Missing Link Fossil Discovered

choongiri writes "The Guardian is reporting the discovery of a missing link of evolution. From the article: "Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.""

It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Can we please stop using this "missing link" terminology? It's one of those terms often bandied about by creationists, but it has very little meaning in science. And anyway, everytime we find another transitional fossil the creationists are just going to point to the two gaps on either side of the new transitional and say, "Now there's two missing links! Nyah nyah nyah!" They already don't believe evolution is possible anyway.

Now as for this find, there's something very important here that the writeup isn't covering. The scientists used their theory to not only predict the existence of such a transitional species, but also where, geologically, it would be located. And guess what - they found what they were looking for exactly where they were looking for it! Talk about predictive power! The predictive power of the theory of evolution is one of its many strengths, and one often overlooked by science-deniers.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[M0b1u5]

If I could MOD you up, I would!

Yep - there's no such think as a missing link. There might have been in the past, but morphological properties allow us to make the connections without having to see all the transitional forms in between. As parent noted: Ambulocetus was predicted by evolution, and then it was found pretty much oin the form predicted, with the bony structures of the inner ear as predicted, in the geological strata at the date predicted - so there's nothing new about evolution proving its own efficacy.

It might be exciting for scientists to actually discover a predicted fossil (well, of course it is!) but us mere mortals don't need to see it to know the truth: we have seen mud skippers on mud flats. We have seen an eel a kilometre from water in the middle of a field, wriggling to the next waterway. We've learned that Inter-tidal zone animals are extremely tough, and can survive long periods of exposure to the extremely hard environment of "air".

So this isn't exactly surprising.

What IS surprising, is that there is no image - not even the obligatory 100-pixel-across thumbnail, which links to a lame-ass 200-pixel-across "Large Picture". I am very interested in seeing this thing - so where the bloody hell is it?

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Tatarize]

I don't even like the term transitional form. It seems to imply that there is a set goal of evolution, that the species is making the transition from this form to that form. In reality, going all the way back to our earliest ancestors you won't find a parent which was a different species than its offspring (some very special cases exist though, but typically never). Everything is a transitional form, from what its ancestors were to what its progeny will become.

The organism 1.39390 isn't really making the transition from 1.39389 to 1.39391. It's just there.

If anything is, I am a transitional form between apes and super-humans.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[x2A]

um, no... if you read what he said you'll spot the words "in between", which creates a context which has a start and an end point, making everything in between - transitional stages. His wording was perfectly valid. That doesn't mean that you have to like the term, but it'll take more than not liking it to stop it being valid.

If you're going to argue about wording, you have to take into account the context which it's used.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[dajak]

I don't even like the term transitional form. It seems to imply that there is a set goal of evolution, that the species is making the transition from this form to that form.

Evolution is not teleological, but the search for fossils by scientists guided by the theory of evolution is. History depends on retrodiction to prove the validity of theories, and retrodiction always uses this teleological perspective. As science understands evolution better it is able to predict the existence of more 'missing links', and if most fossils that scientists find are either known or classifiable as a 'missing link' between known species this is very strong evidence for the validity of the theory of evolution.

The same is true for history in general: the big story creates 'missing links' to search for. Which culture(s) is/are the original source(s) of the Indogermanic languages? Why are there no texts about Jesus that bridge the time of Jesus and the second century? Why are there no records of the early Islamic state in Medina, even though the town has been unharmed and inhabited by Muslims since the days of Mohammed?

Creationists abuse this teleological terminology to their own ends to misrepresent the status of evolution as a scientific theory, just like they misrepresent the meaning of theory itself (as in 'it is just a theory'). They can get away with it because too many people don't understand scientific method. Scientists should resist the temptation to let ID influence scientific method and terminology, because doing so will only seem to validate the credibility of the Intelligent Design lobby.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[jc42]

History depends on retrodiction to prove the validity of theories, and retrodiction always uses this teleological perspective.

One picky point: The terms "retrodiction" and "postdiction" seem to be in competition. The paired prefixes "pre-" and "post-" would say that "prediction" and "postdiction" are the better pair. And "postdiction" is one char shorter, which will probably save you several seconds of typing over your lifetime. ;-)

Anyway, whichever you call it, this is a good example. One of the creati

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[at_slashdot]

[i]If anything is, I am a transitional form between apes and super-humans.[/i]

Since you are on Slashdot most likely you are just an evolutionary dead-end.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[zippthorne]

C-14 dating is not used on samples expected to be millions of years old. it is good for pegging ages in the thousands or tens of thousands of years range. There are other isotopic dating schemes which are more accurate over the longer terms (and able to compensate for the "how much of element X was in the original sample" problem) which are used in the millions to billions of years range.

You carbon-date mummies, pottery, and mastodon bones. You wouldn't carbon-date fossils.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Ugly American]

Fox [foxnews.com] has some pictures of the model and sketches accompanying their article.

Obviously

[robla]

What IS surprising, is that there is no image - not even the obligatory 100-pixel-across thumbnail, which links to a lame-ass 200-pixel-across "Large Picture".

That qualifies as the missing link then, doesn't it.

but there is an image of it

[commodoresloat]

right here [helsinki.fi].

Go Go Google Images

[neersign]

http://images.google.com/images?q=Tiktaalik+roseae &hl=en&btnG=Search+Images [google.com] i'm sure i could find more if i tried

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Witchblade]

What IS surprising, is that there is no image - not even the obligatory 100-pixel-across thumbnail, which links to a lame-ass 200-pixel-across "Large Picture". I am very interested in seeing this thing - so where the bloody hell is it?

Picture [newscientist.com] courtesy of New Scientist.

Images

[armb]

> What IS surprising, is that there is no image

Lots of other places covered the story, some do have pictures.
http://news.google.com/news?q=Tiktaalik+roseae [google.com]

e.g. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=000A040D-36A2-1434-B6A283414B7F0000 [sciam.com]

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[itchy92]

I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but I'd like to reply to your post. The views expressed are mine, and may not conform to any predefined set of views.

The reason that I favor evolution to creationism is that it demands explanation. My understanding of creationism (admittedly very basic, but unbiased)-- and indeed, most religious perspectives-- is that there is no answer to be found. A higher power did whatever it did, and we can never know its nature, so let's just accept it. This is not the attitude th

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[fbjon]

it seems to me that we only see 'complete' species in the world today

That's because you're not old enough. I see that the stars in the sky never move significantly. Perhaps it's just a facade, or should I wait a few thousand years and see what happens first?

Also, the Bible is certainly not the only old book that still applies to humans and society. In fact, there's no divine power needed for its survival: it's a popular book/story, therefore it can last for 8000 years, because it keeps getting passed arou

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[AoT]

I think you've got a fundamental confusion with what evolution is, what the theory says and how it works.

why are there still some species left that are considered lower down on the evolutionary chain?

There is no lower or higher on the evolutionary chain, nor is there transitionary forms. There are species which exist now, species which have existed and those which may exist. There are species that are older, "lower", because they have proved fit for their environments. There are species that evolved later, normally not a direct line of decent, that are fit for *their* environment. I don't know if you've read a good book on evolution but it covers this, pretty basic stuff.

Re:Actually, evolution doesn't predict this.....

[plunge]

"Prediction involves things that haven't happened."

And the discovery of ambulocetus had not yet happened. Then, after it was not only predicted, but genetic studies purported to tell us where to look for it, we found it. What is that, if not predictive power?

It both predicts AND requires it. They are of a kind.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[mcasaday]

Ignorant Aardvark [slashdot.org]

anyway, everytime we find another transitional fossil the creationists are just going to point to the two gaps on either side of the new transitional and say, "Now there's two missing links! Nyah nyah nyah!" They already don't believe evolution is possible anyway.

cartel [slashdot.org]

For me personally, there are just too many gaps. To convince me at least, one fossil/species is not enough.

Whoa! Speaking of predictive power! Man, you really nailed it!

Wish granted!

[Black Parrot]

> Flame away diephobic moderators...flame away.

You're a fookin returd.

Oh, and your post was really stupid too.

Re:Wish granted!

[Fookin]

Hey now, don't bring me into this. I was just minding my business, watching the circus from the sidelines.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Camel Pilot]

i think a Dawkins quote applies here "'Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principals and they work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications such as the dummy planes of the Cargo cults in jungle clearings or the bees-waxed wings of Icaraus don't.'"

There parent post was talking about reality - you are talking about subjective truth relative systems that don't equate.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[NMerriam]

With all due respect, Creationism is not used by many people in the way you use it.

You are right, there is nothing mutually exclusive about religion and evolution, or divine creation and evolution. There are many who believe in theistic evolution and there is nothing contradictory about it -- that God set up the laws of evolution, or even that he guides the process.

But Creationism is a word that, right or wrong, is used by both the general public and its most vocal proponents to mean a belief in a literal i

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[gowen]

But at least they have the honesty to be creationists.
I've no problem with people who actively and honestly choose to believe their religion over science, as long as they're honest about what they're doing. Pretending their religion is science; now thats dangerous.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[rk]

"Then do you also believe that Homosapien is the final product of Creation? Are we the zenith of Evolution?"

Well, I don't know about this we business, but I know I am... :-D

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[flewp]

Did his father smell of elderberries?

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[aprilsound]

Then do you also believe that Homosapien is the final product of Creation? Are we the zenith of Evolution?

I wouldn't be surpirised if humans in millions of years (assuming we survive this long), are nearly identical to humans today. Society kind of puts a stick in the spokes of naturual selection after all. There is probably a little bit of genetic variation to be gained from inter-racial breeding, but for the most part, humans are going to resist bredding with any significant genetic-variants and societ

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[binarybum]

Taking into account the fact that even mentally or physically disabled humans still reproduce
        We are far from the only species that do this.

If for some reason the environment gradually changes so that only a fraction of humans can survive, by that time we will all, either by genetics or other technology, be able to survive. That's not good in my opinion since we are already overpopulated in several areas, but I can see it happening

      This faith in technology seems unfounded. It's the year 2006, we should have been vacationing on the moon for at least the last five years. Instead, we could nuke the surface of every continent by noon tomorrow, but meanwhile millions of people on this planet are still dying of things like diarrhea.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[sumdumass]

Not living on the moon for the last 5 years is probably one of the bigest reasons no one will nuke every city by noon tomarrow.

In other words, I think the only thing stoping us from vacationing on the moon is the fact that too many people think that if governments had a safe place to escape the effects of nukes, they would be used more then they have been. We have the ability, just the desire of those with the ability has seemed to weaken a little.

Maybe i'm wrong and it is just a fuunding issue?

An elaboration.

[Descalzo]

Since I didn't bring it up, and you didn't ask me, I can't really answer for that other guy, but here's a thought: We take what we know: God exists, evolution happens, etc., and try to put it together in a way that works. Not being a scientist, I wouldn't know how to do that. But without a prophet to tell us how it went down, we have to make inferences and assumptions using imperfect tools such as the Bible and the fossil record. That sounds like a cop-out answer to me, but I don't know what else to say

Re:An elaboration.

[Sique]

So you are saying, that evolution researchers have an unfair advantage, because they not only have a theory (evolution), but also facts (fossil record) to prove the theory is sound?

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Pseudonym]

Also not speaking for the parent poster, but I'd just like to make a couple of comments from a theological point of view.

First off, evolution actually fits better with Christian theology than young-earth creation, because it depicts "creation" as an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. It places God in history rather than outside it, which is one of the themes that you'll find running through the Bible.

Secondly, various biblical verses claim that humans are "made in God's image", or words to that effect. This has caused a lot of theological discussion over the years, such as the way that God has been depicted in art. Should God be represented as a grey-haired old man in the sky? "God is spirit" (see John 4:24), after all.

Well if God has no body, it makes more sense to say that the part that when we say "made in God's image", we're not talking about our bodies, which we understand to be evolved animal bodies, but rather the "spirit" part.

This looks like intellectual wankery, much like counting pin-head-dancing angels, and you'd be partly right. But for people who care about this sort of thing, evolutionary theory actually answers a number of long-standing theological problems, and the answers turn out to be much simpler than anyone thought.

I wrote about this a while back...

[meringuoid]

First off, evolution actually fits better with Christian theology than young-earth creation

I had some thoughts along these lines a while back: that by insisting on Biblical inerrancy, the fundamentalists are guilty of idolatry, and that by ignoring evolution they're missing one of God's finest works.

Ah, here it is [slashdot.org]:

It's a tragedy, because assuming for the sake of argument that there is a God, then they're missing some of his best tricks. Evolution is a brilliant hack - a system that you can set up and just let run, and all the work is done for you. It must give God some of the same kind of kick we hackers get when we replace a thousand lines of brutal code with a single concise iterative function... And as for nucleosynthesis, the means by which the heavy elements that constitute much of the Earth were made, if God came up with that then he has a sense of style that I really like. Seeding the universe with metals from supernovae - amazing.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[mikeburke]

Get them to explain the evolutionary path that lead to creatures having sight.

Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable. pp 138-197. [amazon.com]

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[cyclop]

There is nothing magic in the evolution of both neural pathways and biomolecules. Brains are made for plasticity: co-evolving a neural pathway along with the sensory organ sounds like the lesser problem to me. While eyes must evolve a plethora of new tissues, differentiation signals etc., neurons are just there, they just need to grow and wire up in the right way. A simple arc reflex of the kind "if light, then avoid" or "if it moves, then attack" probably requires just a few neurons firing (remember Valent

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[plunge]

Dawkins acn't be blamed for not covering every concievable single subject in one book, especially one written for laypeople. Discussing bio-chemistry is pretty hard when you can't guarantee that your audience knows much about chemistry, cell cycles, genetics, etc.

However, I must say that I find the incredulity a bit weird. It would be strange if light sensitivity _wasn't_ part of the nervous system. After all, lots of organic chemicals are sensitive to, and react differently to light. Those reactions wo

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[arrrrg]

2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?

Well, putting the loaded word "decide" aside, the obvious answer is that land represented a huge unexploited ecological niche, with tons of food and no predators.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[JohnFluxx]

Also they could have just been forced. As other pointed out, you can imagine creatures being forced into shallow waters by waves. There they evolve in very shallow water (i'm thinking like a few centimeters). You can imagine creatures that were able to survive seasons where the pool dries up, and from there creatures that move from one pool of water to another. (Someone else pointed out that we know eels can travel large distances across land to move to more water.)
Just by thinking it's not that hard to come up with a plausible suggestions on why slowly such an advantage would be gained.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[ignavus]

2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?

To get to the sea on the other side.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[killjoe]

"What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?"

To paraphrase Stephen Hawkings "that's like asking what's north of the north pole". It's also like asking "who created god?".

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Moby Cock]

who created god?

Easy! Man.

Heh

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[meringuoid]

Which, ironically, doesn't make the question any less valid.

Or any more meaningful. Or in any way relevant to the topic at hand, which is evolution, not cosmology.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[myth_of_sisyphus]

Well, I'm just an amateur who's done a bit of reading on this so I'll give it a try:

1. What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?

Time was created during the Big Bang so "before" is meaningless. There is no "before" or "after" or "cause" and "effect" if there is no Time.

Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.

2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?

They didn't "decide" to do anything. They were compelled by nature to seek land: to lay eggs, to find food, to mate safely.

3. Get them to explain the evolutionary path that lead to creatures having sight.

Here goes: an eye spot that detects light and dark develops into a pit eye, which enables the creature to detect direction. This develops into a Pinhole Eye. This develops a protective layer. The layer develops fluid. Fluid turns into a protein lens. Cornea and Iris separate. Organism is perfected into what we have now. Totally simplified of course but good enough for slashdot!

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[meringuoid]

Time was created during the Big Bang so "before" is meaningless. There is no "before" or "after" or "cause" and "effect" if there is no Time.

So you're saying that because your belief system cannot conceive of anything before time t, therefore all times before t are meaningless?

No. Others have used the 'north pole' analogy. 'Before the Big Bang' is akin to 'north of the north pole': it's simply an empty statement. Not part of the coordinate system. Undefined.

Here's another puzzle for you: what part of England is a thousand miles from the sea? What do you mean, there's no such place? You mean that just because your belief system can't conceive of places in England further from the sea than distance d, therefore such places are meaningless? Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.

The moment you posit a ball you also have to admit a bounding surface (to wit, a 3-sphere). And when you admit a bounding surface, shying away from what is on the other side of that boundary is intellectual cowardice.

A 3-sphere? No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. A 4-sphere, possibly, in which case the 3-surface would be the space of our universe and the radial directions would correspond to the forward and backward time directions (btw, another analogy for you, what's below the centre of the earth? You mean that because your belief system can't imagine locations > r kilometres down, means all depths below r are meaningless?). An infinite flat expanse of 4-space, also quite plausible. And there are other interesting geometries proposed based on quirks of the microwave background; it's still an open problem in cosmology.

The trouble with these discussions is that it's rather hard to speak meaningfully about these things without using general relativity. Thus you get these rather woolly analogies, translating the clear and precise equations into ambiguous and inaccurate English.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[tgv]

Playing with words is what it is. One writer uses a different meaning of the word "time" than the other. The fact that physics cannot define time without a universe, has no meaning for a normal person who experiences time as a given, a priori, absolute. Saying that it is undefined doesn't take away the legimitate question what existed before the Big Bang. "No idea" would have been a better answer than "it didn't exist".

All other arguments, such as "what is north of the north pole", are not related to this p

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[meringuoid]

The fact that physics cannot define time without a universe, has no meaning for a normal person who experiences time as a given, a priori, absolute.

That's just too bad for the normal person. Time doesn't work like you think, that's just a plain fact. Read up on your relativity. Time really does vary in just the way Einstein described. Time is not a given, a priori, absolute, it's just one more feature of the universe. All other arguments, such as "what is north of the north pole", are not related to this

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[kmcrober]

Sweet Zombie Jesus, you have to be kidding. ID is BS. Period. An educated and honest human being has no excuse for pandering to such an invidiously ignorant ideology. A quick reply to your frankly ridiculous bullet points:

1. Evolution is a biological phenomenon. It has no answer for this question, because this question is not relevant to the evolution of species. Inasmuch as you are indicting all of objective science, I'll simply note that ID has no better answer than consensus physics. "Jesus did it" (or Unnameddesignerwhowewon'tcallGodeventhoughweallkno wthat'swhowe'retalkingabout) is not a testable or falsifiable answer, and is a statement of faith rather than a scientific hypothesis.

2. Sea creatures did not "decide" to become amphibious. Evolution is not a directed process in which species consider their options and choose one. Nor do species evolve "towards" a higher form. That sort of teleology is, again, not a scientific hypothesis. This question is particularly egregious; even a primary school education should have taught you that creatures don't "decide" on how to evolve. I'll charitably assume that you mean, "How did aquatic species become amphibious and then terrestrial species?" The answer is complicated, because science is hard. Read a book. Preferably one by a real scientist, or at least someone with a biology degree. The shortest and easiest (and therefore oversimplified) version is that organisms capable of thriving in more and more marginal environments reproduced more successfully, preserving and spreading their inheritable successful traits.

3. Again, this question betrays remarkable ignorance. Darwin proposed an evolutionary chain for the development of the eye well over a century ago, and evolutionary biology has demonstrated that the eye evolved early and often. (There's a pithy quote to that effect, but I can't recall to whom it should be attributed.) Even basic light-sensitive skin cells can confer an advantage, and the development of those cells into complex lens-bearing eyes is hardly the deep and overpowering mystery that hacks like Behe would like credulous fools to believe that it is. Again, please read a book by someone who *isn't* a creationist. You will be amazed how much there is to learn.

Obviously, I am very contemptuous of your ignorance. But it's more than just that--what is so aggravating to me is the classic creationist arrogance. You assume that your questions are great traps to confound scientists and educated people, when in fact they are literally so foolish that a child could answer them. Do you really think that you know better than specialists who have spent their entire adult lives studying the field? Do you really think that they will be unable to answer your questions? Why haven't you learned the answers to those questions by now yourself? I suspect that the problem may be that you're getting your information from biased sources, such as ID blogs. Someone has badly misled you. But as impoverished as your understanding of the issue is, I'm even more disappointed by the moderators who rated your questions as "interesting." Honestly, the exposure of such rank ignorance on a site geared towards highly educated and presumably intelligent people is disillusioning.

I need a drink. You need a book. Let's hope we both get what we need.

Re:Let's address your own ignorance, shall we?

[kmcrober]

You are, in fact, entirely ignorant of the issue. I am not surprised; Intelligent Design was created with the intention of deceiving people, and it is very successful. The vaunted list [discovery.org] you're pimping suffers from two critical flaws. The first is that it is overwhelmingly made up of lay persons with no special training in biology, as another commenter made clear.

Second, and more importantly, the list's statement is an expression of just the sort of ignorance that is characteristic of creationists. Any sc [talkorigins.org]

Re:Let's address your own ignorance, shall we?

[runderwo]

Quite funny that the only reference that your struggle unearthed, while admittedly a Christian, is actually an ID critic [uncommondescent.com]

Re:Let's address your own ignorance, shall we?

[NialScorva]

Did you read what you linked to?

[...]evolution is an excellent theory to explain the origins of biological diversity, but it has little or no religious significance - it can be placed equally well within an atheistic or theistic context.

Doesn't seem to me like this guy supports Intelligent Design, he's just giving his spin on Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria of Science and Religion.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[x2A]

If you think "what caused the big bang" is such a brilliant question to prove the existance of a god, try this one: what created god?

If you think that everything must have been created, then you can't believe in a god that wasn't created. If, on the other hand, you believe that god can get away without being created, then how can you believe that the big bang can't?

It's these inconsistancies that leave the sane world laughing at you.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[mcc]

1. What caused the big bang? or What external force was there that caused the big bang?

I'm sorry, what does this have to do with evolution versus intelligent design?

Though the big bang cosmology theory has nothing to do with biology, I would agree that Science in general probably doesn't at current have an answer to what caused the big bang. I've seen a few tentative attempts to answer that question, but I don't think there's a consensus. The thing is though, this doesn't exactly matter. We don't take the big bang seriously because we know or care where big bangs come from; we take it seriously because we observe it's what seems to have happened. Nobody particularly wants the big bang theory to be true. Nobody has a particularly vested philosophical interest in the universe being an explosion. We do, however, have rather a decent lot of evidence concerning the exact way that the universe formed, gathered from looking at the aftermath (i.e.: the universe). That evidence has come to suggest what is called the big bang theory. If this is messy, or strange, or we can't come up with a good explanation as to what caused the cause behind that big bang, there really isn't anything we can do about this. Unlike religion, science doesn't get to decide what happened. Science is forced to go whereever the facts the universe contains takes it. And whether we want them to or not, those facts point at this [wikipedia.org].

But of course our inability to explain the Big Bang is quite separate from the status of other theories-- for example, the theory of Evolution-- in which we understand not only what happened, but the mechanism, reasons, and context that brought the thing that happened about.

2. Why did the sea creatures decide to go on land?

Oh, that's easy; there was food up there. Plants have been on land since at least 475 million years ago. [xs4all.nl] Creatures have been permanently stationed up there since at least 425 million years ago. [cnn.com] It's entirely unreasonable to say those millipedes "decided" to get up on land; this is undue anthropomorphization. The change to settle on land was made possible by mutation, which was a random act not guided by any conscious decision making process. It also seems unlikely to me that the first creatures to leave the ocean had any kind of purposeful goal, since I doubt they had enough sensory equipment to tell what the heck they were even doing.

More likely the very first time it happened, it went like this: something that could eat algae was crawling along a rock eating algae. This rock happened to be partially in, and partially out of, the ocean. The thing kept crawling along the rock, eating algae, and eventually it reached the interface between the ocean and the atmosphere, and it kept on crawling, and kept on eating algae. Why not? Of course, it may well have died very shortly after that, depending on whether and how long it could survive in the atmosphere. But: if there's all these algae and plants out in the dry world, and nobody's out there eating them or their dead, well heck, free food and no competition. This creates what we think of (it's a metaphor of sorts) as "evolutionary pressure", kind of like how, if we lived in a world where canned food was common but there weren't any can openers, the process of capitalism would create a tremendous metaphorical pressure for somebody to invent and start selling some.

Now let's say there's not just one thingy that eats algae and one rock where the algae is growing out in the atmosphere. Let's say there's lots and lots of thingies and lots and lots of rocks. The earth is pretty big. If, by coincidence, one of the thingies somewhere on the earth eventually winds up with some genes that, in its little gastropod nervous system, make it feel like it's a really good idea to

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[c_forq]

It's like having a 1970 VW Beetle and a 2006 VW Beetle then saying "look, this 1990 VM Beetle is the missing link" then someone else coming and saying "No, this 1980 VW Beetle is the missing link"

Re: It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[Black Parrot]

> > > agree. It's time to stop. It's like saying that 1.5 is the missing link between 1 and 2 and then someone comes along and says "no, there's a gap between 1 and 1.5".

> > You know, the grandparent post was a little difficult to understand for me, thank you for translating it into numbers.

> Could someone please translate it into something simpler than numbers? Math hurts my brain.

Ok, try "no, there's a gap between l and l.S".

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[x2A]

"Lessee now, God spent 2 billion years making them, and we've spent 200 years looking for them"

Um, no, God spent 6 days making them, and that was only 6000 years ago, the universe didn't even exist 2 billion years ago, DUH!!!

hehehe, how stupid do you feel now?! :-p

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[SatanicPuppy]

You're thinking of the fundies. Catholics don't subscribe to a literal read of the bible.

Re:It's not a missing link, and nice predictions

[kmcrober]

"I was simply stating that evolution as compared to physics are two different kinds of theories."

Well, it's a good thing that you're simply stating it, because you'd have a hard time defending that statement as any sort of meaningful conclusion. Your assertion is meaningless. Evolution is not equivalent to "physics" in the sense that you mean. Evolutionary theory is to biology as atomic theory is to physics. Both have been exhaustively proven by legitimate scientists, and both offer crucial insights tha

Remain strong!

[scapermoya]

Clearly, His Noodliness is testing us.

Re:The Great Transmogrification

[Attrition_cp]

Actually eating spaghetti and noodles in general is approved, sort of like going to communion.

Re:Can we stop with the stupid comments?

[scapermoya]

Stupid comments? The MS bashers do what they do in all seriousness, my comment was a joke.
I don't know of many real scientists that believe that there is actually a debate, they know religion and science are completely seperate issues. However, when Christians inject their beliefs into public education systems that serve everyone's children, thats where the "at odds" comes in. I don't know what you mean by evolution on the "cosmic level", but there is absolutely no debate when it comes to evolution being the means by which each species arose from those before it. If you are one of those people that buys into the "it's only a theory!!!1111", then you arent a scientist. Science is a whole lot of "theories", but theories in a scientific sense are not the same as theories in a conventional layman sense. If evolution was a "hypothesis", then there would be room to argue, but in science if something is a theory, there is a lot of evidence to support it.
Anyone who takes any part of the Bible or any other religious text, especially those written before, oh lets say soap, was invented, has no place in science and especially no place in public educational policy. If you want your kid taught that the Earth is 6,000 years old, Noah put T. Rex on his ark, and that people who carbon date fossils have an agenda, there are plenty of private schools for you.

Re:Can we stop with the stupid comments?

[2short]

"Evolution on a cosmic level has never been observed and it's not much more than an educated guess"

Horseshit. It's a well constructed theory supported by vast mountains of evidence. It is the foundation of the entire science of biology. Every biologist in modern times has spent their career testing it, and found it solid. If it's an "educated guess" then plate tectonics is a wild shot in the dark.

Please, don't use "missing link".

[Black Parrot]

The fossil record is (and always will be) full of holes for the simple reason that not everything gets preserved (and some environments make preservation extremely unlikely), and there's no "magic fossil" that's needed in order to make the big puzzle fall together.

For the most part, the big puzzle is already together. Yeah, there are lots of areas where we'd like to have more detail, but "missing link" implies that we're looking for some sort of Holy Grail, and are in a jam without it.

That simply ain't the way it is.

The thing most interesting to me about this

[mcc]

This was a predicted, sought find. This wasn't just like, some people found a fossil and was like "wow! this fills the gap in a missing link between reptiles and fish!". They set out to find something like this, targeted the most likely places in which to find it, and actually found what they were looking for. A quote of a Ahlberg and Clack article from the Pharyngula blog [scienceblogs.com] (lots of information there):

First, it demonstrates the predictive capacity of palaeontology. The Nunavut field project had the express aim of finding an intermediate between Panderichthys and tetrapods, by searching in sediments from the most probable environment (rivers) and time (early Late Devonian). Second, Tiktaalik adds enormously to our understanding of the fish-tetrapod transition because of its position on the tree and the combination of characters it displays.

I think that's just neat.

Re: The thing most interesting to me about this

[Black Parrot]

> This was a predicted, sought find. This wasn't just like, some people found a fossil and was like "wow! this fills the gap in a missing link between reptiles and fish!". They set out to find something like this, targeted the most likely places in which to find it, and actually found what they were looking for.

A similar thing can be seen on a NOVA [wikipedia.org] episode that they air now and then, where a palentologist used existing fossils in the sequence of whale ancestry to estimate the date of an intermediate form, consulted geologists re where to find exposed land that was the bottom of a shallow sea at that date, visited the site (now a desert) recommended by the geologists, and found vertebrae for the predicted species lying exposed in the sand. Excavations uncovered more complete specimins showing the predicted features of "nose" and legs.

> I think that's just neat.

Way neat.

IANAEB

[Stephen Samuel]

I Am Not An Evolutionary Biologist -- So talking about this makes me feel a bit like a fish out of water.

Re:IANAEB

[dteichman2]

How can you be a non-evolutionary biologist? To be a biologist, one must understand say... DNA, which then has the whole "gene thing." Organisms with DNA that codes for beneficial traits live on, and the rest die. Evolution.

Intelligent Design or Creationists?

[quantaman]

"As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power."

This certainly goes against creationism but afaik the only difference between evolution and intelligent design is that intelligent design claims statistics is insufficient and a divine guiding hand was required, wouldn't this missing link be required for either model as both need to go from water to land?

Re:Intelligent Design or Creationists?

[Knara]

Well, that's part of the problem of ID. Really, a very small number of people have thought through ID to its logical (or illogical) conclusion. They do, however, say that there's a problem in the fossil record in that there's "no transitional fossils" (see previous comments about this fallacious argument). This is just the sort of thing that such folks were mockingly certain did not exist.

Guess they do.

Re: Intelligent Design or Creationists?

[Black Parrot]

> "As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power."

> This certainly goes against creationism but afaik the only difference between evolution and intelligent design is that intelligent design claims [...]

The proponents of ID are all over the spectrum with respect to their views on evolution. Some are YECs of the most narrow sort; others think biologists basically have things right except for an occasio

Pictures

[lifeisgreat]

Since the write-up lacked anything flashy, here's an article from the Nature journal [nature.com] about the find.

Doesn't look very tasty.

Re:Pictures

[whitehatlurker]

Also Scientific American [sciam.com]'s article has a couple of pictures. AND National Geographic [nationalgeographic.com] has a write-up on it.

Missing link

[irish_spic]

Heh, there's lots of missing links here in canada - calling each other hosers and swilling cheap beer, eh.

Doesn't prove evolution

[MarkByers]

The Flying Spaghetti Monster just put it there to confuse us.

FYI

[prof_peabody]

m = milli = 10^-3
M = mega = 10^6

325m years = ~ 118.6 days

Missing link may be a bit young don't you think?

Re: FYI

[Black Parrot]

m = milli = 10^-3
M = mega = 10^6

325m years = ~ 118.6 days

Missing link may be a bit young don't you think?

That's the difference between a "Missing link" and a "missing link".

Sorry, not a missing link

[DumbSwede]

You can only find a "link", not a "missing link." Once found it is no longer missing.
In much the same way as a hot water heater is unneeded since hot water is already hot.
/attempted humor

teleology

[Stalyn]

Assume this animal uses oxygen as an energy source for chemical reactions. Traditionally it retrieved oxygen through the water. Yet after some time its lungs grew the capacity to retrieve oxygen through the air. It would seem that there would have to be some sort of informational exchange in order to determine air was a candidate source for oxygen. How did this happen?

The ancestors of this animal most likely lived in shallow water and perhaps came into contact with air all the time. It might have been able to jump out of the water for a very short period of time. Yet in order to evolve lungs that could take advantage of oxygen in the atmosphere there must have been some informational exchange.

I think some will argue that there doesn't have to be any information involved because random genetic change and natural selection will over time evolve a lung that can retrieve oxygen through the air. The major presupposition is that the genetic code that allows for breathing on land is implicit in genetic change. The group of possible genetic alterations included at least one genetic sequence which would result in land breathing capabilities.

If genetic change is truly random then it could have possibly happened somewhere that was not close to land. Therefore such a change would have not been selected. Then either the space of possible genetic changes is rather small (unlikely) or there is an informational element to evolution.

Re: teleology

[Black Parrot]

> It would seem that there would have to be some sort of informational exchange in order to determine air was a candidate source for oxygen. How did this happen?

For an intuitive notion of "information exchange", evolution extracts "information" from the environment by trial and error.

Crudely put, if evolution tries A and B, and discovers that A works and B doesn't, it has extracted one bit of information from the environment. (Actually not always a whole bit due to redundancies between A and B, and redun

Not direct ancestor

[Envall]

According to Swedish radio this is not a direct ancestor to us. However this find is important since it is close to the trunk from which the mamals is derived.

Land Arthropods were Much Earlier.

[giafly]

Re: showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago

Not so. Arthropods (millipedes and centipedes etc) first conquered the land around 500 million years ago [bris.ac.uk] and were walking around long before this newly-discovered beastie. Their fossilised footprints have been found. "The oldest body fossil of a land animal is a 430-million-year-old millipede."

"Our own ancestors, fish-like amphibians, first lumbered ashore a mere 370 million years ago. There they found a world teeming with plants and giant creepy crawlies."

They just found it?

[jhml]

You mean this sucker is important evidence of evolution, has been missing for who knows how long, they found it, and now they tell us about it? Where was all the hoopla when it was missing?

Before they found it. I don't recall any scientists saying "This theory of evoution might be convincing if we could find a fish with toes, but until then...."

Nor do I recall anyone saying "Well we had this link, but Mortimer apparently slipped it into his pants and took it out of the Smithsonian, and since then it has been missing..."

What else are they missing and not telling us about?

Whole thing just deepens my suspicion. I want an accounting of all the links they claim to have, but for all we know have also gone missing.

Better link, to Nature article

[kronocide]

The fish that crawled out of the water [nature.com]

Re:I found him too!

[mh101]

Funny... following your link to "The Missing Link" says "The page cannot be found." So I guess that means it's still missing? :)

A better missing link

[corngrower]

This link to bbc news [bbc.co.uk] includes a picture of the fossil.

Re:God vs Darwin

[dteichman2]

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/93q2/creationfaq .html [netfunny.com]

Re:Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[1984]

I have a question that I've never really understood the answer to: why is creationism as a belief incompatible with science (including evolution)? Whatever science comes up with, one can always back out and say that the system as a whole was created by an omnipotent external creator. So what I don't get terribly well is why all the fuss about evolution in the first place, unless it's only dogma that's important?

(For me anyway, it's the notion that dogma, existing power structures and beliefs which are impor

Re:Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[Sean Hederman]

If you have a problem with it, no-one is insisting you believe it. You're welcome to your personal beliefs. However, you are (and have in your previous posts) disputing science based on those beliefs. No matter what evidence is put before you showing evolution to be correct, you would twist it or deny it because your faith does not allow for it. At least, unlike many Creationists, you seem to be willing to admit this. However, like many other Creationists you seem to feel that science must conform to your p

Re: Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[Black Parrot]

> I can hear the naturalists clacking away at their keyboards in glee with the "smoking gun" that evolution has finally been "proven" and that the creationists will have to sit in stunned silence under the weight of the evidence finally presented.

To the extent that anything is ever "proven" in the natural sciences, evolution was "proven" well over 100 years ago.

And of course, nobody expects creationists to sit in stunned (or any other kind of) silence, regardless of what evidence is presented.

> Let's not oversimplify this discussion. Thoughtful, intelligent people on both sides of this debate have passion, and conviction.

Yes, but one side has facts and a theory, whereas the other has a well-funded propaganda machine and a lot of self-appointed spiritual advisors telling the ignorant masses that they'll be tortured for all eternity if they let the facts affect their conclusions.

> As a creationist, I welcome advances in knowledge that arise from investigation of the physical realm. I respect men (and women) of science, and applaud this new discovery - but that changes not my conviction that a creator made the planet as it is.

To paraphrase the old saying, facts won't dissuade anyone from a position that isn't built on facts to begin with.

> There are enough complexities and challenges with the idea of evolution as a means of speciation that one more discovery does not put a nail in the coffin of creationism.

Except as a religious/social/political issue, creatinism was nailed back in the nineteenth century.

> I'm not looking to start a debate on this issue, but I am hoping to raise the level of discussion by respectfully asking those who would use this occasion to ridicule people with whom they disagree to please refrain. This is a complex issue and cheap shots are not productive. I will refrain from ridicule as well. Deal?

For my money, people who express ridiculous views are entitled to all the ridicule they reap. (Unless they're insane, in which case we should show a little sympathy for their plight.)

If you would care to identify any of the creationism evangelists who are insane, it would help things alone.

Open mouth, insert foot

[JetJaguar]

Has it occurred to you that in making this very statement, that you are, in fact, doing exactly what you accuse your opponents of? You implore posters from taking cheap shots, and yet your first sentence is exactly that. Right off the bat you are assasinating the character of those who disagree with you with statements like this:

I can hear the naturalists clacking away at their keyboards in glee with the "smoking gun" that evolution has finally been "proven" and that the creationists will have to sit in

Re:Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[aussie_a]

There are enough complexities and challenges with the idea of evolution as a means of speciation that one more discovery does not put a nail in the coffin of creationism.

Actually, it is impossible for any nails to be placed in the coffin of creationism, because it isn't a theory that is able to be proven or disproven. However creationist proponents have placed creationism in opposition to evolution, so this can place a nail in the coffin of that use of creationism.

Oh, and creationists who claim that evolution and creationism have equal evidence backing up each theory (or even better, that there is more evidence to back up creationism then there is to back up evolution) ARE idiots. I'm always happy to hear evidence that helps prove creationism, but I've yet to actually see any. I've seen logical thoughts (as in "but how could it have happened? it's all so complex" although they do rely on premises that can be neither proven nor disproven themselves), but no direct real evidence (for instance, evolution was just a thought, a theory, until fossil records were discovered that helped prove it).

Respectfully
aussie_a

Re:Queue the "Creationists are idiots!" posts

[mvdw]

I can hear the naturalists clacking away at their keyboards in glee with the "smoking gun" that evolution has finally been "proven" and that the creationists will have to sit in stunned silence under the weight of the evidence finally presented.

And this sentence just goes to show that you don't get it. Evolution can never be "proved". Like any scientific theory, it can only be falsified or strengthened by further evidence. A scientific theory of anything physical (ie, not abstract) can never be proved to b

Re: Too many gaps

[Black Parrot]

> If evolution, as they say, takes so long, there WOULD be fossils that we COULD conclusively show are directly linked to other species - without missing links - and they would be found just as easily as dinosaur fossils are.

What makes you think that?

What is the probability that an organism will become fossilized, survive erosion and other hazards for millions of years, and then actually be found by someone? I.e., how good a sample do you think the fossil record is.

How easy would it be for you to find your own ancestors' bones going back 100 generations? Or just 10. What do you conclude from any gaps in that record?

Re: Too many gaps

[Hannah E. Davis]

The probability of a fossil forming is actually pretty slim. First of all, the organism needs to be at least partially solid -- bones do the trick, or a nice big shell, but squishy invertebrates, for example, are extremely unlikely to leave any trace of their passing. The organism also needs to die under the correct conditions and stay there relatively undisturbed for millions of years until human scientists get around to digging it up.

Given that billions and billions of species have existed on this pl

Re:Too many gaps

[kmcrober]

Yes, beneficial mutations are often observed [talkorigins.org].

The Talk Origins FAQ I've linked to is comprehensive, easily searched, and quite objective. Even better, it points the way to more in depth books, articles, and sources--you can, if you choose, go from a one-page FAQ summary all the way to the primary evidence. Otherwise, I would recommend a book such as Ernst Mayr's "What Evolution Is." Much more difficult than the FAQ, and a tiny bit dated, but also much more rewarding.

Re:Jumping to conclusions

[Col Bat Guano]

We don't, that's why you won't find the term "missing link" used scientifically. It could have been one of many species that subsequently became extinct. However it's an example of a fish that developed features that we find in land based animals so it's at least an existance proof.

Re:Some Logic Errors....

[mrpeebles]

The sad and simple truth is that you have to take it on faith that "this must have happened" to truly make the evolution theory work. That's fine, and that's ok... but it's not scientifically sound.

I think that all modern science, and probably all science through history as well, has to make assumptions for the sort "this must have happened." Science has an element of circular thinking in it. Evolutionary theory is nothing special in that regard.

Re:Some Logic Errors....

[SilentReproach]

I would have to agree that if this find is as important as Archaeopteryx, it's not all that important.

It used to be that evolutionists believed Archaeopteryx (fancy word for "ancient wing" or "ancient bird"), was a link between reptiles and birds. Many evolutionists no longer believe this. Closer examination of its fossilized remains revealed perfectly formed feathers on aerodynamically designed wings capable of flight. Its leg and wing bones were thin and hollow. Its supposed "reptilian features" are found

Re:Some Logic Errors....

[plunge]

"Well, not really. It COULD be something totally unique."

Well, yes, except that morphologically it fits in at only one place and time into the tree of life. As you can read from the article, no one is saying that it is a direct ancestor of modern life, because we cannot know, as you note, it's particular future. But we CAN tell its past and from what orders of life it came, and its existence tells us all about what sorts of creatures were around and what they were like on this particular branch of the t

Re:'One of many' missing links

[jc42]

... the scientist ... said it was 'one of many' missing links to the evolution of land animals from fish, but certainly not the only one.

Yup. Much of the reason this one gets so much attention is that it is nearly complete. Other than not knowing how long its tail was (and what color its skin was ;-), a fairly accurate reconstruction is possible. This is more useful than a pile of fragments of different individuals who may have lived centuries apart.

Plus, it's a species that wasn't known before. That's

Re:Problem with theory of evolution

[plunge]

Sigh. No.

You don't understand the method. Observation is observation of some fact or state of affairs that we want to explain. In evolution, those facts are things like the fossil record, the diversity of life on earth, and the very particular character of that life. "Observation" is not a requirement that we see things with out eyeballs, or even the part where we draw conclusions. It's the set of circumstances that we are trying to explain. That's why it comes first. It's TESTING where we find out i