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Showing posts with label Fossils. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fossils. Show all posts

10 February 2011

Dinosaur Bones Crack Open Surprises: Original Tissue

New Scientist?

“Occasionally, though, nature is kind and fossilisation preserves details of an animal’s soft tissue.” But has nature been kind for tens of millions of years? In an article called “Soft-centred fossils reveal dinosaurs’ true colours,” Jeff Hecht spilled the beans that more researchers are finding soft tissue and original material in dinosaur bones said to be over 65 million years old and older – even more than twice as old.

We’ve seen news about soft tissue before (e.g., 12/22/2010), but this article suggests that scientists are becoming more bold to look for it (cf. 02/22/2006).

Pete Larson, Phil Manning and Roy Wogelius, in particular, have been using synchrotron radiation at Stanford to look for unfossilized remains of dinosaurs. Hecht suggested that they are not alone; “Their project is one of several challenges to the conventional wisdom that when animals fossilise, all the original organic material, from the bones to the blood, is lost.”

Their work could crack open old bones of contention: “First, however, researchers like Manning must convince other palaeontologists that their fossils really do preserve original material, which won’t be easy.” Other paleontologists have been skeptical, because “Convincing evidence of original soft tissue older than the Ice Age was lacking.”

That’s because “DNA degrades much faster than proteins and other soft tissue components and nobody thinks it is possible to recover DNA that is older than about a million years.

Hecht explained that, while soft tissue imprints are exceptional but not unknown, preservation of actual original material has been controversial. Mary Schweitzer famously announced blood vessels, cells and other material in a T. rex femur in 2005 (03/24/2005), but “Schweitzer’s claim was met with scepticism, in part because of the immense age of the bone.” She countered skeptics’ arguments that she had only found recent biofilms (07/30/2008) and then announced finding collagen, haemoglobin, elastin and laminin – strengthening her discovery of original material (04/30/2009).

Awaking from their dogmatic slumbers, more paleontologists have started on a soft tissue treasure hunt:

Others have begun to report similar findings, and not just from inside bones. Manning and Wogelius have reported finding amino acids in the claw and skin of Dakota, the 66-million-year-old Edmontosaurus mummy (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 276, p 3429).

Meanwhile, Orr’s former student Maria McNamara, now splitting her time between Dublin and Yale, claims to have found marrow inside the fossilised bones of 10 million-year old frogs and salamanders preserved in lake-bed deposits from Spain (Geology, vol 34, p 641). Marrow is normally among the first tissues to decay, but she found organic residues preserved in three dimensions that retained the original colour and texture of the marrow.

“The fidelity of preservation on a morphological level is remarkable, though it’s very unlikely that the biochemistry would be completely original,” says [Patrick] Orr [University College Dublin]. Preservation of very decay-prone soft tissues is probably more common than we realise, he adds.

So what of the latest test at Stanford? Manning and Wogelius had been successful finding original pigment in an Archaeopteryx specimen in 2009 (05/10/2010), Hecht recalled; “Nobody had expected soft-tissue chemistry to be preserved in such places” as feathers. Quoting Wogelius, “It’s amazing that that chemistry is preserved after 150 million years.

Zinc and copper atoms were also detected with the synchrotron machine. Others have found “more surprises,” like melanosomes still intact in a bird feather said to be 108 million years old using a scanning electron microscope; ditto by another team in China.

The new techniques have not yet answered any big questions about dinosaurs: researchers like Schweitzer and Manning have devoted much of their effort to persuading sceptics that their results are real.

Eventually they think they will win over the doubters and revolutionise palaeontology, but in the meantime they have the satisfaction that drives on amateur and professional fossil hunters alike. “It’s quite amazing to discover something that has never been seen before,” says Wogelius.

Unfortunately, Hecht left us hanging on whether Manning’s team found something at Stanford in their latest test. It sounds, though, like more announcements of original tissue preservation in fossils will be forthcoming, now that the credibility gap has been bridged. “The claims are controversial, but if true they promise to breathe new life into our understanding of ancient life,” Hecht said.

You can read Hecht’s article and think, if you are intellectually lazy, “Isn’t this nice; science marches on.” But it means that science was marching in the wrong direction for a long, long time.

The facts are making evolutionary paleontologists and geologists turn about face, with red faces: they didn’t expect to find soft tissue; they weren’t looking for soft tissue; and they couldn’t believe it when it was shown to them. Schweitzer and Manning are having to act like drill sergeants, barking to the troops that they have been marching in lock step in the wrong direction.

There is only one group that is not surprised by these findings: the young-earth creationists. Yes, those despised, hated, expelled Henry Morris followers, relegated to the dregs of society by academia (both secular and theistic evolutionist camps), even shunned by many in the Intelligent Design community, are not at all surprised.

Like their foes, they also cannot believe that DNA and protein can last for 80 to 150 million years – because they believe those long ages are a fiction. Now that the sleepers on EST (Evolution Standard Time) have been jolted awake, should we trust their alarm clocks? Should we grant them credibility now, when they say, “Well, I’ll be darned! DNA can survive for 150 million years!”? Many of them are sidestepping the fact that soft tissue preservation wreaks havoc on evolutionary age assumptions (cf. 06/03/2005).

While these findings do not vindicate the young earth creationists beyond all doubt – there are still many questions and tests to be made – it sure looks like they have the ball, and the momentum is with them. So don’t let the evolutionists put Greek happy-masks over their red faces and spin this story with cheerful talk that such finds are going to “breathe new life into our understanding of ancient life” (how much did they understand before?), or that this is going to “revolutionize paleontology” somehow, in some vague, unspecified way.

It ought to revolutionize it, all right: by dismantling the evolutionary timeline and re-opening some old, imprisoned questions about the history of the earth. See also the 01/28/2011 entry for more reasons to doubt the presumed authority of the moyboys.* Don’t let them grab the ball. Don’t let them make predictions that only a young-earth creationist would make, like “We expect more soft tissue will be found in dinosaur bones,” and then, when it is found, declare victory. The ball is headed toward the other goal line, and it will take impartial referees to call the fouls.

29 November 2010

Tiktaalik Roseae: Another Missing Link Myth!

Source


This post is about the (creature) Tiktaalik and is linked to the following posts:

EP Link

EP Link

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Darwinist media organizations have embarked upon a new wave of propaganda aimed at portraying a fossil recently described in the journal Nature as a missing link. The fossil in question is that of a fish, discovered in Arctic Canada by the paleontologists Neil H. Shubin and Edward B. Daeschler in 2004. Given the scientific name Tiktaalik roseae, the fossil is estimated to be 385 million years old. Evolutionists looking for possible candidates for their tales of a transition from water to land are putting the fossil forward as an intermediate form by distorting its “mosaic” features.


However, the claim of a transition from water to land is no more than a dream, because the physiological gulfs between terrestrial animals and fish cannot be overcome by any of the fictitious mechanisms of the theory of evolution. The latest attempt to make Tiktaalik roseae fit this scenario, which is supported out of blind devotion to the theory of evolution and rests on no scientific evidence whatsoever, is based on preconceptions and intentional misinterpretation. The facts the Darwinist media have concealed in their Tiktaalik roseae propaganda are set out below.


Tiktaalik roseae: A mosaic life form which is no evidence for evolution


There are three well-preserved fossil specimens of Tiktaalik roseae. Some 3 meters long, the creature exhibits various mosaic characteristics. (Mosaic life forms contain features belonging to different groups of life forms.) As in fish, it has fins and scales. Features such as its flat head, mobile neck and relatively powerful rib structure are found in terrestrial animals. The creature, whose name is derived from the Inuit language Inuktitut and means “a large, shallow-water fish,” also has bones in its pectoral fins. Evolutionists distort these mosaic properties according to their own preconceptions and maintain that the animal is a transitional form between fish and terrestrial life forms.


Mosaic life forms, however, are very far from being the intermediate forms required by the theory of evolution. The present-day Platypusthat lives in Australia, for instance, is a mosaic creature that possesses mammalian, reptilian and avian features at one and the same time. But nothing about it constitutes any evidence for the theory of evolution. Mosaic life forms are not what evolutionists need to find in order to back up their claims; they need to find “intermediate forms,” which would have to be with deficient, only half-formed and not fully functional organs. Yet every one of the organs possessed by mosaic creatures is complete and flawless. They have no semi-developed organs, and there are no fossil series that can be proposed as evidence that they evolved from some other life forms.


The theory of evolution hypothesizes that a process based on random mutations, in other words on chance, took place. According to this claim, the millions of living species on Earth must have evolved from a vast number of intermediate forms, all subjected to chance mutations, and as a result had deformed, abnormal structures, and the fossils of these so-called intermediate forms should have been found. To put it another way, the fossil record should be overflowing with the remains of life forms that can only be described as freaks of nature. However, this is known not to be the case. When species emerge, they do so suddenly, with all their distinguishing features fully developed, and with no series of freaks among them. In his 1999 book Fossils and Evolution, Tom Kemp, curator of Zoological Collections at the Oxford University Museum, describes the position as follows:


In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms. (Tom Kemp, Fossils and Evolution, Oxford University, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 246)


The general picture concealed by evolutionists


Evolutionists attempt to give the impression that fossils actually support the idea of evolution. Yet the “missing link” concept is one that has been invented solely in the light of the needs of the theory of evolution and has no counterpart in the fossil record itself. The lack of fossil links alleged to connect species to one another has been known ever since Darwin’s time. Excavations by paleontologists since Darwin’s day have also failed to resolve this situation, which represents such a grave impasse for the theory of evolution and, on the contrary, have further confirmed the absence of any missing links among living groups.


E. R. Leach, author of the book Rethinking Anthropology, wrote this in his article in Nature:


Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so. (E. R. Leach; Nature, 293: 19, 1981)


A. S. Romer, one of the most eminent paleontologists of his time, said this on the subject:


"Links" are missing just where we most fervently desire them [to point to a transition between species] and it is all too probable that many "links" will continue to be missing. (A. S. Romer, in Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, 1963, p. 114)


David B. Kitts, professor of geology and the history of science at the University of Oklahoma admits the absence of the intermediate forms required by the theory of evolution:


Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. (David B. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 467)


The picture that emerges from the fossil record is completely compatible with creation. The record reveals that living things appeared suddenly and lived for long periods of time without undergoing any change at all. These facts can clearly be seen in an evaluation of evolution’s fossil impasse by the American paleontologist R. Wesson in his 1991 bookBeyond Natural Selection. Stating that the gaps in the record are real, Wesson goes on to say that the absence of a record of any evolutionary branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static for long periods. Species and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but are replaced by another, and change is usually abrupt. (R. Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991, p. 45)


Some 250,000 fossil species have been collected to date, and there is absolutely no trace of intermediate forms in any of them. Evolutionists are behaving irrationally and unscientifically by ignoring this and embarking on campaigns of missing link propaganda.


The Error of Biological Inference from Skeletal Remains


When the bodies of vertebrates are fossilized, they generally leave no remains behind apart from bones. However, bones leave traces of only a very limited part of vertebrate biology, about 1%. When evolutionists begin interpreting the fossil remains of an organism, most of the information about its biology has been lost. Evolutionists, with almost no information concerning the organism’s soft tissue biology “fill” the gap in their knowledge according to the demands of the theory of evolution, which they have adopted as a dogma long beforehand.


The intermediate form claims that evolutionists produce solely by looking at bones is no more than vague conjecture. In his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, the molecular biologist Michael Denton makes the situation very clear:


Because soft biology of extinct groups can never be known with any certainty then obviously the status of even the most convincing intermediates is bound to be insecure. (Michael Denton, Evolution:A Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books: London, 1985, p. 180)


Even the most convincing appearing intermediate forms for evolutionists can subsequently let them down very badly. One excellent example of this is the Coelacanthphenomenon.


Sensational reports show that evolutionists have learned nothing from the Coelacanthphenomenon


As with the latest fossil Tiktaalik roseae, the Coelacanth is a fish that evolutionists once fondly imagined to be a missing link in the transition from water to land. Evolutionists examined 400-million-year-old fossil Coelacanths, which was once believed to be extinct, and drew a number of evolutionary conclusions from the remains. For example, they maintained that the bony structures in its fins were feet that helped the animal walk across the sea floor, and they also claimed that it possessed primitive lungs. The important point here is this: All these assumptions were made in the absence of any information about the Coelacanth’s soft tissue biology.


The erroneous nature of producing evolutionary fantasies in the absence of any information about the animal’s soft tissues emerged following an important discovery in 1938. A living Coelacanth was caught, showing that it was not, as had previously been thought, an extinct life form at all.


Furthermore, many more living specimens were caught in subsequent years. Evolutionists immediately set about examining the fish’s anatomy and way of moving in its natural environment, and saw that the missing link assumptions they had ascribed to it were completely incorrect. The fish, which they had assumed to live in shallow waters and to move by crawling over the seabed, actually lived at depths of around 180 meters,and they also observed that its fins never made contact with the seabed at all. The structure they imagined to be an evolving lung turned out to be a fat-filled swim bladder that had nothing to do with respiration whatsoever.


The realization that the Coelacanth, which had once seemed such a convincing-looking intermediate form for evolutionists, was just an ordinary species of fish clearly shows that the intermediate form claim being made about this latest fossil is also based entirely on uncertainties and speculation, because it, too, is based on imaginative interpretation of soft tissues from the fossilized remains of an extinct life form. In short, the ongoing propaganda through the media is based on nothing more than the exaggeration of scientifically vague information in the light of evolutionist dreams.


Evolutionists’ missing link propaganda actually works against their own claims


Whenever a discovery is depicted as a missing link, the evolutionist media always give the impression that a most extraordinary finding has been made, whereas this actually conflicts with their claims regarding the truth of evolution.


Were the theory of evolution true, then the geological strata would be full of fossil intermediates, and their numbers would be far greater than that of all the species living today or that ever lived in the past. Therefore, the discovery of missing links would be such a routine matter that it would have no news value at all.


Alternatively, if, as evolutionists claim, there were as much evidence for evolution as there is for the force of gravity, then reporting on missing link discoveries would be as nonsensical as reporting on a stone thrown into the air falling back to the ground. In the same way that we would regard a news report along the lines of “We threw a stone into the air and it actually fell back to Earth” as utterly insignificant, so we would regard reports reading “Paleontologists have discovered a new missing link” as equally insignificant. In short, if evolution were a “fact,” there would be no need for any missing link propaganda at all.


The evolutionary series in which Tiktaalik roseaehas been placed is based solely on preconception


One can see in some newspapers that the latest fossil has been inserted as an intermediate form between Acanthostegaand Eusthenopteron. By doing this, evolutionists are seeking to give the impression that the fossil record supports evolutionary transitions and that the evidence for this is mounting up with every passing day. The fact is though that these series represent no evidence that the organisms in question evolved at all. For example, laying out a row of screwdrivers in order of size does not show that they are all descended from one another.


In fact there is no known evolutionary line of descent from Eusthenopteron to Tiktaalik roseae or from Tiktaalik roseae to Acanthostega. These life forms are separated from one another by morphological gulfs based on profound differences and millions of years of time. Evolutionists reveal only their own prejudices with the series into which they place Tiktaalik roseae. Henry Gee, editor of the journal Nature and also a paleontologist, admits that “missing links” and evolutionary series are the work of preconceptions:


New fossil discoveries are fitted into this pre-existing story. We call these new discoveries “missing links”, as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. . . . Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps.(Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time, Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, p. 32)


(For information on the invalidity of evolutionist claims regarding Acanthostega and Eusthenopteron see, http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/natural_history_1_07.html)


The myth of the transition from water to land: an illusory and dogmatic claim


The theory of evolution maintains that change in living things is based on the selection of beneficial differences among those produced by random mutations. However, it is a known fact that mutations have no power to cause anything to evolve by adding new information to living things’ DNA. Mutations damage the genetic information in living things’ DNA, producing effects that leave them deformed or dead. That is because the DNA sequences are exceedingly sensitive, and the effect on these of any mutation based on chance can only be harmful.


For example, no random changes to the letters comprising a manual for an electronic device will turn it into a novel; it will merely damage the information in that manual. In the same way, it is totally impossible for mutations in a fish’s DNA to acquire it a powerful skeletal structure capable of weight-bearing, to construct temperature regulating systems or systems for the use of water (involving such a complex organ as the kidney), or to cause gills to turn into lungs.


It is clear that if a fish does not undergo rapid change in different ways, such as in terms of its respiratory system, excretory mechanism and skeletal structure, it will inevitably die. Such a chain of mutations must take place that it must immediately acquire the fish a lung, turn its fins into legs, add a kidney onto it, and provide its skin with a water retaining structure. Systems of such vital importance to the animal either have to change instantaneously, or else not at all. Such a change is impossible through evolution, which is proposed as a chance-based and aimless process. Any rationally thinking person can see that the only possible explanation is to accept that fish and terrestrial life forms were created independently.


In short, the scenario of a “transition from water to land” is at a complete dead-end. Evolutionists have no consistent fossil evidence they can point to. In her bookVertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, the evolutionist paleontologist Barbara J. Stahl writes:


None of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterized the tetrapods." (Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, Dover, 1985, p. 148)


Conclusion: Evolutionists have to realize they will never get anywhere with outmoded propaganda techniques left over from Adolf Hitler


As has been demonstrated, the “missing linknotion is an unscientific one with no factual counterpart in the fossil record and used solely because of the requirements of the theory of evolution. The way that the Darwinist media cling so strongly to the idea is a method they resort to in order to spread their own ideologies among the public. Evolutionists have no evidence with which to spread their theory, which is the greatest scientific deception in history. All they can do in the face of the collapse, one by one, of such fossils as the Coelacanthand Archaeopteryx, and equine series once defended as evidences of evolution, consists of frequently and loudly ensuring that the missing link fraud is kept on the public agenda.


All these endeavors are a propaganda technique, as described in the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s statement that a lie would be believed by many if repeated loudly and often enough.


Evolutionists must accept the fact that paleontology demolishes their theory, and must realize that constantly repeating their missing link tales will not alter the fact in the slightest.


Harun Yahya!

01 November 2009

Oldest Known Spider Webs Discovered

Original Article

Silken spider webs dating back some 140 million years have been discovered preserved in amber, scientists announce today.

The viscous tree sap flowed over the spider webs before hardening and preserving the contents, which were discovered in Sussex, England. Other bits sealed up in the amber included plant matter, insect droppings and ancient microbes.

"These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge," said lead researcher Martin Brasier, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford.

Brasier and colleagues used a computer technique called confocal microscopy to reconstruct the webs and examine the interweaving silk threads. Various clues, including threads that were twisted and coated with sticky fluid droplets, suggest the webs were spun by spiders closely related to modern-day orb-web garden spiders.

"These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey," Brasier said. "We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber."

The web analysis also gave insights about the spider's diet. "I would guess, from the form of the web, that it was feeding on flying insects like flies and the ancestors of bees, wasps and moths," Brasier told LiveScience.

In 2006, scientists reported an ancient web sealed in amber and estimated to be about 136 million years old.

The new web discovery will be published in the latest issue of the Journal of the Geological Society.

Leaving aside the "millions of years" nonsence, this descovery is fascinating. Seems like spiders have always been spiders, exacly what the Biblical Origins Model would predict.

15 June 2009

Fossil Graveyards: the elephant in the living room

Have you ever been in a situation in which you and other people were talking about something, and everyone knew that there was something relating to that subject you and others were not suposed to mention? Evolutionists must feel that way when it comes to fossil graveyards.

Fossil graveyards happen when a large collection of fossils is found in the same place. The weirdness of such places is that sometimes the animals you find in there don't even live in the same habbit.

Another "weird thing" is that sometimes you find many whale fossils buried in such place. How do you fossilize one whale, let alone dozens of others, in the same place?

Everyone realizes that a catastrophic event is at the root of such fossil graveyards. The problem for evolutionists is that the Holy Bible mentions one worldwide catastrophic event that caused the death of the majority of land animals, and the vast majority of humans.

Knowing the Biblical conotations of such graveyard relics, and how a world wide flood totally destroys the mythical "million of years" needed for evolution, atheists and old earthers in general have to try to find another non-world-wide-flood explination. Usually it comes down to "We know it wasn't a major world wide catastrophy, but we don't know what it was!"

See, evolutionists live by faith.

23 May 2009

Rush Limbaugh Hates Science!

Well, it seems that old Rushie has fallen from grace in Chuckles' dictionary.

Not being content in attacking pretty much every conservative figure there is (Jindal, Coulter, Glenn Beck, etc), the aging adolescent, has-been jazz guitarrist, Charles Johnson aka "Darwinist Rage Boy" is now angry at Rush Limbaugh. Rush's crime? Not worshipping Darwin.

As I think everyone knows, there has been a huge (darwinian) hype about a lemur fossil found in Germany, and nicknamed as "Ida". To make the story short, it's just a fossil of an animal that looks like modern lemurs. Nothing more nothing less.

Not for darwinists, of course. For darwinists this is the evidence they have been praying for. (Well, not praying, since they usually don't believe in a Personal God)

Rush Limbaugh, like any sane person, is skeptical of this (yet another) "missing link". Charles, who cannot accept that people don't believe that the world created itself, fumes and says:

It’s just pathetic that on a day when such an amazing scientific discovery is announced, possibly one of the greatest finds of all time, Rush Limbaugh gets on the radio and tells his millions of admirers that it’s meaningless bullshit.

Well , first of all, it's not "one of the greatest finds of all time". It's just a freaking fossil, for crying out loud.

Secondly, it is meaningless when we look at what it is suposed to confirm. The theory that postulates that the living world is the result of an undirected natural process, as opposed to intelligent design, is not "confirmed" when we find fossils of extinct animals. Where is the mechanism able to turn this animal into something other than itself? How do we know that this animal burried in there left any offspring? The hype around Ida is more religious fervor than empirical science.

This should be a day when all Americans — all human beings — are proud of what we can accomplish through science and research, and human intelligence. Discoveries like “Ida” happen once in a lifetime.

Hilarious. Notice the on going "boogey man" mentality displayed by Chuckles Johnson aka Darwinist Rage Boy, aka Icarus the Kid: if you deny that those bones are your great great great grandparents, then you hate ALL science. It never dawns on Darwin Boy's mentality that perhaps (perhaps) it is because of "science and research" that people don't buy the Darwian nonsense.

Right wing extremist Savage wrote a worthy article about the Darwin-Ida-Charles Johnson affair.

07 December 2008

Tiktaalik Not a Missing Link

Dec 4, 2008 — Has all the colorful artwork of the fish-a-pod been for naught? Three European biologists that Neil Shubin’ famous Tiktaalik fossil, supposedly of a fish evolving into a four-footed land dweller (see 05/03/2006, 11/13/2008) and achieving near iconic status in the media (01/16/2008) is not a missing link after all.
The situation is much more complex, argued Boisvert et al in a letter to Nature.1 Those who enjoy the full jargon can follow their reasoning:
The pectoral fin skeletons of Panderichthys and Tiktaalik share certain unusual features such as a blade-like radius and a longitudinal ridge-and-groove on the flexor surface of the ulna. These can tentatively be interpreted as attributes of the ‘elpistostegid’ segment of the tetrapod stem lineage and thus ancestral for the tetrapod forelimb. Given that recent phylogenies consistently place Panderichthys below Tiktaalik in the tetrapod stem group, it is surprising to discover that its pectoral fin skeleton is more limb-like than that of its supposedly more derived relative. In Tiktaalik4, like in ‘osteolepiforms’ and rhizodonts (more primitive fish members of the stem group), the ulna and ulnare are of similar size. The axis of the fin comprises two more elements distal to the ulnare, and the distal radials are arranged pinnately around this axis. In contrast, in Panderichthys and tetrapods, the ulna is much longer than the ulnare, the ulnare is the last axial element, and the distal radials/digits are arranged in a transverse fan shape11 (Fig. 3). It is difficult to say whether this character distribution implies that Tiktaalik is autapomorphic,2 that Panderichthys and tetrapods are convergent, or that Panderichthys is closer to tetrapods than Tiktaalik. At any rate, it demonstrates that the fish-tetrapod transition was accompanied by significant character incongruence in functionally important structures.
Being translated, that last sentence says that if these fossils represent an evolutionary line from fish to tetrapod, the features are all mixed up and out of sequence – including the “functionally important structures.”
1. Boisvert, Mark-Kurik and Ahlberg, “The pectoral fin of Panderichthys and the origin of digits,” Nature 456, 636-638 (4 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07339.
2. Autapomorphic means a derived trait unique to any given taxon, i.e. shared by the ingroup taxa, but excluded from its outgroup taxa. Convergent refers to traits that appear similar but are not phylogenetically related.
If this tale were told by Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story” would undo the first of the story. It wouldn’t bother the evolutionists, though, because that’s what Darwinism is all about, anyway: telling a good story (see 12/22/2003 commentary).
Next headline on: FossilsEvolutionary Theory

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