A recently announced fossil find brings a closer understanding of the evolution of land animals from creatures of the deep.
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
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In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.
Other scientists said that in addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils were a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who have long argued that the absence of such transitional creatures are a serious weakness in Darwin's theory.
The discovery team called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish."
Christo-fascist creationistas lost no time in condeming the announcement, since it doesn't even come close to fitting into their narrow worldview.
Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."
Given that nothing short of finding evidence of a blond-haired blue-eyed white guy in the fossil record would convince people like Gish of anything, I don't get why "journalists", especially those that write about science even give them any ink at all. Nothing like validating nonsense by printing it in the New York Times, is there (Judy Miller).
posted by Jo Fish on 04.06.06 at 12:09 AM
Comments:
I think people like Gish are pretty good proof of devolution, though...
Ya know, propping up ancient mythology after 2000 years of scientific progress - it's hard work!
You are correct, Jo. Creationism is not a science, it is an attack on science. It is merely a religious movement meant to create doubt on any science that does not support a literal view of the book of Genesis. A real science tries to convince the science community of the validity of an argument using logic and evidence. Creationism, on the other hand, is aimed a scientifically illiterate populace to garner political support for the inclusion of the Bible's creation myth in the nation's classroom. The absurd demands they place upon evolutionary biology (actually, all biology is based upon evolution because it is a fact, the theory is an explanation of HOW evolution takes place) is a standard of proof that creationism has never, ever even attempted to provide. Pick up any textbook on evolutionary biology and it will give you plenty of evidence of the whys and hows, and some textbooks are very technical. Pick up a textbook(?) on creationism and you'll get ignorance masquerading as arguments of why the evolutionary biology books get it wrong. You'll also get the newest version (which is called intelligent design, or ID), which just rehashes how creationists just can't see how things became so complex without some unspecified 'designer' (Guess Who). You certainly won't get much in the way of answers.
