Posted on 04/02/2004 4:25:18 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Arlington, Va.—How land-living animals evolved from fish has long been a scientific puzzle. A key missing piece has been knowledge of how the fins of fish transformed into the arms and legs of our ancestors. In this week's issue of the journal Science, paleontologists Neil Shubin and Michael Coates from the University of Chicago and Ted Daeschler from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, describe a remarkable fossil that bridges the gap between fish and amphibian and provides a glimpse of the structure and function changes from fin to limb.
The fossil, a 365-million-year-old arm bone, or humerus, shares features with primitive fish fins but also has characteristics of a true limb bone. Discovered near a highway roadside in north-central Penn., the bone is the earliest of its kind from any limbed animal.
"It has long been understood that the first four-legged creatures on land arose from the lobed-finned fishes in the Devonian Period," said Rich Lane, director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) geology and paleontology program. "Through this work, we've learned that fish developed the ability to prop their bodies through modification of their fins, leading to the emergence of tetrapod limbs."
NSF, the independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, funded the research.
The bone's structure reveals an animal that had powerful forelimbs, with extensive areas for the attachment of muscles at the shoulder. "The size and extent of these muscles means that the humerus played a significant role in the support and movement of the animal," reported Shubin. "These muscles would have been important in propping the body up and pushing it off of the ground."
Interestingly, modern-day fish have smaller versions of the muscles. According to Coates, "When this humerus is compared to those of closely-related fish, it becomes clear that the ability to prop the body is more ancient than we previously thought. This means that many of the features we thought evolved to allow for life on land originally evolved in fish living in aquatic ecosystems."
The layered rock along the Clinton County, Penn., roadside were deposited by ancient stream systems that flowed during the Devonian Period, about 365 million years ago. Enclosed in the rocks is fossil evidence of an ecosystem teeming with plant and animal life. "We found a number of interesting fossils at the site," reported Daeschler, who uncovered the fossil in 1993. "But the significance of this specimen went unnoticed for several years because only a small portion of the bone was exposed and most of it lay encased in a brick-sized piece of red sandstone."
Not until three years ago, when Fred Mullison, the fossil preparator at the Academy of Natural Sciences, excavated the bone from the rock, did the importance of the new specimen become evident.
The work was also funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society.
Another classic! You are definitely on a roll here!
But I'm bailing for a little snapper almondine.
Have you seen this Simpson episode where Homer gets a seeing eye help monkey?
I pulled stomach muscles!!
Marge is upset and calls the monkey a filthy animal...as she pours a glass of juice.
Homer answers by saying ...."That Filthy monkey just made the Orange Juice your drinking"!!
The Monkey and Homer pig out..drink way too much beer.
The Monkey is lying on the floor in a diaper surrounded by beer cans.
Marge see's and starts to complain.
Homer says....."Leave him alone Marge..can't you see his cholesterol is over the top"!
Homer yeilds to Marges complaints..and drops the monkey back where he got him...
the owner comes out..the monkey keys in the computer..."Pray for Mojo"!
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.
That's all you've got?
The problem is that I could go to any academic library in America to the math section and however many books they have on probability and statistics, that's how much evidence I'd have AGAINST evolution. Every one of those books is a blanket refutation of evolution, from alpha to omega, from the front cover to the back cover. Page after page after page after page after......
I know, I'm just building on his foundation. :-)
Start here: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.
Follow a number of the more promising links from those pages, as well.
Then move on to: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ.
Then: Horse Evolution.
Then you may be ready for the *excellent* and detailed 43-page overview of: What does the mouse genome draft tell us about evolution?
Then in whatever order you think best for your own education:
Introduction to Evolutionary BiologyThat's just a *small* taste. And note that these are just essays *about* the evidence, not the vastly larger, more detailed mountains of *primary* literature (i.e. papers of scientific studies, experiments, vast catalogs of fossil specimens, gigabytes of DNA sequences, etc. etc. etc.)Evolution is a Fact and a Theory
Observed Instances of Speciation
Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics
Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution
The Age of the Earth: How do we know it?
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences
Evidence Supporting Biological Evolution
Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes
Alec's Evolution Pages with scientific evidence for evolution
Eomaia scansoria: discovery of oldest known placental mammal
Discovery of a Transitional in Romer's Gap
The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation"
THE THERAPSID--MAMMAL TRANSITIONAL SERIES
AMBULOCETUS AS A FOSSIL TRANSITIONAL
CETACEAN EVOLUTION (WHALES, DOLPHINS, PORPOISES): EVIDENCE OF COMMON ANCESTRY OF CETACEANS AND CERTAIN SPECIES OF LAND MAMMALS (Excellent article -- written by a former young-earth creationist!)
Ring Species and Clinal Variation: Nature's Way of Making New Species
Transitional Human Fossils: Six Million Years of Human Ancestry
The Evolution of Improved Fitness By Random Mutation Plus Selection
Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey
The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence
Evolution: Converging Lines of Evidence
Evolution Library: Evidence for Evolution
And here's a small sampling of my own modest posts on the subject:
Happy reading. Let me know when you've finished all those, and I'll provide you with more.Explanation of why shared endogenous retroviruses are extremely strong evidence for common descent
Specific comparison of a gene as found in humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans
Discussion of the evolution of the Krebs metabolic cycle
Support for the assertion that biologists overwhelmingly accept evolution
Information on the biochemical evolution of the blood-clotting mechanism
Evolution of the woodpecker's tongue, and the mammalian eye
A detailed list of 50+ transitional fossils marking the evolutionary path between fish and elephants
Rebuttal to misstatements about SJ Gould, and fossils answering several creationist challenges
Punctuated equilibrim is not a departure from Darwin's original theory
Two papers on assembly of proteins by means of non-protein means
Response to Behe's "Irreducible Complexity", and the Contingency argument
Musings on creationist probability calculations, and references to abiogenesis papers
Exposition on the Dodo (and its evolutionary history)
Overview of a paper on the evolution of army ants
On the Cambrian fauna and the rise of phyla
A ton of links to papers on genetic algorithms
Cladograms of dino-to-bird evolution
Details of Dawkins' "methinks it is like a weasel" evolutionary program
The original fish-to-elephant post, plus dino-to-bird details
Complete this sentence: "There are none so blind..."
The problem is that I could go to any academic library in America to the math section and however many books they have on probability and statistics, that's how much evidence I'd have AGAINST evolution. Every one of those books is a blanket refutation of evolution, from alpha to omega, from the front cover to the back cover. Page after page after page after page after......
I've read a great number of those books (far more than you have, I'll wager), and I didn't find anything in them that could reasonably be considered "a blanket refutation of evolution".
On the contrary, the mathematics of evolution works out very nicely whenever it's examined.
So rather than blustering, "the evidence against evolution is, um, over there in that big library somewhere, really!", why don't you actually present a piece of this "blanket refutation" you allege exists in those math books, so that at the very least we can determine whether you, with all due repect, have the slightest clue what you're talking about.
I await your mathematical disproof of evolution. Be sure to show your work, using additional pieces of paper if necessary. (Fair warning: I've read and analyzed all the usual creationist "mathematical disproofs" of evolution, and you're going to get shredded if you try to cut-and-paste one of them, because they're all deeply flawed and monumentally ignorant of the topic they're attempting to analyze).
Your move.
Such as for example:
So lets just cut the bull and get right to the point.
Random chaos or God ?
I choose God.
you choose random chaos.
Debate over , you lose.
Drop a pile of rocks on the ground. I'll bet you the mathematical formula that's required to describe the positions of the rocks will not be simple. (They won't line up in a nice neat row, evenly spaced, which would make for a simple equation.) Are there angels whose job it is to make sure they don't line up exactly?
OTOH, if you bring simple organic molecules together in certain ways and expose them to a hot bath rich in minerals such as iron sulfides & inorganic clays, more complex molecules form, and even link up into chains. Pretty cool, if you ask me!
2. The simplest way to demonstrate statistical probability is to flip a coin. Heads or Tails ? only problem is it takes someone to flip the coin.
Unless an earthquake shakes the table & the coin drops to the ground. So?
Look - utterly complex weather systems get created every day on Earth. They're so complex, it takes supercomputers to describe them! So are there angels whose job... ?
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