[beyond 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."" ---

****

Yoi, another Janet Reno Alert.

[AmericaUnited]

ROFLOL! More desperate junk science from the evo kooks.

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?

[LinnieBeth]

Good reporting- but where's the pictures?

[muir_redwoods]

"....confronted the sensationally uncomfortable issues raised by the coelacanth."

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.

[R W Reactionairy]

I suppose it might be what some scientists claim it is ... but if it was predatory [and not in the sense of eating tiny critters with a large body and its crocodile like jaws] what did its descendants eat when they completely left the water to forage on land? A walking fish might be very well adapted to short jaunts between isolated pools in the dry season, but that doesn't mean that it isn't still a fish.

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.

[Young Werther]

There is a theory that the missing link in hominid development was the "aquatic ape". Since this ape lived in and around the water like "mer people" there would be no archeolgical evidence on land. However, some of our aquatic adaptation survive.

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!!

[SengirV]

So the creationists only defense here is to point at the Coelacanth YET AGAIN?

Yawn

[Sender]

Artist's conception of Tiktaalik:

[Revolting cat!]

[JCEccles]

"Evolution by natural selection , . . . which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!

"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.)

[bobdsmith]

Please worldnetdaily, ignorance and arrogance are liberal values. Please stop writing these appallingly researched evolution op-eds.

[DennisR]

"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."

But...but...but...these scientists, aren't they??? They know everything that happened, even if it was 383 million years ago and know one was there! Hm...on the other hand, maybe the scientists are...drum roll here...God!

[Havoc]

Charlatans in desperation.. lol.

[mikeus_maximus]

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.

Every religious theory, even one mislabelled as "science", takes faith. :)