Creation & EvolutionForum for the discussion of this important topic. This forum is open to non-believers. There is a Christians-only forum in the Christians-only section too.
Gist of the story: Resolution to the discrepancy between dinosaur and avian digits made certain predictions about what type of limb we should see in dinosaurs in a certain time period. Lo and behold, we eventually find a dinosaur, from that time period, with the traits predicted.
Basically, dinosaurs *appear* to have digits I II and III, and at one time birds *appeared* to have digits I II III. After developmental studies it was found that birds actually have digits II III and IV, but since we can't do the same studies on dinosaurs, it was predicted that an evolutionary median must exist where the missing digits I and V in dinosaurs are reduced or nonexistent. Woo, we found it: Limusaurus Inextricabilis.
N.B. I'll be responding very rarely, you may have noticed I dropped off here recently, school's gotten super-hectic with a few short-term high intensity classes. I just thought this find was really neat.
Gist of the story: Resolution to the discrepancy between dinosaur and avian digits made certain predictions about what type of limb we should see in dinosaurs in a certain time period. Lo and behold, we eventually find a dinosaur, from that time period, with the traits predicted.
Basically, dinosaurs *appear* to have digits I II and III, and at one time birds *appeared* to have digits I II III. After developmental studies it was found that birds actually have digits II III and IV, but since we can't do the same studies on dinosaurs, it was predicted that an evolutionary median must exist where the missing digits I and V in dinosaurs are reduced or nonexistent. Woo, we found it: Limusaurus Inextricabilis.
If this is true it will mean creationists will turn their attentions to some other 'missing link', creationists are like the TV news, all they want is bad news, and just like the TV news if there is no bad news they will make some up.
hooray! two more missing links that evolution hasn't found yet!
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"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties." -Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume II, Chapter X
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hooray! two more missing links that evolution hasn't found yet!
LOL
Michael Shermer was debating Gish several years back, and when asked about transitional fossils, he gave an example, to which Gish exclaim, "Aha, now you're missing two more transitional fossils."
Ignorance has no bounds I guess.
__________________ We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is noaccident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth. ~R.D.
Do check out Dave Hone's post on the hands, by the way. The Pharyngula entry has a link to it, and it gives a more complete - and complicated - picture from one of the authors of the paper.
I distinctly remember something about Hox genes in alligator hands that bears on this issue... if only I can find it... Ah, this is the one. HoxD-11 is expressed in most of a developing alligator hand, except the thumb area (similar to the pattern in mice). This suggests that the absence of HoxD-11 expression in the developing "digit II" of birds is not because the index fingers of archosaurs just don't express this gene, but more likely because of a developmental frame shift where an ancestral digit II assumed the identity of a thumb. Rhymes nicely with this Limusaurus creature.
__________________ "There is much we do not understand about the history of life, and the same will be true of our grandchildren. But, then, if we knew all there was to know, scientific interest would cease. Textbooks may portray science as a codification of facts, but it is really a disciplined way of asking about the unknown." - A.H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet
"Come on, put your bloody thinking caps on!" - Dr Tony Prave, geology lecture
This fossil is like hot steamy evolutionary nerd sex.
I like.
__________________ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939] (Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst) said:
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."
More Limusaurus coverage in the science blogosphere, and a reason why its hands might not mean much at all (but it's still a very cool fossil): Limusaurus @ Tet Zoo.
(I'm eternally grateful to Bombila for prompting me to watch that blog.)
__________________ "There is much we do not understand about the history of life, and the same will be true of our grandchildren. But, then, if we knew all there was to know, scientific interest would cease. Textbooks may portray science as a codification of facts, but it is really a disciplined way of asking about the unknown." - A.H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet
"Come on, put your bloody thinking caps on!" - Dr Tony Prave, geology lecture
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