Rick, Fazal Rana, is a creation scientist, what do you think he will say on the subject?
His main points is:
1. This fish changes the evolutionary theory, upside down.
And then he goes off on trying to make a case from ID. But that right there is wrong. What this find changes is our perceived timline of when complex jaw bones appeared. National Geographic, Christian science monitor, live science and nature all commented on this that this changes how we thought modern jaw bones appeared in evolutionary timeline. This does not mean evolution needs to be re-written, that was blatant exaggeration and misleading for the layman.
Fuz dates a book from the seventies as proof that evolution theory CAN'T BE TRUSTED? If he is a scientist he should know that new discoveries change things. THAT IS WHAT SCIENCE DOES. This is not dogma, nor religion which has to stay the same.
I was quite upset about how he used big words to essentially say that this proves evolution as understood, is backways. That was so dumb.
And he also focused on the wrong parts. What makes it historically important, is the fact that before this, all fossils we had uncovered showed that the extinct family of primitive armored fishes, the placoderms, had simple jaws, composed of a few large bones. But in the new fossil, there is a distinctive three-bone system still used by chewing vertebrates today: a lower jawbone called the dentary and two upper jaw bones called the premaxilla (holding the front teeth) and the maxilla (holding the canine and cheek teeth).
If you look the fish from the top, it looks like a simple placoderm, but from the side, it does not match the jaws from the previous placoderm fossils. Fuz rana really used this to reject evolution but what was really important is that current evolution estimates fish like creatures coming on land some 370 million years ago and it was thought that the
complex-modern jaw structure was formed somewhat prior to that but later than placoderms; but the find of this fish changes that idea because it seems that the complex jaw had evolved in a fish which earlier had shown no signs of it. But this fish, it is the missing link. Because you have fish with simple jaws and then you have modern creatures on land and in water with complex jaws, but you don't have a missing fossil in the middle. This fish fills it. Its a fish but unlike fish of its times, it has modern jaw bones like we have today in vertebrates, esp humans. This changes our view of how face bones, cheek bones have evolved. Ultimately it will help piece together the transition from ocean life to terrestrial life as far as the modern jaw of vertebrates is concerned.
So this is what it changes, our understanding of how modern jaw bones appeared early in the evolutionary timeline than what was earlier estimated. The transition gap is still huge between jawless fish and jawed fish but its not what Fuz would have you believe.
Infact look at what scientists are saying, e.g Dr. Friedman who reviewed the original published paper in
Nature said:
"This is an unexpected discovery that inverts schoolbook teaching on the evolution of bony skulls," Dr Friedman told the BBC.
"Up until now it had been thought that the anatomical peculiarities of bony fishes - the group that would eventually give rise to human beings - are specialisations that arose later in vertebrate evolutionary history in our own bony fish lineage."
"But now that narrative has been turned on its head."
Dr Friedman said that the fish's jaw was much more like that of a modern bony fish - which is why its discovery may offer a new perspective on the early evolution of these creatures.
"While this fossil does not tell us anything about the origin of jawed fishes from jawless ones, it does tell us about subsequent modifications to jaw structure that we thought were unique to bony fishes," Dr Friedman said.
It is thought that modern jawed vertebrates, such as sharks and bony fishes, emerged from a collection of jawed, armoured fishes known as placoderms.
Dr Friedman says that the fossil adds weight to the theory that many classic bony fish features were evolved "very deep in our family tree, before bony fish split from sharks".
And speaking of this, the idea that new evidence changes how we see things, is actually welcome. Its not a fault its a strength.
