|
 For almost a century and a half, evolutionists have been searching for
the special "transitional" creature that allegedly allowed fish to
trudge up onto dry land.
Fossil records of a peculiar fish, thought to be 70 million years old,
often were alluded to as the key to this "transition" from water to
land. Look in any biology textbook under the word "coelacanth," and
you are likely to find a description of this "missing link." Raven and
Johnson described it in their college‑level biology text in the
following manner: "Although Latimeria [its scientific name] is a very
strange animal, its features mark it as a member of the evolutionary
line that gave rise to the terrestrial tetrapods" (1989, p. 857).
Other authors described it this way: "Ancestors of this coelacanth are
thought to have given rise to the amphibians. The paired fins show the
basic plan of a jointed series of bones that could evolve into the
limbs of a terrestrial vertebrate" (Villee, et al., 1985, p. 550).
Prior to 1938, the coelacanth was known only from fossils, which
afforded scientists a great deal of speculation when they tried to
extrapolate a physiology from the record of the rocks. Certain
structures, such as fins, were determined to be the forerunners of
legs for all amphibians. With joy abounding, evolutionists designated
this as the animal that allowed fish to crawl out of the muck and mire
in order to live on dry land.
In December 1938, a living coelacanth
was caught off the coast of Africa, and soon thereafter the
evolutionists' joy turned to consternation when it was determined that
the soft anatomy of the coelacanth was nothing like that of an
amphibian.
A 1999 book review in Nature provided
the following commentary regarding the anatomy of coelacanths: "... it
shares very few advanced characteristics with the tetrapods, and this
puts it somewhere near the base of the sarcopterygian [vertebrates in
which the fin/limbs portion of the skeleton articulates to the girdles
by means of a single bone---BH] tree. In a sense, the coelacanth tells
us more about the primitive condition of all bony fishes than about
the origin of tetrapods" (Janvier, p. 856).
Subsequent discoveries of this
special fish soon made it quite apparent that these fish did not live
in shallow areas "ready to crawl out onto land." In fact, this fish
has been observed in caves 200 meters down, and is known to die from
decompression when brought to the surface! Additionally, researchers
were placed into a position of explaining just how an animal that was
supposed to have walked with the dinosaurs could suddenly show up
again, without there being any "recent" fossils to account for the
great gap in time.
But are these "deep" water fish found
only in caves off the coast of Africa? Wouldn't it be convenient if
another group of coelacanths were found in shallow water?
In the cover story in the September
24, 1998 issue of Nature ("The Lost Tribe of Coelacanths"), Mark
Erdmann and his team identified coelacanths from Indonesia that also
were found in deep water (Erdmann, et al., 1998)‑a find that greatly
changed the supposed distribution of these fish.
More recently, a paper was submitted
to Nature by Bernard Seret, Laurent Pouyaud, and Georges Serre in
which a coelacanth was said to have been caught in the shallow, muddy
bay of Pangandaran. This new find, if true, would help bolster this
species as a transitional animal moving from water to land. The key
words here are "if true," because it appears that the image used to
document this new find is a forgery! Roy Caldwell, a coauthor of
the 1998 Nature paper from which the photograph appears to have
been reproduced, scrutinized it and stated: "I am 100% certain the
image is a fake" (p. 114).
This allegation has many individuals
in the scientific community up in arms, and has prevented the
publication of the Seret paper in Nature thus far. To date, no
less than four articles already have appeared in Nature in
response to this "new find," each of which castigates the authors for
the forged photograph (see McCabe and Wright 2000, p. 114; McCabe,
2000, p. 225; Erdmann and Caldwell, 2000 p. 343; News in Brief, 2000,
p. 554).
Bernard Seret, one of the authors of
the submitted paper and an ichthyologist at the Museum of Natural
History in Paris, admits that the two photographs appear to show the
same fish. He stated simply: "This is very embarrassing" (as quoted in
Caldwell, 1998, p. 114).
Very embarrassing indeed!
One of articles in Nature is titled
"How New Technology Put a Coelacanth Among the Heirs of Piltdown Man"
(Erdmann and Caldwell, 2000, p. 343).
Georges Serre, the individual responsible for providing the picture,
still claims that the photograph is authentic, although he now says
"it was taken by a friend who later died and whose widow gave it to
Serre before moving abroad" (p. 114).
A French development agency has now gone to court to inquire into the
alleged forgery, and the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement
where two of the authors work has launched a formal investigation.
While all this fighting is going on, several things remain clear. The
coelacanth is not the transitional animal evolutionists have been
seeking so desperately. The DNA and genetic data gathered from these
animals show just the opposite by documenting that this animal has
remained stable throughout time. In other words, the coelacanth
provides strong evidence for creation, because it has reproduced its
kind throughout the years, just like the Bible's book of Genesis said
fishes would!
REFERENCES
Erdmann, Mark V., Roy L. Caldwell,
and M. Kasim Moosa (1998), "Indonesian `King of the Sea' Discovered,"
Nature, 395:335, September 24.
Erdmann, Mark V., and Roy L. Caldwell
(2000), "How New Technology Put a Coelacanth Among the Heirs of
Piltdown Man," Nature, 406:343, July 27.
Janvier, Philippe (1999), "Coleacanth
a' la Marseillaise," Nature, 401:854‑856, October 28.
McCabe, Heather (2000),
"Recriminations and Confusion Over `Fake' Coelacanth Photo," Nature,
406:225, July 20.
McCabe, Heather and Janet Wright
(2000), "Tangled Tale of a Lost, Stolen, and Disputed Coelacanth,"
Nature, 406:114, July 13.
News in Brief (2000), "French Agency
Seeks Inquiry into `Forged' Coelacanth Photo," Nature, 406:554,
August 10.
Raven, P.H., and G.B. Johnson, eds.
(1989), Biology (St. Louis, MO: Times Mirror/Mosby College
Publishing), second edition.
Villee, C.A., E.P. Solomon, and P.W.
Davis (1985), Biology (New York: Saunders College Publishing).
* Copyright ©
2001 Apologetics Press, Inc., the original publisher, with website
http://www.ApologeticsPress.org. All rights reserved. Republished
here by Creation Digest with permission.
Apologetics Press
230 Landmark Drive
Montgomery, Alabama 36117 U.S.A
http://www.ApologeticsPress.org |
