"This bone is nothing! Nothing at all!
Posted on 04/02/2004 4:25:18 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Arlington, Va.—How land-living animals evolved from fish has long been a scientific puzzle. A key missing piece has been knowledge of how the fins of fish transformed into the arms and legs of our ancestors. In this week's issue of the journal Science, paleontologists Neil Shubin and Michael Coates from the University of Chicago and Ted Daeschler from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, describe a remarkable fossil that bridges the gap between fish and amphibian and provides a glimpse of the structure and function changes from fin to limb.
The fossil, a 365-million-year-old arm bone, or humerus, shares features with primitive fish fins but also has characteristics of a true limb bone. Discovered near a highway roadside in north-central Penn., the bone is the earliest of its kind from any limbed animal.
"It has long been understood that the first four-legged creatures on land arose from the lobed-finned fishes in the Devonian Period," said Rich Lane, director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) geology and paleontology program. "Through this work, we've learned that fish developed the ability to prop their bodies through modification of their fins, leading to the emergence of tetrapod limbs."
NSF, the independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, funded the research.
The bone's structure reveals an animal that had powerful forelimbs, with extensive areas for the attachment of muscles at the shoulder. "The size and extent of these muscles means that the humerus played a significant role in the support and movement of the animal," reported Shubin. "These muscles would have been important in propping the body up and pushing it off of the ground."
Interestingly, modern-day fish have smaller versions of the muscles. According to Coates, "When this humerus is compared to those of closely-related fish, it becomes clear that the ability to prop the body is more ancient than we previously thought. This means that many of the features we thought evolved to allow for life on land originally evolved in fish living in aquatic ecosystems."
The layered rock along the Clinton County, Penn., roadside were deposited by ancient stream systems that flowed during the Devonian Period, about 365 million years ago. Enclosed in the rocks is fossil evidence of an ecosystem teeming with plant and animal life. "We found a number of interesting fossils at the site," reported Daeschler, who uncovered the fossil in 1993. "But the significance of this specimen went unnoticed for several years because only a small portion of the bone was exposed and most of it lay encased in a brick-sized piece of red sandstone."
Not until three years ago, when Fred Mullison, the fossil preparator at the Academy of Natural Sciences, excavated the bone from the rock, did the importance of the new specimen become evident.
The work was also funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society.
"with a different viewpoint", eh? Which viewpoint might that be, eh?
If you're saying that "creationist scientists will think up some excuse to hand-wave this away also", no doubt, but that's hardly the same as an actual refutation.
So don't jump the gun claiming victory.
Don't jump the gun claiming defeat, either, as seems to be your motivation here ("it'll go down, just you wait and see!")
And pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Hunches are good. I have the strong feeling I'm about to hit Lotto, Mega-Millions, or Powerball. That I have so far failed to do any such thing despite perhaps a couple thousand wasted dollars over the last fifteen years of trying means nothing against the power of my hunch.
The scientists who announced this discovery are not pikers in paleontology, so don't look for them to be spanked and put to bed with no supper anytime soon. ICR may deign to write a rebuttal, maybe even the prestigious Discovery Institute of Seattle, but it won't be based on any more than doctrinaire opposition to progress in this particular direction.
Yes.
So you'd like to believe.
A real scientist knows that we don't know anything about anything,
Ooooookay..... Speak for yourself, son. Personally, I know quite a lot about many things.
and should readily discard the evolutionist claim when it doesn't fit.
Except that it fits just fine here, so...
A bone doesn't fit, no matter how you slice it.
You forgot the "because" part of your claim. Simply declaring that "the bone don't fit so you must acquit" just doesn't cut it among "real scientists".
Also devoid of substance.
There used to be a good site comparing the head bones of Eusthenopteron (lobe-finned fish) and Acanthostega (very early amphibian). Alas, it's gone now. Anyway, aside from genetic similarities, early amphibians had bone-for-bone practically the same heads as their immediate fish ancestors.
It's rather late to be that ignorant. A scientist who hopes to push the envelope in his lifetime has to come up to speed on what we do in fact know, which is quite a daunting body of literature.
Wow, the "I have no ability to refute the findings but I don't like them so I'll just broadly ridicule them" brigade is out in full force tonight, I see.
There's a great deal of difference between the sort of empty schoolyard sniggering you did which didn't address even a single word of the original article, and a substantive rebuttal.
Learn the difference.
Try again when you've got something resembling an actual contribution to a science discussion.
To save time, I direct you to my replies in posts #30, #35, #53, and #56, they're all entirely appropriate to your post as well.
If you guys keep this up at this rate, I'll have to compose a form letter or something.
With some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Better bookmark it, Pat. You'll need it later on other threads when they start talking about "no transitionals" for the umpteenth time.
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