Re: 'Tiktaalik': New Link in Evolution's Chain - Science, slow and steady

[Jay <sappororaptor@yahoo.com>]

I like this editorial. It seems reasonably responsible in its comments unlike a 
lot of recent
stuff published in the popular media (eg. a recent piece on Hagryphus).

Quote from editorial: ''Caution: Although headlines about "missing links" are 
certainly
attractive, they are both slightly overstressed and slightly misleading. All 
life is related, so
every new species, living and past, is a link to every other. Evolution isn't 
waiting around for
us to fill in the holes; it marches on. "Missing" simply means we haven't found 
it yet''

--- Patti Kane-Vanni <pkv1@erols.com> wrote:

> Today's _Philadelphia Inquirer_ Editorial Page: 
> http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14347114.htm Great play in 
> the press! - Patti Kane-Vanni
> Editorial: 'Tiktaalik': New Link in Evolution's Chain
> Science, slow and steady
> 
> What the heck is Tiktaalik roseae?
> 
> It's a glimpse of how life pulled itself from water to land during the 
> Devonian period, hundreds of millions of years ago. It's also a tribute to 
> brains and incredible, shivering patience.
> In the April 6 issue of Nature, a scientific team - including a 
> paleontologist from Philadelphia's own Academy of Natural Sciences - 
> announced the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae. The word tiktaalik comes from 
> the Inuktikut language of the Nunavut territory of Canada, where the fossils 
> were discovered. It means "burbot," a big freshwater fish. That's what 
> Tiktaalik evidently was: It could motor in shallow water, and maybe even 
> flop around on land a little.
> Scientists have long pondered a 25-million-year question mark between 
> Panderichthys, a fish with early features of land dwellers (385 million 
> years ago), and Acanthostega, one of the first amphibians and one of the 
> earliest known four-footed land dwellers (360 million years ago). (For a 
> chart, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4879672.stm.) What 
> happened during those 25 million years?
> Here praise is due Edward Daeschler, curator of vertebrate biology at the 
> Academy of Natural Sciences. He, with Neil Shubin of the University of 
> Chicago and others, trekked in 1999 into arctic Canada to look for a 
> creature that could bridge the gap. It took them only five years of being 
> very cold and frustrated, digging around in Ellesmere Island. (Entirely 
> unromantic is the stuff of science.)
> Payoff of payoffs: Someone noticed a fossil snout sticking out of a cliff 
> wall. Eventually, the team would find three skeletons of Tiktaalik, one of 
> which is about nine feet long. A homely, 383-million-year-old dude, it 
> probably looked like a crocodile: flat head, eyes on top, scales. Instead of 
> limbs, it had webbed fins, suggesting that it lived in shallow water. But it 
> also has features you don't see in fish: the beginnings of a neck and 
> wrists. Truly, this seems like a step in the transition from water to land. 
> Indeed, as Daeschler says in a New Scientist article, as a transitional 
> species, Tiktaalik "really split the difference right down the middle."
> Some wonder aloud why we haven't found "all the fossils" yet, as if that 
> makes the fossil record less than trustworthy. Hello: It's amazing we have 
> any fossils. They survive only under precise geological conditions, and we 
> can get at only those near the surface or otherwise accessible. Many lords 
> of the past sleep in the hearts of mountains. We'll never find them, never 
> know about them.
> Although much of history is destroyed or deep beyond our grasp, we can 
> assemble a persuasive outline of life's exuberance. Whenever a find like 
> this happens, it's a tribute to astonishing luck and even more astonishing 
> hard work. The discovery of Tiktaalik is very much the latter.
> Caution: Although headlines about "missing links" are certainly attractive, 
> they are both slightly overstressed and slightly misleading. All life is 
> related, so every new species, living and past, is a link to every other. 
> Evolution isn't waiting around for us to fill in the holes; it marches on. 
> "Missing" simply means we haven't found it yet.
> Finds like Tiktaalik are rare, as rare as the patience and endurance to 
> scour the world for them. Drawing life's family tree is slow, slow, slow, 
> like the move from sea to land. Much as Tiktaalik may have done, we slip 
> from one territory to another, getting our land legs under us until we can 
> stand on our own feet. 
> 
> 


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