Living "missing link" discovered
There was a lot of hoopla recently over the discovery of the "missing link" fossil named "Tiktaalik", a fish with legs, that supposedly proved Darwinism to be true. Well, a living shark species that walks on fins has recently been discovered. A picture of the shark is here (it is the second picture in the series at the top of the article).
Labels: Evolution controversy (3 of 4)
posted by Larry Fafarman | 9/19/2006 12:44:00 PM
10 Comments:
I congratulate you for showing both sides. This "missing link" is one more bit of evidence for evolution.
>>>Well, a living shark species that walks on fins has recently been discovered.<<<
Well, as long as you consider 182 years ago "recent." This species of shark was first discovered in 1824.
However, the sensational media is to blame for this - not Larry.
I should also point out that AOL misspelled the scientific name of the fish (Hemiscyllium freycineti is the correct spelling - AOL spelled it Hemiscyillum). Poor thing. I happened to recognize it from the photo.
Oh, and finally, this is not a "missing link" - rather, it is an example of convergent evolution.
Kevin Vicklund said --
>>>> Well, as long as you consider 182 years ago "recent." This species of shark was first discovered in 1824.
However, the sensational media is to blame for this - not Larry. <<<<<
Why blame the media for this? The media was probably just repeating what the scientists said.
>>>>> Oh, and finally, this is not a "missing link" - rather, it is an example of convergent evolution. <<<<<<
It was just a joke, Kevin. I am sure that if Darwinists considered this shark to be a "missing link" (not missing since 1824, you say, long before the idea of missing links was invented), we would have heard from them by now. Still, though, I am surprised that this shark has apparently not been compared to Tiktaalik (not that I am aware of, anyway).
According to Wikipedia, the legs are not the only transitional features of Tiktaalik.
> Why blame the media for this? The media was probably just repeating what the scientists said. <
The odds against the media reporting a scientific finding accurately are astronomical. There used to be a science editor with the Los Angeles Times named Dr. Irving S. Benglesdorf. He was a complete idiot.
I remember one byline telling us that they had discovered "a new type of star, farther away than the sun".
After a bit of investigation, it turns out that two new species within the genus Hemiscyllium were discovered. The media either mislabeled the picture with an extant species name, or confused a picture of the previously known species with the new species. Members of the genus are commonly known as carpetsharks, and have long been known to "walk" as well as being able to survive anoxic conditions (lack of oxygen) - the first species in the genus was described in 1788.
BTW, the previous comment about missing links was directed at ViW as well as Larry. According to Wikipedia, the legs are not the only transitional features of Tiktaalik. This is an important observation - as you seem to be hinting, transitional status is almost always based on a number of features, not just one.
Fake Dave --
>>>>>>Do you mean that the whole post was a joke, Larry(?)? <<<<<<
No, only the "missing link" part was a joke. I am really seriously wondering why this shark has not been compared to Tiktaalik.
Fake Dave said --
>>>>>> I am really seriously wondering why this shark has not been compared to Tiktaalik. >
That's simple -- there's little of interest or relevance there. Convergent evolution is common. And Tiktaalik was a semi-land animal (he had both gills and lungs, and a land animal's skeleton in several aspects), whereas the shark is still very much a fish. <<<<<<
I disagree -- the walking-on-limbs feature is an unusual feature that both of them share. Having gills and lungs is not all that unusual -- amphibians have gills as young and lungs as adults. What is unusual is having both gills and lungs in the adult stage. BTW, I was wondering how it was determined that Tiktaalik had both gills and lungs -- these are soft tissues and would not have been preserved in a fossil. Also, according to the pictures in Wikipedia, the fossil was badly fragmented, which would make analysis especially difficult.
Perhaps the blogger here is an example of a missing link. He seems to fit in the family "Not So Great Apes".
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