Newly found species fills evolutionary gap between fish and land animals

Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs and parts of the limbs that are similar to four-legged animals known as tetrapods, as well as fish-like features such as a primitive jaw, fins and scales.

These fossils, found on Ellesmere Island in Arctic Canada, are the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The new find is described in two related research articles highlighted on the cover of the April 6, 2006, issue of Nature.

"Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land-living animal both in terms of its anatomy and its way of life," said Neil Shubin, professor and chairman of organismal biology at the University of Chicago and co-leader of the project.

Tiktaalik was a predator with sharp teeth, a crocodile-like head and a flattened body. The well-preserved skeletal material from several specimens, ranging from 4 to 9 feet long, enabled the researchers to study the mosaic pattern of evolutionary change in different parts of the skeleton as fish evolved into land animals.

The high quality of the fossils also allowed the team to examine the joint surfaces on many of the fin bones, concluding that the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints were capable of supporting the body-like limbed animals.

"Human comprehension of the history of life on Earth is taking a major leap forward," said H. Richard Lane, director of sedimentary geology and paleobiology at the National Science Foundation. "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil 'Rosetta Stones' for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone--fish to land-roaming tetrapods."

One of the most important aspects of this discovery is the illumination of the fin-to-limb transition. In a second paper in the journal, the scientists describe in depth how the pectoral fin of the fish serves as the origin of the tetrapod limb.

Embedded in the fin of Tiktaalik are bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals.

"Most of the major joints of the fin are functional in this fish," Shubin said. "The shoulder, elbow and even parts of the wrist are already there and working in ways similar to the earliest land-living animals."

At the time that Tiktaalik lived, what is now the Canadian Arctic region was part of a landmass that straddled the equator. It had a subtropical climate, much like the Amazon basin today. The species lived in the small streams of this delta system. According to Shubin, the ecological setting in which these animals evolved provided an environment conducive to the transition to life on land.

"We knew that the rocks on Ellesmere Island offered a glimpse into the right time period and the right ancient environments to provide the potential for finding fossils documenting this important evolutionary transition," said Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, a co-leader of the project. "Finding the fossils within this remote, rugged terrain, however, required a lot of time and effort."

The nature of the deposits where the fossils were found and the skeletal structure of Tiktaalik suggests the animal lived in shallow water and perhaps even out of the water for short periods.

"The skeleton of Tiktaalik indicates that it could support its body under the force of gravity whether in very shallow water or on land," said Farish Jenkins, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University and co-author of the papers. "This represents a critical early phase in the evolution of all limbed animals, including humans--albeit a very ancient step."

The new fossils were collected during four summers of exploration in Canada's Nunavut Territory, 600 miles from the North Pole, by paleontologists from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago and Harvard University. Although the team has amassed a diverse assemblage of fossil fish, Shubin said, the discovery of these transitional fossils in 2004 was a vindication of their persistence.

The scientists asked the Nunavut people to propose a formal scientific name for the new species. The Elders Council of Nunavut, the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, suggested "Tiktaalik" (tic-TAH-lick)--the word in the Inuktikuk language for "a large, shallow water fish."

The scientists worked through the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth in Nunavut to collaborate with the local Inuit communities. All fossils are the property of the people of Nunavut and will be returned to Canada after they are studied.

The team depended on the maps of the Geological Survey of Canada. The researchers received permits from the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth of the Government of Nunavut, and logistical support in the form of helicopters and bush planes from Polar Continental Shelf Project of Natural Resources Canada. The National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society, along with an anonymous donor, also helped fund the project.

Sorry, I'm a free thinker. There are scientists that have more education than you or I, that agree with me, so what does continuing education have to do with it?

The absence of free-thinking in science would mean that it goes nowhere. And of course there are scientists that have more education than I (I don’t know about your educational level), but I’d like to see the name of just one who would accept your position, which I quoted before, " that if the pro-ID people got THEIR own dictionary, would that make it correct, or does this separate dictionary only apply for the evo THEORY?"

I also doubt he/she would be hung up on the word “theory.”

This might be a good time to reiterate a previous statement I posted to you, which you didn’t address. “The pro-ID people are presently engaged in attempting to change the definition of science in an effort to claim ID is scientific. This in and of itself should be a convincing demonstration that ID isn't science.” Am I leaping to an unwarranted conclusion here?

I'm also so secure in my beliefs that I don't need to put people down who don't disagree with me, as you and some other evos have attempted to do. Thou doth protest toooooo much.

You know what? You’re right. I'll apologize for the tone of my last post to you right now. I'm sorry about that, and I'll try harder to stay on an even keel in the future. But I have to add this: It’s not insecurity, it’s exasperation. It seems clear from your stated unwillingness to accept that certain fields have their own vocabulary and their own particular uses for certain words that you’re unfamiliar with the topic you’re attacking. Am I wrong?

To illustrate, let’s go over this one again: My favorite flavor of quark is “charm.” Others are partial to “up.” Do “flavor,” “charm,” and “up” have the same meaning in this context as they do in everyday conversation? Of course not!

ID is a scientific theory, and Evo is a scientific theory.

In what way is ID a scientific theory, as the word is currently defined? Here are three questions every scientific theory must be able to answer in order to be considered scientific. Thus far, no ID proponent has offered answers to any of these:

1)What predictions does it make?
2. What new lines of inquiry will result from it?
3) How can it be falsified?

If you can answer these questions, you’ve done something no ID advocate has done to date. If, on the other hand, you start complaining about what you believe other theories do or don’t do, or pretend not to understand what “falsifiable” means in a scientific sense, then all you’ve done is demonstrate that you don’t know what you’re talking about

Do you think any of these guys (also free thinkers) might have more scientific education than we do?

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Czech_Intelligent_Design.html
Monday, October 24, 2005
'Intelligent design' supporters gather
By ONDREJ HEJMA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Hundreds of supporters of "intelligent design" theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence.
About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended Saturday's "Darwin and Design" conference to press their contention that evolution cannot fully explain the origins of life or the emergence of highly complex species.
"It is a step beyond Darwin," said Carole Thaxton of Atlanta, a biologist who lived with her husband, Charles, in Prague in the 1990s and was one of the organizers of the event.
"The point is to show that there in fact is intelligence in the universe," she said. The participants, who included experts in mathematics, molecular biology and biochemistry, "are all people who independently came to the same conclusion," she said.
Among the panelists was Stephen C. Meyer, a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design.
He said intelligent design was "based upon scientific evidence and discoveries in fields such as biochemistry, molecular biology, paleontology and astrophysics."
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Hundreds of supporters of "intelligent design" theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence.

--snip--
Pavel Kabrt, a Czech who served on the committee that organized the event, said the capital of the ex-communist country _ now a highly secular republic _ was a fitting backdrop for the debate.

"Communism is gone, but its main pillar, Darwin's theory, is still here ... the evolution theory is taught as dogma here starting in nursery school," said Kabrt, an electrician who lectures on intelligent design at Czech high schools.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/34122.html

Next science:

The Science Behind Intelligent Design Theory
Read all about it: http://acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/idscience.htm

Last but not least: Now you seem to want me to define science by your criteria, Gumlegs. Here's my criteria, using my own common sense as a free thinker:

A) There is no proof that an ape can become a human.

B) Darwin convinced scientists to believe his theory based on antiquated information, at that time, like we only have one cell, when we really have trillions, and when there are new discoveries, evo scientists just change the theories.

The human body is made up trillions of cells.

http://websekolah.bharian.com.my/F1Sci/june15.html

Again, this is a recent discovery.

Evolution & Creationism
Terminology in Conflict
Richard Joltes

One of the fundamental reasons for the ongoing conflict between the religious and scientific communities involves differences in terminology and word usage. Having heard many lay people scoff “evolution is only a theory” or refer to “the theory of Intelligent Design,” it seems prudent to discuss differences in usage and understanding, as Creationists are misusing the understanding of this and other scientific terms by the average individual to further their own aims.

In science, the word "theory" is not used in the manner understood by most people, i.e. I have a theory that if I do X, Y will result or perhaps my theory is that man was created by divine intervention. They equate the word with “conjecture,” “supposition,” or at worst “guess.” However, phrases such as these fall under the heading of "hypothesis" or “hunch” for the purpose of scientific enquiry. In a scientific context, the word theory is reserved for ideas that have been repeatedly tested experimentally under very rigorous conditions and confirmed to behave as expected. Quantum electrodynamics, heliocentrism, and plate tectonics are other examples of scientific theory; they are areas that have been independently studied and repeatedly verified over decades or centuries using increasing amounts of hard data.

Science also relies on facts, which are either data gathered through observation or instances in which some phenomenon has been tested and verified so many times that there is no longer good reason to suspect any variation in outcome. Even in this case a fact is not immutable, since it is always possible for new evidence to be introduced that will overturn a long-established fact. Evolution is a fact in the respect that we have hard data – an ever-expanding fossil record – proving that species have changed over time; dinosaurs, early mammals, Trilobites, and other forms no longer exist as living species. The exact mechanism by which these changes occurred (e.g. natural selection and environmental pressures) is the realm of evolutionary theory and is based on interpretation of that fossil record and other available data.

The “Intelligent Design” movement is not a monolithic group; it is composed of numerous Creationist organizations with varying agendas and specific beliefs. However, the basic tenet of ID can be summarized by the statement life is very complex; such complexity could not have been arrived at by chance, therefore an intelligent designer must exist. This is not a theory in the scientific sense; at best it's the hypothesis or thesis statement in an analytical paper and must be supported by massive amounts of confirmatory data in order to be considered proven in any real sense. Even if the initial researcher provided such evidence, his or her findings still must be confirmed and re-tested by others in order to eliminate experimental error or other problems.

However, most of ID's proofs consist of statements such as "see how complex the human mind is? This could not have happened by chance, and that proves our point." This isn't proof. Instead, it's circular reasoning using the central tenet complex life could not have been arrived at by chance as its core: having accepted that statement, anything deemed “complex” must have originated with the proposed intelligent designer. ID proponents offer no actual proof that chance cannot be responsible for complexity; they simply assert that this is the case.

The inability of ID supporters to see no mechanism by which evolution could work, and their belief that life could have arisen only through the actions of an intelligent designer, reveals a lack of understanding of current science and progress in the field of evolutionary biology over the last century. The fact that anti-evolutionists constantly cite Origin of Species and Darwin’s other writings as the last word on the subject again indicates this is the case. However this inability is also eminently understandable, given the scale of time – millions, if not billions of years – involved, the invisibility of the process to the naked eye, and the complexity of the underlying science. Envisioning the level of change that occurs even over a single millennium is difficult. One may try to imagine, for instance, what everyday life really was like for someone living 1,000 years ago with no electricity, automobiles, printed books, or sanitation. Now multiply by 1,000 and think of 1 million years BCE. The mind boggles. It is nearly impossible to appreciate the immensity of change that can occur over that period of time without a firm understanding of the evidence and evolutionary mechanism as currently understood by science.

Other weaknesses and misunderstandings inherent in the ID argument can be noted through its frequent misuse of other terms and definitions. The ongoing misconception of “survival of the fittest” (italics mine) to mean “best” or “strongest” shows a misunderstanding of the larger concept, which might be better rephrased “survival of a physiological change that proves more fit for a given set of environmental conditions.” Creationists also misinterpret the term randomness as meaning random chance when this is not the case. Evolution does not suggest random chance creates mutations leading to new species: what it says is that variation within a given species can produce a “useful” change leading to improved survivability for that organism, which is then more likely to pass its genes (and thus the useful change) on to succeeding generations. Eyes, wings, and prehensile tails do not magically, randomly appear overnight; instead they develop over hundreds of generations, bit by bit, in response to environmental pressures or other conditions that predispose their owners to an improved rate of survival. Evolution is a cumulative process, not a series of random events that eventually result in a new species.

ID is not scientific theory and is unlikely ever to be, since there is no known mechanism by which its basic hypotheses can be tested for accuracy: we cannot generate an experiment containing all the conditions necessary to prove that complex life can only be generated given the presence of an intelligent designer. There is no body of evidence that confirms IDs tenets, and it is not based on scientific principles; it's simply an attempt at an end run around objections that Creationism isn't scientific and is therefore not to be taught in science classes.

Physicist Richard Feynman once said, during an introductory quantum physics lecture to a non-specialist audience, "I'm going to tell you the theory and you'll think it's crazy; many of you won't want to believe it. But it doesn't matter if you like it or not, because it's the way it is. Nature doesn't care if you don't like the way she does things; they happen that way whether you like them or not." ID proponents and other Creationists “don’t like” what the evidence says, and have settled upon a course of obfuscation, word tricks, and manipulation of data in order to discredit evolutionary theory.

Evolution, to the best of our understanding, is "the way it is." There are, and will continue to be, unanswered questions regarding exact mechanisms and rates of change, but the fundamental theory remains sound after 150 years of challenge and refinement. To state otherwise is to ignore the available data, and those who ignore contradictory data are not scientists.

If ID and other Creation “science” proponents wish to participate in legitimate scientific enquiry and desire active consideration of their ideas by the scientific community, they must adopt and understand the methods and terms used while agreeing to abide by the rules of evidence. Couching religious belief in scientific terms while ignoring the rules of inquiry simply exposes their deceptive practices: there is little difference between them and a TV commercial, where an actor equipped with white lab coat and clipboard throws out pseudoscientific jargon while expounding on a soap powder’s latest whitening agent.

Do you think any of these guys (also free thinkers) might have more scientific education than we do?

Some do, some don’t. I notice, by the way, that the article states that the “hundreds of supporters” who gathered were ignored by Czech scholars … but we’ll ignore that. It’s hilarious, though, that we’d read, "’Communism is gone, but its main pillar, Darwin's theory, is still here ... the evolution theory is taught as dogma here starting in nursery school,’ said Kabrt, an electrician who lectures on intelligent design at Czech high schools.”

Communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, explicitly rejected the Theory of Evolution, and demanded the theories of Lysenko be accepted.

But again, I digress. None of this answers any of the requests or questions I asked in my last post to you. Here they are again:

1. I’d like to see the name of just one who would accept your position, which I quoted before, " that if the pro-ID people got THEIR own dictionary, would that make it correct, or does this separate dictionary only apply for the evo THEORY?"
2. The article does not address this: “The pro-ID people are presently engaged in attempting to change the definition of science in an effort to claim ID is scientific. This in and of itself should be a convincing demonstration that ID isn't science.” Please comment.
3. The article doesn’t address this: Here are three questions every scientific theory must be able to answer in order to be considered scientific. Thus far, no ID proponent has offered answers to any of these:

What predictions does it make?
What new lines of inquiry will result from it?
How can it be falsified?

Regarding the article, “The Science Behind Intelligent Design Theory,” the author relies quite a bit on Dembski. It should be pointed out that Dembski’s examples fail to meet his own mathematical criteria, that his mathematical critera have never been explained (he's never stated a basis for the numbers he uses), and that Dembski’s most important criterion (never stated, but apparently the one that governs his theory), is “I know it when I see it.”

Last but not least: Now you seem to want me to define science by your criteria, Gumlegs.

Not my criteria, the criteria used by science. All of science, not just the Theory of Evolution.

Here's[sic] my criteria, using my own common sense as a free thinker:

A) There is no proof that an ape can become a human.
B) Darwin convinced scientists to believe his theory based on antiquated information, at that time, like we only have one cell, when we really have trillions, and when there are new discoveries, evo scientists just change the theories.
The human body is made up trillions of cells.

Your criteria have nothing whatever to do with science. How would “A,” for instance, address gravitational theory? Please note that the criteria I posted (again, I didn’t make them up), apply to every scientific theory. “There’s no proof that an ape can become human” is again merely an attempted attack on the Theory of Evolution, and is in no way support for any other theory. Incidentally, if it could be shown that an ape became a human, it would be considered disproof of the Theory of Evolution.

In my last post to you, I stated,

If, on the other hand, you start complaining about what you believe other theories do or don’t do, or pretend not to understand what “falsifiable” means in a scientific sense, then all you’ve done is demonstrate that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

All you’ve done is complain about the Theory of Evolution. You’ve just supplied an example of not knowing what you’re talking about.

Each and every statement in “B” is just silly. Let’s take them in order: “Darwin convinced scientists to believe his theory based on antiquated information.” I’m not sure what you mean by this, but Darwin’s theory was new when he proposed it. What “antiquated” information was he using? I don’t know where the “one cell” notion you’ve stated comes from but I’d like to see a citation – one from Darwin, and not Jack Chick. In any case, the Theory of Evolution doesn’t stand or fall on the number of cells in the human body – or any other body, for that matter.

Your objection to the Theory of Evolution being modified to account for new discoveries is more support for my contention that you don’t know anything about science. In fact, this objection is an objection not to the Theory of Evolution, but to science itself!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.