Score One for Darwin

More evidence for the flat earthers to ignore. This, from BBC News.

"Fossil animals found in Arctic Canada provide a snapshot of fish evolving into land animals, scientists say.

"The finds are giving researchers a fascinating insight into this key stage in the evolution of life on Earth.

"US palaeontologists have published details of the fossil "missing links" in the prestigious journal Nature."

Creationists are always saying that there's no evidence of what they call 'transitional species'. What they mean is that there's no fossil record of one animal 'turning into' another. It's ridiculous - like arguing that if people evolved from ocean creatures, you need to come up with a mermaid. This isn't any more 'transitional' than anything else, but it does fill a gap in the fossil record.

And here's the clincher, it fills a gap that evolutionary theory had predicted.

"Before these finds, palaeontologists knew that lobe-finned fishes evolved into land-living creatures during the Devonian Period.

"But fossil records showed a gap between Panderichthys, a fish that lived about 385 million years ago which shows early signs of evolving land-friendly features, and Acanthostega, the earliest known tetrapod (four-limbed land-living animals) dating from about 365 million years ago."

That's the key. Science is capable of predicting outcomes. In this case, as with countless others, it's done just that. The people who found this animal, Professors Neil Shubin and Edward Daeschler, went looking for this because they knew it must exist. And their prediction proved correct.

I'm not fooling myself into thinking that the fairy tale minded creationist crowd is going to cave on this one. But it does make it that much more difficult for them to make their case.

--Wisco
(Keywords: science, intelligent design, religious right, darwinism )