Could we figure out evolution without fossils? A quick response to @gavvet's question

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A fossil fragment is sensational, if it tells about the ancestors of the creature on the right. Illustration from Huxley 1863
The theory of evolution, despite being a fact as strongly established as can be said of any scientific principle, continues to generate a lot of debate.

Daily, scientific discoveries, continue to add to the deeper and broader knowledge of evolution, as championed by Charles Darwin.

And so it is that while i was reading through, i stumbled on a post by one @gavvet, on the same subject.


In it @gavvet asked:-

But could we figure out evolution without fossils?

Now for starters, Fossil records have been, and remain (my opinion, as this is now becoming increasingly contested), the most convincing case in regard to evolution.

Charles’s Darwin’s evolutionary book, Origin of Species, makes the strongest case for that. At least one page, in every six, has to do with the fossil record.

@gavvet's post was brief, but in that question, he posed a giant question, one cannot exhaustively answer it.

I will here only quickly scribble my thoughts. i started this as a comment on his post, but saw it grew so long, i decided i would just convert it to a post on my blog. But of course i will make sure to draw @gavvet's attention to it, as it is, one can say, a direct reply to his massive question.

@gavvet's point

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According to @gavvet,

Darwin was able to deduce descent with modification by observing geographically isolated living species and artificially selected and bred domestic animals.

Fossils just helped him figure how this all worked out over much longer time periods, @gavvet concludes.

In qualifying his argument with a ‘just’, @gavvet either intentionally or unintentionally, pours water, or one can say, downplays, the importance of that ‘figuring how all (modification by observing geographically isolated living species and artificially selected and bred domestic animals) worked out over longer periods of time.

My thoughts

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That for me, is the first flaw of @gavvet's otherwise well-reasoned argument. Why do I say this? It is because, doing exactly that, which he downplays, is fundamental to the credibility of any evolutionary theory.

But before i turn to it, let me quickly observe that these questions

How do you link many extinct species with the ones that still survive today? How do you evidence that this descended from the other?

Are some of the questions an evolutionary theory answers.

Evolution is an ‘incidence’ phenomenon, a function of time until the present moment. The expectation, for any theorizing on it, is the requirement to have a clear sequence of changes with time. How to therefore figure out ages is fundamental to studying evolution.

If, and of course they did, fossils, helped Charles’s Darwin do just exactly that, then one cannot, but conclude that they (fossils) were to Darwin, and even to contemporary scientists, fundamental and a cog in the wheel of evolutionary study.

This importance now recognized, I return to @gavvet’s question

But could we figure out evolution without fossils?

Suffice to opine that of the many questions that follow from @gavvet's parent question i will only name one, by whose means, I shall here attempt to quickly answer it (the parent question).

Summarily put, the child question is:

Could Darwin have figured out how descent with modification by observing geographically isolated living species and artificially selected and bred domestic animals all worked out over much longer time periods without fossils?

And to that question, nowhere else can the answer be found, than in Charles’s Darwin’s book, the Origin of Species. And to it, I alluded in the beginning,namely that - at least one page, in every six, has to do with the fossil record. That is how important the fossil record was to Darwin.

That observed, I contend that the same remains true even today. And any allusion to anything otherwise must be based on the evidence that contemporary scientists can have achieved, or indeed, can achieve the same without using fossil records. Where is that evidence?

Fossils therefore, didn’t ‘just’ help Darwin figure how this all worked out, they were all there could be used, and are probably (unless contemporary scientists can put forward a tested alternative) still all there is that can be used to do the same even today, despite our advances in molecular biology.

Darwin’s evidence in large part depended on being above else, able to assign date to the fossils. That is how he got to know that one species evolved into another. What is the evidence of contemporary scientists, and what does it depend on?

Make no mistake; I recognize the likelihood of other possibilities, which is why I will conclude by observing that the examination of fossil record need be done, with an understanding of bias and incompleteness.

But until consistent and tested evidence of today’s ‘molecular level’ biology alternatives can be presented, to say, as does Professor Richard Dawkins, that

"If every fossil were magicked away, the comparative study of modern organisms, of how their patterns of resemblances, especially of their genetic sequences, are distributed among species, and of how species are distributed among continents and islands, would still demonstrate, beyond all sane doubt, that our history is evolutionary, and that all living creatures are cousins. Fossils are a bonus.

Is to border on little but conjecture. So, I contend.

References

1. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150803-how-do-we-know-evolution-is-real
2. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence
3. https://geminiresearchnews.com/viewpoints/acclaimed-fossils-might-not-depict-human-evolution/

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