Fish with Limbs

kpogoda writes "American scientists have unearthed the world's oldest arm bone, a 365-million-year-old fossil that provides key evidence that fish used limbs in water well before animals used them to climb up on land."

Comments

Reminds me of wings

[PIPBoy3000]

One of the typical arguments by creationists is how can evolution make these jumps from legs to fully functional wings. The latest thinking is that there's wasn't a giant leap, but rather a series of gradual steps between limbs that didn't impart flying, but still had some use.

For example, chickens don't fly very well, but have you ever tried to catch a chicken? Those "vestigial" wings sure impart bursts of speed and the ability to leap over obstacles.

It's neat to see the discovery of similar intermediaries between swimming and walking limbs. Evolution is an amazing and beautiful thing.

Re:Reminds me of wings

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest thinking is that there's wasn't a giant leap, but rather a series of gradual steps between limbs that didn't impart flying, but still had some use.

As far as I know, that's not "the latest thinking", but a concept that was established a long time ago. Even when I was a kid back in the 80s, I remember reading about how the origins of flight were thought to be lizards with ever-increasing flaps that allowed them to glide slightly (and, of course, the increased surface area helped them when "sunbathing").

Re:Reminds me of wings

[Zerth]

Longisquama had long feather shaped solid scales, although not used for flight. Plus, while not considered in the ancestor path of modern birds, Archaeopteryx had both feathers and scales.

Feathers don't fossilize well(lack of granularity in the surrounding matrix hides detail such as barbules), so many of the intermediate forms may also not have fossilized cleanly. Some birds who have been found without clear feather impressions have been mistaken for dinosaurs such as Compsognathus.

Lastly, there's a few real nuts who think everyone has it backwards and dinosaurs evolved from birds and everyone is looking in the wrong direction:)

Re:Reminds me of wings

[SmackCrackandPot]

There was an video segment on Discovery science about the evolution of insect wings. The basis of the research was based on stonefies and demonstrated how gills could have evolved into stubs which would not have given flight by themselves, but would have provided enough acceleration for the critter to escape from predators. The arms race between these two species would have forced ever faster acceleration to occur, until being fast enough to make flight possible.

Re:Reminds me of EYES

[Baron_Yam]

I love the standard creationist line that eyes couldn't have evolved - they must have been planned.

I once read an excellent rebuttal of that which described how to get from a photosensitive cell to a full eye while each stage had a noticable survival benefit... and then followed up by mentioning that it's happened on multiple seperate occasions in evolutionary history.

Heh.

Re:Reminds me of EYES

[Hater's Leaving, The]

"...multiple seperate occasions..."

Not just that, but _differently_ in each of the major eye types. There's no "animal eye", there are at least 3. (I forget exactly how they're categorised, but they're roughly vertibrate, cephalopod, and creepy-crawly.)

In particular, our retinas are 'back to front'. It's an flawed design, and that's why we have blind spots -- it's where the nerves leave the inside of the eyeball. If our eyes came about through _design_ then it was _crap_ design.

God-freaks can take the soft cheese out of their ears now.

THL.

Re:Don't let the religious zealots see this story.

[Atrahasis]

Eugenics is one possible product of "Darwinism", but not the only possible product. If you consider "fitness" as "the ability to survive", that being the only logical definition in evolutionary terms, then "survival of the fittest" means "survival of those best able to survive". Belonging to a society that increases your chances of survival despite your genetic defects is an effective evolutionary strategy, the equal and opposite of eugenics. As long as the ability to treat and minimise the effects of these defects remains effective, eugenics is unnecessary.

Re:Reminds me of EYES

[GrumpySimon]

Not only that but there are at least 65 (yes, 65) phylogenetically distinct eye-forms. Wow - independant evolution 65 times.

see: Weiss, K. (2002). "How the eye got its brain." Evolutionary Anthropology 11: 215-219.

Cheers,
Simon

Re:Darwinism is NOT A RELIGION!

[Tyreth]

I'm impressed by the change in your demeanor since your initial post.

Jaques.

Cousteau.

I don't understand this response/reference.

logic, etc. People do have morals and a concept of right and wrong. Without going into more detail at the moment, this is a proof of God.

Human society has evolved behaviours that tend to eliminate people without morals. We lock them up, execute them, and in lots of ways pretty much take 'em out of the gene pool.

Sure, but it wasn't always this way. The natural history as told by darwinists is curiously devoid of things we consider virtues, yet is replete with betrayel, murder, rape, greed, etc. At what point did that rule of success change? After all, there is still much to be gained through betrayel, yet people shun it.

And we recently have found an new way to breed out rapists, by aborting their unborn spawns, but apparently god is pro rape or someting, all the preachers are against that.

What a strange conception. "god is pro rape or someting"...yes, 'or someting'. Strange as it may seem to you, Christians in general value the life of all people, no matter what race or age. In particular we see a need to defend those who are helpless. The child of a rapist is also a victim. And for that reason alone Christians teach that such children should not be aborted. For the mistakes of another, we do not consider the murder of a child a just recompense. Of course, the standard response may be to call that child just a tissue, or the mother's body, but nothing could be more absurd. Especially when one considers the fact that, even in the mother's womb, the child needs to set up defences because the mother's body naturally desires to reject the foreign body. And the child has it's own DNA. A unique, and valuable life, with a chance to lead a life completely different to that of the rapist who spawned it. Completely separate from the mother, relying on her for sustenance. Not an easy thing for a mother to look after, but it does not justify murder.

It is also true that so long as there are no selective pressures (such as when there are enough resources), there is no darwinist evolution.

That's a phase of evolution. Darwin figured that evolution occured slowly over very long periods of time, but since he was a scientists, not a prophet, his theory has evolved too. There is evidence that points to punctual evolution, where major changes occur rather quickly (geologically speaking, not X-Men fast) when some radical change in the environment makes selection much harsher. In the interim only the occasional minor change occurs, since the pressure to change is less. That would be the part where subtle changes and minor diversity is introduced in the gene pool.

Yes, and Gould's motivation for punctuated equillibrium was the fact that the fossil record does not support Darwinist evolution. As Gould said, it shows stasis (no change) and saltation (sudden appearance of creatures). So, I'm still waiting for proof of darwinist evolution. Biologists search for the method in biology on the assumption that darwinist evolution is justified elsewhere - such as the fossil record. But here there is no proof. Each field assumes that the next one has the proof.

if one creature had a feeling of greed to take more than it wanted, and killed for it, then that creature would be selected for. Thus darwinist evolution favours in this case something we consider immoral.

Yes, evolution occurs without a sense of morality. But taking more than you want is not a balanced trait, and chances are that the short-term advantage this (apparently genetic) trait would be outweighed by the long-term negative effect of such behaviour. Remember the story of the grasshoper and the ant? Selfish and short sighted behaviour works great when the conditions are