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423 mya fish upends jaw evolution theory

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Qilinyu rostrata/ZHU Min

From Anna Nowogrodzki at Nature:

The 423-million-year-old specimen, dubbed Qilinyu rostrata, is part of an ancient group of armoured fish called placoderms. The fossil is the oldest ever found with a modern three-part jaw, which includes two bones in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw. Researchers reported their find on 20 October in Science.

Scientists had thought that placoderm jaws were only very distantly related to the three-part jaw found in modern bony fish and land vertebrates, including people.

“You know that old thing where you have a picture of a vase and you suddenly realize that it’s two human profiles facing each other? It was like that,” Ahlberg recalls. “You realize that what everybody else has ruled out is in fact not only not ruled out, but is in fact the crushingly obvious interpretation.” More.

So “modern jaws” turn out to be very old?

See also: Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

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Thanks very much for that conspectusBelfast
October 22, 2016
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Of related note:
picture - 550 million year old fossil fish - "Most major animal groups appear suddenly in the fossil record 550 million years ago, but vertebrates have been absent from this 'Big Bang' of life. Two fish-like animals from Early Cambrian rocks now fill this gap." "Lower Cambrian Vertebrates from South China" - Nov. 1999 http://www.evolutionnews.org/cambrianfish.jpg Metaspriggina: Vertebrates Found in Cambrian Explosion - August 29, 2014 Excerpt: Now that some months have passed since the discovery of another rich trove of Cambrian fossils 26 miles from the Burgess Shale, scientists are starting to publish findings from the new Marble Canyon site. One amazing find just published by Simon Conway Morris and Jean-Bernard Caron is putting more bang in the Cambrian explosion.,,, ,,,confirms that this animal was far more than a chordate: it was a vertebrate fish, right there in the Lower Cambrian! Imagine a vertebrate fish, with a skeleton, binocular vision, muscles, nerves, gut and blood vessels: it is so complex compared to what came before, it makes the suddenness and explosive increase in complexity undeniable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/metaspriggina_v089471.html Pikaia Fossils Explode the Evolutionary Paradigm - Fazale Rana - May 2012 Excerpt: Yet, in the Chengjian site—which corresponds to the beginning of the Cambrian—researchers have recovered a number of urochordate, hemichordate, cephalochordate, and agnathan specimens, all organisms that would be Pikaia’s evolutionary descendents. Instead of observing the sequential appearance of primitive chordates first, followed by more advanced chordates, the fossil record actually shows the simultaneous appearance of primitive and advanced chordates. http://www.reasons.org/articles/pikaia-fossils-explode-the-evolutionary-paradigm Challenging Fossil of a Little Fish What they had actually proved was that Chinese phosphate is fully capable of preserving whatever animals may have lived there in Precambrian times. Because they found sponges and sponge embryos in abundance, researchers are no longer so confident that Precambrian animals were too soft or too small to be preserved. “I think this is a major mystery in paleontology,” said Chen. “Before the Cambrian, we should see a number of steps: differentiation of cells, differentiation of tissue, of dorsal and ventral, right and left. But we don’t have strong evidence for any of these.” Taiwanese biologist Li was also direct: “No evolution theory can explain these kinds of phenomena.” http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htm Fish & Dinosaur Evolution vs. The Actual Evidence - video (17:30 minute mark and 22:40 minute mark) https://youtu.be/yQNrQKVVMKw?t=1050
This following quote nicely sums up the implications of these findings:
"Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle," Richard Dawkins - River Out Of Eden pg. 83
Thanks Richard, welcome to Theism! Moreover, besides the 'surprising' extremely early appearance of fish, the overall fossil record is far more incompatible with Darwinian assumptions than many Darwinists will ever honestly admit in public
Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head – July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: “This pattern, known as ‘early high disparity’, turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn’t a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.”,,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: “Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: “A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html In Allaying Darwin's Doubt, Two Cambrian Experts Still Come Up Short - October 16, 2015 Excerpt: "A recent analysis of disparity in 98 metazoan clades through the Phanerozoic found a preponderance of clades with maximal disparity early in their history. Thus, whether or not taxonomic diversification slows down most studies of disparity reveal a pattern in which the early evolution of a clade defines the morphological boundaries of a group which are then filled in by subsequent diversification. This pattern is inconsistent with that expected of a classic adaptive radiation in which diversity and disparity should be coupled, at least during the early phase of the radiation." - Doug Erwin What this admits is that disparity is a worse problem than evolutionists had realized: it's ubiquitous (throughout the history of life on earth), not just in the Cambrian (Explosion). http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/in_allaying_dar100111.html “In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms.” TS Kemp - Fossils and Evolution,– Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999 “What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.” Robert L Carroll (born 1938) – vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians "The facts of greatest general importance are the following. When a new phylum, class, or order appears, there follows a quick, explosive (in terms of geological time) diversification so that practically all orders or families known appear suddenly and without any apparent transitions. Afterwards, a slow evolution follows; this frequently has the appearance of a gradual change, step by step, though down to the generic level abrupt major steps without transitions occur. At the end of such a series, a kind of evolutionary running-wild frequently is observed. Giant forms appear, and odd or pathological types of different kinds precede the extinction of such a line." Richard B. Goldschmidt, “Evolution, as Viewed by One Geneticist,” American Scientist 40 (January 1952), 97.
Of related note, although the most widely accepted explanation for the origin of new enzymes by Darwinists is gene duplication and recruitment, this following recent study on fishes blew a hole in that Darwinian assumption:
Eel Migration Comes to Light – Oct. 10, 2016 Excerpt: Imagine a half-ton tuna laid out on a dock next to a seahorse, a minnow, and a moray eel. That's just a snapshot of the astonishing diversity found in the group of fishes called teleosts, or ray-finned fish, which today have 30,000 species -- more than all living mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. For more than a decade, many researchers have assumed that teleosts' dizzying array of body types evolved because their immediate ancestor somehow duplicated its entire genome, leaving whole sets of genes free to take on other functions. Now, an examination of the fish fossil record challenges that view. Despite duplicating their genome about 160 million years ago, teleost fish hewed to a few conventional body types for their first 150 million years. Meanwhile, the holostean fishes, a related group with genomes that never underwent a doubling, evolved a stunning diversity of body plans. The work "demonstrates beautifully how necessary it is to look at the fossil record when testing hypotheses about ... large scale evolutionary changes," says Robert Sansom, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/10/eel_migration_c103197.html Douglas Axe and Ann Gauger Argue that Design Best Explains New Biological Information - Casey Luskin August 26, 2013 Excerpt: Axe and Gauger observe that “The most widely accepted explanation for the origin of new enzymes is gene duplication and recruitment.” However, they cite experimental work showing that a duplicate gene is much more likely to be silenced (because of the costly resources expended in transcribing and translating it) than it is to acquire a new function. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/douglas_axe_and075601.html Biologic Institute's Groundbreaking Peer-Reviewed Science Has Now Demonstrated the Implausibility of Evolving New Proteins - Casey Luskin January 22, 2015 Excerpt: one of their citations makes a compelling case that the gene duplication step poses a major obstacle to gene recruitment via gene duplication and mutation. They cite a paper from PLOS Genetics, "The Extinction Dynamics of Bacterial Pseudogenes," which notes: In bacteria, however, pseudogenes are deleted rapidly from genomes, suggesting that their presence is somehow deleterious. The distribution of pseudogenes among sequenced strains of Salmonella indicates that removal of many of these apparently functionless regions is attributable to their deleterious effects in cell fitness, suggesting that a sizeable fraction of pseudogenes are under selection. It concludes, "Although pseudogenes have long been considered the paradigm of neutral evolution, the distribution of pseudogenes among Salmonella strains indicates that removal of many of these apparently functionless regions is attributable to positive selection." Don't miss the profound importance of this. What it means is that there is very likely a fitness cost associated with carrying an extra, useless copy of a gene, and therefore it can be advantageous to delete duplicate version. This has major implications for the co-option model of protein evolution, because it shows that producing a new protein does not involve "neutral evolution," but rather requires steps that very likely will impose a deleterious effect upon the organism. per ENV
bornagain77
October 22, 2016
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