Artists rendition of Tiktaalik (source: National Science Foundation via Wikipedia)
Richard Dawkins describes Tik-tik in his his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, as “the perfect missing link—perfect, because it almost exactly splits the difference between fish and amphibian, and perfect because it is missing no longer.” But, sadly, Tiktaalik is now consigned to the scrap heap because tetrapod footprints have been discovered in Poland that are 18 million years earlier (all within the evolutionary story line, of course). That upsetting find was published in Nature and picked up on all the science-news channels early January.
I wrote an article about the implications of the find for creation.com, discussing some of the options that the evolutionists could be exploring to rewrite their story. But there is one option that I did not mention—ignore it. I wonder if that is what is happening on Wiki. When I looked at their their entry for Tiktaalik today there was no mention of the Nature paper by Niedzwiedzki et al. or of any of the surprised comments of paleontologists about the need to dump their whole transitional scheme. It hit the news over ten days but no-one would know from Wiki yet that poor old Tik-tik is an evolutionary has-been.
22 January 2010:
I edited Wiki myself today. See Wikipedia silent on Tiktaalik no longer.
Tags: fish-to-tetrapod, Fossils, Tiktaalik, Wikipedia
It is still a transition species.
Polar bears evolved out of a brown bear population but we still have brown bears. Animals evolve out of populations rather than all members of a species evolving into a new species. Ancestors don’t have to go extinct.
Give me a break,
Yes, the polar bears demonstrate natural selection. No problem! YECs accept natural selection. These processes are not going to put wings and feathers onto a lizard and change it into a a bird (See Don’t fall for the bait and switch on Creation.com).
The argument for Tiktaalik being such an ideal transition was based on it being the right “age” between other intermediates of the “right age”. The discovery of the footprints in Poland messes up that neat scheme. So the story has to change, as you say. Evolution is a worldview that is used to explain the evidence by means of imaginative stories. There are other worldviews.
Having recently reviewed the report on the Polish foot prints I am at a loss to see your ‘argument’. Amphibians, living and extinct cannot survuve in a marine environment. As the ‘foot prints’ are found on an ocean shore type environment, the organism clearly cannot be related to modern amphibians. Ergo, while it is an fascinating find, it is utterly irrelevant to amphibian evolution. Tiktaalik is a genuine transition form, just like all of the others.
Creationism is dead, give it up.
Give me a break,
The experts in the field said it was a problem. Did you read what they said as quoted in my report?