Showing a Bit of Backbone

yevrah writes "Palaeontologists in South Australia have found the earliest occurance of a fossil displaying primitive vertebrate. Described as something like a tadpole that probably wriggled through the bottom of the ocean this little critter is a likely missing link between invertebrates and fish."

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Commentator really gets it wrong

[woolie]

"You look at this blob on the ground and say, 'There goes our ancestor,' " he said. -- writes Penelope Debelle.

She ought to read Stephen Jay Gould's work before writing about science. Her statement, in fact, is very much wrong. The common supposition that there is a steady march from simple forms to more complex ones is well debunked by Gould. There is plenty of evidence that the same morphology has been developed by several species. Some survive. Others are pruned. Likewise, there is no reason to believe that this creature is an ancestor of modern chordates.