300 Million Year Old Fossil Fish Likely Had Color Vision

westlake writes Nature is reporting the discovery of mineralized rods and cones in a 300-million-year-old fossil fish found in Kansas. The soft tissues of the eye and brain decay rapidly after death, within 64 days and 11 days, respectively, and are almost never preserved in the fossil record — making this the first discovery of fossil rods and cones in general and the first evidence for color vision in a fossilized vertebrate eye.

Comments

Almost all scientific results...

[uncqual]

...refute ID or any notion of a god (or, to avoid offense, God).

It's really hard to find a recent (last 40 years) validated scientific result that validates, rather than debases, long held religious beliefs.

Decades ago "factory religions" (i.e., the smart ones, faced with irrefutable evidence, decided to abandon their beliefs and retrench in a new fantasy) abandoned the notion that God (who?) created everything in seven days.

The ignorant and unscientific still cling to "Intelligent Designer" fantasies just as the Taliban (ISIS et al) do to their irrational beliefs. Eventually, all of these will crumble under the advance of logic and reason and the sheer weight of evidence.

Humans, for good ecological reasons, seem to want to create a "supreme being". Even as recently as the Dark Ages, this was probably helpful. When all looks bleak, 1000 civilizations that give up because logic dictates that are are going to fail will fail. One of the 1000 that have the "God Gene" and persevere against all logic may survive and propagate their sperm.

We are all likely offspring of that flawed logic and it is our duty to crush support of that logic just as we, much more recently, reversed our opinions on slavery (i.e., anyone you can beat into submission is now your property).