Tiktaalik Tall Tales

Tiktaalik is back in the press. This alleged transitional form of fins-to-limbs evolution has already been dismissed. But since science is not a friend to the Evo Sith, they keep trying to zombify creatures that are dead to science and then let evolutionary speculations run loose. Rikki-Tikki-Talik is put forward as evidence of evolution, but there is no serious examination of the evidence, no mechanism for evolution, no believable conjecture as to how it happened in the first place. This is what passes for evolutionary "science".

By Ghedoghedo (own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

What makes matters worse for evolutionary scientists is that what they find does not even fit their own speculations. As we keep telling you, evolutionist (and their wild-eyed press) keep spinning yarns and telling stories and passing it off as science. Then people who do not know how to think critically (or simply want reinforcement for their preconceptions) will not only accept this "science", but pass it off as refutation of creationists. This is how the clown car of evolution works.

Discoverer of a putative ancestor of tetrapods thinks it came with rear-wheel drive.

Neil Shubin of Your Inner Fish fame did some more digging, and found the rear fins of his iconic fish-a-pod that made headlines in 2006.  Publishing the new findings in PNAS, he says that the rear hip bones of the creature he named Tiktaalik roseae provide insight into the great transition from swimming to walking:

At first glance, the origin of tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) from finned precursors seems an almost insurmountable transition between life in water and life on land. If the basis of comparison were living taxa alone, then the anatomical and behavioral differences among finned and limbed vertebrates could appear vast: for example, fin structure and function differ dramatically from those of limbs.  Fossil evidence, in particular vertebrates from the middle and late part of the Devonian period (393–359 Mya), offers intermediate conditions that bridge this gap.

Shubin and team compared the hip bones of swimmers he feels were ancestral, like Eusthenopteron, and later landlubbers, like Acanthostega, to show evolutionary progress toward tetrapodhood.  The story, however, is not one of simple progression.  For one, Tiktaalik appears to be a “mosaic” of “derived” (evolved) and “plesiomorphic” (primitive) features.

Although the size and general robusticity of the pelvis is derived relative to other finned forms, aspects of the general architecture of the girdle are plesiomorphic .…

Plesiomorphic features of Tiktaalik can be interpreted as highlighting a functional difference with limbed forms ...

Another complication from the new findings is a falsification of the “front-wheel drive” theory of the transition. 

You can finish reading "Tiktaalik is Back, This Time with a Hip Twist".