Another intermediary in the evolution to land-based tetrapods is finally cornered. Hello, little wannabe-amphibian! So the horror of the gaps shrinks yet again. (Shrinkage being a general problem in water anyway.) But, to be fair to religious literalism, the fossils were found in the flat part of the earth. An earlier article illustrates what was known prior to Ventastega: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Presumably Ventastega lies between Tiktaalik and what I presume is Acanthostega, peeking back at his newly installed hindquarters. "Four wheel drive. Nice."
Can we keep references to religion out of Biology? If you want to discuss creationism, please do not post it in B and G. Just stick to evidence based science.
I just did. What is you want to know about? I'm not an expert on the period, but the accumulating evidence does have the effect of minimizing the fossil record gaps that are taken as evidence that Adam and Eve were real n' such.
It is promising. But some of the leaps of imagination done with very partial fossil finds are well documented, even in modern times. I hope a more complete fossil is found, revealing more of a concrete proof and less conjecture.
Geoff, the article is from a year ago. Has anything new been added to it since then? Have they found more fossils of this animal?
Well, it's more than a molar to be sure. That is only one case, the molar, maybe it's the best known. There is a lot more of this in paleontology, including in recent times.
Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromsome Adam were real people from whom we can all trace our origins. Or don't you believe you were born of parents, who were born of parents, who were born of parents, etc.?
We lament the general lack of humor in science, until some snarky scientists give names like Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve to two rather ordinary people who didn't even live in the same era (60KYA and 170KYA, respectively) and who were both born in the usual unremarkable way. As Wikipedia says: We don't need to promote that implication.
I could believe in a gaggle of related Eves and Adams. But by definition, there will be no "single ancestor".
Yep. Single Eve always was a crock of shit. Sorry, sorry: exceedingly unlikely would be our phrase. Mea culpa.
I think it is possible to trace back a single lineage to a single eve. I know for sure that my mother was my eve for instance.
Mitochondrial eve is a well established scientific fact. Do some googling and educate yourself about genetics.
