Some odd-looking 50 million-year-old fossils fish discovered in the bowels of several European museums  help explain how flatfish such as flounder, sole and halibut developed the strange but useful trait of having both eyes on one side. The trait, in which flatfish lie on their sides at the bottom of the sea, has posed a problem for evolutionary biologists because no one had found any so-called transitional fossils, until now.
“The important thing about this study is it delivers evidence of those intermediates,” said Matt Friedman of The Field Museum and the University of Chicago, Friedman examined specimens of two kinds of fossil fishes from the Eocene period in northern Italy. One was a new genus that Friedman named Heteronectes or “different swimmer.”What he found is that Amphistium, had been incorrectly assumed to have a symmetrical skull, but Friedman noticed that in some fossils, the eye was slightly out of place,and that one eye had begun migrating, but had not quite crossed the middle of the head.
The find raises the question of why this bizarre intermediate form developed. “It turns out they don’t lie flat and completely prone on the sea floor. They actually will prop themselves up slightly (with their fins),” Friedman said. Once in that position, having a slightly asymmetrical eye arrangement must have proved advantageous in the search for food.
Hat tip to Kathy Savage FCS Board Member
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If evolution is true, why are there still non-flat fish?
But seriously…
Here are some excellent reports on the study:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080709/full/news.2008.946.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2008/07/09/dawn-of-the-picasso-fish/
Awesome! Of course, now there are two more gaps the creotards will demand be filled. 😉
Beyond the specific importance of this discovery is the fact that this perfectly illustrates how scientific endeavors are continually moving forward while crationism/ID is forever locked to a specific dogma. I mean, what when will there be a new announcement of a discovery that advances their belief system?
So which came first? A perfectly designed fish with eyes symmetrical to it’s form or as the article says, a species that, “is so complex, so marvelous, or simply so weird that it’s hard to imagine how it could have possibly evolved by natural selection.â€
This discovery has advanced my belief system.
ABO, unless you are willing to try to learn something and/or engage in meaningful scientific conversation, please go away.
Some things really are this simple.
http://unreasonablefaith.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/methods.gif
Ah, a thread about evolution without a moronic, anti-science excretion from ABO (or some other religidiot) is like a day without sunshine. Or food poisoning, perhaps.
Hey, ABO take a look at this!
S.Scott- that is WAY COOL!
Very very COOL
Welp, with all this evolutionary news, I guess that God and Jesus are tricking the evilutionists making them look like fools.
LOL! 😉
“Welp, with all this evolutionary news, I guess that God and Jesus are tricking the evilutionists making them look like fools.”
No tricks are necessary, you guys are doing a fine job on your own.
Is your head so far down the rabbit hole that the only comments you can make with your logically-deprived brain are smarmy retorts?
We can both acknowledge that transitional gaps in the fossil record still exist. However, the fossils we HAVE discovered to the fill previous gaps (up to the most recent ones being unearthed right now) have all consistently shown that evolution is indeed the mechanism by which these animals developed over time, in addition to disproving the wonderful garden party of God scenario many times over. What do you have left to stand on besides blind faith?
Karl, it’s a lost cause. You know this. YEC’s are the worst kind of stupid as even a flatworm can be taught but, alas, ABO and his ilk cannot.
It may ultimately be futile to change it, but personally, that’s not my goal. I just find their level of cognitive dissonance rather fascinating. Being an engineer as well as a researcher, I find their illogical cult-mentality to be like a mechanical system which proclaims to accomplish feats that violate the laws of thermodynamics and boasts of being unbreakable. Makes me want to pry off the metal casing and take a look at the mechanics inside, add a variety of unconventional inputs to it and measure its response, and ultimately, stress it to the point of breaking the “unbreakable.” Of course, I already know that in the end, I’ll always find the proverbial “man behind the curtain” making it sing and dance, but that’s always fun too. For the moment, it feels like this latest variant is “broken” as well, but there will always be more.
It’s fun to take things apart…
Karl
You’ll have to forgive me for my seemingly uncourteous remarks. I find great humor in being called a moron by a group of people who considers themselves mutants.
How enlightening, I had no idea we are that close to filling enough transitional gaps to prove evolution as the mechanism which produced the wide variety of life here on earth.
Considering the billions of gazillions of positive transitional specimens which one might expect to find, between a fly and a wasp, how far along are you?
Yes, it is fun to take things apart…
Further along than the incredibly baseless, moronic notion that a magic man, for which there is no “evidence” beyond a big book of ignorant goatherder fairy tales plagiarized from earlier cultures, poofed everything into existence 6 thousand years ago. I’m sorry this makes you feel less special, but tough titties, dude.
O, I don’t have to feel special, nor do I know any magic men. But it would be nice to get an occasional answer without being fed full of crap.
Playing along with your deluded mentality, I never said we were close to filling in all the gaps, but the pieces we have found all consistently support evolution. I will bow and call you master when they find the fossil of a modern flatfish just chilling in the same geological layer as its partially asymmetrical ancestor. Seeing how such a groundbreaking event has yet to happen among the millions of fossils which have been unearthed so far, I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you.
In reality, there is no point in trying to convince you of anything regarding evolution. You’ve made up whatever remains of your mind when you sold it out for God. You can continue to smile and consider us the real morons for not subscribing to your fantasy world, and perhaps even get off on our frustration at your boastful ignorance of basic science, but if you take a really good look at your actions so far, what you’ve been doing is trying to convince yourself of your misguided views and trying to get some sort of validation from our responses. Sounds to me that even you are having some trouble believing the crap that you’ve been vomiting out…
Quip time for me!
” But it would be nice to get an occasional answer without being fed full of crap.”
Might I suggest you chuck out your Bible, then? 😉
Oh, and as far as the “magic man” goes, I seem to recall that the christobots love to believe in the specialness of humans because we were “made in God’s image”. So, it is certainly implied that God looks like a man and he MUST be magical since he does all sorts of stuff that defy laws of physics, among other things. C’mon, he poofed everything into existence in 6 days! That’s MAGIC, man!
When did evolutionist become concerned about the laws of physics? Evolution is a self transforming process, it could go anywhere. That’s Magic !