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.
The same odds your name is not VaderRetro but something else.. You just appear to be VadeRetro..
In the beginning man created God to help him understand and control the world around him. Then as mans true understanding and power grew his need for God diminished. The ancient Gods have served their purpose, let them die.
The purpose of life is the search for understanding and truth. Don't let a crutch stop you from walking.
Much like your vapid vitriol.
Love that quote! Thanks for the ping!
You must not have been a very good evolutionist. At least I've got a lifetime of church attendance, almost ten years of education in Christian schools (grade school->junior high and college with Bible minor), and hundreds of hours in various ministries to point to as my qualifications as a good borderline-fundamentalist ex-Christian. As an evolutionist you have--what was it you said, "I got an A in biology"?
It's a certainty that my real name isn't my screenie. If creationist calculations of individual molecules jumping together to make even a simple cell mean anything--and my use of them here might be the only legitimate use of them--it's that nothing is likely to make a man out of dust in one afternoon. The creationist "Were you there?" argument also reduces confidence in this one. Then there's the creationist "Why don't we see this happening now?" argument.
I'd have to say the odds must be about zero.
People of integrity who want to commumnicate clearly and avoid the fallacy/sin of equivocation.
It's your list. It carries no weight, no authority. The spam is posted and reposted, when the evos are called on it, they say, "dispute the list."
Well, why should anyone bother?
We have dictionaries that say "Websters" and "American Heritage" and "Oxford English"--what do we need with a dictionary written by DC?
Apparently there's no point in trying to agree on a definition of terms. When you define the terms you are using as they are used in scientific discussions, so everyone knows what you are saying, it's called spam. Conversely, the anti-evolution anti-science crowd just use whatever definitions they want without telling anyone what they are, or make up their own definitions.
"It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything."-G.K. Chesterton
If we agree about what sense words are being used in, we may avoid the fallacy/sin of equivocation.
Mamzelle: It's your list. It carries no weight, no authority. The spam is posted and reposted, when the evos are called on it, they say, "dispute the list."
What definitions do you think are incorrect? Why?
Mamzelle: Well, why should anyone bother?
To avoid the fallacy/sin of equivocation.
Mamzelle: We have dictionaries that say "Websters" and "American Heritage" and "Oxford English"--what do we need with a dictionary written by DC?
Because the dictionaries give every attested use of a word, whereas a specialized area like biology may use only one of them.
We aren't discussing theology, we're trying to discuss science. It is important that the terms be explicitly defined and agreed upon.
That is, if we're people of integrity who want to commumnicate clearly and avoid the fallacy/sin of equivocation.
The first thing you do with a a control freak is to refuse to let him control anything. This relentless spamming is the behavior of a controlling personality--post something thousands of times, maybe someone will even care? The Voice Spamming in the Wilderness. Isn't that what you have your own forum for?
Not only would it be foolish to accept The List From Nowhere, it's foolish to even take it seriously enough to read, much less dispute. It's just endless spam from obsessives from another forum.
That and the fact that a cute baby chimp grows up to be a very strong and destructive adult chimp. (They're kinda like people in that regard)...
Its not a "List from Nowhere:" it was developed in large part from this thread.
You can go back and read the thread and see how the terms were discussed and improved. You can even contribute your preferred definitions on that thread for discussion and possible inclusion in the definitions list.
Or you can just be a scold.
I'm just taking the opportunity to point out the way evos behave, and the way they say others should behave. And posting the same linked list hundreds of times on FR is an abuse of the forum.
Almost all the chimps shown in movies and TV are just babies. The grownups are too big to be really cute. They're also stronger than Samson and don't feel like they have to do just what they're told just when.
Looks more like a turtle.
They cross between swimming and land travel, except for the ones caught on the roads.
Well, yeah, that too. :-)
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