Life began 3.8 billion years ago, and insects diversified 290 million years ago, but the human and chimpanzee lineages diverged only five million years ago. How have scientists figured out the dates of long past evolutionary events? Here are some of the methods and evidence that scientists use to put dates on events:
1. Radiometric dating relies on half-life decay of radioactive elements to allow scientists to date rocks and materials directly.
2. Stratigraphy provides a sequence of events from which relative dates can be extrapolated.
3. Molecular clocks allow scientists to use the amount of genetic divergence between organisms to extrapolate backwards to estimate dates.
Click here for an interactive timeline of important scientific events concerning evolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_13
Things that affect how an organism evolves:
Descent with modification
Mechanisms of change
Genetic variation
Mutations
The causes of mutations
Gene flow
Sex and genetic shuffling
Development
Genetic drift
Natural selection
Sexual selection
Artificial selection
Adaptation
All of the information for this series of blogs I read on the Berkeley.edu website.
I still haven't seen or heard of any strong evidence for new kinds of animals or that the earth is 4.5 billion years old or any other huge age.
1. Radiometric dating assumes
A. that the conditions have always remained the same giving a consistent rate of decay.
B. the original amount of radioactive material.
The error of this is evident in the first trip to the moon. Samples of rock were taken from the moon and tested using several radiometric dating methods. None of the results agreed so a number was given based on what? I'm not sure. Maybe the scientist's opinion.
2. Sratigraphy is based on circular reasoning assuming the age of each layer based on scientists best guess on when the events happened.
(ex. A common way to tell the age of a layer of strata is the fossils you find there. The most common ways to tell how old a fossil is are to use unreliable radiometric dating or to extrapolate the age from the layer it is found. Scientists have decided how long ago each animal lived based on the strata. Now they want to turn around and say the proof of the strata is that the fossils are there.
3. Molecular clocks first and foremost assumes that the rate of divergence has remained the same and has not been affected by a cataclysmic event or change of climate. In many cases it is even an assumption that there has been genetic divergence and they are not two different kinds of animals created differently.
MacroEvolution is not science any more than Intelligent Design or Scientific Creationism. It is a lump of assumptions.
We learned all of that "genetic drift" and "descent with modifiication" mumbo-jumbo in Biology classes through high school. So please, come up with some more-convincing, new information.
This isnt my information, I am just sharing some things I read.