Check out this newly discovered, 375 million year old fossil!
It's a nine foot or so creature from the Devonian era with fish's scales, fangs, and gills. It also had (and this is where it gets interesting) top-mounted eyes like a crocodile's, an interlocking rib cage which suggests lungs, and limbs strong enough to support itself in shallow water, or even on land. In short, this may very well be a missing link between the aquatic and the terrestrial.
The kicker? The structure of it's limb and "finger" bones are almost precisely midway between what one would expect from lobe-finned fish and early tetrapods.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Okay, I realize that was an inane comment to a pretty important issue, so let me try again.
I shouldn't be anymore, but I'm surprised that a discovery such as this one hasn't made bigger news. It seems like the fishapod first hit the media on April 5th. I hadn't heard anything about it until just now.
This sort of thing is tremendously important to understanding evolution--it's a shame that the news is not more widely circulated.
Then again, it's entirely possible that I haven't been paying enough attention. Have other Hatrackers heard of the fishapod before?
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Even though I understand and even agree with the expression of frustration, I thought the last paragraph of the article was just not called for and served no useful purpose.
quote:In short, fishapod adds one more brick, and an especially important one, to the edifice of Darwinian evolution—and at the same time puts the so-called theory of intelligent design into even greater question than it already faces. That would be true if only because any designer who deliberately made such a queer fish would have been more of a practical joker than anything else. But it also demonstrates that while evolution has plenty of missing bits of evidence, they keep showing up all the time to strengthen it. Evolution is, as ID supporters love to say, "just" a theory. It also happens to be one of the most successful scientific theories in history, whose predictions of what should be found in the fossil record have been proven out… for the zillionth time.
Just because this is a web article (not for print) doesn't mean journalistic standards shouldn't be adhered to. In this case, the author takes almost 1/3 of the total space to do a soapbox. He doesn't interview anyone, just gives us his opinion about how things MUST be.
Sometimes its the people one agrees with that cause the most anguish.
Here's what I might've said instead, were I hoping to convey the point that this find has importance in the ongoing (and rather frustrating) debate:
In the debate over Evolution versus various theories invoking the actions of an "intelligence" to explain the history of life on Earth, finding such midway species is considered especially important. Evolutionary theory has a ready explanantion for the appearance of such species in the fossil record -- that they represent a branching point from which modern species descended. They have features that place them at the point where species diverged -- in this case from purely water-based to semi-aquatic and later fully land-based existence. Such "missing links," when discovered, pose a bigger problem for theories relying on an external intelligence or "actor" to explain their existence. While it always possible to say that the ways of such hyper-intelligent beings are inscrutable to us with our limited knowledge, such explanations don't hold much sway in scientific debate. It is therefor incumbent on creationists and intelligent design theorists to put this creature in context or modify their theories to explain its apparent transitional nature.
posted
Celaeno, I don't know that I necessarily would like to keep one, but think of the practical joke possibilites! As for the circulation thing, it was printed in Time magazine too, but I haven't seen it anywere else besides when I googled it to find an article.
Bob, The magazine article was a lot better, without the "I told you so" head beating. There's some mild gloating, but nothing gratuitous. Take a look at the article next time you're at a supermarket or something. They have a comparison between the fishapod (scientific name, Tiktaalik roseae) and early tetrapods, with diagrams of of the digit bones. There is a companion article titled, "Darwin Would Have Loved It," but again it focuses on why evolution is important to us as a scientific theory and not why creatioinists are stupid.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Celaeno: Okay, I realize that was an inane comment to a pretty important issue, so let me try again.
I shouldn't be anymore, but I'm surprised that a discovery such as this one hasn't made bigger news. It seems like the fishapod first hit the media on April 5th. I hadn't heard anything about it until just now.
This sort of thing is tremendously important to understanding evolution--it's a shame that the news is not more widely circulated.
Then again, it's entirely possible that I haven't been paying enough attention. Have other Hatrackers heard of the fishapod before?
The way I see the media is like this. Media is a lot like Hip-Hop.(bear with me). For those of you who know nothing about rap, there are two main branches of rap, Underground and Mainstream. Mainstream rap sounds a lot like the same music you here everday. It's a lot of artists like Jay-Z or 50-Cent who, while they have support from the street, their music isn't very innovative. It's the same flow and rhyme scheme with a different hook and beat. Underground rap is a lot different. The beats that the MCs rap to is more simplistic and doesn't get stuck in your head as easily. However, the MCs make up for this by the sheer volume of tracks that they put out, and the innovation that comes with it. Whenever something works in the Underground rap world, it often rises up, or 'Crosses over' to the Mainstream rap world. This is why artists like Paul Wall are on the rise. You will never find Underground music on the top 100 charts, or hear it played on the local radio stations. A lot of times when artists from the underground cross over to Mainstream rap, they meet lots of contreversy, criticism, and death threats. A good example of this is Nas.
The Media only appeals to the mainstream. The hard work that the scientists did to make this discovery will never be shown on CNN. It will be published in Scientific journals that have about 5,000 subscribers. When news crosses over, it rarley works because people don't care, or the Media itself underestimates the value of what they have. The media is too focused on the War in Iraq to play scientific discoveries that have little or no effect on people's health or well-being. In much the same way, Radio stations are too focused on playing Nelly to bring people the latest from Scarface.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Gosh darn it, when are these scientists going to learn? Now there's two more gaps in the fossil record!
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
As for the circulation thing, it was printed in Time magazine too, but I haven't seen it anywere else besides when I googled it to find an article.![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
