Another transitional fossil found

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science....ap/index.html

Fossil identified as earliest land walker

AP) -- A fossil found in 1971 has been newly identified as the earliest known animal built to walk on land, a salamanderlike creature that marked a previously unknown stage in the evolution of fish into the ancestors of all vertebrates alive today.

The toothy animal, Pederpes finneyae, lived between 348 million and 344 million years ago in what is now Scotland. It was perhaps a yard long, and probably split its time between the water and land where it walked on four feet, said Jenny Clack, of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.

"It trudged through the swamp catching anything that moved -- not terribly exciting, I suppose," Clack said.

Clack formally describes Pederpes in this week's journal Nature. The creature's nearly complete fossil skeleton had lain, mislabeled as a fish, in a Scottish museum since its discovery 31 years ago. Further work on the fossil in the 1990s revealed it had legs.

The identification helps close a hole in the early fossil record of a group of creatures called tetrapods.

The gap, or Romer's Gap -- named for the late Harvard paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer -- had stumped scientists seeking to chart the evolution of the first four-limbed creatures with backbones. Tetrapods were the first animals known to walk the Earth and are the ancestors of today's mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds.

"Discovery of a nearly complete skeleton in the middle of Romer's Gap should help in establishing the pattern of evolutionary change among early tetrapods," wrote Robert Carroll, of Montreal's Redpath Museum, in an accompanying commentary.

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ROFL!!! Check out this quote from the article.

Funny how, according to everyone on this forum, evolution has never BEEN based on speculation, but entirely on evidence. Then when some fossil turns up that looks more convincingly like a transitional than anything else in the record, suddenly all the OLD info was speculation, but THIS is evidence.

Yeah, right.

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What do you think the quote from the article refers to? The whole Theory of Evolution (i.e. common descent, natural selection a.s.o) or just the so-called Romer's gap?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure most people here will agree that evolutionary theory was fairly speculative for the first few years, but then backed up by more and more evidence over the years. And I have never heard or seen anyone claim that they know the evolutionary path for any organism that ever existed in minute detail, so get ready for more speculation.

Choccy

LOL!

Yeah, we're still waiting for seals to develop legs too!

We could fabricate a bunch of transitional myths using animals alive today. These transitional myths involving extinct species are no different.

There's no such thing as a transitional fossil in the macro-evolutionary sense. It's all bogus.

Animals were created the way they are from the start, including the animal mentioned.

The evolutionists can make all the claims they want and people will continue laughing at them and their assumptions.

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Evolutionists complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything.

-- G.K. Chesterton

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here.

-- Patrick Henry (1736—1799)

Hmm, were I come from 99% of the people are not laughing at evolutionists and thei assumptions. Can you guess who they are laughing at?

Choccy

Nick, I assume you are intelligent enough to have understood that the "speculation" in question was about the kinds of creatures that filled Romer's gap. Therefore I have a question. Was this just "sour grapes" because another transitional fossil has been found right where it should have been, or do you get so excited when you see one of your "buzz words" that you can't contain yourself and have no choice but to post something sarcastic, even knowing ahead of time that your misrepresentation of the position of your opponents is specious?

Do you ever have moments when you want to go back and post a follow up admitting that your sarcastic mis-analysis was unfounded, or do you just cross your fingers and hope that no one will call you on it?

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Man should no more get tired of using his brain--if he is using it properly--than a fish should get tired of water.

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He who laughs last...

Hehe, I'm gonna have to agree with you on that one.

Choccy

..did not get the joke earlier.

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Hier sitz´ich, forme Menschen
Nach meinem Bilde,
Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei,
Zu leiden, zu weinen,
Zu genießen und zu freuen sich
Und dein nicht zu achten,
Wie ich!

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Prometheus)

Which reminds me of a totally off-topic joke.

There's only one joke book in a prison library, and all the inmates in the prison have it memorized by now. So they don't even bother telling jokes anymore, they simply yell out the number of the joke in the book.

So one inmate yells out, "Eleven!" and many others laugh. Another yells, "Two hundred thirty!" and most of the inmates laugh again. Another yells, "Forty five!" There are no laughs, but one of the inmates mutters, "Some guys just don't know how to tell a joke."

...alternate punch line...

Another yells, "Forty five!" and many inmates laugh, but one guy just laughs and laughs and laughs. One of the inmates says to his cellmate, "What's with him?" The cellmate says, "He probably never heard that one before."