Posted on 04/15/2006 11:37:52 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Posted: April 15, 2006
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
It's been a week since the scientific world went gaga over a fish called "Tiktaalik," which is being billed as the missing link between water and land animals.
The paleontoligists say the fossils they date to 383 million years ago show how land creatures first arose from the sea.
Tiktaalik, they say, lived in shallow swampy waters and had the body of a fish but the jaws, ribs and limb-like fins of so-called "early mammals."
"Tiktaalik represents a transitory creature between water and land," explained Farish Jenkins Jr. of Harvard University, one of the discovery team members. "Really, it's extraordinary. We found a fish with a neck."
Martin Brazeau of Sweden's Uppsala University said Tiktaalik is "unquestionably" the most land-animal-like fish known to date.
"Just over 380 million years ago, it seems, our remote ancestors were large, flattish, predatory fishes, with crocodile-like heads and strong limb-like pectoral fins that enabled them to haul themselves out of the water," explained Per Erik Ahlberg of Uppsala and Jennifer Clark of the University of Cambridge, in a commentary accompanying their report in the journal Nature.
As the New York Times reported the find, the fish has characteristics that "anticipate the emergence of land animals – and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs."
I'm glad these evolutionists are so giddy about finding one of their ancestors, but before we all go off the deep end about this latest discovery, understand what all the excitement is about.
For years, those who disbelieve in macro-evolution – people like me – have been saying to the evolutionists, "Show us evidence of one kind of creature becoming another kind." They haven't been able to do it – not with all the fossils they've studied and certainly not in their scientific observations of the world in which we live.
Tiktaalik is their best shot.
But let me tell you why it is most definitely not what the evolutionists suggest it is.
There is another fish called the "coelacanth." Ever hear of it? I've included a photo of one with this column – which, when you think about it, is really quite amazing. Because, just a few years ago, the same scientists who were calling the Tiktaalik fossil the missing link between sea life and land life were claiming the coelacanth fossils of the same era represented just that link.
Coelacanth
But, then, unfortunately for the evolutionists, coelacanths – these "350-million-year-old fossils" – turned out to be very much alive. They turned up regularly in fish markets. Today they live in aquariums – not terrariums – by the way.
The coelacanth has the same kind of lobe fins as the Tiktaalik. The fossil experts told us they enabled the coelacanth to walk on the ocean floor. However, none have yet been observed walking. Instead, they use those lobe fins to swim better, not walk.
Like those of the coelacanth, the bones in the fins of the Tiktaalik are embedded in muscle – not part of the skeleton.
In other words, there is a whole lot of supposing going on about the Tiktaalik that is reminiscent of the kind of supposing that has gone on for as long as evolutionary theory has been around.
The Tiktaalik is no more a missing link between sea life and land life than a Tic Tac is a missing link between a Lifesaver and an Altoid.
Notice not one of the stories you have read about the Tiktaalik has confronted the sensationally uncomfortable issues raised by the coelacanth.
We don't know that the Tiktaalik lived 383 million years ago. We don't know that it used its unusual fins to walk. We don't know that it ever left the water. We don't even know for sure that it is extinct today. And we sure don't know that it represents any link between one species and another.
We simply don't know what we don't know. And I sure wish those who called themselves scientists would just admit that.
****
Yoi, another Janet Reno Alert.
It's beyond me why they think that they are so 'learned' and smarter than the rest of us, when they fall all over themselves for this fairytale NONSENSE again and again?
Actually the posted article is the junk science.
Good reporting- but where's the pictures?
If it is incorrect- please educate us.
There have been several threads on this discovery already, including on based on a Wall Street Journal article.
I suggest you take a look through those. The science is a lot sounder.
Which are?
Do you suppose that an ancient animal must have evolved over time simply because it is old? Reptiles like turtles and alligators predate dinosaurs and are in many cases largely unchanged over time. This is simply because there is still a niche for them in the current environment. Evolution is driven by natural selection. If the environment for a coelacanth or a turtle or a crocodillian is hospitable enough it will have no need to evolve.
BTW, I think the author of this article has also overstated his case in regard to the coelacanth. A better example might have been what is referred to as the Asian walking catfish which can and regularly does [as a species] take short strolls.
When you look at a gorilla you notice that its nose is two vertical slits while our noses are hooded, (the nostrils are covered). The ability to hold our breath and dive to great depths like whales and dolphins are environmental adaptations which point to an aquatic lifestyle.
Goole it and learn more!!
So the creationists only defense here is to point at the Coelacanth YET AGAIN?
Yawn
The land invertebrates. Snails, slugs, spiders, insects and other arachnids.
"Sometimes one hears it argued that the issue is moot because biochemistry is a fact-based discipline for which theories are neither helpful nor wanted. The argument is false, for theories are needed for formulating experiments. Biology has plenty of theories. they are just not discussed--or scrutinized--in public. The ostensibly noble repudiation of theoretical prejudice is, in fact, a cleverly disguised antitheory, whose actual function is to evade the requirement for logical consistency as a means of eliminating falsehood. We often ask ourselves nowadays whether evolution is an engineer or a magician--a discoverer and exploiter of preexisting physical principles or a worker of miracles--but we shouldn't. The former is theory, the latter is antitheory."
Robert B. Laughlin, A Different Universe--Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down, (Basic Books, New York, 2006) pp. 168-170.
(Dr. Laughlin is no creationist. He is a Stanford University professor who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1998.)
They're a bit more knowledgable about thses kinds of things than World Nut Daily and Pat Buchanan wannabe Joesph Farrah.
Archive
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.