Posted on 05/20/2006 6:02:56 PM PDT by Al Simmons
Fetus' Feet Show Fish, Reptile Vestiges By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
May 18, 2006 — The feet of human embryos taking shape in the womb reveal links to prehistoric fish and reptiles, a new study finds.
Human feet may not look reptilian once babies emerge from the womb, but during development the appendages appear similar to prehistoric fish and reptiles. The finding supports the theory that mammalian feet evolved from ancient mammal-like reptiles that, in turn, evolved from fish.
It also suggests that evolution -- whether that of a species over time or the developmental course of a single organism -- follows distinct patterns.
In this case, the evolution of mammalian feet from fish fins to four-legged reptiles to four-limbed mammals to human feet appears to roughly mirror what happens to a maturing human embryo.
"Undoubtedly there are clear parallels between the mammal-like reptilian foot and the human foot," said Albert Isidro, an anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain and lead author of the study, which appeared in the journal The Foot.
Isidro and colleague Teresa Vazquez made the determination after analyzing fossils of a number of mammal-like reptiles that lived from 75 to 360 million years ago. The scientists also studied fossils of osteolepiform fish, which appear to be half fish and half reptilian. These fish lived 400 million years ago and had lungs, nostrils and four fins located where limbs would later be found in four-footed reptiles and mammals.
In 33-day-old human embryos, the scientists observed "the outline of a lower extremity in the form of a fin, similar to that seen in osteolepiform fishes." As the embryo continued to develop, the researchers focused their attention on two foot bones: the calcaneous, or heel bone, and the talus, which sits between the heel and the lower leg.
At 54 days of gestation, these two bones sit next to each other as they did within the reptile herbivore Bauria cynops, which lived around 260 million years ago. This ancient reptile had flat, crushing teeth and mammalian features.
At eight and a half weeks of gestation, the researchers found the two embryonic foot bones resemble those seen in the Diademodon vegetarian dinosaur, which lived around 230 million years ago.
"We can tell that the embryo is half way between the reptiles and the mammals (at this stage)," Isidro told Discovery News.
The two foot bones continue to develop until, at nine weeks, they resemble that of placental mammals as they emerged 80 million years ago.
This development of feet in the human embryo mirrors how the foot evolved over millions of years beginning with fish and ending with early mammals, according to the scientists.
Supporting the fish/foot link was the discovery last month of a new species, Tiktaalik roseae, which lived 375 million years ago. It had fish fins and scales, but also limb parts found in four-legged animals.
"Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land-living animals 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-author of a related paper in the journal Nature.
H. Richard Lane, director of sedimentary geology and paleobiology at the National Science Foundation, said, "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil ‘Rosetta Stones’ for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone: fish to land-roaming tetrapods (four limbed animals)."
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"The part of the article that is idiotic, and I guess the basis of the "new study," is the attempt to compare fetal development to specific prehistoric fossils. There is no need and no ability to make such a specific comparison."
Thanks. I strongly suspected this. But is the whole premise of the article correct? I'm in my 50s and I remember that when I was a kid this was believed---but I thought it was disproved---but these correlations were found to be coincidental.
Ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny...this concept has been
pretty well ruled out, due to poor research and faked
drawing by Ernest Haeckel in the late 1800's or early
1900's...most embryology textbooks do not say that
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" anymore.
Interesting idea...if a developing human fetus(baby) was
fossilized, would the discoverer(s) think that they had found a half-fish, half human, or 1/4 fish, 1/4 reptile, 1/4
lower reptile, 1/4 human?
Another question would be, is this pattern seen in all
organisms?...for instance, does a bird go through
it's development looking like a reptile, or a dinosaur?
Does a horse look like a protohippus in development?
Does a fish go through a jellyfish embryological phase?
When I was a baby I looked like Winston Churchill.
I neither grew up to become Winston Churchill nor did I have any of his genes.
What BS. The appendages of a growing fetus prove nothing except the fact that babies toes and hands need to grow the fetus doesnt come fully formed from the egg stage.
Neither does a chicken. Crack a fertilised chicken egg and you dont see a rooster with its wattles.
Who thinks up this BS?
"There were famous illustrations in all the school biology textbooks for many years, showing this kind of fetal development. Most of us probably used one of those textbooks when we were children. They have long been proven to be complete lies."
Thanks. That's what I thought.
I just knew I evolved from a trombone!
This is something that Darwin himself noticed. It's one of the more interesting tidbits that I learned in Biology 101.
Ontogenic recapitulation is an old theory which has been thoroughly discredited. Of course, that doesn't mean that evolutionary "scientists" are actually going to stop using such a useful fairy tale.
By whom?
LOL. "Republican Party Reptile" is a great book and a must read. PJ O'Rouke at his best.
LOL...okay. For some reason I posted to this thread. I needed a tagline?
Panicking darwinist mind control freaks, alarmed at the fact that more and more people are seeing through the evo-bunk.
Yeah, and when I was a kid, my brothers said I looked like a toad! This means about as much................
Let me guess, they are all animals that have heads, bodies, and appendages.
Care to look at 5 day old tree sprouts and guess species?
They mean half fish and half amphibian, of course.
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