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The Missing Link - BBC Horizon - 1/2

In 2001 the discovery of a tiny fossilized jawbone hit the headlines. The jawbone, only a few centimeters long with seven rows of teeth, was found abandoned in a dusty museum where it had lain unnoticed for decades. Its rediscovery has caused a sensation in the world of palaeontology because scientists now believe it may be a tiny remnant of a 'missing link', an ancient extinct animal that could provide a vital clue in our understanding of one of the great mysteries of science - how, 360 million years ago, a slimy fish-like creature grew legs and walked out of the water, onto the land to become our ancestor. This mystery has taken scientists a century to unravel. And this tiny jawbone may be a final clue.

  • Jonas22
  • posted by Jonas22
  • Date 8/16/2007 3:37:01 PM
  • Views: 5349
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10 Comments

Current View: 15 / Show all Comments

klavlav : LVL 16: VP 2.5: said:

klavlav

7 votes NegativePositive

834 days 11 hours ago...

5/5 though I have to chuckle a bit at the bombastic music and the dire narration,

"There had to be...(pregnant pause)...A MISSING LINK!!! (Cymbals crash!)"

Maybe trying a bit *too* hard to make science interesting : )

Great stuff, all the same.

990ctane : LVL 24: VP 3.3: said:

990ctane

5 votes NegativePositive

833 days 8 hours ago...

i think that old creationist guy might be the missing link :)

5/5 as always jonas22

Razer167 : LVL 32: VP 4.1: said:

Razer167

2 votes NegativePositive

830 days 23 hours ago...

thanks! 5/5

blaqsparrow : LVL 20: VP 2.9: said:

blaqsparrow

0 votes NegativePositive

830 days 23 hours ago...

Neat, but a little dated? We've found fossils of legged fish since 2001. I don't think this is considered a mystery anymore.

antisemantic : LVL 28: VP 3.7: said:

antisemantic

2 votes NegativePositive

830 days 22 hours ago...

5/5 for the great story. But I have to wonder just how long this theory will hold up. It's solid, to be sure, but that is with the given evidence.

There are a ridiculous amount of variables which haven't been considered, or even discovered, yet. I mean, evolution is a long process, and there is no way that we could say for sure what affected these ancient creatures in a way that would grow them some legs. The good thing is that science is plastic, so the theory CAN change if it has to...

/end ramble.

tj : LVL 31: VP 4: said:

tj

0 votes NegativePositive

830 days 22 hours ago...

I'M a Lizard fish??????????????AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

klavlav : LVL 18: VP 2.7: said:

klavlav

2 votes NegativePositive

830 days 22 hours ago...

antisemantic

Good point. It's this plasticity - the ability to always guess, check and refine, to take in new information - that distinguishes the 'science' of evolution from the 'dogma' of creationism.

Absent this, it is also when "science" becomes dogma.

The true scientist never rests, never stops asking. The dogmatist never even asks in the first place.

edit for dudewheresmygrl below: Ah, but Mrs. Garrison eventually saw the Light, after sleeping with Richard Dawkins. Same thing happened to me... :p

dudewheresmygrl : LVL 32: VP 4.1: said:

dudewheresmygrl

0 votes NegativePositive

830 days 22 hours ago...

One day a couple fish had a retard baby; and the retard baby was different so it got to live, so it went on to have more retard babies, and then a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its mutant fish hands; and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and then it had a baby...retard frog squirrel and then that had a retard baby which was a monkey fish frog, and this monkey fish frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey; so there you go your the retarded off-spring of 5 monkeys having sex with a fish squirrel...Congratulations!

American Idiot : LVL 1: VP 1: said:

American Idiot

4 votes NegativePositive

830 days 20 hours ago...

I find that people can only think of things occuring within three to four lifetimes. Meaning that most people just can seem to grasp the vast amounts of time needed for even a small change to occur. My favorite quote from a creationist person is as follow:

"If evolution happened, then why isn't it still happening?"

Which, of course, shows a complete lack of understanding of how evolution works.

exploder : LVL 46: VP 5: said:

exploder

4 votes NegativePositive

830 days 1 hour ago...

^^^ agreed. And of course it is HAPPENING right now. We even force it's hand when we direct the selection process: as in all of the many millions of breeds of dogs, cats, cows, horses, birds, fish, food crops, flowers, insects, bacteria, etc.; that WE HUMANS have forced into existance by being a selective force in their environment. We haven't been using uranium and X-rays to mutate them, just deciding more directly which ones die, and which ones live on to breed the future.

I also think that the pressures exherted by our societies upon many millenia of human generations, have affected a process of evolution. Especially when faced with larger concentrations of people doing agriculture together, where people succeed best by doing what they are told, which makes them function better in larger social hierarchies. We have bred sheeple, who demand to be told what to do and think.

Evolution is the active process all around us, all the time. The inevitable outcome of the specific successes and failures of history as it specifically happened.

All the modern creationist pressure is a desperate dying bid for dogmatic control of your thought space, in the face of obviously better answers.

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