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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.""
If I could MOD you up, I would!
Yep - there's no such think as a missing link. There might have been in the past, but morphological properties allow us to make the connections without having to see all the transitional forms in between. As parent noted: Ambulocetus was predicted by evolution, and then it was found pretty much oin the form predicted, with the bony structures of the inner ear as predicted, in the geological strata at the date predicted - so there's nothing new about evolution proving its own efficacy.
It might be exciting for scientists to actually discover a predicted fossil (well, of course it is!) but us mere mortals don't need to see it to know the truth: we have seen mud skippers on mud flats. We have seen an eel a kilometre from water in the middle of a field, wriggling to the next waterway. We've learned that Inter-tidal zone animals are extremely tough, and can survive long periods of exposure to the extremely hard environment of "air".
So this isn't exactly surprising.
What IS surprising, is that there is no image - not even the obligatory 100-pixel-across thumbnail, which links to a lame-ass 200-pixel-across "Large Picture". I am very interested in seeing this thing - so where the bloody hell is it?
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
> 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 similar thing can be seen on a NOVA episode that they air now and then, where a palentologist used existing fossils in the sequence of whale ancestry to estimate the date of an intermediate form, consulted geologists re where to find exposed land that was the bottom of a shallow sea at that date, visited the site (now a desert) recommended by the geologists, and found vertebrae for the predicted species lying exposed in the sand. Excavations uncovered more complete specimins showing the predicted features of "nose" and legs.
> I think that's just neat.
Way neat.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Actually eating spaghetti and noodles in general is approved, sort of like going to communion.
Touched By His Noodley Appendage.
1. What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?
Time was created during the Big Bang so "before" is meaningless. There is no "before" or "after" or "cause" and "effect" if there is no Time.
Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.
2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?
They didn't "decide" to do anything. They were compelled by nature to seek land: to lay eggs, to find food, to mate safely.
3. Get them to explain the evolutionary path that lead to creatures having sight.
Here goes: an eye spot that detects light and dark develops into a pit eye, which enables the creature to detect direction. This develops into a Pinhole Eye. This develops a protective layer. The layer develops fluid. Fluid turns into a protein lens. Cornea and Iris separate. Organism is perfected into what we have now. Totally simplified of course but good enough for slashdot!
Also not speaking for the parent poster, but I'd just like to make a couple of comments from a theological point of view.
First off, evolution actually fits better with Christian theology than young-earth creation, because it depicts "creation" as an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. It places God in history rather than outside it, which is one of the themes that you'll find running through the Bible.
Secondly, various biblical verses claim that humans are "made in God's image", or words to that effect. This has caused a lot of theological discussion over the years, such as the way that God has been depicted in art. Should God be represented as a grey-haired old man in the sky? "God is spirit" (see John 4:24), after all.
Well if God has no body, it makes more sense to say that the part that when we say "made in God's image", we're not talking about our bodies, which we understand to be evolved animal bodies, but rather the "spirit" part.
This looks like intellectual wankery, much like counting pin-head-dancing angels, and you'd be partly right. But for people who care about this sort of thing, evolutionary theory actually answers a number of long-standing theological problems, and the answers turn out to be much simpler than anyone thought.
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Also they could have just been forced. As other pointed out, you can imagine creatures being forced into shallow waters by waves. There they evolve in very shallow water (i'm thinking like a few centimeters). You can imagine creatures that were able to survive seasons where the pool dries up, and from there creatures that move from one pool of water to another. (Someone else pointed out that we know eels can travel large distances across land to move to more water.)
Just by thinking it's not that hard to come up with a plausible suggestions on why slowly such an advantage would be gained.
I had some thoughts along these lines a while back: that by insisting on Biblical inerrancy, the fundamentalists are guilty of idolatry, and that by ignoring evolution they're missing one of God's finest works.
Ah, here it is:
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but I'd like to reply to your post. The views expressed are mine, and may not conform to any predefined set of views.
The reason that I favor evolution to creationism is that it demands explanation. My understanding of creationism (admittedly very basic, but unbiased)-- and indeed, most religious perspectives-- is that there is no answer to be found. A higher power did whatever it did, and we can never know its nature, so let's just accept it. This is not the attitude that has brought forth all the technological advancement over the span of human history. Why would a higher power "create" us with such a disposition for logic, and then expect us to deny it?
Evolution keeps us looking for that "missing link", to further solidify the theory with each new example. It isn't satisfied to say, "well, life originated in water, and moved to land, and now here we are"; it constantly refines itself, seeks new possibilities, and attempts to prove or disprove those possibilities.
and wondering how that is actually going to cause a new species, rather than just a more specialised version within the same species
You should extend that idea over a few thousand or million iterations, and see what you end up with. Most evolution is attributed to mutations, so a drastic change may have occured in one generation, or in 500... a stray group of cells (a prehistoric cancer of sorts) may have had the ability to process air and extract oxygen, and eventually beget a set of lungs for the creature. The creatures emerge from water, and those with larger fins survive, as they have greater motility and can eat more food. Those fins gain strength, and can eventually propel them forward consistently, eventually begetting legs. And so on, and so on...
I concede that evolution may not be correct. Perhaps a creator just created everything to look like it could have evolved from other things. But given our species' great capacity for reason, our defining characteristic, doesn't it seem more logical to follow the path of evidence, rather than of belief?
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