More interesting fossils than Ida

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Michael

Ida is a new fossil discovery that has been horribly over-hyped. It is being called “the missing link”. Following sentences usually mention humans. In other words, some articles are crafty and don’t directly say this fossil is important to Homo sapiens. Others are less crafty. All of this non-sense plays right into the hands of the lying creationists (sorry to be redundant).

Darwinius masillae, otherwise known as Ida, is a tremendously well-preserved fossil that is a primate ancestor. As with most fossils, it was probably a relatively close cousin of one of our direct ancestors. (Note, “relatively close”. Of course, all fossils we find are eventually cousins of our ancestors, if they aren’t directly our ancestors.) How close is difficult to tell – forget saying it’s a direct ancestor. It is a member of the same suborder as humans (and apes and monkeys), haplorhine, but that doesn’t mean Ida wasn’t the last member of her particular population. It can tell us some interesting things, but it in no way independently confirms evolution. Science doesn’t work that way; theories are supported by a wide body of evidence. A single find can add a little weight to a theory, but doesn’t usually completely make a theory. (Notable, if this were found in the, say, Jurassic period, it would have been a find that actually spun evolution on its head – find me a part of creationism [or its coy, dishonest, lying cousin intelligent design] that can be falsified.)

So while interesting and not simply trivial, there are more important fossils out there than Ida. What’s more, there are more interesting fossils. (Guess which claim is the author’s opinion.) Here are some.

Lucy

Lucy

Maiacetus inuus

Maiacetus inuus

Schinderhannes bartelsi

Schinderhannes bartelsi

Tiktaalik

Tiktaalik

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Schinderhannes bartelsi

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Michael

The title just grabs you, doesn’t it? It’s okay if it doesn’t; this organism did enough grabbing in its day anyway.

S. bartelsi was recently discovered in a piece of slate in Germany. The fossil offers some clues as to the origin of the claws of scorpions and horseshoe crabs.

“With a head like the giant Cambrian aquatic predator Anomalocaris and a body like a modern arthropod, the specimen is the only known example of this unusual creature,” said Derek Briggs, director of Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History and an author of the paper appearing in the journal Science.

Scientists have puzzled over the origins of the paired grasping appendages found on the heads of scorpions and horseshoe crabs. The researchers suggest that Schinderhannes gives a hint. Their appendages may be an equivalent to those found in the ancient predatory ancestor, Anomalocaris — even though creatures with those head structures were thought to have become extinct by the middle of the Cambrian Period, 100 million years before Schinderhannes lived.

Recognizing the rarity of this find, Briggs references Anomalocaris (also a rare find). This organism was a proto-arthropod, but came some time before S. bartelsi. Its appendages are basically precursors to pedipalps, or the grasping claws present in scorpions and horseshoe crabs. They’ve proved to be quite durable, especially in horseshoe crabs, which have maintained their body ‘plan’ for a few hundred million years. These claws have proved quite useful for the horseshoe crab niche. Scorpions, on the other hand, have varied a bit more, but their claws are still likely homologous to this new fossil and thus also good evidence for the durability of this appendage.

Schinderhannes bartelsi

Schinderhannes bartelsi

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