01-24-2006
And we’re back…
Okay, I’m going to humor myself and suppose that there are more readers of this blog than Travis, Nicole and myself. So here goes… “Sorry I’ve been gone so long, I’m sure you all can’t wait to read what I'’ve been working on… Well wait no more, because the Truth-Truth train is rollin’ into the station!”
Ok, now that we have the obligatory ego-tation out of the way, let’s get to the meat of today’s topic.
Saw this headline in Foxnews.com’s Science section:
“Human Ears Evolved From Ancient Fish Gills”
Your ability to hear relies on a structure that got its start as a gill opening in fish, a new study reveals.
Humans and other land animals have special bones in their ears that are crucial to hearing. Ancient fish used similar structures to breathe underwater.
Scientists had thought the evolutionary change occurred after animals had established themselves on land, but a new look at an old fossil suggests ear development was set in motion before any creatures crawled out of the water.
The transition
Researchers examined the ear bones of a close cousin of the first land animals, a 370-million-year-old fossil fish called Panderichthys.
They compared these structures to those of another lobe-finned fish and to an early land animal and determined that Panderichthys displays a transitional form.
In the other fish, Eusthenopteron, a small bone called the hyomandibula developed a kink and obstructed the gill opening, called a spiracle.
However, in early land animals such as the tetrapod Acanthostega, this bone has receded, creating a larger cavity in what is now part of the middle ear in humans and other animals.
Missing link
The new examination of the Panderichthys fossil provides scientists with a critical “missing link” between fish gill openings and ears.
“In Panderichthys, it is much more like in tetrapods, where there is no longer such a ‘kink’ and the spiracle has widened and opened up,” study co-author Martin Brazeau of Uppsala University in Sweden told LiveScience. “[The hyomandibula] is quite a bit shorter, but still fairly rod-like, like in Eusthenopteron. It’s like a combination of fish and tetrapods.”
However, it’s unclear if early tetrapods used these structures to hear. Panderichthys most likely used its spiracles for ventilation of either water or air. Early tetrapods probably passed air through the opening. Scientists would need preserved soft tissue to say for sure.
“That’s the question that we’re starting to investigate, whether early tetrapods used it for some ventilation function as well,” Brazeau said. Whether it was for the exhalation of water or air, it’s not really clear. We can infer that it’s quite expanded and improved from fish.”
This research is detailed in the Jan. 19 issue of the journal Nature.
Ever heard the exclamation, “WTF?” ? Well, I think it means “What Total Falsehood”.
This is going to be short, but how STUPID would the evolutionary powers that be (Or “used to be”)
have to have been to take a “nose” (gills), completely change the biological properties to form ears, and then stop and go,
“Oh crap, thats right, we needed a way to breath oxygen! Better get back to work, guys, and hurry! We’ve got about 5 minutes to get air flowing into our lungs before billions of years of evo go down the tubes!”
Now unless our “ancestor’s” new noses were evolving at the SAME TIME that we were shape-shifting our gills into our new hearing devices, how in the world would they have breathed once the ears were cut off from the lungs? And even better, let’s say that magically, both organ’s WERE evolving at the same time, that means the creatures would have been breathing for a period of time through TWO orifices. Test time. Try breathing through your mouth AND nose at the same time….
Doesn’t really work, does it?
Now imagine trying it with your nose and ears.
And remember, the fish were (theoretically) still in the water at the time that this change was occurring, so how were we filtering oxygen out of the water? Don’t you think this type of adaptation would take way too many occurrances of pure happenstance to have any leg to stand on? And yet the media is reporting it as a scientific finding, and not even as a theory.
(Note that the sub-heading reads, “Your ability to hear relies on a structure that got its start as a gill opening in fish, a new study reveals“, rather than “a new study CLAIMS.”)
Grrr… I can’t stand it I tell ya.
Posted by Jordan in Uncategorized | RSS 2.0
Hey! Where’s your FAITH? Do not mock Science’s god, “Chance,” lest you incur Gaia’s wrath!