Missing Link Fossil Discovered

choongiri writes "The Guardian is reporting the discovery of a missing link of evolution. From the article: "Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.""

Comments

It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Can we please stop using this "missing link" terminology? It's one of those terms often bandied about by creationists, but it has very little meaning in science. And anyway, everytime we find another transitional fossil the creationists are just going to point to the two gaps on either side of the new transitional and say, "Now there's two missing links! Nyah nyah nyah!" They already don't believe evolution is possible anyway.

Now as for this find, there's something very important here that the writeup isn't covering. The scientists used their theory to not only predict the existence of such a transitional species, but also where, geologically, it would be located. And guess what - they found what they were looking for exactly where they were looking for it! Talk about predictive power! The predictive power of the theory of evolution is one of its many strengths, and one often overlooked by science-deniers.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[c_forq]

It's like having a 1970 VW Beetle and a 2006 VW Beetle then saying "look, this 1990 VM Beetle is the missing link" then someone else coming and saying "No, this 1980 VW Beetle is the missing link"

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[arrrrg]

2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?

Well, putting the loaded word "decide" aside, the obvious answer is that land represented a huge unexploited ecological niche, with tons of food and no predators.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Tatarize]

I don't even like the term transitional form. It seems to imply that there is a set goal of evolution, that the species is making the transition from this form to that form. In reality, going all the way back to our earliest ancestors you won't find a parent which was a different species than its offspring (some very special cases exist though, but typically never). Everything is a transitional form, from what its ancestors were to what its progeny will become.

The organism 1.39390 isn't really making the transition from 1.39389 to 1.39391. It's just there.

If anything is, I am a transitional form between apes and super-humans.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[killjoe]

"What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?"

To paraphrase Stephen Hawkings "that's like asking what's north of the north pole". It's also like asking "who created god?".

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Camel Pilot]

i think a Dawkins quote applies here "'Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principals and they work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications such as the dummy planes of the Cargo cults in jungle clearings or the bees-waxed wings of Icaraus don't.'"

There parent post was talking about reality - you are talking about subjective truth relative systems that don't equate.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[kmcrober]

Sweet Zombie Jesus, you have to be kidding. ID is BS. Period. An educated and honest human being has no excuse for pandering to such an invidiously ignorant ideology. A quick reply to your frankly ridiculous bullet points:

1. Evolution is a biological phenomenon. It has no answer for this question, because this question is not relevant to the evolution of species. Inasmuch as you are indicting all of objective science, I'll simply note that ID has no better answer than consensus physics. "Jesus did it" (or Unnameddesignerwhowewon'tcallGodeventhoughweallkno wthat'swhowe'retalkingabout) is not a testable or falsifiable answer, and is a statement of faith rather than a scientific hypothesis.

2. Sea creatures did not "decide" to become amphibious. Evolution is not a directed process in which species consider their options and choose one. Nor do species evolve "towards" a higher form. That sort of teleology is, again, not a scientific hypothesis. This question is particularly egregious; even a primary school education should have taught you that creatures don't "decide" on how to evolve. I'll charitably assume that you mean, "How did aquatic species become amphibious and then terrestrial species?" The answer is complicated, because science is hard. Read a book. Preferably one by a real scientist, or at least someone with a biology degree. The shortest and easiest (and therefore oversimplified) version is that organisms capable of thriving in more and more marginal environments reproduced more successfully, preserving and spreading their inheritable successful traits.

3. Again, this question betrays remarkable ignorance. Darwin proposed an evolutionary chain for the development of the eye well over a century ago, and evolutionary biology has demonstrated that the eye evolved early and often. (There's a pithy quote to that effect, but I can't recall to whom it should be attributed.) Even basic light-sensitive skin cells can confer an advantage, and the development of those cells into complex lens-bearing eyes is hardly the deep and overpowering mystery that hacks like Behe would like credulous fools to believe that it is. Again, please read a book by someone who *isn't* a creationist. You will be amazed how much there is to learn.

Obviously, I am very contemptuous of your ignorance. But it's more than just that--what is so aggravating to me is the classic creationist arrogance. You assume that your questions are great traps to confound scientists and educated people, when in fact they are literally so foolish that a child could answer them. Do you really think that you know better than specialists who have spent their entire adult lives studying the field? Do you really think that they will be unable to answer your questions? Why haven't you learned the answers to those questions by now yourself? I suspect that the problem may be that you're getting your information from biased sources, such as ID blogs. Someone has badly misled you. But as impoverished as your understanding of the issue is, I'm even more disappointed by the moderators who rated your questions as "interesting." Honestly, the exposure of such rank ignorance on a site geared towards highly educated and presumably intelligent people is disillusioning.

I need a drink. You need a book. Let's hope we both get what we need.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[x2A]

If you think "what caused the big bang" is such a brilliant question to prove the existance of a god, try this one: what created god?

If you think that everything must have been created, then you can't believe in a god that wasn't created. If, on the other hand, you believe that god can get away without being created, then how can you believe that the big bang can't?

It's these inconsistancies that leave the sane world laughing at you.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[binarybum]

Taking into account the fact that even mentally or physically disabled humans still reproduce
        We are far from the only species that do this.

If for some reason the environment gradually changes so that only a fraction of humans can survive, by that time we will all, either by genetics or other technology, be able to survive. That's not good in my opinion since we are already overpopulated in several areas, but I can see it happening

      This faith in technology seems unfounded. It's the year 2006, we should have been vacationing on the moon for at least the last five years. Instead, we could nuke the surface of every continent by noon tomorrow, but meanwhile millions of people on this planet are still dying of things like diarrhea.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[mcc]

1. What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?

I'm sorry, what does this have to do with evolution versus intelligent design?

Though the big bang cosmology theory has nothing to do with biology, I would agree that Science in general probably doesn't at current have an answer to what caused the big bang. I've seen a few tentative attempts to answer that question, but I don't think there's a consensus. The thing is though, this doesn't exactly matter. We don't take the big bang seriously because we know or care where big bangs come from; we take it seriously because we observe it's what seems to have happened. Nobody particularly wants the big bang theory to be true. Nobody has a particularly vested philosophical interest in the universe being an explosion. We do, however, have rather a decent lot of evidence concerning the exact way that the universe formed, gathered from looking at the aftermath (i.e.: the universe). That evidence has come to suggest what is called the big bang theory. If this is messy, or strange, or we can't come up with a good explanation as to what caused the cause behind that big bang, there really isn't anything we can do about this. Unlike religion, science doesn't get to decide what happened. Science is forced to go whereever the facts the universe contains takes it. And whether we want them to or not, those facts point at this.

But of course our inability to explain the Big Bang is quite separate from the status of other theories-- for example, the theory of Evolution-- in which we understand not only what happened, but the mechanism, reasons, and context that brought the thing that happened about.

2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?

Oh, that's easy; there was food up there. Plants have been on land since at least 475 million years ago. Creatures have been permanently stationed up there since at least 425 million years ago. It's entirely unreasonable to say those millipedes "decided" to get up on land; this is undue anthropomorphization. The change to settle on land was made possible by mutation, which was a random act not guided by any conscious decision making process. It also seems unlikely to me that the first creatures to leave the ocean had any kind of purposeful goal, since I doubt they had enough sensory equipment to tell what the heck they were even doing.

More likely the very first time it happened, it went like this: something that could eat algae was crawling along a rock eating algae. This rock happened to be partially in, and partially out of, the ocean. The thing kept crawling along the rock, eating algae, and eventually it reached the interface between the ocean and the atmosphere, and it kept on crawling, and kept on eating algae. Why not? Of course, it may well have died very shortly after that, depending on whether and how long it could survive in the atmosphere. But: if there's all these algae and plants out in the dry world, and nobody's out there eating them or their dead, well heck, free food and no competition. This creates what we think of (it's a metaphor of sorts) as "evolutionary pressure", kind of like how, if we lived in a world where canned food was common but there weren't any can openers, the process of capitalism would create a tremendous metaphorical pressure for somebody to invent and start selling some.

Now let's say there's not just one thingy that eats algae and one rock where the algae is growing out in the atmosphere. Let's say there's lots and lots of thingies and lots and lots of rocks. The earth is pretty big. If, by coincidence, one of the thingies somewhere on the earth eventually winds up with some genes that, in its little gastropod nervous system, make it feel like it's a really good idea to

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[dajak]

I don't even like the term transitional form. It seems to imply that there is a set goal of evolution, that the species is making the transition from this form to that form.

Evolution is not teleological, but the search for fossils by scientists guided by the theory of evolution is. History depends on retrodiction to prove the validity of theories, and retrodiction always uses this teleological perspective. As science understands evolution better it is able to predict the existence of more 'missing links', and if most fossils that scientists find are either known or classifiable as a 'missing link' between known species this is very strong evidence for the validity of the theory of evolution.

The same is true for history in general: the big story creates 'missing links' to search for. Which culture(s) is/are the original source(s) of the Indogermanic languages? Why are there no texts about Jesus that bridge the time of Jesus and the second century? Why are there no records of the early Islamic state in Medina, even though the town has been unharmed and inhabited by Muslims since the days of Mohammed?

Creationists abuse this teleological terminology to their own ends to misrepresent the status of evolution as a scientific theory, just like they misrepresent the meaning of theory itself (as in 'it is just a theory'). They can get away with it because too many people don't understand scientific method. Scientists should resist the temptation to let ID influence scientific method and terminology, because doing so will only seem to validate the credibility of the Intelligent Design lobby.

Please, don't use "missing link".

[Black Parrot]

The fossil record is (and always will be) full of holes for the simple reason that not everything gets preserved (and some environments make preservation extremely unlikely), and there's no "magic fossil" that's needed in order to make the big puzzle fall together.

For the most part, the big puzzle is already together. Yeah, there are lots of areas where we'd like to have more detail, but "missing link" implies that we're looking for some sort of Holy Grail, and are in a jam without it.

That simply ain't the way it is.

The thing most interesting to me about this

[mcc]

This was a predicted, sought find. This wasn't just like, some people found a fossil and was like "wow! this fills the gap in a missing link between reptiles and fish!". They set out to find something like this, targeted the most likely places in which to find it, and actually found what they were looking for. A quote of a Ahlberg and Clack article from the Pharyngula blog (lots of information there):

First, it demonstrates the predictive capacity of palaeontology. The Nunavut field project had the express aim of finding an intermediate between Panderichthys and tetrapods, by searching in sediments from the most probable environment (rivers) and time (early Late Devonian). Second, Tiktaalik adds enormously to our understanding of the fish-tetrapod transition because of its position on the tree and the combination of characters it displays.

I think that's just neat.

Re: Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[Black Parrot]

> I can hear the naturalists clacking away at their keyboards in glee with the "smoking gun" that evolution has finally been "proven" and that the creationists will have to sit in stunned silence under the weight of the evidence finally presented.

To the extent that anything is ever "proven" in the natural sciences, evolution was "proven" well over 100 years ago.

And of course, nobody expects creationists to sit in stunned (or any other kind of) silence, regardless of what evidence is presented.

> Let's not oversimplify this discussion. Thoughtful, intelligent people on both sides of this debate have passion, and conviction.

Yes, but one side has facts and a theory, whereas the other has a well-funded propaganda machine and a lot of self-appointed spiritual advisors telling the ignorant masses that they'll be tortured for all eternity if they let the facts affect their conclusions.

> As a creationist, I welcome advances in knowledge that arise from investigation of the physical realm. I respect men (and women) of science, and applaud this new discovery - but that changes not my conviction that a creator made the planet as it is.

To paraphrase the old saying, facts won't dissuade anyone from a position that isn't built on facts to begin with.

> There are enough complexities and challenges with the idea of evolution as a means of speciation that one more discovery does not put a nail in the coffin of creationism.

Except as a religious/social/political issue, creatinism was nailed back in the nineteenth century.

> I'm not looking to start a debate on this issue, but I am hoping to raise the level of discussion by respectfully asking those who would use this occasion to ridicule people with whom they disagree to please refrain. This is a complex issue and cheap shots are not productive. I will refrain from ridicule as well. Deal?

For my money, people who express ridiculous views are entitled to all the ridicule they reap. (Unless they're insane, in which case we should show a little sympathy for their plight.)

If you would care to identify any of the creationism evangelists who are insane, it would help things alone.

Re:Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[aussie_a]

There are enough complexities and challenges with the idea of evolution as a means of speciation that one more discovery does not put a nail in the coffin of creationism.

Actually, it is impossible for any nails to be placed in the coffin of creationism, because it isn't a theory that is able to be proven or disproven. However creationist proponents have placed creationism in opposition to evolution, so this can place a nail in the coffin of that use of creationism.

Oh, and creationists who claim that evolution and creationism have equal evidence backing up each theory (or even better, that there is more evidence to back up creationism then there is to back up evolution) ARE idiots. I'm always happy to hear evidence that helps prove creationism, but I've yet to actually see any. I've seen logical thoughts (as in "but how could it have happened? it's all so complex" although they do rely on premises that can be neither proven nor disproven themselves), but no direct real evidence (for instance, evolution was just a thought, a theory, until fossil records were discovered that helped prove it).

Respectfully
aussie_a

Re: Too many gaps

[Black Parrot]

> If evolution, as they say, takes so long, there WOULD be fossils that we COULD conclusively show are directly linked to other species - without missing links - and they would be found just as easily as dinosaur fossils are.

What makes you think that?

What is the probability that an organism will become fossilized, survive erosion and other hazards for millions of years, and then actually be found by someone? I.e., how good a sample do you think the fossil record is.

How easy would it be for you to find your own ancestors' bones going back 100 generations? Or just 10. What do you conclude from any gaps in that record?

Re:Can we stop with the stupid comments?

[scapermoya]

Stupid comments? The MS bashers do what they do in all seriousness, my comment was a joke.
I don't know of many real scientists that believe that there is actually a debate, they know religion and science are completely seperate issues. However, when Christians inject their beliefs into public education systems that serve everyone's children, thats where the "at odds" comes in. I don't know what you mean by evolution on the "cosmic level", but there is absolutely no debate when it comes to evolution being the means by which each species arose from those before it. If you are one of those people that buys into the "it's only a theory!!!1111", then you arent a scientist. Science is a whole lot of "theories", but theories in a scientific sense are not the same as theories in a conventional layman sense. If evolution was a "hypothesis", then there would be room to argue, but in science if something is a theory, there is a lot of evidence to support it.
Anyone who takes any part of the Bible or any other religious text, especially those written before, oh lets say soap, was invented, has no place in science and especially no place in public educational policy. If you want your kid taught that the Earth is 6,000 years old, Noah put T. Rex on his ark, and that people who carbon date fossils have an agenda, there are plenty of private schools for you.

Re:Can we stop with the stupid comments?

[2short]

"Evolution on a cosmic level has never been observed and it's not much more than an educated guess"

Horseshit. It's a well constructed theory supported by vast mountains of evidence. It is the foundation of the entire science of biology. Every biologist in modern times has spent their career testing it, and found it solid. If it's an "educated guess" then plate tectonics is a wild shot in the dark.

Re:Some Logic Errors....

[mrpeebles]

The sad and simple truth is that you have to take it on faith that "this must have happened" to truly make the evolution theory work. That's fine, and that's ok... but it's not scientifically sound.

I think that all modern science, and probably all science through history as well, has to make assumptions for the sort "this must have happened." Science has an element of circular thinking in it. Evolutionary theory is nothing special in that regard.