IGBT
Lifer
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Here they are in order:
Tiktaalik:
Scientists announced in the journal Nature last week the discovery of fossils from a curious 375-million-year-old creature displaying an odd combination of both fish and land animals traits.
Dubbed ?Tiktaalik,? the creature was immediately hailed by scientists as being a major find, one as critical for understanding how fish became four-limbed animals as Archaeopteryx was to understanding the transition of dinosaurs to birds.
The very next day, Robert Crowther, director of communications at the Discovery Institute, posted a statement on the institute website in a rushed attempt at damage control. Crowther wrote:
?These fish are not necessarily intermediates?Tiktaalik roseae is one of a set of lobe-finned fishes that include very curious mosaics?They are not intermediates in the sense that have half-fish/half-tetrapod characteristics. Rather, they have a combination of tetrapod-like features and fish-like features. Paleontologists refer to such organisms as mosaics rather than intermediates.?
In his blog Pharyngula, PZ Meyers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, points out why this argument is flawed:
?But that kind of mosaicism is what you?d expect, and what we should see in a transitional form! Every element of the organism shouldn?t be changing in a slow and steady lockstep, but instead should shift haltingly?Sometimes major shifts in the environment might oppose some kind of concordance, and plasticity means a change in one structure might impose related changes in associated structures, but it?s silly to assume everything morphs uniformly from one generation to the next....
Here they are in order:
Tiktaalik:
Scientists announced in the journal Nature last week the discovery of fossils from a curious 375-million-year-old creature displaying an odd combination of both fish and land animals traits.
Dubbed ?Tiktaalik,? the creature was immediately hailed by scientists as being a major find, one as critical for understanding how fish became four-limbed animals as Archaeopteryx was to understanding the transition of dinosaurs to birds.
The very next day, Robert Crowther, director of communications at the Discovery Institute, posted a statement on the institute website in a rushed attempt at damage control. Crowther wrote:
?These fish are not necessarily intermediates?Tiktaalik roseae is one of a set of lobe-finned fishes that include very curious mosaics?They are not intermediates in the sense that have half-fish/half-tetrapod characteristics. Rather, they have a combination of tetrapod-like features and fish-like features. Paleontologists refer to such organisms as mosaics rather than intermediates.?
In his blog Pharyngula, PZ Meyers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, points out why this argument is flawed:
?But that kind of mosaicism is what you?d expect, and what we should see in a transitional form! Every element of the organism shouldn?t be changing in a slow and steady lockstep, but instead should shift haltingly?Sometimes major shifts in the environment might oppose some kind of concordance, and plasticity means a change in one structure might impose related changes in associated structures, but it?s silly to assume everything morphs uniformly from one generation to the next....
