Probably some type of alligator by the looks of the skull. Those paleontologists take huge leaps of faith. Sometimes they find what they want to find. Extract some DNA and clone one, then get back to me.
DD
Fish With Feet
by metatron 21 Replies latest jw friends
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cofty
Data Dog - Do some reading before you dismiss one of the greatest fossil discoveries of all time.
Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" has the details if your interested.
There are a series of transitional fossils showing the evolution from ray-finned fish to tetrapods.
Nobody has ever claimed that one fossil was a direct ancestor of any other.
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Viviane
Ernest, the first thing you wrote said we don't have enough info to be precise, then you made a very precise statemement. Which is it?
Data-dog, first you say the people who study this field take huge leaps of faith in their statements, then you (no a paleontologist?) make a huge leap in a statement. Which is it?
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Apognophos
Extract some DNA and clone one, then get back to me.
What would this accomplish? What do you expect to learn once Tiktaalik is alive again? They can already see that its bone structure allowed it to walk (underwater), and that it had fish-like and tetrapod-like traits.
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Earnest
Viviane : Ernest, the first thing you wrote said we don't have enough info to be precise, then you made a very precise statemement. Which is it?
Can you please elaborate your question with examples as it is unclear to me what you are referring to.
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DATA-DOG
It could be a tetrapod ansector of an alligator with traits similar to a fish, then it became extinct. There is no proof that it is a missing link of anything. You can't take a skull that looks like an alligator and mix and match with other fossils from the same strata and prove you have a mising link. It's wishful thinking at best.
Tetrapod like traits? That means four legged. An alligator has four legs and can walk on the bottom. If science could bring back an animal through the cloning process, then all the guess-work would be gone. We still can't even say with certainty what color or texture ancient creatures had. I just saw a show the other day and they think T-REX may have benn completely diffrent than currently pictured, and may have even had feathers! There is no end to the speculation. If something is not proven 100% then I remain skeptical.
Thanks for the book title Cofty.
DD
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cofty
You can't take a skull that looks like an alligator and mix and match with other fossils from the same strata
Data Dog - If you took 10 minutes to read the evidence you would be embarassed to write that.
The entire Tiktaalik fossil was found intact and a further 5 specimens have now been found. All of them were found in a strata dating from 375 million years ago. Shubin first chose the location based on the age of the rock and then went looking for a fossil that showed transitional features. After 3 seasons he found something better than you could posisbly imagine. It has gills and lungs. Crucially the bones of its limbs have the same arrangment as all tetrapods. Big bone - 2 thinner bones - lots of little bones - digits.
You are not skeptical you are cynical. Skeptics examine the evidence thoroughly and keep an open mind.
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Apognophos
A new paper was published on Tiktaalik yesterday...
Yes, I was thinking of this paper when I said "tetrapod-like traits". If I meant "four-legged", I would have said four-legged. Note how the fish had actual hips, but not as advanced as the hips in land animals.
We still can't even say with certainty what color or texture ancient creatures had.
Whether or not the fish was orange or had feathers is immaterial. The point is that it had the ability to walk. It represents a missing link in the sense that it shows how fish could have adapted for land life in stages, regardless of whether it's the direct ancestor of anything.
By the way, "wishful thinking" could also be defined as "assuming that a fossil was cobbled together from separate animals just because you don't like the evidence you're seeing".
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Viviane
Can you please elaborate your question with examples as it is unclear to me what you are referring to.
I am happy to.
You wrote: If you are going to say 'missing link' then you will need to be more precise as to exactly how and when amphibians evolved tens of millions of years later. As it happens, this period is called Romer's gap because the fossil record is so sparse it is effectively non-existent.
Then you wrote: In fact, the descendants of Tiktaalik, the Acanthostega, were completely wiped out so Tiktaalik was a missing-link to nothing.
It just seems like you are saying we can't say precise things about millions of year ago by saying a precise thing about millions of years ago.
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Earnest
Viviane, thanks for explaining where your confusion lies.
Quite simply Acanthostega appeared about 365 million years ago and were wiped out by a mass extinction known as the Hangenberg event six million years later; with the result that, as I said, Tiktaalik was a missing-link to nothing.
Romer's gap ran from the time of this mass extinction for 15 million years and this is the period where the fossil record is so sparse it is effectively non-existent. So the Acanthostega were outside of the period referred to as Romer's gap.
Anyone claiming Tiktaalik as a missing-link between fish and amphibians doesn't have a leg to stand on.