Category Archives: Evolution

Scientists Call Fish Fossil the ‘Missing Link’

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Scientists Call Fish Fossil the 'Missing Link':

Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375 million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
In addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils are widely seen by scientists as a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who hold a literal biblical view on the origins and development of life.
Several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish were uncovered in sediments of former stream beds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole, it is being reported on Thursday in the journal Nature. The skeletons have the fins and scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long…
…The discovering scientists called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish."…
…Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go in an interview. "It's a really amazing remarkable intermediate fossil — it's like, holy cow," he enthused…

[how about holy mackerell!]

…In a statement by the Science Museum of London, where casts of the fossils will be on view, Dr. Clack said the fish "confirms everything we thought and also tells us about the order in which certain changes were made."
…While Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in the United States, other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the creationists' argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind.
One creationist Web site (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind."
Dr. Novacek responded in an interview: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"

uh, nothing
Tiktaalik art above via Pharyngula

Science vs. Scientism

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There has been an excellent debate on Science & Intelligent design going on at a conservative web site, The Corner on National Review Online (scroll down a bit if you hit this link).  John Derbyshire, resident curmudgeon at NRO takes up the pro-science cudgel.  One example:

"To a great many people, Darwin is a bogey-man, a sort
of anti-Christ figure.  I suspect that millions of American children
are tucked up in bed at night with the warning that if they are not
good, the Darwin monster will come and eat them up.
To working scientists, this is nuts.  Darwin was a great observer of
nature who established a neat theory that explains lots of stuff, and
which, in 150 years of inquiry, no new observations–zero, zip, zilch,
nada, none–have contradicted.   That’s all.  Possibly some
observation will be made tomorrow that contradicts it–an intact bird
skeleton in precambrian rocks, for instance.  Then we’ll need a
revised theory, as we did in physics 100 years ago when Newtonism
showed cracks.  The scientist who develops that revised theory will
then be world-famous, and will enjoy wealth and prestige beyond the
dreams of avarice.  He will not be burned at the stake by enraged
Darwinians, any more than Einstein was by enraged Newtonians.  Lots of
ambitious young biologists would l–o–v–e to be that guy.  None of
them would describe himself as doing his daily research work ‘in the
name of Darwin.’
But scientific thinking–dispassionate observation, measurement,
experimentation, and hypothesis-forming–is deeply unnatural for human
beings, and a great many people–most, I sometimes think–will just
never get it, in fact will react violently against it, at any rate
when it is applied to living creatures.  To most people, all abstract
thought is really religion, or ought to be.  If it doesn’t behave like
religion, if a theory’s proponents don’t behave like evangelists and
theologians, people get mad with them.  That is part of human nature,
according to Paul Bloom, and I think he’s right; but you can’t build
bridges or design drugs by thinking like that, and you can’t enlarge
your understanding of the natural world, either–no matter how many
philosophers, theologians, novelists, and historians you hire."