On Mon, 19 Jan 1998 22:13:54 -0600, Glenn Morton wrote:
GM>There is a report in the January 8, 1998 Nature about a fossil fish with
>fingers in its fin. From the news account on the AP wire it sounds like it
>is a lobe-finned fish, a coelacanth. It comes from 350 million years ago
>which is immediately after the evolution of the amphibians (who also had
>fingers). I hope to have the article in my hand tomorrow...
You mean "fin"? ;-) I haven't seen the NATURE article yet, but maybe
its the Western Australian Devonian fish fossil, Gogonasu, which was
in one of our local newspapers a while back:
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Fishing for Fossils
WA's rich mineral deposits have seen the State become one of the top
10 scientific sites in the world and the WA Museum is now a world
leader in fossil research. ELISIA BENNETT reports on some
important old fish bones.
FOSSICKING on a hot, dusty pastoral station in the far north of WA
would not seem like the ideal way to find fish. But the rocky outcrops
that stretch as far as the eye can see belie the fact that Gogo Station,
near Fitzroy Crossing. is one of the top 10 fish-fossicking sites in the
world. You'd think the people wandering around the sunburnt cattle
station in 40C heat tapping rocks with hammers had rocks in their
heads, were suffering from heat-stroke, or both.
But far away from the treeless, desolate land of the station,
palaeontologist John Long holds up his prize catch. It is one of 40
discoveries at Gogo of a species new to science that has secured
WA's position as one of the best sites in science circles. The fossil's
value is incalculable to the scientific world yet it lives unpretentiously
in the bottom draw of a humble office resembling a school laboratory
at the WA Museum. The office belongs to Dr Long, the museum's
curator of vertebrate fossils, and in his hand is the absurdly delicate
skeletal remains of a fish. "This is 370 million years old," he says. "I
get shaky just picking it up." It's affectionately known as the Nose of
Gogo.
Not that it's gone any where in recent times, except into history
books. To put the fossil's age into perspective, the fish lived 121
million years before dinosaurs, 3.1 billion years after the first life form
on earth and 364 million years before the first man began roaming.
What is so special about this fossil, found in 1986 and properly called
Gogonasus, is that it has challenged scientific beliefs about the
evolution of land animals. "It's challenged the most important step in
the evolution chain about the origin of land animals," Dr Long says.
"I believe this fish gave rise to the first four-legged animals leading to
man." The Gogonasus is one of 40 species new to science found at
the Gogo site.
[...]
WA is like an untapped gold mine to palaeontologists because it
harbours some of the best preserved: and most diverse fossils in the
world. And most importantly, the fossils are virtually untouched. The
reason for the pristine preservation of the fossils at Gogo Station date
back hundreds of millions of years. This period was known as the
Devonian Age and at the time, Australia was part of the great
Gondwana land mass. Inland seas covered parts of what is now the
North-West coast, stretching past Gogo through to the edge of the
Great Sandy Desert. As fish from the sea died, they sank to the sea
floor and were gradually covered with sediment. This eventually
formed into mudstone, creating a protective layer on top of the
skeletons which were further preserved by soil minerals such as iron.
It is this same type of sediment formed in tropical climates that makes
North-West WA (once situated across the equator) rich in mineral
resources such as iron ore.
Because WA is free of volcanic and tectonic plate movement, the
fossils have been untouched by moving land masses. Yet erosion
eventually exposed the fossilised fish and today they are found inside
smooth stones and boulders that litter the ground across the station.
Scientists determine the age of the fossils by isotopic dating of the
mineral content in the rock that surrounds them Dr Long says
geological surveys alerted British scientists that Gogo was ripe for
fossil find back in the 1960s. But it has only been in the past decade,
largely through Dr Long's numerous trips to the site, that Gogo has
gained worldwide recognition. Dr Long says an expert eye can spot
exposed fossils in the rock but usually the fossils are uncovered by
smashing the rock open. If a fossil is inside, the rock is then glued
back together with a cement adhesive and put in a bath of acids that
dissolves the rock and leaves the fossil in one piece.
Dr Long's most significant find at Gogo was that of the Gogonasus,
named because of its advanced nasal system with a nostril opening
inthe roof of the mouth. He says the fish has many features that are
similar enough to modern man for him to believe the fish was the first
to give rise to the lineage man evolved from. These included paired
pectoral and pelvic fins with two joints in each resembling human arm
and legbones. Dr Long says the discovery of the nasal system was
extremely significant because it challenged the theory that the lungfish
was the first to evolve into an amphibian."
[...]
(Bennett E., "Fishing for Fossils", Sunday Times: Perth, Western
Australia, February 9, 1997, p3)
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What a "coincidence". The only line of fish that developed the
beginnings of arms and legs, also just happened to have an "advanced
nasal system with a nostril opening in the roof of the mouth", ready
for when its descendants did finally get pelvis and shoulder joint
connections to their spinal column millions of years later, they
would be able to walk on land! Sounds like a far-sighted (not a
blind) Watchmaker to me!
Indeed, far from being confirmation of the "blind watchmaker" thesis,
the fin-hand/foot transition is a key part of what Taylor calls "The
Great Evolution Mystery":
"The land animal must also change its sense organs. It no longer
needs the curious organ which runs along its side called a lateral line,
and this is converted, by an amazing series of steps...into the ear. The
eye, too, changes, since the refractive index of air is different from
that of water and no doubt there are modifications in the sense of
smell, though I doubt if anyone has studied that. And then, of course,
there is the problem of the legs themselves. Before ever the fish
reached the land the structure of its fins began to change. Instead of
rays, a series of bones corresponding to the tibia, radius and ulna of
the arm appeared. Digits, tarsals and metatarsals evolved (so it is now
generally conceded) as wholly new structures, though the point -
unwelcome to Darwinians - was hotly contested in the 1930s."
(Taylor G.R., "The Great Evolution Mystery", 1983, pp59-60)
Actually, the fin-hand/foot transition is IMHO one of the best examples of
intelligent design, and an insuperable problem for the blind watchmaker,
because it had to happen *twice* in the putative common ancestor,
and in no other animal before or since:
"There is no doubt that in terms of evolution the fore- and hindlimbs
must have arisen independently, the former supposedly evolving from
the pectoral fins of a fish, the latter from the pelvic fins. Here is a case
of profound resemblance which cannot be explained in terms of a
theory of descent. The occurrence of the same pentadactyl pattern in
the fore- and hindlimbs presents an additional and unrelated challenge
to evolutionary biology - that of explaining the independent origin of
structures which are incredibly similar in terms of a random
accumulation of tiny advantageous mutations...It seems very unlikely
that there could be any adaptive necessity that dictates that there be
five digits in both hand and foot or that thumb and big toe be both
made up of two phalanges, that the forearm and lower leg be both
made of two long bones or that there be only one bone in the upper
arm and leg. We seem forced to propose that during the course of
evolution the gradual accumulation of tiny independent and random
changes in two independent structures - the pectoral and pelvic fins of
a fish hit on an identical yet apparently arbitrary ground plan for the
design of the fore- and hindlimbs of a tetrapod. The problem is even
more perplexing considering that neither the initial structures- the
pelvic and pectoral fins of a fish - nor the end products of the process
- the fore- and hindlimbs of a tetrapod - are in any strict sense
identical. How this complex and seemingly arbitrary pattern was
arrived at twice independently in the course of evolution is
mystifying." (Denton M., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", Burnett
Books: London, 1985, p152)
The fin-hand/foot transition is really just another example of the
component-by-component assembly over millions of years of a series of
unrelated structures which are of no immediate use to the organisms
possessing those structure, but which will form essential part of a
larger coordinated system in the distant future. The same
"conceptual bankruptcy" that applies to Darwinist explanations of the
development of the human complex, applies also to the development of
the land animal complex:
"Gradualists and saltationists alike are completely incapable of
giving a convincing explanation of the quasi-simultaneous emergence
of a number of biological systems that distinguish human beings from
the higher primates: bipedalism, with the concomitant modification
of the pelvis, and, without a doubt, the cerebellum, a much more
dexterous hand, with fingerprints conferring an especially fine
tactile sense; the modifications of the pharynx which permits
phonation; the modification of the central nervous system, notably at
the level of the temporal lobes, permitting the specific recognition
of speech. From the point of view of embryogenesis, these anatomical
systems are completely different from one another. Each modification
constitutes a gift, a bequest from a primate family to its
descendants. It is astonishing that these gifts should have
developed simultaneously. Some biologists speak of a predisposition
of the genome. Can anyone actually recover the predisposition,
supposing that it actually existed? Was it present in the first of
the fish? The reality is that we are confronted with total
conceptual bankruptcy." (Schutzenberger M-P, "The Miracles of
Darwinism: Interview with Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger", Origins &
Design, Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 1996, pp10-15)
God bless,
Steve
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Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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