Posted on 10/21/2006 8:10:12 PM PDT by Jeff Gordon
A 380 million-year-old fossil found in Australia has filled a gap in the understanding of how fish evolved into the first land animals.
John Long, lead researcher at Museum Victoria, said the perfectly preserved skeleton has revealed that fish developed features characteristic of land animals much earlier than once thought.
Long said: "We've got a fish from the Devonian period about 380 million years ago and preserved in three-dimensional stunning perfection.
"It has revealed a whole suite of characters that link it to the higher land animals or tetrapods, so it's filling in a blank in evolution we didn't know about before."
Head holes
The fossil of the Gogonasus fish, found in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, at a site of a former major coral reef, shows the skull had large holes for breathing through the top of the head.
The researchers said it also had muscular front fins with a well-formed humerus, ulna and radius, the same bones found in the human arm.
Long said: "The degree to which these features resemble the earliest four-legged land animals makes Gogonasus a new model in the picture of how fishes evolved into land animals.
"Gogonasus is the missing clue in vertebrate evolution, the world's first complete perfect skeleton of the kinds of fishes that gave rise to the first land animals.
"The transition from a fish living in water to an air-breathing land animal with arms and legs was one of the most dramatic transitions in the history of evolution and many unsolved questions remained."
Earlier this year, scientists reported the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, a 375 million-year-old species of fish seen as the missing link in the shift from water to land animals.
While Tiktaalik had a skull that was identical to an amphibian, Long said Gogonasus looks much more like a fish.
He said: "I like to say it's a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's showing that evolution isn't as straightforward as we'd like to think."
The fossil was unveiled at the Melbourne Museum on Thursday and will remain on display for a month.
There are?
For real?
I can see you must be a very educated person!
Belief gets in the way of learning.Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973
Or did you have something else in mind?
LOL
GREAT SCOTT!
LOL
Sure it does. I graduated first in my college class with a 4.0 GPA.
And this was AFTER my conversion to Christianity and turning away from evolution.
Evolutionists and atheists aren't the only people capable of learning anything.
Nobody said you were stupid. You just believe things that are not so, which prevents you from looking at science with an open mind. Let me guess, your degree was in Italian Literature...?
And now it frantically pounds out messages on FR with women's underwear on it head.
What college and major?
Belief certainly doesn't need to get in the way of learning, but it can get in the way of accurate conclusions. Of course, it's impossible to totally exclude belief of any sort, so all conclusions will invariably be influenced by some bias.
380 million years, ooooookaaaay...so does it have a sister?
Grandpa.....grandpa....is that you?
Actually it was Applied Science, Electronics Technology. A lot of Math, Physics etc.
I would say my beliefs actually helped me grasp the sciences better.
Seriously, I was once a dedicated evolutionists...but it seems totally stupid to me now. And I feel like it makes fools of some of the most educated and intelligent people around.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973
Sure it does. I graduated first in my college class with a 4.0 GPA.
And this was AFTER my conversion to Christianity and turning away from evolution.
Evolutionists and atheists aren't the only people capable of learning anything.
Read the posts again. You said that " I don't believe it validates evolution anyway."
Not, there is evidence that this is not so. Not, the evidence argues against it. You said you don't believe it.
Your ability to learn about this fossil, and the hundreds of other discoveries made each year, is precluded by your prior belief.
GPA is nice, but by your own admission you have closed your mind to the discoveries of science which do not fit with your belief system.
That's pretty sad. It must be tough to read the newspaper in the morning knowing that there might be some new discovery you will have to wave away on the basis of your prior belief.
There are fish that can go onto land today. That does not make those fish the ancestors of land animals. So this fossil has bones in its front fins similar to human arm bones. Could that be because the fish actually could go on or very close to land and would have use for fins that could support its weight out of water?
In many cases, hypothetical missing links (such as feathered reptiles) would have been weeded out by natural selection unless their oddness conferred upon them usefulness. A reptile with feathers who couldn't fly (or who could fly but the feathers would not make it easier)would use up energy making feathers--energy which could be used for other things. Also, it would be a freak, so unless it could get lots of food, was very fast, etc. how would it have children?
Macroevolution ping.
Lots of loaded keywords, on both sides.
Nonsense. Muslims have plenty of Macroevolutionists, though--as with Christianity--they shouldn't. Good try in attempting to link Creationists and Islamo-fascism, though.
I have no problem with any true scientific discoveries.
I do have problems with the conclusions some try to draw from them.
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