The Washington Post has a story on a new find of a "missing link" type of creature that adds one more plank in support of the theory of evolution argument - not that facts and data mean anything to the hard core Christianist who could be struck in the head with a 2x4 and still not get the message. For those with some open mindedness to facts and logic, the discovery may have some relevance since the new fossil discovery of this primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history should help evolutionary biologists to better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land. Here are a few highlights:*
The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.
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"At the time there were a lot of creatures around of varying degrees of advancement," Ahlberg said. They all seem to have similar characteristics, so Ventastega's find is helpful for evolutionary biologists. Ventastega is the most primitive of these transition animals, but there are older ones that are oddly more advanced, said Neil Shubin, professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, who was not part of the discovery team but helped find Tiktaalik, the fish that was one step earlier in evolution.
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One question that scientists are trying to figure out is why fish started to develop what would later become legs. Edward Daeschler, associate curator of vertebrate zoology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, theorizes that the water was so shallow that critters like Ventastega had an evolutionary advantage by walking instead of swimming.
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