Fish-to-land-animal transition illustrated on Wikipedia. None of these have anything to do with the transition now so the entry for each one needs to be modified.
Well, on 22 January 2010: I edited the Wikipedia entry for Tiktaalik myself:
Tetrapod footprints found in Poland and reported in Nature in January 2010 were “securely dated” at 18 million years older than Tiktaalik, which means that Tiktaalik cannot be part of the fish-to-legged-animal transition, which is now considered to have occurred at around 400 million years ago. [reference to Nature paper]
All the entries on the other alleged transitions (Panderichthys, Acanthostega, etc.) need to be changed too. I wonder when that might happen.
23 January 2010: Less than one day later, my Wikipedia entry was edited:
Tetrapod footprints found in Poland and reported in Nature in January 2010 were “securely dated” at 10 million years older than the oldest known elpistostegids [reference to Nature paper] (of which Tiktaalik is one) implying that animals like Tiktaalik were “late-surviving relics” possessing features that actually evolved around 400 million years ago. [reference to Nature editorial]
So, Wikipedia can respond quickly. I wonder why nothing was said about the Polish footprints for 16 days but my post was edited in just 12 hours.
Interesting. The 18 million years has been reduced to 10 million so it does not sound much of a problem now, does it? But the fact remains that tetrapods were present at least 18 million years (assuming their evolutionary paradigm, of course) before Tiktaalik, and the entry is about Tiktaalik.
No reference now to Tiktaalik being part of the fish-to-land-animal transition. Evercat, who made the change, said, “‘part of the transition’ is meaningless. Nobody ever claimed Tiktaalik as an actual ancestor of anything.” No one ever claimed it was a transition? Richard Dawkins certainly thought Tiktaalik was an ancestor of something when he described it as “the perfect missing link”. How can he think it is a “link” unless it is the ancestor of something?
All the hype surrounding Tiktaalik certainly gives the the impression it was significant in the transition. In fact, the first paragraph on Wikipedia says, “It [Tiktaalik] is an example from several lines of ancient sarcopterygian fish developing adaptations to the oxygen-poor shallow-water habitats of its time, which led to the evolution of amphibians.” Did that say “led to the evolution of amphibians”? That sounds like Tik-tik was presented as part of the transition to land animals to me.
Or is this just a paleontological word game. Is it more about image than substance? Is the idea to make statements that give the impression that there is evidence but knowing that when pressed on the detail there is an escape clause?
Tags: fish-to-tetrapod, Fossils, Tiktaalik, Wikipedia
Because the editors had trouble trying to explain it without it detracting from the significance of the fossil. How do I know? Because on January 10th, eleven days before you edited it, editor Evercat wrote on the article’s talk page:
He gave the Nature reference. So he knew about the discovery, but failed to mention it in the article. And it was “irritating” because? Well, in reply to another editor, he explained that it was “irritating” because
“Nuanced”? What that means is that yes, it is a palaeontological word game. A “transitional” fossil is one that has characteristics that the palaeontologist expects would be in an intermediate/transitional; it doesn’t need to actually be transitional to be considered “transitional”!
Descendants need ancestors. Transitional forms do not need nuanced understanding because they are just ordinary organisms in a lineage.
A recent study of fossilizing chordate decay rates showed that the phylogenetically most informative characters decayed fastest and the plesiomorphic ones were decay resistant: Robert S. Sansom, Sarah E. Gabbott & Mark A. Purnell, Non-random decay of chordate characters causes bias in fossil interpretation, Nature 463:797–800, 2010.
Simple they do not want contrary evidence or statements made about their precious tiky wiki(pedia). This critter was their best hope for their faith in evolution in years. Even though it was readily shown not to be transitional by us creationists soon after it was made public. So they edit out real science and real information in favor of keeping disproved falsified information. Atheists i deal with on http://www.christian-chat.net/livechat.php in chan #topix will argue using Tiktaalik like it is their holy grail and nothing can stand against it. When problems are pointed to they just loop back on them self to restate the same they said before.
Any ways nice simple to understand blog post that im sure will get used in topix soon
je rome aka nova on ccnet
I find it interesting that with the Climategate scandal the secular establishment is getting a taste of its own medicine. Could this be a direct result of a now habitual anti-scientific attitude within the cloistered group-think of neo-Darwinism? Sadly, those calling for the return of genuine scientific debate over climate are just as likely to smother any debate on origins. I wonder whether sanity will ever return to mainstream science, or whether science will have to die a bitter death before it could ever be re-established.
Excuse me but what the author said here is non sense
of course Tiktaalik IS “the perfect missing link”
suppose we find it in rocks only 100 millions years old… it will just prove us that this missing link have survive 300 millions of years. If there are foot prints 18 millions years before it is the proof that Tiktaalik appear 18 millions years before the actual finding ( and perhaps much more) full stop
What is important is the structure of Tiktaalik which show it is an intermediate between fish and amphibians exactly as predicted by evolution
Hi Jean Staune,
Comparing structure says nothing about ancestor-descendant relationships. You can arrange spoons according to their structure but that has nothing do do with ancestor-descendant but with design.
… yet the ever persistent evidence for evolutionary development is there. Evolution does not have a rule that states that an ancestor form must die out immediatly following the emergence of a daughter species. Tiktaalik is a true transitional form and was also a living fossil in its own time. Controversy solved.
Hi Give me a break,
Yep, that is the way it works. New facts mean that you have to keep coming up with new stories to explain the evidence within your evolutionary way of thinking. Unfortunately the really neat transition involving multiple fossils has been messed up. But then something else will come up and that may become more popular in the future. It’s all very subjective, and you need to see that there are other ways of looking at the data. Creationist scientists do the same thing. They develop explanations for the evidence that are consistent with the biblical worldview. Give me a break, give it a try!