"The Darwin-drenched phrase “missing link” popped up again, this time in a story that claims humans got their faces from a fish.
They’re calling it Entelognathus (“complete jaw”), and claiming it resolves an old debate whether placoderms were the ancestors of bony fish and cartilaginous fish.
It appears that all Entelognathus shows is that some bony fish traits appeared in this placoderm, making their appearance earlier than expected. It does not say how an unguided process of mutations produced things as complex as multi-boned jaws, semicircular canals in the ears, and copulatory organs. Moreover, this fossil cannot explain the cartilaginous fish:
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,
Genesis 1:20
- “Extraordinary ‘missing link’ fossil fish found in China” (PhysOrg).
- “Scientist hails ‘jaw-dropping’ fish fossil discovery” (BBC News).
- “Fish fossil suggests our skeleton evolved face first” (New Scientist).
A spectacular new “missing link” fossil has been unearthed in China. The "419 million year old" armoured fish, called Entelognathus, meaning “complete jaw” solves an age-old debate in science. For palaeontologists this fish is as big as finding the Higgs-Boson particle because of its immense significance to our understanding of early vertebrate evolution.
This is arguably one of the most exciting fossil discoveries in the past century since Archaeopteryx, the first fossil to bridge the gap between dinosaurs and birds.
After soaking the articles in an acid bath to dissolve away the hype, what is left? John Long’s Conversation piece seems largely a screed against creationists (“those minority groups within society who for some or other reason do not believe in evolution”), so we must look elsewhere for the data.They’re calling it Entelognathus (“complete jaw”), and claiming it resolves an old debate whether placoderms were the ancestors of bony fish and cartilaginous fish.
“Up until now it had been thought that the anatomical peculiarities of bony fishes — the group that would eventually give rise to human beings — are specialisations that arose later in vertebrate
evolutionary history in our own bony fish lineage.”
“But now that narrative has been turned on its head.”
Under their own admission, they are talking about a narrative – not necessarily a fact of science. It appears that all Entelognathus shows is that some bony fish traits appeared in this placoderm, making their appearance earlier than expected. It does not say how an unguided process of mutations produced things as complex as multi-boned jaws, semicircular canals in the ears, and copulatory organs. Moreover, this fossil cannot explain the cartilaginous fish:
Dr Friedman says that the fossil adds weight to the theory that many classic bony fish features were evolved “very deep in our family tree, before bony fish split from sharks”.
“This means that we — as in bony fishes — are the ones who have held on to more ancient structures, while it is the sharks that have gone off and done something new and interesting in an evolutionary sense.
In addition, sharks and rays can not be considered primitive, either. So now, evolutionists have two problems when there were one: (1) how Entelognathus got “many classic bony fish features” by mutations and selection, and (2) how sharks did something “new and interesting in an evolutionary sense” (if one pardons the oxymoron)." CEHAnd God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,
Genesis 1:20
