How many so called missing links have been found to be anything but what they were claimed to be. What comes to mind is the ceolocanth which turned out to be far from a land lubber. This type of research is incredibly subjective but I suppose it fills a void.....

Please give us all a break.

After reading this article and many similar ones in the past six years, I marvel at the ability of the Religious Right to argue with a straight face the "young Earth" theory and, indeed,Fundamentalism or Creationism (I,D.). at all. If there was ever a time that the total knowledge of humanity is under attack, it is now.I'm not for a moment suggesting that there is no God, but to pervert his purported word in the manner of Jim Dobson or Jerry Falwell is the lowest form of religion known to Man.Good luck to all of you engaged in furthering our knowledge of what and how our ancestors developed.

Just a few questions:

1) The photo shows what appear to be bones jutting from the body, how can you deduce from those fragments that they were either fins, legs or both?

2)There's no way to tell if the creature used gills or lungs at this stage (unless you get lucky and find a fully preserved specimen, skin & organs intact), how can you tell he breathed both water AND air?

3) Fianlly, let us, for a moment, consider both the platypus and the walking catfish. Both are odd creatures, one because he looks like an afterthought and one because he can "walk" on his fins from one body of water to another, and yet, there's no debate at all that one is a mammal and one is a fish. Hm?

I know you're the scientists, but, really, people, we have creatures existing today that are clearly not "evolving" in any way. Do you honestly expect me to believe in evolution and *then* believe humans are the pinnacle of that evolutionary ladder? If not, show me, please, someone in the process of evolving to the next level. According to your evolutionary time tables, there should be someone evolving even now.

(By the way, I'm a Christian and a Creationist, so I don't expect any answer to this. In case you do, though, I'll give you my reply to any evolutionary "proof" you may choose to offer. Genesis 1:1-3a "In the beginning GOD CREATED the heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And GOD SAID..."
That's all. Just "God said". I find it much easier to take "God Said" on faith that believe we "evolved" over millinia.

The concept drawings remind me of a siren or axolotl.

I am interested in this find. How did these workers come to this conclusion, I do not see proof positive, however the implications here are astounding. I am anxiously awiting more information. I like your website.

With all due respect, the article "The fish that crawled out of the water" is so far-fetched it is difficult to believe. What is even more amazing is the fictional account that is built around it.

Very interesting. You would think, based on your drawing done by Kalliopi Monoyios, that over the 20 million years this development suppposedly occured there would be millions, if not billions of these skeletons throughout the earth. We have one. Killed rapidly, nearly intact, little to no time to decompose or be consumed by scavengers, & buried in sedimentary deposits. This animal was killed in a water disaster...a flood. Very intersting explanation of the development of the fln/arm. I would like to see the development of the gil to a lung! Perhaps we found a cousin of the mudskipper.

"...and a long snout that would have been suited to catching prey on land."
What prey?!?!

Nice to have the gap in the fossil record of the fish-tetrapod transition more filled once more !

These findings are highly relevant to the current evolution/intelligent design debate, and the crucial thing is the amount of detailed knowledge the team had before they even left their laboratories. The predictions of what to look for and where to look for it came from the fields of geology, plate tectonics, palaeontology, biology, and evolutionary theory, and the outcome provides confirmation of the mutually predictive validity of those diverse fields. No ID theory can satisfactorily account for such evidence, unless the designer purposefully planted these fossils where they were found. The idea that the designer created the world ready made as we see it was first proposed by Philip Goss, the 19th century biologist and religious minister. If true it would make the observed universe a purposely misleading forgery, which is presumably why the idea has never become popular, even among creationists.

I think it is quite funny how a few bones lead a few scientists to think they know all of evolutionary history. Why after all this time is this the first "supposed" missing link skeleton? Shouldn't the geological record be full of these things? Or, perhaps that was just the way that creature was made?

Voilà une découverte qui tombe à point. En pleine bataille sur le «dessein intelligent», le fossile d'Ellesmère vient encore enfoncer le clou de l'évolution. À moins de s'aveugler volontairement, plus aucun doute n'est permis. Merci.

Visit a mangrove swamp anywhere you choose and you can find many "missing links" alive and well TODAY. They are called mud skippers. You proved nothing except that these type of life forms have always been here. Impress me with a "real" discovery.

To answer a few questions posed by the creationists:

1) We don't know where Tiktaalik would have feed, perhaps it fed on land, or in the water, or both.

2) No one is saying that this is the first organism to venture onto land. There were likely other vertebrates venturing on to land as well at the same time and place, and furthermore, insects had colonized the land millions of years before vertebrates did, so there would have been a lot of insects to feed on for a non-plant eater, a well as snails, slugs, etc. Perhaps Tiktaalik fed on other shore dwelling creatures, like crocodiles currently due today. I can easily image Tiktaalik lying in wait near the shore line for other lumbering vertebrates that would clumsily move between water and land. Tiktaalik’s structure is similar to but crocs, who currently do this, and Lothiform fishes that are ray-finned fish who also have legs and sit on the bottom waiting for prey to come by.

3) Transitional fossils for this transition (fish to tetrapods) are only recently being discovered because of where they are. Many of these types fossils have been found near the polar regions, which just happens to be a place where we have not been looking extensively until recently.

4) The fact that anything even remotely resembling something "half fish and half land animal" is very significant. Creationism, when properly interpreted, predicts that all life has been exactly as it currently is, and therefore there should be no evidence of any life that looks different from any currently living animal.

You then have to make up how there used to be more things, but they got killed off in a flood, however the story of the flood doesn't say anything about a massive kill off of organisms, its just making stuff up to try and account for the obvious fact that there are many fossils of organisms that no longer exist.

Christian Creationist denied extinction well into the late 1800s. Creationism always claimed that life has been 100% the same since the "creation", it has only been in the late 100 years, which overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that creationists have tried to make up excuses for how we could have fossils for life forms that clearly no longer exist.

A new intermediate form has been found! Well, maybe...

As we've seen before, this new "find" is positioned--both in Nature and the NYTimes--as evidence that should finally convince the creationists that Darwin was indeed correct.

The problems, however, are no different than with other supposed intermediates:

1. There is not enough material in the fossil to see much of a difference from modern life forms (in this case, how are we to readily distinguish the fossil remains from a comparable crocodile skeleton?)

2. There is no explanation as to how such an intermediate would have dual breathing systems--lungs and gills.

3. This discovery is one of the very few that have been made, and yet Darwin himself wrote in OoS we should expect to find an *abundance* of intermediate forms in the fossil record, and that a lack of such evidence would essentially invalidate his theory.

On one hand, intelligent design is intuitively compelling for some, and yet unprovable. On the other hand, Darwinists STILL have no compelling evidence of intermediary forms (nor do they have a sound explanation for abiogenesis or the mechanism of inheritance).

One thing is clear: One's worldview concerning origins has very much to do with religious faith. This debate, like others, reveals that many participants are unwilling to critically evaluate their presuppositions. This is the most critical impediment to fruitful, respectful dialogue.

Reading some of the comments from creationists above I'm struck by some of the incorrect presumptions about evolution presented. If you people are truly concerned about understanding evolution (and biology in general) I urge you to devote some time to study outside of creationist and religious propaganda. Some of the questions asked above sound reasonable but actually aren't valid as applied to evolutionary theory and biology. Other questions have been answered decades ago but still work their way into creationist writing.

I'm not a scientist but I do have a strong background in the hard sciences and they are just that - "hard" - I compare having a good grasp of science as similar to knowing a foreign language. It takes time, patience, and study (and in many cases hefty tuition) to fully understand something like evolution or molecular biology. The beauty is that anyone can learn science - it's not some secret brotherhood of lab coated mystics working with smoke and mirrors (despite what creationists say) - science is accessible to anyone willing to devote the time to learn it. There are many people on the creationist side of this (largely false) debate who really should spend less time on the internet forums and more time in the classroom.

Ok, they have found a sarcopterygii's specie, so what. They cannot assume it is a missing link. The correct scientific method requires it to be proved.

That is not scientific it is only propaganda.

Hey you evolutionists the earth is not 365 million years old that would be impossible because the Bible states different. The fish you found is most likely a type of exstinct alligator. Bet you can't find what evolved into the Tiktaalik. It is impossible for something to happen by chance. Nothing happens by chance. Who knows your fish might just be another piltdown man to fill in the missing pieces. Least this one looks real, and I don't see any chewing gum either. Oh yeah, when did plants and insects evolve, and what from? Where did atoms and molecules come from? You might find alot of exstinct animals that God created, but something you will never find is solid proof. Evolution is a faith, and so is the belief in creation. So stop teaching evolution as a science and a fact. Because it is not! What are you all smokin fish can't crawl out of water if they did they would be amphibians not fish.

This is as good as the babelfish for me!

Someone get Oolon Colluphid on the phone.....

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

I wholeheartedly agree with the comments made by 'Will'.

I personally dislike the tag 'Creationists' as it seems to imply some sort of intellectual/philosophical movement.

I suspect that many Creationists are ordinary people that, with all due respect, may not have had, or do not have, time to spend in the classroom.

Rather than herding the 'Creationists' into a corral, and then shooting at them from an Ivory Tower, perhaps the 'Scientists' should explain their reasoning in a clearer fashion. Discussions concerning fides et ratio took place during the Renaissance.

If people in the 21st century approach science without
the ability to reason, then there has evidently been a failing in the education system, and in the way scientists communicate with the public.

Discoveries like 'Tiktaalik roseae' provide and ideal opportunity for public education. Given the huge media attention that 'fishapod' has attracted, I belive that the authors of this work now, more than ever, have an obligation to educate.

From an administrative point of view grants should be provided to this end without the normal delay frequently associated with project funding, so as to be in tune with media coverage, and thus maximise the overall effect.

The announcement of the fossils of the elpistostegalian sarcopterygian Tiktaalik roseae Daeschler, Shubin and Jenkins 2006 has, perhaps predictably, attracted comment from Christians and creationists such as Pam Sears who finds it “much easier to take ‘God Said’ on faith” than to “believe we "evolved" over millinia [sic].

The vacuity of this remark is evident from two things. The first is simple laziness – that Ms Sears chooses to believe one thing rather than another because her preferred option is ‘easier’.

By ‘easier’, I suppose, she could mean, instead, ‘easier to reconcile with her own beliefs’. And this leads to the second point – that scientific advance is entirely different from belief. This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Richard Dawkins has elsewhere argued against Paley’s ‘watchmaker’ argument of 1802 (beyond which creationists have not advanced a millimetre) on the grounds that it is an ‘argument from incredulity’. That is – ‘I refuse to believe it, therefore it cannot exist’. Leaving aside the wealth of philosophical implications implicit in this remark, it should be apparent that this argument is barred from scientific discourse. Scientists discover things that appear unbelievable, because this reflects on the limits of the knowledge of the believer, and not on the state of the Universe. In this way, science advances, whereas creation remains static.

If, like Ms Sears, you choose to subscribe to a belief system that originated thousands of years ago in the ancient Near East, then almost everything is unbelievable and you must needs resort to shrill re-assertions of passages of Genesis, rather than argument based on the substantial body of fact and argument that has accreted since then.

In case Ms Sears and other creationists think I am a fan of Dawkins, Dennett and similar epicene proselytizers of irreligion, I am not. I believe in God. And, being Jewish, I would caution Ms Sears to be very careful when quoting the Bible in English. The Bible was originally written in Ancient Hebrew, which I have found from personal experience is extremely difficult to understand and interpret, and the earlier chapters of Bereshit (Genesis) are the most difficult of all. I would attach more credence to Ms Sears’ argument were she to quote the relevant passages in Hebrew. For example, Genesis 1:1 transliterated from the Hebrew runs “Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets” and even this apparently clear statement can be subjected to reinterpretation. For example, ‘ha’aretz’ refers to ‘land’ or ‘soil’ rather than a discrete planet Earth, as in the Hebrew blessing on food ‘Baruch atar Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, borei puri ha’aretz’, which refers to the fruits of the earth in a general way, and not to a cosmic body floating in space which we now know the Earth to be. The authors of the Bible, not having access to spacecraft, could not have known this. But Ms Sears’ comments imply that she doesn’t believe that, either – and if so, one must ask her how she can be tolerant of a spherical Earth (perhaps she is not) and not of evolution, and inquire as to the basis of her choice. It is not for nothing that in Hebrew scholarship the Bible is dwarfed by the 5,000 pages of the Talmud, compiled by rabbis over centuries, in which every part of the Bible is minutely interpreted. But Ms Sears doesn’t want to know that -- it’s too ‘difficult’.

Evolutionary biologists are in part to blame. In seeking to offer ‘evolution’ or ‘science’ as alternatives to ‘creation’ and ‘belief’, Dawkins, Dennett and colleagues are falsely equating the two, when faith and science are absolutely and necessarily different. To have faith requires no proof, still less substantiation. Either you believe, or you don’t. One cannot prove the existence of God, nor should one want to. To do otherwise is to misunderstand and misrepresent the nature of belief, which has access to the absolute.

Science, however, aspires to humbler goals, and Dawkins and Dennett have signally and wilfully failed to grasp this. Absolute truth is deliberately closed to it – in science we have provisional solutions, which hold until solutions are found that explain the world more coherently. Apples didn’t fly upwards the moment Einstein discovered relativity – but relativity provides a more succinct description of the world than was possible in Newton’s time.

But if you ‘believe’ in the Bible as literal truth (as Ms Sears does) rather than as an instructive, insightful and morally uplifting part of our heritage (as I do), then no advance is possible, and Ms Sears has no right to comment so assertively on matters which she plainly does not (or chooses not to) understand. Here I agree with John Vanderzyden on this blog who writes “One's worldview concerning origins has very much to do with religious faith. This debate, like others, reveals that many participants are unwilling to critically evaluate their presuppositions. This is the most critical impediment to fruitful, respectful dialogue.”

However, the false Dawkinsian dichotomy between ‘science’ and ‘belief’ has left science wide open to the abuses of ‘Creation Science’, and its dreary demands for ‘equal time’ in school and college curricula. For a start, ‘Creation Science’ is an oxymoron, for the reasons I have stated, and no amount of rebranding as ‘Intelligent Design’ can escape this. Creationism is not science because it does not seek evidence to advance knowledge of the world, with the consequence that our previous understanding of the world is modified, but to discover, through a pseudoscientific gloss, evidence that supports its static world view, disregarding the rest. If this is science, it is bad to the point of being fraudulent.

In addition, the Dawkinsians, in their assault on belief in the strictly Darwinian arena, are fighting too specific a target. Creationists do not object to evolution in particular, but to the scientific materialism on which it is based. This objection is not limited to Christianity, but is current in modern Islam and orthodox Judaism, too. I have written on this topic elsewhere, and those interested can visit this url:

http://www.chiswick.demon.co.uk/multifaithID.html

from which a number of things are apparent: including the fact that Creationists are currently making common cause with Islamic fundamentalists in an assault on science. I trust that this might come as a shock to certain parts of the current US administration who rely on Christian fundamentalists for their support against, for example, Islamic fundamentalism.

More generally, one can only ask once again how Ms Sears and others can choose to benefit from the products of science (modern healthcare, cheap and easy travel, abundant food and the other benefits afforded by scientific research), while abjuring others (evolution). The authors of the Bible had access to none of these, but I doubt whether creationists in the US at least, who are in the main the wealthy and content, would choose to live like a bronze-age Bedouin such as my revered avoteinu v’imoteinu – that’s Hebrew, for Abraham, Sarah and their friends and relations.

From this it is clear that Creationism is a political movement whose aim is to roll back the clock and return to the Dark Ages, in which science was constrained by the Bible because that was the only ready source of information at the time. The aim of scientists of the Renaissance and the Enlightment and up to the present day – scientists such as Newton, Einstein, and perhaps even Darwin – was to glorify the Creator by seeking to understand his plan. That is my goal, too.

Creationism is, therefore, not the real thing, but a cheap knock-off. In seeking physical evidence for Creation, it undermines the very fabric of the belief to which Ms Sears subscribes. If you feel it necessary to seek proof of your faith, one is entitled to ask whether your faith is really all that strong. The beginning of every Jewish Sabbath service starts with these lines: ‘Ma tovu aleicha Yaacov’: ‘How lovely are your tents, O Jacob!’ As well as speaking directly to the ancient heritage valued by Ms Sears and myself, it is a simple and touching affirmation of belief. But by seeking substantive evidence for belief, you might change the emphasis: well, Jacob, just how lovely ARE your tents? – and the whole edifice collapses.

Therefore I should set out my stall. I am an evolutionary biologist. I was the editor of the two papers about Tiktaalik. I believe in God. I object to the cheap, wilful, nasty traduction of my religious faith by a group of people who would pervert it to further their questionable political ideals. I object to all scientists of faith to join me in its damnation, and to educate certain in the evolutionary biology community of the rank and damning illogicality of their position.

"...perhaps the 'Scientists' should explain their reasoning..."

"That is not scientific it is only propaganda."

"On the other hand, Darwinists STILL have no compelling evidence of intermediary forms..."

"How did these workers come to this conclusion, I do not see proof positive..."

In response to the breed of comments above: Did you actually read the articles? All the statements in the news summary are backed up in a scientifically rigorous manner in the authors' peer-reviewed articles.

Maybe the problem is that you didn't understand them.

This is a very real and difficult problem to address, and granted, the professional scientific community needs to spend more time doing so, but PLEASE do not dismiss ideas as incorrect just because you don't understand them.

Additionally, one reason why scientists often don't address some of the concerns brought up by creationists (e.g. Thomas Weant) is because evolutionary theory and the mechanisms underlying evolutionary change are so thoroughly misunderstood and misrepresented that we are at a loss about where to start! It is quite a monumental task to educate the public about how science and nature works when there is such resistance to ideas and hypotheses that have been supported by evidence numerous times.

This is directed to Dr. Henry Gee:

Holy smokes man! Being I'm an atheist, I generally reject the concept of a god or gods immediately. But, sir, although I still stand with my lack of belief in a sole creator, you sure have given me some serious food for thought. Thank you.

Ichthyosasquatch

Hold your horses folks. Evolution is a gradual process, so really there is no such thing as a missing link, or, there billions of them. These fellows just happen to fit into a gap that was pretty big. Oh, and regarding the "how can they know" question. Every specialty has ways of interpolating or extrapolating, or averaging, or filling in unknowns with pretty good guesses, guesses that have in the past prove helpful and evenutally accuate, so you have to believe that the artist renditions are done in this vein and not as part of some crazy liberal conspiracy. Justin

Regarding the Coelacanth, I cannot find reference to it ever having been considered a land animal. It was always known of as a fish, it's just it was thought to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous Period until a fish of this type was noticed amongst the catch of a shark fishing boat in 1938.

For those who discount evolution because they can't see the changes, just look at bacteria. If bacteria aren't evolving, then why are there strains that are growing increasingly resistant to existing antibiotics?

All it takes is for a few microbes to have a genetic anomoly that allows them to survive exposure to an antibody that would kill off 99% of the bacteria. Those few microbes could then spread and and create a whole host of microbes causing reinfection, rendering the originally used antibody to be useless against it the second time around.

You could repeat this process over and over again with different antibodies until you have a strain of bacteria that is remarkably different than the original, in that it is now hardier and more resistant compared to the original strain.

To (eg A. Biologist) you still didn't answer my question about where did plants, molecules,atoms,and insects come from that is because evolutionists don't know. Here is another one how did oxygen and hydrogen evolve. In order for something to be fact it has to go through a series of tests and when the tests show invalid you are to dispose of your ideas. So evolution is violating the laws of science and can not be a science at all. Even Darwin knew that. The reason why evolutionist don't address the concerns that I brought up is because they don't have an answer. I do not dismiss the IDEAS as incorrect because I don't understand them but because evolutionists are wrong and a bunch of liars. Ramapithecus or ("Rama's Ape"), for example evolutionists tryed to make the ape look like a man but failed. Why would I even want to believe them. Nobody likes a liar. G.A. Kerkut has seven assumptions called the "General Theory of Evolution," evolutionists believe these assumptions as true. Even though Kerkut said his assumptions are not capable of experimental verification. There is NO way your IDEAS and hypotheses have been supported by evidence numerous of times. If so neither me nor anbody has seen any REAL EVIDENCE. I am not a creationist but a Bible believing Christian.

Thank you Dr. Gee, I'd say that pretty much sums it up.

If more people could approach the subject with an open mind and look beyond their presuppositions, then perhaps we can all see this discovery as progress instead of an attack.

One thing I would note, is that while there is often the perception that inconclusive fossil evidence is the foundation of the argument in favor of evolution, it is a fractional part of the big picture.
The evidence is laid out quite plainly for us to see even when we consider only the earth's current bio-diversity. There is a trend of incremental progression towards higher complexity in, I dare say, every facet of life on earth. Fossil evidence serves only to add to those particular chains of progression that have lost links along the way.

What hand might be guiding this process should be the Creationists' debate, not their current regressive crusade, which tries to debunk decades worth of progress in evolutionary theory.

-Willem v.d. Schyf

Since Darwin proposed that life has simply been evolving and changing and developing humans have hard a hard time understanding this, a hard time accepting this.

This blog is simply a showcase that fools rush into, displaying their bias.

Let's just keep evolving, "merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream".

i'd like to thank the scientist that put their time effort and money into finding this wonderful speicmen. it is a very exciting find.

i'm so enthused that I'd like to buy a full size painted replica of this creature. does anyone know of a website where i could purchase a painted replica? or a store that might have one?

thanks in advance and congrats on the find. three cheers!

I am a Creationist and think that this find is very important. I believe in the infallibility of the Bible and yet, find this discovery non-contradictory to what the Bible teaches. We, as Creationists, get our information concerning the origin of the earth from Genesis, but reading it with a 21st Centry Western mindset is improper.

The audience in the days Genesis was written (it was oral tradition for many years before it was penned) were less concerned with HOW things came to be and more concerned with by WHOM things came to be. Just because the Bible doesn't mention dinosaurs or Tiktaalik roseaes doesn't mean that they didn't exist. Same goes for any number of species that existed in those days that do not now.

The omphalos hypothesis that many Christians suggest is one that portrays God as a Liar. In response to the navel theory, Charles Kingsley once wrote, "I cannot ... believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind." Here's the fact: They found a new species and we as Christians that believe an in an Intelligent Designer have to understand that this in no way threatens the truth of Scripture.

Very interesting...quite a find, but, I fail to believe that this is the only possible link to this fish to lizard transition. Nevertheless, it could be , and I laugh at the creationists on this comments website, who think we did not evolve! I am a Greek Orthodox Christian, but I am also very realistic about science and evolutionary concepts and logical principles. 365 million years is a lot of time to allow such an evolution....seems totally plausible and possible for me! Congratulations gentlemen! Continued success....

Does anyone know if the cranium was sufficiently intact to allow the making of an endocast?

Hi
This animal had COANA?
Thanks

Dear Rex,

What a find. Today was one of the happiest days of my adult life when I read about the discovery of Tiktaalik. However, when I read the replies to the article on your blog, I was astounded to see the number of ignorant human beings who deny such a find and its implications. I don't know if this is a scientfically valid observation, but most naysayers have little command of the English language, where the people who are impressed with the find communicate on a much higher level. I'll leave that one for you experts to ponder.
I am the president of the Atheist Coalition of San Diego. I see that you are based in "America's finest city." Would you consider giving a talk to our group sometime? We would be honored. Please let me know about your speaking and congratulations on such a dynamic article.
Sincerely,
Jeff Archer
4245 Francis Way
La Mesa, CA 91941
619-465-9528
lekkerspikkels@msn.com

The discovery Tiktaalik certainly is a valuable event that improves our understanding of evolution, but I have read several speculative comments by a variety of scientists on this event that seem a bit unwarranted to me. I should note that I have a degree in biology and I agree that Tiktaalik is a significant “transitional specimen”.

I have read many comments about the proposed behavior of Tiktaalik that do not seem reasonable. For example, some have proposed that Tiktaalik “evolved limbs in order to” (which is not how evolution works) walk onto the land, to navigate dense aquatic plants, or to hand on to the ground in fast moving streams, etc.

However, looking at the morphology of the creature, there is every indication that this was a mostly stationary bottom dwelling creature that lied in wait for its prey to come close, before it then snapped it up.

There are very good reasons for believing that this is a mostly aquatic animal that hunted its prey in the water. Firstly, the morphology of the fish is analogous to Lophiiformes (http://tolweb.org/Lophiiformes/21989).

Lophiiformes are ray-finned fish, and therefore, not related, but they show many signs of convergent evolution.

The key features are the flat head, eyes on top of the head, and the leg like limbs. These are all features of fish that live on the bottom and eat prey that swims above them.

Ray-finned fish have mouths that can inhale, so they are able to suck in prey, but the ancestors of Tiktaalik could not inhale, so the movable neck would have been a great benefit for a stationary feeder.

Secondly, present day crocodiles, probably the closest living relative, hunt in a similar way, by lying stationary in the water, on the bottom, or near the water's edge, and then snapping up prey as they come close. This is another very good reason to believe that this was a stationary hunter.

So, while I think that this fish is a “missing link”, I do not think that we should view it as a “walking fish”. The fish probably swam in a manner similar to present day crocodiles, i.e. By using its body but not its limbs, and used its limbs to spring up from the ground to grab prey.

On a different subject, addressed to the creationists, mudskippers and walking catfish are not transitional forms between fish and tetrapods at all, because these are ray-finned fish that don't posses any of the structural elements that tetrapods have, such as arm bones, wrists, fingers, etc. They also don't posses movable necks or lungs. So, while they are fish that move on land, they are not transitional forms between fish and modern land animals.

As for the development of lungs, we already know that lungs evolved from the air sacks that fish use to regulate their buoyancy. There are several species of lungfish today that can breath air directly through the mouth.

The fact that this article is being heralded in media rags is one sign of payola and not necessarily substance. These findings are based on theory and soft science at best. Unfortunately many with careers in the sciences are too egotistical to admit that they do not know everything. The artcle on Nature.com begins with this "objective" statement: " A crucial fossil that shows how animals crawled out from the water, evolving from fish into land-loving animals, has been found in Canada."
I believe that this is misleading and assumes that many ideas hypothesized by geologists and paleontologists are proven facts and not up for debate. Pure rubbish!
Based on mathematical formulas used to calculate how much time the earth would need to have existed for enough non-deletirious mutations to occurr for evolution to have taken place, the earth would have to be much older than these quacks say it is, but if you bring this point up they will ignore it because as I said above
"Unfortunately many with careers in the sciences are too egotistical to admit that they do not know everything."
That's all for now.

"Additionally, one reason why scientists often don't address some of the concerns brought up by creationists (e.g. Thomas Weant) is because evolutionary theory and the mechanisms underlying evolutionary change are so thoroughly misunderstood and misrepresented that we are at a loss about where to start! It is quite a monumental task to educate the public about how science and nature works when there is such resistance to ideas and hypotheses that have been supported by evidence numerous times"

I agree A. Biologist. Creationists and ID people can explain their thing in five minutes, while discussing evolutionary theory takes longer. I wonder how can those pseudosciences still exist when we have this kind of evidence.

It is interesting to note that some feel it is the responsibility of scientists to undertake the effort to properly educate the public about why they have arrived at the conclusions they have. Some feel that their conclusions are simply speculations and assertions of faith. In any case the truth is that scientists arrive at their conclusions from a combination of exhaustive examination of physical evidence and the marshalling of their extensive experience and education. Scientists are very conservative about speculation because they do not want to diminish their credibility among their colleagues. Scientists are primarily addressing each other. They are addressing an audience that has the education to be able to appreciate their assertions and question them if necessary. If you read the abstracts concerning this find (available online) you'll note that they are referring to their examination of details of anatomy. Most people have not put in the educational effort that would allow them to critically review the evidence let alone question the conclusions. These paleontologists are primarily talking with other paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. I encourage anyone truly intersted in learning about these fields to do so. And a careful reading of "The Origin of Species" can also clear up misconceptions. Make the effort to learn and understand in good "faith" and then draw your conclusions.

I am a molecular biologist. I just want to point out that evolution is NOT a matter of "believe it or don't": it is a FACT. It is not a matter of faith. I dare someone to state that the sun is flat!! I was completely astonished and scared about the comments written by so-called creationists. I don't believe someone in 2006 can still think this way. These comments simply highlight an incredible ignorance about the matter, a superstitious view on the universe,a lack of will (or of capability?) to actually READ and STUDY biology and comparative anatomy. Evolution, like physics or chemistry, is not a domain of religion and people should do an effort to FIRST KNOW about it, and then talk.

This scientific finding similar to so many before proves once again Darwin was right. However, to present this scientific finding as a fact that proves creationists are wrong is like comparing apples against oranges. How can you get into a logical, rational debate with people who believe they belong to the exclusive club of Christians who are the only ones going to heaven and the rest of us go to hell even though we may be good people doing good deeds for humanity? It is worthless. So lets accept this finding as what it is.. It is a scientific finding not a religious finding.

I have a question for Will. Please tell all of us ignorant, poor, uneducated folks that surf the web too much, what about evolutionary theory is “hard” science. To say creationist spew propaganda, look in the mirror first. For you to tell us how enlightened you are, due to your familiarity with the “hard” sciences is so pompous. Did you pull out your tweed jacket, and put it on while you were writing your response? To lump evolutionary theory and molecular biology (or some other big scary science word) together is a common form of defense, to discourage further discussion. I don’t know how much time you spend on the computer, but I encourage you to get out in nature and see how God has blessed us with many miracles. There are all there, right before our eyes. Enjoy the wonders we have been given. To think that, all that is perfect and balanced in nature, came about due to a series of chance events and environmental shifts, that lead to favorable mutations in a series of different organisms is sad.

Errata corrige: in my comment (posted on April 7, 2006 07:22 AM) I wrote "...I dare someone to state that the sun is flat", I obviously intended to write "the earth"! Sorry about that!

This is my last posting on this matter here, but a few of the creationist remarks must be addressed.

James Yelton: I find your comment about getting out in nature ironic, since that is exactly what biologists do, and more to the point, that is exactly what Darwin did.

Charles Darwin was educated as a clergyman in the finest ecclesiastical school in England. He was a complete believer in the literal truth of the Bible when he set sail on the Beagle.

It was his 5 year experience of coming into contact with untouched nature all around the world that changed his mind and brought about his theory of evolution by undirected change and natural selection.

I grew up in both Florida and Arkansas. I have been a fisherman and hunter my entire life. I am also a biologist. I am *very* familiar with nature.

I'm also very familiar with the fact that nature is essentially extremely deadly, competitive, cruel, brutal, and heartless. The main thing that you see when you pay attention in nature is that everything killing everything.

It's very beautiful on the surface, as we have evolved to perceive it in such a way, but it's a very deadly serious competition taking place. Every organisms that exists is primarily a set of defense mechanisms, killing mechanisms, and reproductive mechanisms.

Life is fundamentally based on killing, consumption of the molecules of other organisms, domination, and reproduction.

At the molecular level life is about consuming organism molecules, and the primary source of organic molecules is other living things, that we must kill to survive.

Doesn't exactly sound like a place "created by a loving God".

If you would like to learn more about evolution I can recommend my own article on the subject:

Understanding Evolution: History, Theory, Evidence, and Implications

As for the creationist claim that it is "mathematically impossible" for evolution to "be true", this claim is based on completely flawed math that completely ignores the laws of nature and treats all molecules like ping-pong balls in a lottery drawing. According to the same math it is impossible for snowflakes to form as well, or planets or anything else of that matter, because this calculation assumes that molecules have no properties, but just act like random numbers, which they don't.

James Yelton wrote: "I encourage you to get out in nature and see how God has blessed us with many miracles. There are all there, right before our eyes. Enjoy the wonders we have been given. To think that, all that is perfect and balanced in nature, came about due to a series of chance events and environmental shifts, that lead to favorable mutations in a series of different organisms is sad."

James, I agree with only half of your statement. As well as being a Nature editor I am a keen gardener because I can't get over a childlike wonder of putting a tiny seed in the ground and seeing it come up as an enormous great plant. How does this happen? Where does that plant *come from*? As a scientist, I am fascinated by the mechanics of how this comes to be, and as a religious person I cannot help but thank God. My religious sensibility makes the scientific details all the more wonderful, not less, and it is an impulse that makes me strive to learn more, not close my mind to the wonders of God's Creation by cleaving to some ancient text.

J. A. Black wrote "I still stand with my lack of belief in a sole creator, you sure have given me some serious food for thought." No, thank *you*. Being prepared to change one's position is what it's all about. The Creationists are, of course, philosophically unable to do this.

I'd like to point out a serious grammatical error in my post of yesterday. The last sentence should have read "I call on all scientists of faith to join me in [Creationism's] damnation, and to educate certain in the evolutionary biology community of the rank and damning illogicality of their position." On that last point: as one can never prove the existence
of God, atheism is not a tenable position for a scientist. Thomas Henry Huxley displayed the proper humility of science in his coinage of the term 'agnosticism'. If we just don't know, we should be honest and say so.

I dislike this sort of "intellectual" (at best) warfare. I am a Christian since 1987 -- a very real experience for me. Until 1988, I had no doubt whatever about origins -- evolution was absolutely it; no intelligent human being with knowledge of shoes would doubt it. I still don't "doubt" the veracity of science, nor can I grab tenaciously to simple creationism.

I have never been a scientist or anything close, but I do have a solid education, and concepts like this fascinate and intrigue me.

Probably the biggest question I have centers on the "absolute" conviction that creeps into articles about finds. So few of the comments even hint at the purest emotions that Daeschler and Shubin must have felt, and the rest of us should feel: joy and excitement. The discovery adds immense wealth to the stores of knowledge -- for both "sides."

This should not be seen as a huge "victory" beyond the victory of knowledge. Even Daeschler and Shubin "played down the significance of their find." Good for them.

The first sentence of an article at Nature.com -- complete with grammatical errors -- throws it all into the cesspool of "foregone conclusion":

"A crucial fossil that shows how animals crawled out from the water, evolving from fish into land-loving animals, has been found in Canada."

Regardless of your perspective, I'm sure that God is pleased that another of his creatures has been found and named.

I've read the posts here by creationists with quite some ammusement. The ignorance of evolution and even of science is appaling. I have to laugh, or I would cry. Many are making assertions about it that would require more direct examination of the specimens, or directly contradict the descriptions in the article.

But one mistake I have noticed from even those arguing for evolution is to say that the Tiktaalik would be mose closely related to aligators or crocodiles. That is only a very superficial resemblance. The closest living relatives would be amphibians such as salamanders.

What was interesting to me, having taken a college level comparative anatomy class, was the mention of gill arches migrating towards the top of the head, possibly in the process of becoming ears. The inner ear bones of modern land animals are believed to have evolved from gill arch bones, and this is excellent confirmation. This animal is exactly what we should expect to have found.

This is the first time I have visited a Nature blog. I am an avid surfer of the website and this article in particular interested me sparked a variety of questions.

So it saddens me that the comments section is not devoted to relevant debate, but is nothing more than a showdown between Creationists and Evolutionists.

If we can't resonably discuss scientific topics on the website for what is possibly the most prestigious scientific journal in the world then what what exactly is the point of these blogs?

I need to correct one little thing on my last post. The Tiktaalik's closest living relative is the coelocanth. The closest TETRAPOD relative would be the salamander.

Just a note: Serious proponents of Intelligent Design distinguish between microevolution, where changes occur within a species, and macroevolution, where cows change into dolphins. Microevolution is an accepted fact, but macroevolution is a fairy-tale for those grown-ups who personally feel the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible to be unacceptable.

One last comment about the relationship of Tiktaalik to modern animals.

The issue of reptiles and amphibians is contentious.

Much of the ideas about reptile/amphibian evoltuion has been presumed and this is still an area of research. Reptiles certianly did not evovled from amphibians in the modern sense. I'm more inclined to the view that they have a common ancestor that was neither "reptile" nor "amphibian", and that true amphibians arose after the split.

I will agree though, for me to say that Tiktaalik is most closely related to a croc was a bad statement.

Thanks

Evolutionary history tells us that, contrary to a comment posted here on the 6th of April, flowers would not have existed on land 375 mya, nor would any of the insects that they are co-dependent on. According to evolutionary history, ferns and other seedless plants dominated the Carboniferous "coal forests" some 340 to 280 mya, well after the proposed age of Tiktaalik. Angiosperms (flowers) didn't apparently develop until some 175 mya. Moreover, terrestrial slugs and snails would not, and do not occur in close proximity to marine environments, in terms of Tiktaalik being able to "haul out", to eat them. Terrestrial gastropods would loose water and dehydrate because of a hypertonic envirement, i.e., next to the shore. From the perspective of evolutionary history and ecology, Tiktaalik would have had little incentive to feed on land, given the diversity and abundance of life in the proposed paleozoic era seas. We can see there is as much ignorance among evolutionary biologists as there is with people claiming to be Creationists, regarding the understanding of general biology and experimentally testing theories. What this find needs is strong evidence of it's age, that is independent from the researcher's biases.

"Macroevolution", as some like to call it, is not a fairy tale, and there is no valid disctinction between macroevolution and microevolution, because the concept of species is merely a framework that mankind uses to organise the infinitely variety of nature. It is a useful and valid framework, but the dividing lines are not always clear, and the decisions about where one species ends and another begins change over time. Macro- and Microevolution are the same thing: evolution. You can't accept one and not the other.

Could someone that knows more than I take a moment to comment on a question I have regarding this criticism of macroevolution:
"3. This discovery is one of the very few that have been made, and yet Darwin himself wrote in OoS we should expect to find an *abundance* of intermediate forms in the fossil record, and that a lack of such evidence would essentially invalidate his theory." - John

I admittedly know relatively little about this subject, although unlike some, I am at least keenly aware that, as Dan put it:
"scientists arrive at their conclusions from a combination of exhaustive examination of physical evidence and the marshalling of their extensive experience and education" (It disturbs me when some Christians so readily dismiss macroevolution without any respect or knowledge of the extensive research that has been done to support it, other than what they've heard 3rd hand).
What I am modestly educated in is the field of chemistry. I wonder if the proportionally small amount of fossil evidence of transitional forms between species might be analygous to a chemical reaction. That is, in order to form products from reactants, a transitional molecule is formed (called an activated complex). Although this intermediate step (or steps)is necessary for the completion of this chemical change, it is itself is not very stable and therefore lasts for only a fraction of a second.
In macroevolution, are the transitional organisms (the small and large missing links, so to speak)that appear to be underrepresented in the fossil record somehow less stable (less successful at surviving and therefore enduring in the evolutionary timeline) than the organisms before and after - and as a result constitute a minute (and difficult to find) portion of the fossil record?
An elementary question, I know, but...

Cows --> Dolphins

?!?!?!?!?!?

[croggled that anyone thinks that this is what evolutionary biologists are teaching]

It is amazing how people try to rationalize events around them. Look at the way we jump to conclusions at the sound of politicians. The fact is this is but one of an infinite number of puzzle pieces that has been found. It fills in a small gap in the overall understanding of our history. The bone development and age of the fossil can be used to bracket the morphologic development observed in the fossils which can at least suggest development of use for crawling vs swimming. These may have been limited to movement in shallow water where the body was partially or completely submerged to eliminate the body weight. In swamp or shallow alluvial environments, this would be expected as a likely precursor to actual land movement. We do not have enough at this point, or possibly ever, to determine that without a doubt. Wether it is evolution or creation is beside the point. Most of the people trying to push these points simply need to get a life. The fact is, it is what it is. They once lived on this planet and now they don't, and this is just one more bit of information to sort it all out. For the critics..I suggest a little more aluminum foil on the walls. For those who see this as the absolute connection..I suggest you take a breath and not try to figure out the end of the book before we get there.

Rock does not lie...Lithophylic

Eric: You are calling evolution a fairy-tale grownups use in place of what? Another fairy-tale?

The evidence for an immensely anchient Earth, for descent with modification over a very long-term, and for common descent of all life on Earth is so plentiful and well documented that it is impossible for well-informed objective person to refute it.

I'm astonished..... I believed to read a forum about the characteristics of a really interesting discovery..... but I see a lot of fool that say something as "this is a croc" or similar. I'm sad.In Italy these position are not common, but there are somelobbies which attempt to say so. I hope that devonian tetrapods and jurassic theropods-bird are the "tombstone" of creationmism. Yet the fact now is that some scientists went to a place chosen with great attention, having the ideas that just in this place (for age and environment) could be some important fossil. And they have found it. Thank you. I don't know many things about tethrapoda, but now can we argue that elbow and wrist formation predate fingers formation? What are the steps that scientists have to know about the fish-amphibians transiction? And it's surprising that even the tethrapoda legs and the bird feather and light bones were born for a matter and after were used for other functions.
About coelecants: creationists must know that if Tiktaalik was discovered several years ago, scientists could have said that they were fish very near to tethrapods. But in that time there were no fossil record of tethrapoda....
Aldo Piombino - Florence

Dr. Gee repeats an error so egregious that I cannot resist commenting; The Scientific advances he mentions from which we all benefit are all the result of impirical science. They have absolutely nothing to do with evolution. Examine standard texts relating to these areas and see how many times you see evolution mentioned.

I find this scientific discovery very exciting for many of the same reasons stated above, regardless of the resulting debate.

However, I think that we scientists are failing to acknowledge that, while we feel we have done rigorous studies on data which validates the conclusion, this information is highly inaccesible. Even to people who have formally studied hard science, it takes a large amount of practice to be able to critically review journal articles and interpret the findings presented -- imagine if you had no background whatsoever in science!

Further, the media cannot be expected to accurately portray hard science, as most journalists do not have sufficient knowledge of what they are reporting on (otherwise, they would never make a teleologic mistake such as "how fish developed legs for land mobility", which is completely backwards! It should have noted that this development allowed the organisms land mobility). But it is very important, as previously noted, to consider that scientists are very hesitant to publish information that has not be thoroughly tested, as they are being critically reviewed by their scientific peers, and publishing "bad" science is highly disadvantageous to their professional reputation. This is not something thrown around casually in the scientific world.

I hope that the critics of this discovery drop their self-riteous and inflammatory crusades and make an effort to fully read and understand the full scientific journal article, instead of relying on watered-down press pieces. If you don't understand the article, ask someone who can help -- perhaps a local professor. Furthermore, as a biologist, I am not trying to take down the entire theory of Creation. This isn't war. Instead, this is simply an attempt to further advance our community's knowledge of things previously unenlightened -- for, "wonder is the desire for knowledge." - St. Thomas Aquinas. If you want to "see how God has blessed us with many miracles", look in the mirror: We are blessed with the ability to reason and think, instead of just doing.

More so, I hope someone in the scientific community climbs off their smug horse and presents this information in such a way that everyone can feel excited about it, regardless of their personal belief system. Make this knowledge accessible to the public!! And don't trust the media to do it for you...

Congratulations and thank you to the researchers for their hard work and valuable contribution.

--
"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." - Alfred Korzybski

I welcome with joy this latest "fishapod" finding, but view with caution the great public generalizations from it. There is much yet to find on Ellesmere Island and elsewhere.

I take it on faith that there will always be gaps in the fossil record. It is in the nature of living tissue and geologic forces at work. Some fossils are abundant, others are rare. Look how long this team had to search when they knew what to look for and where to look! But please note they did start with a testable hypothesis about where in the fossil record to look, even down to the type of environment that must have existed then for something like Tiktaalik roseae to have appeared.

As a non-professional scientist, I have had a deep interest in Darwin and evolutionary theory for years. Even after reading Darwin's Origin of Species it was not clear to me how Evolution works. Darwin did not even have a clear definition of a the concept "species".

Finally I read Ernst Mayr's book "What Evolution Is", written at age 97 I believe, summarizing a lifetime of careful scientific experience along with his major contributions. The light dawned.

For those too busy to read this small tome written for the general public, I commend Mayr's obituary in the Economist at http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3644451

The principles that struck me as so simple and appealing to my common sense are the following:

Mayr's great contribution: Organisms don't evolve, species (in the case of sexual reproduction, groups of organisms that can interbreed) do!

Here's how:

Idea #1: Every generation of living things comes in a huge number of individual variations. It's in the DNA. Just look at our single species of 6 billion human beings--the largest mammalian example on the planet. No two are alike. Same with a litter of puppies, a garden of flowers, unseen bacteria.

Idea #2, which Darwin got from Economics: Since in the natural world there are more born than can survive, there is severe competitive pressure on all organisms to survive and earn a living.

Idea #3, those variants in the population or species with the best characteristics for surviving and reproducing the most descendants in the environment of their generation, win the game of life and get to pass on their DNA variants. The pressure of selection determines what life forms will change into. Tiktaalik roseae obviously was successful enough to leave fossils for us to find.

By creating computer models with these characteristics, groups of constructs representing species can be seen to evolve! Evolution can be reproduced by mathematical simulation. Very elegant.

This certainly oversimplifies the course of life, given the competition between species, symbiotic co-evolution, diverse environments, cataclysms, plate tectonics, and climate changes on our violent planet but perhaps these simple ideas clarify for doubters what is going on. I know they did for me.

One great miracle is that we the only creatures on earth who can figure this stuff out! What ever G-d we may believe is behind this universe (or not), scientific progress only happens if our theories are subject to hypothesis, testing and falsification. The hypothesis of "intelligent design" cannot be tested or falsified. By definition it is not a science but an ideology.

Having just become a grandfather twice last year I know the joy of seeing my wife's and my DNA succeed...at least for now. :>)

I'm surprised that no one has noted the sentence in Mr. Yelton's argument where he asks derisively if you scientists put on your tweed jackets while doing this research. As a former teacher who once owned a tweed jacket WITH LEATHER ELBOW PATCHES, I take umbrage at that characterization of teachers/researchers! I'm quite sure Mr. Yelton wrote his piece wearing his seersucker jacket with the white shirt and narrow tie! Seriously,one must have some humorous perspective on these matters to keep from getting too depressed.

But when he implies that scientists bundle THE WORK OF different academic specialties to make their work more unintelligible (presumably to those with no scientific backgrounds), he reveals his true paranoia at that which he can never understand and which he stereotypes using presumably the worst comparison he can imagine. He has a rich intellectual history to draw on for these views. Remember the famous politicians who referred to the "nattering nabobs of negativism" and the "pointy-headed PERFESSERS"?? The former went to jail for bribery (Spiro Agnew) and the latter died in justifiable ignominy, having disavowed all his former social and political beliefs (George Wallace). I feel sorry for Mr. Yost, as I feel he may wind up as did Mr. Wallace, BECAUSE their beliefs AND attitudes ARE SO SIMILAR.

I was really happy when I´ve heard of the discovery of Tiktaalik. It makes me feel eager to learn more about paleonthology and the evolution of life on earth, which are themes that fascinate me. I hope one day I can study them deeply.

I'm interested in all this fossil finding.How i can become just like you.And i hope i can study more about Tiktaalik.Send me more notes about it,please!!! :~)

As Alto Piombino briefly mentioned, the scientists that found these specimens did science the way its supposed to be done. They took their theories, in fact, all of their ideas, such as evolution, the known gelogical and evolutionary timeline, knowledge of locations where sediments of the correct age could be found, and what kind of environment the organism they are looking for would inhabit. They took these ideas and used them to predict where they could find what they were looking for, and what it might look like. They tested their prediction, and thus all of the ideas it was based on, and it came through for them in flying colors! I would like to offer them a very sincere "BRAVO!"

And I challenge any creationist scientist to do anything even halfway as impressive. Make a prediction based on your "science", and test it.

The discovery of Tiktaalik is extremely exciting, even if descriptions of it in the media may have ignored some of the details of the debate!

As a Christian who believes that God created using the mechanism of evolution, I find two aspects of the debate on this page particularly depressing:

(1) Creationists are remarkably quick to make assertions without bothering to understand the data. Guys, how will an atheist believe the Gospel if they see that you are so quick to talk rubbish about something which they themselves are experts in?

(2) Scientists themselves are often very arrogant in their defences of the science - "we've trained years for this so don't expect us to explain things to lesser mortals". You know you can do better than that! For example, an early post asked "The photo shows what appear to be bones jutting from the body, how can you deduce from those fragments that they were either fins, legs or both?" - which had puzzled me as well as I struggled to relate what I saw there to the diagrams that accompanied the picture in the media, eg in the New Scientist. It wouldn't take much to be able to give a sensible answer to that question - or to publish a photo that reveals more of the limb structure.

Both sides of the creation/evolution debate need to be less shrill.

The irony of this find is lost on the authors - that a single find of a fossil of a supposed transitional life form is a major news item. In Darwinist evolution, specimens of transitional life forms should be so numerous that the labor would not be in finding them, but devoted to crafting what should be a massively complex taxonomy. Yet, when a (single!) specimen is found, it's big news. This article is a combination of 1)wishful thinking, 2) subjective conjecture passed off as science and 3)loaded with irony.

[Editor's note: You'll see from our story that there are indeed a number of transitional species - this one simply (conveniently) falls into a gap where we didn't previously have any samples. Also note that they found several of these creatures - the one in the picture was simply the best preserved.]

Geoff Lockett said:
In Darwinist evolution, specimens of transitional life forms should be so numerous that the labor would not be in finding them, but devoted to crafting what should be a massively complex taxonomy.

Where I live, there are pigeons, seagulls, sparrows, etc. by the hundreds of thousands. They are *everywhere* -- nobody's car is safe! Yet in all the years I've lived at my house, not *once* have I found a bird skeleton while working in my garden. Not *once*. So if all those birds are not just figments of my imagination, where are all the bird skeletons? By Geoff Lockett's logic, the soil in my yard should be just *packed* with bird skeletons! So Geoff, where'd they all go???

Fascinating fossil, fortunately preserved over geological time and found and properly studied and reported by a group of dedicated biologists. If only the creationist detractors to evolutionary science – who so liberally salt the pages of these ‘discussions’ with uninformed and misconceived attacks – were required to justify their critique of evolution research with the same degree of support and reference to scientific findings and methods as the authors of the Nature article (Daeschler, Shubin, & Jenkins) provided for their study!

With all (considerable) due respect to Dr. Lee, I think Dawkins is right. There is an enormous incompatibility between science and religion. One is about evidence. A scientist's most cherished belief, a hypothesis s/he has worked a career or lifetime on, all must be thrown out if the evidence contradicts it.

A religious belief, on the other hand, is held without reference to evidence. Indeed, the brownie points go the other way: holding one's belief firm in spite of any amount of evidence to the contrary. I have great difficulty reconciling these ideas and so lean increasingly toward atheism (happily so far - maybe I'll have a "comfort crisis" eventually ).

I confess to liking religious people less and less when they ride in airplanes designed by aeronautic engineers, take drugs developed by biologists and participate in our judicial system (which would not convict a shoplifter without evidence) and then attack science. (And, evidently, skipped science class.)

We're headed toward a "Sputnik" moment I'm afraid, where the rest of the first world will have moved ahead in the sciences while we in the US not only fall behind but receive health care in our old age from doctors, lab techs and pharm researchers who were taught biology without its central unifying idea, evolution. What a thought!

Would you get on a plane not designed by an engineer with a full education in physics? This is the future of biology in this country if the religious right were ever to get its way.

Respectfully,

Jean

I have to wonder after reading the comments here how many of the creationists 'criticising' this find actually bothered reading the papers involved.

It doesn't appear that any of them have actually bothered reading and understanding the paper. Just criticising what is yet another piece of contradictory evidence against the [nonexistent] creationist model.

To kurt:

Regarding insects, plant-eating insects existed on land long before the existence of flowers.

There are many semi-aquatic snails that live both in and out of the water and are abundant near the water's edge.

There are many species of arthropods that live both in and out of the water, and they were indeed on land long before vertebrates. Crabs live all over the coasts.

Having said all that, I think that Tiktaalik was probably an aquatic hunter or mostly aquatic hunter, and perhaps it never left the water at all.

There are, after all, hundreds of species of fish with legs more advanced than Tiktaalik's today that live purely under the water and never come onto land.

Land is not needed for legs, there are uses for legs in the water.

Given Tiktaalik's head shape, I think it fed similar to current crocs and anglerfish, by sitting on the bottom and waiting for prey to swim overhead.

SaulOhio says, "And I challenge any creationist scientist to do anything even halfway as impressive. Make a prediction based on your 'science', and test it."

This happens. As I mentioned earlier in this discussion, I ride on a happy fence, and don't mind looking at all versions of research with absolute fascination because I firmly believe "all truth is God's truth."

One utterly captivating video entitled "Mount. St. Helens: Explosive Evidence for Catastrophe," does exactly what you ask. Dr. Steve Austin found some remarkable evidence.

Of course, when it comes to the creation argument, none of the "damned if you do" crowd will watch it, and few of the "damned if you don't" group will bother.

It covers some fascinating territory, and I had a chance to see some of the evidence in person when I lived in Seattle.

(Incidentally, I loaned the video to a creationist scoffer who "accidentally" threw it away and refused to replace it. I was looking for someone who would comment... He wasn't my man.)

On Joseph O'Donnell's point - you can get onto this forum from the Nature Science Update page without having a subscription to Nature, so some of us may well not have read the original articles. Given that this is so, some of the questions above would still benefit from an answer.

If you actually want to do something about the rise of 6-day creationism, arrogance isn't going to help - it'll actually do the opposite and perpetuate the negative perceptions of science and its practitioners.

Of course, free access to the Tiktaalik articles wouldn't go amiss either! :-)

Dave, it's easy to make a video that appears reasonable to laypeople with no background in geology or other relevant subjects: the audience simply won't know enough to know whether any given claim makes sense or not: it all sounds plausible.

But real geologists find Austin's arguments and evidence to be unconvincing.

[Editor's note: this entry has been shortened from the original for legal reasons]

But real geologists find Austin's arguments and evidence to be unconvincing.

Thanks, plunge, for a polite and reasonable reply! (I wish I could see the legally objectionable material.) The parts of Austin's research that I could see were the stratification and "miniature Grand Canyon" that formed virtually overnight. I was also fascinated with the deposits of "petrified forests" under water.

Most of the criticism of Austin regards radiometrics -- and he was sloppy -- but the principles of dating are sloppy. Contaminants and xenogens always seem to throw wrenches into the works. Validity of radiometrics seems to be based on whether the results confirm one's theory.

The only place you step over the edge is to refer to "real" geologists: regardless of your opinion of Austin and his work, he has a 100% secular list of degrees, culminating in a PhD from Penn State. In my mind, although he wanders far from the beaten path, that still ranks him as "real."

From my perspective, somewhere around 95% of the evidence strongly suggests eons of time elapsed in the formation and development of our current world, but other 5% should not be dismissed out of hand because "other perspectives" have led to the greatest discoveries in history -- even if, like Darwin and Planck, those views bring about something other than what they intended.

"Give to Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar and to God what belongs to God"

I think the people who believe in creationism should read this over and over until they understand.

i actually read jennie clacks book gaining ground about 2 years ago...great book ..very detailed if y'all want info on these "fishapods"

btw creationists, i agree with that poster who said that you shouldnt criticize scientific evidence that you don't know anything about ........it just makes you look arrogantly ignorant

Henry Gee: you had me singing along with you right up until you wrote "as one can never prove the existence of God, atheism is not a tenable position for a scientist".

This applies to you too. If atheism is untenable from a scientific standpoint, so are theism and deism. Contrary to your stall, set out so admirably and articulately, this statement disqualifies you from being a scientist who believes in god. Yet of course you are. To say otherwise is (a) ridiculous but (b) a corollary. You are a scientist who believes in god; I am a scientist who believes in a lack of god. These are faith-based positions and so we can be scientists while holding them because we acknowledge that any attempt to use logic to determine the existence of god results in agnosticism. Opinions on god's existence are beyond science and orthogonal to logical analysis. As you said, "Either you believe, or you don’t." Even Dawkins admits that atheism is a faith. To be a scientist is to have a method, not an answer. Deists, theists and atheists can all join.

After several years of examing both sides of this argument, I have come to the final conclusion that neither side will ever be "correct" because that would make the other side "incorrect". In reality, both creationism and evolutionism hold clues to the real truth, but we will never see this truth as long as we, as humans, hold onto our ego so desperately. Why does someone have to be wrong? What if the answer is right in front of our face but we're too busy trying to be right to see it. I think I've found it...or at least something closer than anything else I've seen. Feel free to let me know what you think...I'm always up for a challenge. Are you?

Sincerely,

A Forgetful God
(http://forgetfulgod.blogspot.com)

I think it is interesting how many people say that belief in God is "unscientific" or even beyond the scope of science. Has anyone ever seen something with which they are unfamiliar, sucha as a odd type of clothing from a foreign land? Since you have never seen that type of clothing before, and you didn't see it actually being constructed, do you just say, well that must have just popped up out of the ground or something-- because since I didn't see it than I am not going to believe it was made. ANyone who said such a thing would be regarded as an idiot. We see things all the time, buildings, toys, computer software etc. that are totally foreign to us but we assume, because of what we obwerve, (observation IS science) that they are made by humans. Do we have a right to assume that? of course. why? because we see the intelligent nature, and/or the functionality of the object. it COULD NOT have just made itself, with any ridiculous made-up amount of time. We SCIENTIFICALLY assume that what we observe is amde by something intelligent- becuase we find order and funcionality. The same should be true of any intelligent person-- if they observe life in general, people, animals, the planets, and see order they should, in fact they are wrong if they do not, see the Conscience behind it all. It only makes logical sense. That is why it is said in an old proverb "a fool says in his heart there is no god."

The creationist's vision was perfectly summarized by someone writing: "I find it much easier to take 'God Said' on faith than believe we 'evolved' over millenia".
Yeah right ... if EASY is the criterion, then science cannot compete with faith. Herewith I declare him the winner of this debate.

Neither Religion nor Science has the Earth’s true History “ALL KNOWED UP”.
If you want to believe God Created life on Earth, you are going to have to concede he did it over time: Evolution is a fact.
But the whole concept of Earth History, as presently being taught in our schools, is nothing more than an elaborate myth.
And the site listed below, will prove it to any open-minded person.
No fees ask or accepted.
All I am trying to peddle is the truth.
And no! I am not a religious zealot.
See: HTTP://PlanetEarthRevisited.blogspot.com/
For the only true story, of our Earth’s trek through time, ever written.
I DARE YOU TO READ IT.