Did ostriches evolve from birds that could fly?

[Seymore4Head]

I could imagine a line of ostrich type creatures that never learned to
fly.

https://youtu.be/ZsDMUKjFBGo?t=1560

[John Harshman]

The answer to your question is "yes", and what you could imagine is not
relevant.

[Bill]

How do you that - either answer ...

Bill

[Ernest Major]

Map the ability to fly onto a cladogram. The alternative to ostriches
having flying ancestors is many different groups of birds independently
developing flight.

There is a possible ambiguity. Are ostriches part of a larger group of
flightless birds? The nesting of the flighted tinamous within
palaeognaths and the "basal" position of ostriches within palaeognaths,
and assorted other evidence, leads to the conclusion that the ancestral
palaeognath was flighted, and flight was lost independently in several
palaeognath lineages, including the ostrich lineage.

--
alias Ernest Major

[RonO]

Also like the related tinamous that can fly, ostriches retain the
physical morphology (skeleton) that tells us that their ancestors could fly.

Ron Okimoto

[Bill]

What is known, for which we have evidence, is that ostriches
don't fly. We know that giraffes have long necks and an
arctic fox is white; there is direct and verifiable
evidence. How all this happened is conjecture.

Bill

[John Harshman]

> What is known, for which we have evidence, is that ostriches
> don't fly. We know that giraffes have long necks and an
> arctic fox is white; there is direct and verifiable
> evidence. How all this happened is conjecture.

Wait. Are you Bill Cole? If so, much becomes clear.

[Bill]

Wait. Do you actually read what's posted here?

Bill

[RonO]

Bill, why are you still an idiot IDiot? What is the draw of the IDiot
switch scam? Don't you ever want to actually learn anything about
nature? Why did you pretend to be interested in the IDiot science for
so long? Why do ID perps like Denton and Behe tell you that biological
evolution is fact? Do you know what science is? Have you learned at
least that much?

Why is willful ignorance your only solution to reality?

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Wrong again. Arctic foxes aren't always white. And denying that
fossil exist is simply perverse.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Bill]

Did I say that fossils don't exist? What I did say is that
the interpretations made from the existence of fossils are
speculative. In another thread someone was talking about
Australopithecus naledi which had been dated at 3 million
years and then, later, to about 300,000 years. The
interpretations were obviously wrong. The fossils existed,
the way they were understood was way off.

Bill

[John Harshman]

That's a good enough answer for me.

[jillery]

You certainly implied it.

>What I did say is that
>the interpretations made from the existence of fossils are
>speculative. In another thread someone was talking about
>Australopithecus naledi which had been dated at 3 million
>years and then, later, to about 300,000 years. The
>interpretations were obviously wrong. The fossils existed,
>the way they were understood was way off.
>
>Bill

Nadeli is a new discovery, and so what it represents is necessarily
speculative. The evidence for the phylogeny of birds has been known
for much longer.

[Burkhard]

Unlike of course your conjectures of Gobleki Tepe which we all have to
accept despite the gaping holes in them? Do you really not realize how
your highly selective epistemological nihilism makes any discussion with
you utterly pointless?

[Ernest Major]

If you didn't weren't interested in the answer why did you ask?

--
alias Ernest Major

[Bill]

The answer, like almost all answers, is more about the one
doing the answering that the question asked. Most of the
answers will be secondhand, taking the word of those who are
taking the word of someone else. How many of us offer
original answers for original research through direct
observation?

Well, there the Dilettantes of Talk Origins (DOTOs) who will
tell us based on their expertise with Google.

Bill

[John Harshman]

Here, is this good enough?:

Harshman J., Braun E.L., Braun M.J., Huddleston C.J., Bowie R.C.K.,
Chojnowski J.L., Hackett S.J., Han K.-L., Kimball R.T., Marks B.D.,
Miglia K.J., Moore W.S., Reddy S., Sheldon F.H., Steadman D.W., Steppan
S.J., Witt C.C., Yuri T. Phylogenomic evidence for multiple losses of
flight in ratite birds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2008; 105:13462-13467.

[Bill]

Congratulations, a published paper. So we now have the
interpretation of the research but who did the research and
what was being researched?

Bill

[Sean Dillon]

Are you forwarding the position that unless a single scientist has done all of the work in a given field on his/her own, they shouldn't trust their conclusions? And that, further, we shouldn't trust their conclusions either way, because that means taking the scientist's word for it?

[Sean Dillon]

Also, the answer to that question is right on the abstract:

"Author contributions: J.H., E.L.B., M.J.B., S.J.H., R.T.K., W.S.M., F.H.S., and D.W.S. designed research; J.H., E.L.B., M.J.B., C.J.H., R.C.K.B., J.L.C., S.J.H., K.-L.H., R.T.K., B.D.M., K.J.M., S.R., S.J.S., C.C.W., and T.Y. performed research; J.H., E.L.B., M.J.B., and C.J.H. analyzed data; and J.H., E.L.B., and M.J.B. wrote the paper."

John Harshman was the lead both in designing and carrying out the research.

And here is what was being researched:

"Ratites (ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries, and kiwis) are large, flightless birds that have long fascinated biologists. Their current distribution on isolated southern land masses is believed to reflect the breakup of the paleocontinent of Gondwana. The prevailing view is that ratites are monophyletic, with the flighted tinamous as their sister group, suggesting a single loss of flight in the common ancestry of ratites. However, phylogenetic analyses of 20 unlinked nuclear genes reveal a genome-wide signal that unequivocally places tinamous within ratites, making ratites polyphyletic and suggesting multiple losses of flight. Phenomena that can mislead phylogenetic analyses, including long branch attraction, base compositional bias, discordance between gene trees and species trees, and sequence alignment errors, have been eliminated as explanations for this result. The most plausible hypothesis requires at least three losses of flight and explains the many morphological and behavioral similarities among ratites by parallel or convergent evolution. Finally, this phylogeny demands fundamental reconsideration of proposals that relate ratite evolution to continental drift. "

[Andre G. Isaak]

In article <or5lo4$5l4$1...@dont-email.me>, Bill <fre...@gmail.com>

Well, if you read the citation you'll see that John Harshman is the
first author listed, so presumably he was involved in the research. As
to the what was being researched, if the title doesn't provide enough of
a clue for you, you could always try reading the paper. That's what most
people do to answer that sort of question.

Andre

--
To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service.

[John Bode]

Serious question - if you're sitting on the jury in a murder trial, and
the state's case is built on only physical evidence with no eyewitness
testimony (fingerprints, hair, fibers, stuff like that), would you
automatically vote to acquit regardless of the apparent strength of that
evidence? Would you immediately discount any such evidence?

After all, you didn't gather that evidence for yourself - you're relying
on someone else having gathered and interpreted it. Would you trust it
under any circumstances?

[John Harshman]

I have to say that Marshall McLuhan had an easier time of it in Annie Hall.

[Bill]

Considering that the sciences change constantly and facts
become obsolete and new data is explained more than one way
and researchers don't ever agree unanimously on their
research, all pronouncements should only be accepted
tentatively. For those with a point to prove, nothing is
tentative.

Bill

[Bill]

I did even though biology bores me. We know that the
research will find new, possibly contradictory phenomena, so
I withhold my full acceptance.

Bill

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 04 Oct 2017 19:45:53 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bill <fre...@gmail.com>:

>What is known, for which we have evidence, is that ostriches
>don't fly. We know that giraffes have long necks and an
>arctic fox is white; there is direct and verifiable
>evidence. How all this happened is conjecture.

So nothing which leaves specific evidence of its former
existence (such as John noted) is actually "evidence", and
only that which is currently observable qualifies? So
Imperial Rome, for one example, didn't actually exist? And
nothing existed prior to the time of birth of the oldest
living human?

Do you even think about what you write before hitting
"Send"?
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Bill]

As the article points out, the hypothesis, "is believed to",
"The prevailing view", "suggesting","plausible hypothesis"
which implies uncertainty. Things have been observed and
these observations have been interpreted and these have been
incorporated into existing hypotheses (continental drift,
the paleocontinent of Gondwana). It all seems very
artificial with each interpretation buttressing another.

I'm wrong of course so, fire away ...

Bill

[Sean Dillon]

This seems like a really dumb forum to post on, for someone bored by biology.

> We know that the
> research will find new, possibly contradictory phenomena, so
> I withhold my full acceptance.
>
> Bill

The goalposts just keep on moving. A scientist has provided you with a paper that HE was the lead researcher on, addressing EXACTLY the topic of the thread, and even that isn't good enough for even provisional acceptance, because someone MIGHT disagree with it down the line.

No, science doesn't get everything right... immediately or even ever. But science keeps getting LESS WRONG all the time, so ignoring science because it MIGHT change in the future is kinda wrong-headed.

[Bill]

I hope that never happens but the totality of the evidence
is all you've got. How we understand the evidence and all
the other factors that affect our judgment is mostly
invisible so we can't really know. We can speculate and hope
for the best.

Bill

[John Harshman]

Would you like me to cite a long list of papers that confirmed the
result of that one? Or is there in fact nothing that will convince you
of anything you don't already believe?

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 09:36:08 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by John Bode
<jfbod...@gmail.com>:

It certainly does sound that way. Bill, the defense
attorney's "dream jurist"...

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 11:13:54 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bill <fre...@gmail.com>:

As I expected, the apparent beginning of an infinite
regression of objections, analogous to a 6-year-old's
endless succession of "Why?".

Did it ever occur to you to *read* the paper, since such
papers are almost invariably about the research done by the
writers? Even abstracts, which are typically available even
if the full paper is paywalled, usually explain the basic
techniques, and describe "what was being researched".

[John Harshman]

That's science for you. Never any absolute proof, just smaller and
smaller room for doubt. Now this was the first paper to make the
discovery in question, which is why it had to challenge the prevailing
view at the time. But now, years later, it's the new prevailing view.
And the old one was never supported by evidence.

> Things have been observed and
> these observations have been interpreted and these have been
> incorporated into existing hypotheses (continental drift,
> the paleocontinent of Gondwana). It all seems very
> artificial with each interpretation buttressing another.
>
> I'm wrong of course so, fire away ...

Of course. Real humility would be a better stance for you than fake
humility. I suppose you don't think continental drift or Gondwana are
real things either? I suppose geology bores you too. Why do you even
bother talking about any of that boring stuff?

[Bill]

Most posters prefer talking about biology and evolution but
that's a pretty predictable war of opinions. I find
cosmology more interesting and the origins of things
includes the universe itself.

Bill

[Bill]

A flood of citations will always prevail since I'll cave
from sheer exhaustion. You don't have to convince me
anything, least of all your competence as a researcher. I
respect your accomplishments. I also assume that future
science will displace current research at some point.

Bill

[Bill]

Rome is an elaborate erosion pattern of the rock in central
Italy; it all completely natural. This hypothesis has the
advantage of eliminating any need for testy historians and
that will greatly reduce the number of books we have to
read.

>
> Do you even think about what you write before hitting
> "Send"?

Thinking is reserved for some other newsgroup, not T.O.

Bill

[Bill]

You may have noticed that my posts address how phenomena are
understood rather than the phenomena being investigated. I
rarely haggle over the details but how they get connected.
Only a few sciences offend me (psychiatry and its offspring,
sociology, anthropology, archeology to some extent, and a
few others) but mostly I'm a big fan of science in general.

Bill

[John Harshman]

Your assumption is wrong. The more common situation is for future
science to refine current research, not displace it. You really can't
use the fact that science changes to discount science, as you attempt here.

Anyway, if you respect my accomplishments, you can't simultaneously
dismiss them as useless.

[John Harshman]

And yet you find biology boring, and apparently geology too. You aren't
a fan at all. Nothing wrong with disliking science, though I don't
understand the mindset. Still, you might as well admit your dislike to
yourself and others. Owning up to your snide sniping would also be more
honest than backing away when questioned.

[Öö Tiib]

Someone who talks like knowing something about origins of our
universe is apparent liar. What is there to discuss?

[Bill]

I do not believe your work is useless, I believe it is
provisional. This is not an insult, it's just a recognition
of the way science has always worked.

Bill

[Bill]

Consider the venue for our comments. People here are
careless in their logic and too rigid in their conclusions.
This is what I expect from excessive arrogance. The only
views acceptable to posters here (generally) are exclusive
and bear no dissent.

Bill

[Bill]

Odd, so many have called me a liar yet have no evidence
beyond their own prejudices.

Bill

[Öö Tiib]

It is just my view of the world that people who talk that they
know something about what they know nothing about are liars.

However I have observed before that you can conclude knowledge from
ignorance. There were long threads where you claimed that we know
nothing about other planets therefore there are no life or something
like that. So by your world view knowledge taken from ignorance is
not a lie.

[John Harshman]

Yes, all science is provisional, but I don't think that means what you
think it means. I hope you're looking behind you. Otherwise you might
injure yourself severely from backing up so fast. Let's return to your
original statement here:

"What is known, for which we have evidence, is that ostriches don't fly.
We know that giraffes have long necks and an arctic fox is white; there
is direct and verifiable evidence. How all this happened is conjecture."

So you have gone from "conjecture" to "provisional", and those are very
different things. It appears you no longer claim we have no evidence for
anything other than that ostriches don't fly. That's progress, but the
speed with which you made that progress, without even seeming to notice
the change, makes me suspicious that you will shoot right back to your
original claims as soon as convenient. Are you a troll, or are you just
very confused about what you think?

[John Harshman]

What you really mean is that many people here are unwilling to accept
the nonsense you spout without challenge. You have presented no logic
and nothing supports your conclusions. Why should anyone pay attention
to you? As for arrogance, your contempt for science shines through every
word you post.

[jillery]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 16:21:14 -0500, Bill <fre...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Odd, so many have called me a liar yet have no evidence
>beyond their own prejudices.

Of course, the lies to which "they" refer are about your
misrepresentations of what "they" said, of which there is abundant
evidence, which makes your statement above trivially proved false, and
almost certainly another lie of the same type.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[jillery]

There's your problem. Other posters here leave their brains on. You
should try that, if only for the novelty of the experience.

[Bill]

John Harshman wrote:

...

>
> Yes, all science is provisional, but I don't think that
> means what you think it means. I hope you're looking
> behind you. Otherwise you might injure yourself severely
> from backing up so fast. Let's return to your original
> statement here:
>
> "What is known, for which we have evidence, is that
> ostriches don't fly. We know that giraffes have long necks
> and an arctic fox is white; there is direct and verifiable
> evidence. How all this happened is conjecture."
>
> So you have gone from "conjecture" to "provisional", and
> those are very different things. It appears you no longer
> claim we have no evidence for anything other than that
> ostriches don't fly. That's progress, but the speed with
> which you made that progress, without even seeming to
> notice the change, makes me suspicious that you will shoot
> right back to your original claims as soon as convenient.
> Are you a troll, or are you just very confused about what
> you think?

I stand by my paragraph above and wonder how it could offend
you. While reading your paper, I noticed several qualifiers
and quoted them to you. The most we can do because of these
qualifiers, is wonder how much of the qualified text
contains real information. We can conclude that maybe,
possibly, could be, perhaps your conclusions from your
research might be correct. Blame your choice of words.

Bill

[John Harshman]

On 10/5/17 4:39 PM, Bill wrote:
> John Harshman wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>
>> Yes, all science is provisional, but I don't think that
>> means what you think it means. I hope you're looking
>> behind you. Otherwise you might injure yourself severely
>> from backing up so fast. Let's return to your original
>> statement here:
>>
>> "What is known, for which we have evidence, is that
>> ostriches don't fly. We know that giraffes have long necks
>> and an arctic fox is white; there is direct and verifiable
>> evidence. How all this happened is conjecture."
>>
>> So you have gone from "conjecture" to "provisional", and
>> those are very different things. It appears you no longer
>> claim we have no evidence for anything other than that
>> ostriches don't fly. That's progress, but the speed with
>> which you made that progress, without even seeming to
>> notice the change, makes me suspicious that you will shoot
>> right back to your original claims as soon as convenient.
>> Are you a troll, or are you just very confused about what
>> you think?
>
> I stand by my paragraph above and wonder how it could offend
> you.

Wonder no more. What offends me is your constant back and forth
equivocation, your seeming either to forget what you said or not to know
what it would mean to a reader, and your frequently expressed contempt
for science.

> While reading your paper, I noticed several qualifiers
> and quoted them to you.

Oh, yes. And your passive-aggressive denial of any purpose behind your
overt actions.

> The most we can do because of these
> qualifiers, is wonder how much of the qualified text
> contains real information. We can conclude that maybe,
> possibly, could be, perhaps your conclusions from your
> research might be correct. Blame your choice of words.

No, I blame your reading ability. First of all, that's only the
abstract. You have never shown any sign of having read or comprehended
the paper itself. Second, most of those words aren't even referring to
our conclusions. Third, the language of scientific papers is frequently
hedged. You have to be able to read to decide whether the conclusion is
strong.

[Bill]

Fair enough, I'm despicable. Worse, this thread has become
tedious so I'll try something else.

Bill

[John Harshman]

An elegant flounce. Perhaps you want to spend more time with your
family. That's always a good one.

[jillery]

Don't forget his repetitive misrepresentation of what other posters
said. Oh wait.... you said that... nevermind.

[jillery]

You will almost cerrtainly sing the same song using different words.
Big whoop.

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/5/17 4:39 PM, Bill wrote:

> John Harshman wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>
>> Yes, all science is provisional, but I don't think that
>> means what you think it means. I hope you're looking
>> behind you. Otherwise you might injure yourself severely
>> from backing up so fast. Let's return to your original
>> statement here:
>>
>> "What is known, for which we have evidence, is that
>> ostriches don't fly. We know that giraffes have long necks
>> and an arctic fox is white; there is direct and verifiable
>> evidence. How all this happened is conjecture."
>>
>> So you have gone from "conjecture" to "provisional", and
>> those are very different things. It appears you no longer
>> claim we have no evidence for anything other than that
>> ostriches don't fly. That's progress, but the speed with
>> which you made that progress, without even seeming to
>> notice the change, makes me suspicious that you will shoot
>> right back to your original claims as soon as convenient.
>> Are you a troll, or are you just very confused about what
>> you think?
>

> I stand by my paragraph above . . .

And yet: That ostriches don't fly is also provisional. Yes, there is
very, very good evidence that ostriches don't fly, but there is still a
chance that some might be found with larger and stronger wings.
Likewise, there is a nonzero chance that we could find short-necked
giraffes (we already know of short-necked giraffe relatives) and brown
arctic foxes (other arctic species change fur color seasonally). "What
we know as fact" comes within the set of scientific findings, so it must
also be conjecture and provisional.

You can either accept that certainty need not be absolute to still
qualify as certainty; that facts, even though there is a small chance
they might be wrong, are still more useful when considered as facts than
when considered as mere possibilities; and that your non-acceptance of
reality is not justified by anything in reality. Or you can continue
your descent into irrelevance, such that nothing you say or think
matters to anyone but you.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can
have." - James Baldwin

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 14:42:01 -0500, the following appeared

[Crickets, sort of...]

> So
>> Imperial Rome, for one example, didn't actually exist? And
>> nothing existed prior to the time of birth of the oldest
>> living human?

>Rome is an elaborate erosion pattern of the rock in central
>Italy; it all completely natural.

So neither Rome (the city, modern version) nor its denizens
exist?

> This hypothesis has the
>advantage of eliminating any need for testy historians and
>that will greatly reduce the number of books we have to
>read.

So, assuming that wasn't your attempt at irony (and its
concomitant evasion of the point) you *do* think that
nothing we cannot see directly is evidence for anything. OK,
I can live with your willful ignorance and nihilism. In
fact, it makes things a bit simpler, since I can safely
ignore anything you write.

>> Do you even think about what you write before hitting
>> "Send"?

>Thinking is reserved for some other newsgroup, not T.O.

With you here, that's at least partly correct.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:07:20 -0700, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by John Harshman
<jhar...@pacbell.net>:

I suspect he thinks that relativity "displaced" Newtonian
mechanics, rather than extending it into
previously-unexamined areas.

[J.LyonLayden]

Wow Harshman you're the hardest working troll I know!

Do you walk up to strangers in real life and call them stupid for not knowing the nuances of bird evolution?

Is anyone who is curious an idiot, or just people who are curious about birds?

[John Harshman]

It isn't clear what you're responding to here, as you don't quote
anything and your actual response is to Bob Casanova. Did you have a
real question?

Regarding the ones you asked, I don't recall ever doing that, in real
life or here, and curiosity about birds is orthogonal to idiocy.

[erik simpson]

You have to consider who's asking some of the questions here. Many have been here
for many years, asking the same (or very similar) inane questions.

[John Harshman]

To amplify: Bill, in particular, is an idiot. I don't even think he's
curious about birds.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 2 Nov 2017 08:24:01 -0700, the following appeared in

talk.origins, posted by John Harshman
<jhar...@pacbell.net>:

I don't recall doing so WRT bird evolution, either, even if
ho only responded directly to something I posted.

Maybe he's just confused...

[jillery]

How sad. One might think someone named "Bill" would at least be
curious about that part of a bird.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 02 Nov 2017 22:14:16 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

>On Thu, 2 Nov 2017 09:28:21 -0700, John Harshman
><jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>>On 11/2/17 8:25 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, November 1, 2017 at 10:25:03 PM UTC-7, J.LyonLayden wrote:
>>>> Wow Harshman you're the hardest working troll I know!
>>>>
>>>> Do you walk up to strangers in real life and call them stupid for not knowing the nuances of bird evolution?
>>>>
>>>> Is anyone who is curious an idiot, or just people who are curious about birds?
>>>
>>> You have to consider who's asking some of the questions here. Many have been here
>>> for many years, asking the same (or very similar) inane questions.
>>>
>>To amplify: Bill, in particular, is an idiot. I don't even think he's
>>curious about birds.

>How sad. One might think someone named "Bill" would at least be
>curious about that part of a bird.

Maybe, like Karl Crawford, he's fixated on specialized
bills, such as those found on Karl's favorites, woodpeckers,
and others don't count.