Evolution!!!
Ya gotta LUV it!!!
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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Try to remember you have no problem with evolution.
Am I correct in saying that the right hand top photo is a human baby and the lower right hand photo is a pig fetus?
They're gettin' ahead of us!
"Panicking darwinist mind control freaks, alarmed at the fact that more and more people are seeing through the evo-bunk."
Now here's some real bunk for you. There's a Toshiba Corp mind-controlled horse in paragraph 2...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1634861/posts
I'm no expert on this topic. The embryos look like what the article describes. Not much doubt about that. Make of it what you will.
So what are you saying?
Thanks for a great article! It's wonderful to live in a time when the truth about evolution is finally getting the widespread research and respect it deserves after ages of lies and superstitions.
and they call this science?
Ya gotta LUV it!!!
I suppose no one asked you to the prom either. ;o)
(I love your tagline btw)
only someone with a repulsive personality would make such a claim. (Lon Chaney doesn't qualify.)
More like the last 6 months or so ~ takes a while for the cold, hard facts to sink in.
Sometimes there's only one solution to a particular scaffolding problem ~ you could conceivably have a line of mammals descended directly from fish without the amphibian/reptile stuff (with some clever use of recombinant DNA technology, of course), and you'd probably end up with a developmental scheme pretty much like the one you see being exercised by mammals today.
(That's an evo in-joke.)
"More like the last 6 months or so ~ takes a while for the cold, hard facts to sink in."
No, the last 100 years.
I turn on the PC for "a few minutes" to check the news and whatnot, and end up still online an hour later - thanks to links like the one you posted at #58 :) - I found it full of interesting information - thanks!
We wouldn't have this thread if the whole idea had been successfully put to rest. It's still out there. It's still believed (even if you gave up teaching it 100 years ago). It's still specious.
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