Tiktaalik
The Fantastic Fins to Feet Fairy Tale
Tiktaalik serves as a prime example of a fantastic evolutionary just-so story. The world of mainstream science presents a fully metaphysical fairy tale as science to the world. According to Sci-News it is labeledthe best-known transitional species between fish and land-dwelling tetrapods.*
The philosopher's stone
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Neil Shubin is the evolution crackpot who discovered Tiktaalik. In this video, also published by PBS under the title Amazing Places, Amazing Fossils, he starts by sayingIt was definitely the biggest adventure of my lifeand a little laterwe dug, hoping to find the fossils we were looking for.In another video called on the Evolutionary Step from Sea to Land, after explaining how intrigued he was by the fantastic evolutionary just-so story of water-to-land evolution, he saidmy goal was to find new evidence that tells us about how it happened.Berkeley has an article which states thatthe paleontologists who found Tiktaalik went looking for it.* The University of Chicago paid "professor" Shubin to make expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in order to find something like this.
Evolutionists like Neil desperately hope to find transitional fossils. As William James said:belief will help create the fact. See Paradigm Paralysis. Because transitional fossils simply don't exist in the fossil record, they invented punctuated equilibrium and are forced to make use of metaphysics...
Metaphysics
Tiktaalik is technically a fish, complete with scales and gills — but it has the flattened head of a crocodile and unusual fins. Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fishes', but they also have sturdy interior bones that would have allowed Tiktaalik to prop itself up in shallow water and use its limbs for support as most four-legged animals do. Those fins and a suite of other characteristics set Tiktaalik apart as something special; it has a combination of features that show the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and their descendants, the four-legged vertebrates — a clade which includes amphibians, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and of course, humans.*
The University of Berkeley is known for being a pro-evolution bastion. Turns out this article is perfect for showing the unscientific metaphysics of evolution theory. Evolutionists always bring up features of one unique life form that are similar to that of another and then quickly jump to the conclusion that this must have been a transitional fossil. An elephant has a long trunk, a giraffe has a long neck, both have four legs, a bla-bla just-so story, e voila, more evidence for evolution. It's typical. And ridiculous. It's remarkable that they also mentionThose fins and a suite of other characteristics set Tiktaalik apart as something special. Because the most likely conclusion is of course that this Tiktaalik is just another unique life form unrelated to any other. But that logical conclusion is banned by evolutionists.
Tiktaalik, for example, had fins with thin ray bones, scales, and gills like most fish. However, it also had the sturdy wrist bones, neck, shoulders, and thick ribs of a four-legged vertebrate. Tiktaalik was specialized for life in shallow water, propping itself up on the bottom and snapping up prey. The adaptations it had for this lifestyle ended up providing the stepping stones for vertebrates to climb onto dry land — but of course, Tiktaalik was not "aiming" to evolve features for land-living. Tiktaalik was simply well-adapted for its own lifestyle and later on, many of these features ended up being co-opted for a new terrestrial lifestyle.*
The article continues with more metaphysics jumping to wild conclusions. Then it saysTiktaalik was simply well-adapted for its own lifestyle. Again this points to the conclusion that Tiktaalik was first of all a unique life form, fully functional and complete, not in a transition. But the autors simply assume it evolved without offering any science.
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Computer-generated images of Super-Tiktaaliks fly out of the water with a narrator saying things likeprimitive air breathing lungs kick in, simple wristbones propel them off the ground, this amazing creature is the first vertebrate to walk on landwith bombastic music in the background.
In a video called Introducing Tiktaalik, Your Inner Fish part 1 Neil Shubin saysThere are deep connections among all life forms on this planet.In Your Inner Fish part 2 he goes on to explain thata human arm resembles the fin of a fish.The University of Chicago statesTiktaalik has a mix of fish and amphibian traits. Tiktaalik looks like a cross between...* andTiktaalik shares anatomical features with both primitive fish and the first tetrapods.* Wikipedia says:many features akin to those of tetrapods.BBC says:Tiktaalik is considered pivotal because it has many features that look half-way between fish and land animals.* The Guardian says:aquatic features mixed with others more suited to life on land.* NPR says:Tiktaalik bridged the gap between sea living and land living creatures, and played an important evolutionary role on our journey to becoming human.* The Smithsonian says:Tiktaalik roseae had fish-like fins, a flattened skull similar to a crocodile.*
Etcetera. Etcetera.
All this stuff of course reminds of frogs turning into princes, fantastic just-so stories for kids. Bombard people's minds with countless just-so stories and the ignorants will believe it. What is missing in all these fantastic fairy tales believed by so many ignorants around the world is of course the science because science cannot offer any evidence for a transition from one unique life form into another in the unobservable past. Therefore evolutionists resort to pure metaphysics.
Birds of a feather...
Calling the three-part, prime-time PBS special Your Inner Fish an "enthralling examination of the ancient animal ancestry in the fossil record and in our own bodies," the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine named Neil Shubin, the Robert R. Bensley professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. ... "We enjoyed an embarrassment of riches this year, with outstanding entries representing a tremendous diversity of scientific subjects," said May Berenbaum, NAS member and chair of the communication awards selection committee, and professor and head of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Choosing the best among the best was difficult but the winners are exemplars of how excellent popular science writing can make complex science understandable, relevant, and thoroughly engaging." ... Your Inner Fish has also been nominated for two Emmy awards, for graphics and for science.*
The world of mainstream science presents this evolutionary fairy tale as yet another "fact of evolution".
Unrelated unique creatures
Handfish propel themselves by walking on the sea floor rather than swimming. Fossils from the Eocene show they haven't undergone any evolution for many millions of years. Gobies are so-called bottom-dwellers and they haven't undergone any evolution for at least 34 million years. It's cousin the mudskipper is a completely amphibious fish that can use its pectoral fins to walk on land. Another unique and completely functional animal.
The alligator gar is a primitive ray-finned fish and has an alligator-like appearance and an elongated snout. Fossils from the Eocene show they haven't undergone any evolution for at least 47 million years. Other fish have flat heads. The Crocodilefish for example. All of them are fully functional and unique life forms.
Flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of water into air, where their long, wing-like fins enable gliding flight for considerable distances above the water's surface. Another fully functional and unique animal. Their fossils from the Middle Cretaceous Cenomanian Stage show they haven't undergone any evolution for at least 95 million years! Etcetera. Evolutionists systematically leave out the most logical and scientific explanation, namely that newly found fossils are unique life forms unrelated to any other and have never undergone macroevolution. Just a simple fact omitted by the world of mainstream "science" which is of course driven by the unprovable philosophies naturalism and uniformitarianism. Hence the unscientific metaphysics...