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Human Limbs Evolved From Shark Fins Thanks To Sonic Hedgehog Gene (mirror.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the how-it-all-began dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report at Mirror: Scientists believe human limbs evolved from the gills of sharks -- thanks to a gene named after Sonic the Hedgehog. The discovery comes from analysis of skate, a cartilaginous fish which has much in common with sharks. Limbs, like gills, grow thanks to a vital protein known as the 'Sonic hedgehog gene' -- named after the video game character. The new discovery backs up a theory suggested 138 years ago that legs and arms evolved from prehistoric fish gills. Gizmodo has more details on this.

5 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Bony fish did not evolve from sharks by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bony fish and their decedents, including tetrapods, did not evolve from sharks, but a common ancestor of both.

    1. Re:Bony fish did not evolve from sharks by Tough+Love · · Score: 5, Informative

      "evolved from SHARK fins" is a journalistic invention from mirror.co and is not the fault of the cited article, which says "evolved from the transformation of gill arches in early fish", clearly including common ancestors. It is perfectly plausible that the same gene may have descended in recognizable form down these not very widely separated branches of the evolutionary tree, that is certainly true of many other genes. What other means do we have to learn something about genes of the vanished common parent, other than studying the similarities and differences of current expression and function of recognizable descendents in dissimilar species?

      Anyway, the research is about gills, not fins, so that is another journalistic crime from mirror.co. It would have been more honest to run a headline along the lines that shark gills and human hands are essentially the same, but then would anybody read it?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:Bony fish did not evolve from sharks by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's because it's sonic hedgehog, not sonic THE hedgehog.

      Many references:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. Title doesn't reflect article by Big_Oh · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA: from gills, not from fins.

  3. Bad summary by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    A very bad summary. That's what they get for using the Daily Mirror as if anything they published were actually science journalism.

    The proposed evolution is from gills, not from fins. And even here, it's the gill arch: not the gills, but the cartilage supporting the gills

    Sharks have nothing to do with it-- the fish in question are skates, not sharks, and even here, they aren't proposing that limbs evolved from skate gill arches, but from the gill arches of proto-fishes who were ancestral to both.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com