[Doctor Stochastic]

Evolutionary theory makes predictions. This isn't one of them. What is your point? That you fail to understand what evolutionary theory says?

[AndrewC]

Evolutionary theory makes predictions. This isn't one of them.

It isn't? I think you are very mistaken. I'll give you one more chance. What does evolution "predict" about lungs and lobe-fins? It made a "prediction" about mesonychus and whales. It then changed it to a "prediction" about pakicetus and whales. I know that a "prediction" has been made concerning lungs and lobe-fins. I am certain that it is taught in classes.

Lecture 26: Getting some backbone or the origin of vertebrates

Lobe-finned fish

• The fins are constructed of a series of sturdy bones and are connected to the rest of the skeleton by boney connections (joints).
• Three groups of lobe-finned fish
• Coelocanths
• Lungfish
• Rhipidistians  (tetrapods, or vertebrates with four limbs with fingers and toes instead of fins, evolve from one group of rhipidistians.)

IMPORTANT TERMS AND CONCEPTS FROM THIS LECTURE

Synapomorphies of Chordata or chordates
Earliest appearance of vertebrates in the fossil record
Mineralogy of most vertebrate skeletons and why it might be beneficial
Devonian diversification of fish
Earliest fish were jawless, meaning jaws are a syanapomorphy of later fish and all other vertebrates
Differences between chondrichthans and the bony fish (ray-finned and lobe-finned fish)
Main groups of lobe-finned fish, their relationships
To which group of lobe-finned fish do you belong?

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Tetrapods: Fossil Record

Tetrapods, whose closest living relatives are lungfish,

You deny that and what the "prediction" is. Why?