"We Hit the Jackpot"

Hooray, evolution!

Update: Ray Troll has some wonderful artwork featuring pictures of the little beastie on his site already. (Via Pharyngula)

And there's a nice Wikipedia entry already, of course. Ain't the Internets a wonder?


And the creationist response:

Because evolutionists want to discover transitional forms, when they find a very old fish with leg-bone-like bones in its fins, they want to interpret this as evidence that it is some sort of transitional creature. However, other fish seem to have the same sort of structure as stated above, and these bones are not constructed as one would expect for weight-bearing legs. It may be just another example of the wonderful design of our Creator God.

Hmm, or it could be a transitional fossil. Ever heard of Occam's Razor? Note how the above tacitly presupposes evolution to be impossible: "these bones are not constructed as one would expect for weight-bearing legs."

Er, right, that's what makes it a transitional feature. Their very rebuttal reveals that they do not understand Darwinian adaptation, which is blind. As the changes are happening, they are not happening so that the creature can walk on land one day. The creatures with these subtle differences usually enjoy some sort of advantage because of that feature, and over eons, those features, through further adaptation may turn into different "parts." But the parts aren't thinking, "I'm going to evolve into Elle McPherson's legs one day." They're just doing what they can do in their current state. It ain't rocket science.