The
Real Darwin Fish
By Chris Mooney
We all know the Darwin fish, the car-bumper
send-up of the Christian ichthys symbol, or Jesus fish. Unlike the Christian
symbol, the Darwin fish has, you know, legs.But the Darwin fish isn't merely a
clever joke; in effect, it contains a testable scientific prediction. If
evolution is true, and if life on Earth originated in water, then there must
have once been fish species possessing primitive limbs, which enabled them to
spend some part of their lives on land. And these species, in turn, must be the
ancestors of four-limbed, land-living vertebrates like us.Sure enough, in 2004, scientists found one of those transitional
species: Tiktaalik
roseae, a 375-million-year-old Devonian
period specimen discovered in the Canadian Arctic by paleontologist Neil
Shubin and his colleagues. Tiktaalik, explains Shubin on the latest episode of
the Inquiring Minds podcast, is an "anatomical mix
between fish and a land-living animal."Read rest see pics here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/04/your_inner_fish_book_and_pbs_documentary_on_tiktaalik_and_neil_shubin.html
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