http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/07/opinion/edfossil.php
Scientific curiosity
The Boston Globe
SATURDAY, APRIL 8, 2006
It looks like a shoe tree. But the fossilized remains of Tiktaalik, a
roughly 375-million-year-old fish, are a pivotal entry in the annals of
science.
This discovery has great value for several reasons. It adds to the
biological records. It rebuts inaccurate claims made by creationists. And it
shows the passion, patience, and power of scientific research.
Scientists say that Tiktaalik is the missing evolutionary link between
creatures that lived in water and those that walked on land.
Inside Tiktaalik's fins was the skeletal structure of arms, including
wrists and elbows. The fish also had a modified ear region and a mobile neck.
So while Tiktaalik probably wasn't pondering a move with the spouse and kids to
a drier neighborhood, evolution was making way for just such a relocation plan,
clearing a path for limbed creatures, including, eventually, humans.
As they are frequent guests on free-for-all talk shows, science and
religion will no doubt clash over this finding. Tiktaalik will add to the
problems of strict creationists, who believe the world was created by God
quickly, and not so very long ago. But there's still plenty of room for
respectful coexistence between those who believe that evolution is a gift of
God and those who believe it is a rational and replicable scientific theory.
The most exciting part of Tiktaalik's discovery is seeing scientists at
work.
The world of 375 million years ago, the Devonian Period, also called the
age of fishes, was when life came ashore. Fish became land dwellers.
Seed-bearing plants, trees, and early forests developed. Today's continents
were crammed together in major land masses and the climate was thought to be
tropical.
To piece together more of the fossil record, a team of scientists, using
a tip from a textbook, went to the Canadian Arctic and worked during the
summer, the only months when the weather was tolerable for what amounted to
digging in dirt. Three expeditions were mounted over four years. Funding came
from universities, an anonymous donor and scientific organizations - an example
of the financial teamwork it can take to pursue knowledge, especially when
there is no obvious way to turn resulting discoveries into marketable products.
Stories told in geologic time can be victims of popular neglect,
relegated to the world of children who pay attention to dinosaurs and rocket
ships. Fortunately, Tiktaalik's fossil puts earth's long history in the
headlines, a reminder to everyone to be curious about where the earth has been,
and what this might say about where it is going.
- The Boston Globe
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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