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Author | Topic: Missing link found: early jawed fish | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Here's a link to the news article
quote:
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jar Member (Idle past 420 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Professor Long says the fossil dates to about 50 million years before fish became amphibious. HUH? Is there a wrong word in there?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2132 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Wiki says "The first major groups of amphibians developed in the Devonian period, around 370 million years ago, from lobe-finned fish similar to the modern coelacanth..." so 370 million + 50 million seems about right for the age of this find.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Professor Long says the fossil dates to about 50 million years before fish became amphibious.
HUH? Is there a wrong word in there? I'm not seeing it. Which word are you referring to?
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jar Member (Idle past 420 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
But lobe-finned fish already had jaws. Weren't there even earlier jawed fish like Placoderms and weren't they even further back than 420 million years ago?
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2132 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
According to Wiki, you are correct.
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jar Member (Idle past 420 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Amazing.
I was shooting from memory which is often wrong, but I still think it is most likely that that sentence in the article is likely just the reporter misunderstanding of what was actually said or taken out of context.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2132 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
I read it differently.
I read the sentence to mean that amphibians developed some 50 million years after this find.
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jar Member (Idle past 420 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
But they are dating this find at 419 million years ago.
How does that jibe with there being earlier jawed fish? What do amphibians have to do with when recognizable jaws first appeared?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2132 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Your initial quote from the article was:
Professor Long says the fossil dates to about 50 million years before fish became amphibious. It seems that this is correct. Perhaps you pulled a quote other than you intended for that post? As it does seem that jawed fish were already known from that time period and somewhat earlier?
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jar Member (Idle past 420 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
No, I still don't see how that connects to the story. It is just part of the issues with the story as posted and as I said, I get the feeling that the reporter got lots out of context or misrepresented.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9509 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
I really wish they wouldn't scream 'missing link' everytime an important new fossil is found - it gives totally the wrong impression of what evolution is.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android |
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4443 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
"This ancient fish called Entelognathus is the missing link because it shows that the extinct armoured Placoderms fishes, which dominated the seas, rivers and lakes of the world for 70 million years, actually were the ancestors to all the living fish on the planet today." I wonder if this is actually a quote from one of the scientists involved or a misunderstanding by the reporter. This fossil may have jaw features that are transitional, but there is no way to know if it is "the ancestor of all modern fishes". I can understand a scientist saying something like that to a reporter to emphasize how import and exciting this new find is, and thinking that the reporter actually understands that this is an exaggeration like his scientist colleagues would understand it. Have seen this kind of situation when I and some of my fellow dragonfly specialists talk to reporters. When we say that Tanypteryx hageni is a "living fossil" it means one thing to us and something different to the reporter and so may convey a completely erroneous meaning to the reader.What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1051 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
I wonder if this is actually a quote from one of the scientists involved or a misunderstanding by the reporter. This fossil may have jaw features that are transitional, but there is no way to know if it is "the ancestor of all modern fishes". That's not a misquote at all, you've just misread it. Nowhere does it say that this fish in particular is the ancestor of modern fishes. It says that placoderms are the ancestors of modern fishes. Just like someone might point to a feathered dinosaur fossil and present it as strong evidence that dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds, without implying that this particular fossil is a bird ancestor. If you want the article's misquote, then you should be looking at this one:
quote: I suspect Professor Zhu said 'vertebrates', rather than 'vertebrae'. Although we could be generous to the reporter and blame on it on the Professor's English skills.
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