Re: Transitional fish

Showing some ignorance here probably, but why is this so dramatically
different than the mudskippers that live today?

On 4/8/06, Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Quirky "fishapod" crawls onto our family tree
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002913907_fossil06.html
>
> U.S. researchers say they have found the missing evolutionary link
> between fish and land animals: fossils of a strange creature that
> crawled onto the shore about 375 million years ago.
>
> Editor's Summary 6 April 2006 When fins became limbs
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/edsumm/e060406-01.html>
>
> When fins became limbs
>
> The transition between fishes and limbed vertebrates, or tetrapods,
> occurred over 370 million years ago and required changes to
> virtually the entire body. Sensational fossil finds, and
> reinterpretations of old ones, have radically altered thinking on
> this topic in the past 20 years. But the transition itself – the
> very point where fishes became tetrapods – remains obscure. What
> fossils there are tend to be incomplete or badly preserved. All that
> changes with the discovery of remarkable new fossils from the late
> Devonian of Canada of a near-complete transitional form preserved in
> the round. It's a fish with fins, but fins that flexed and extended
> like arms and hands. It has tetrapod-like ribs, a mobile neck and
> wrist. The impact of this discovery will be felt far and wide in
> evolutionary biology. On the cover, the fossil as found emerges from
> under a log as it might have in life in a shallow-water habitat.
>
> Per Erik Ahlberg and Jennifer A. Clack Palaeontology: A firm step from
> water to land
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/440747a.html> p747
>
> Edward B. Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr
> A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body
> plan
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/pdf/nature04639.pdf>
> p757 Abstract
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/abs/nature04639.html>
>
> Neil H. Shubin, Edward B. Daeschler and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr The
> pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/pdf/nature04637.pdf>
> p764 Abstract
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/abs/nature04637.html>
>
> PT has two articles on this topic
> http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/post_10.html (Transitions on
> the DI blog)
> and http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/tiktaalik_makes.html
> (Tiktaalik makes another gap) PZ Myers more at Pharyngula
> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/tiktaalik_makes_another_gap.php
>
> And for comic relief
> http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/trollart_on_tik.html at
> http://www.trollart.com/
>
> This is cool news since another major transitional gap has been filled in.
>
> <quote>But fossil records showed a gap between Panderichthys , a fish
> that lived about 385 million years ago which shows early signs of
> evolving land-friendly features, and Acanthostega , the earliest known
> tetrapod (four-limbed land-living animals) dating from about 365 million
> years ago. In 1999, palaeontologists Professor Neil Shubin, from the
> University of
> Chicago, and Professor Edward Daeschler, from the Academy of Natural
> Sciences in Philadelphia, set out to explore the Canadian Arctic in an
> attempt to find the "missing link" that would explain the transition
> from water to land. After several years of searching with very little
> success, they hit the jackpot in 2004.</quote>
>
> I love it when science hits the jackpot.
> Remind me again what ID would predict?
>
Received on Mon Apr 10 10:03:00 2006