Ashby wrote:
> On p. 74 of _Darwin on Trial_, Phillip Johnson provides the
following quote from Barbara J. Stahl's textbook _Vertebrate
History: Problems in Evolution_ (1985): "none of the known fishes
is thought to be ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most
of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that
came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs
that characterized the primitive tetrapods." It seems clear that
her objection to the various fish which have been put forth as
tetrapod ancestors is not that they lack signs announcing their
ancestral status but that they lack evidence of developing the
structures which most distinguish the early tetrapods. <
Are you suggesting that ribs and legs are the only features
which can be transitional? Lungs were also needed and the
record according to Ahlberg and Milner attests to the duplicate
gill/lung possesion of both the lastest fish and the earliest
tetrapods. Is this not also a transitional feature; one that
might be more important than legs? Vertebrates can live
on land without legs (e.g., snakes), but not without lungs.
You wrote
> On pp. 74-75 Johnson points out that the internal organs of
the coelacanth, an ancient fish which was thought to have been long
extinct until one was caught in 1938, showed no signs of preadapta-
tion for use in a terrestrial environment. This was contrary to
the expectations of evolutionists. It was they, not Professor
Johnson, who pinned high hopes on the study of the coelacanth's
soft biology. This is evident from the comments of P. L. Forey in
_Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B_ (1980) 208:369
(quoted in Michael Denton's _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_, 179):
We had to wait nearly one hundred years before discovery of
the Recent coelacanth. During that time many fossil coela-
canths were described and, on the basis of osteological
features, their systematic position as near relatives of the
extinct rhipidistians and as tetrapod cousins had become part
of "evolutionary fact", perpetuated today in textbooks. Great
things were therefore expected from the study of the soft
anatomy and physiology of _Latimeria_. With due allowance for
the fact that _Latimeria_ was a truly marine fish, it was
expected that some insight might be gained into the soft
anatomy and physiology of that most cherished group, the
rhipidistians. Here at last was a chance to glimpse the
workings of a tetrapod ancestor. These expectations were
founded on two premises. First, that rhipidistians are the
nearest relatives of tetrapods, and secondly, that _Latimeria_
is a rhipidistian derivative.
I therefore think that the criticism of Johnson on this point
is unfounded. <<
This whole idea that the evolutionists all expected that the
crossopterygia to show preadaptations for land life is wrong
and can be shown to be such by an examination of the
"ancient" literature of the 20's and 30's and 40's Romer in his 1945
edition states of coelecanths,
"The early members of the group were, in general, fresh-water
types; but in the Triassic, when coelacanths were common
and varied, we find them in marine deposits. The group
survived in this new environment; Undina of the Jurassic
and Macropoma in the Cretaceous are later Mesozoic
representatives. It is reasonable to believe that in this
environment lung-breathing would disappear; some sort
of lung sac persisted, however, for numerous Mesozoic
specimens show a calicification in its expected position."
(Alfred S. Romer, Vertebrate Paleontology, (Chicago U,
1945), p. 121
I might point out that this was about 8 or 9 years before
science was able to examine the soft tissue of latimera,
if I interpret Locket correctly. (see Adam Locket "Learning
from an anachronistic fish," New Scientist, May 25, 1972,
P. 427).