Re: [asa] Extinction/Extant

This should help in some serious thinking...

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/god_introduces_new_bird

Enjoy!

Quoting Keith Miller <keithbmill@gmail.com>:

> Bernie asked:
>
> Isn't the lungfish a great example of a "transitional form?" If not, why
> > not (a fish with lungs... almost all fish have no lungs)?
> >
>
> Actually no. It is not a transitional form. Lungfish and coelocanths are
> sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" but that is also deceptive. Both
> are recent members of lineages that go back to the Devonian. But like
> everything else they have also evolved over that long period of time. They
> are not the same as their ancestors.
>
> To find transitional forms that link lobe-finned fish with tetrapods, you
> have to go back into the past down the evolutionary tree. As it turns out
> there is quite a number of transitional fossil species in the late Devonian
> around the time that the first tetrapods appeared. These are the
> transitional forms -- not modern species.
>
> A lot of the popular misconceptions about transitional forms are a result of
> uniformed media coverage, and some misguided popularization by some
> scientists as well.
>
> Keith
>

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Received on Mon Oct 12 23:07:33 2009