinkedIn to
find a job. I never saw any sign that you were successful at it
in the intervening time.


> Not helpful.

It is you who aren't being helpful. In fact, your continued
tight-lippedness has made me wonder whether your only claim
to being a professional ornithologist is your ability to
make character data matrices and to use them to produce phylogenetic
trees, especially within extant Neornithes.

In the olden days you might have been much in demand for that role,
but now that even self-confessed amateur paleontologists like Mickey
Mortimer (with only a *Bachelor's* degree in biological science) can do it
quite competently, I can understand why you are so reluctant to
answer my question.

[John Harshman]

On 10/22/18 3:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[Snip one long violation of the supposed "gentleman's agreement"]

If you continue on this course I will stop responding to you altogether.

[Oxyaena]

I killfiled him, I suggest you do the same. The less responses to him,
the better, otherwise it eats up bandwidth feeding his trolling.

--
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is
those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively
assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -
Charles Darwin

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, October 22, 2018 at 9:41:46 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/22/18 3:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [Snip one long violation of the supposed "gentleman's agreement"]

Tell me how. And keep in mind the words attributed to Harry S Truman,
whose supporters often said, "Give them hell, Harry!"

I don't give them hell. I give them the truth, and they think it
is hell.

> If you continue on this course I will stop responding to you altogether.

You mean like you stopped responding to JTEM after alleging he
was a troll? I'm not impressed by this avoidance of the need to
explain why I was in violation, according to you.

It will also be interesting to see what, if any, reply you make to Oxyaena's
post in support of you. If she killfiled me, she did it no
more than 10 minutes after she made the reply to me to which
I in turn replied to with:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/dpR_mOvZ5Q4/bqEAdMJxCAAJ
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2018 12:44:16 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <99649e95-d2e9-4ac9...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: The Big Splits In Hominidae


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 3:30:49 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 10/22/2018 9:41 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> > On 10/22/18 3:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > [Snip one long violation of the supposed "gentleman's agreement"]

Harshman has yet to support the claim that I was in violation anywhere.
So the following comment by him was the GO part of GIGO until he does
support it:

> > If you continue on this course I will stop responding to you altogether.
> >
>
> I killfiled him, I suggest you do the same.

Way back in 1993, one of the pro-choice women in talk.origins said,
"Goddess preserve us from pointless killfile announcements".

You've gone on record as saying your killfles last less than a day.
And you are either too lazy to refresh them each day, or you lack
the self-control to behave AS IF your killfile were working. That's
because you went right back to replying to the person you had killfiled.

And that woman of 1993 [either Catwoman or C.J. Silverio, I forget which]
wasn't even referring to an announcement as glaringly pointless as yours.
And it even happened to be by a fellow pro-choicer.

> The less responses to him,

> the better, otherwise it eats up bandwidth [to troll him, because he's been
> copiously feeding our] trolling.

Fixed it for you. You have been very copiously trolling me
the vast majority of time you've replied to me over the years.
And I've been a sucker as far as feeding your trolling goes.

Most of the time, that is. I successfully stopped for over a
month here in sci.bio.paleontology, but it became obvious that
you were determined to keep trolling me, so I temporarily
resumed feeding you.

I am taking steps to break myself of the habit, but it isn't
easy to do that without making myself a doormat.

> --
> Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is
> those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively

> assert that [Hominini is a subgroup of Hominina, and that a 1998
> long-obsolete article using mitochondrial DNA gives the best estimate
> of the human-chimp split, dating it as 10mya or further back.]

I fixed this for you too. You tried to fob off your very aggressive
promotion of, and exploitation of, that obsolete article as an innocent little
mistake that you (sort of) corrected.

Unfortunately for you, your electronic equivalent of a "paper trail"
is too damn extensive for that fobbing-off to have any credibility.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/