Missing Links of Evolution?

The fundies love to prattle on about how evolution can't possibly be true because none of the 'middle steps' exist. Well, fuck them. Here's a shark that walks on it's fins.

The AP via Yahoo News:

BANGKOK, Thailand - Scientists combing through undersea fauna off Indonesia's Papua province said Monday they had discovered dozens of new species, including a shark that walks on its fins and a shrimp that looks like a praying mantis.

The team from U.S.-based Conservation International also warned that the area — known as Bird's Head Seascape — is under danger from fishermen who use dynamite and cyanide to net their catches and called on Indonesia's government to do more to protect it.

"It's one of the most stunningly beautiful landscapes and seascapes on the planet," said Mark Erdmann, a senior adviser of Conservation International who led two surveys to the area earlier this year.

"Above and below water, it's simply mind blowing," he said.

Erdmann and his team claim to have discovered 52 new species, including 24 new species of fish, 20 new species of coral and eight new species of shrimp. Among the highlights were an epaulette shark that walks on its fins, a praying mantis-like shrimp and scores of reef-building corals, he said.

Of course all of the habitat is endangered due to fishing, but that's a seperate angle.

This was on the front page of Yahoo news. It isn't burried in some acedemic journal. But do you thik this will be acknowledged by the 'it's just a theory' crowd? Not a chance. Their belief-based (rather than observation based) world view allows them to ignore what they don't want to ackowledge without disrupting the logical continuity of their world view (mostly because it's not based on logic.)

Oh, the article ends with this:

Researchers also encountered the Long-beaked Echidna, members of the primitive egg-laying group of mammals called the Monotremes.

No signs of evolution there, either!


Photo credit: Conservation International