Dolphin With Four Fins

[Leonard]

Leonard, I would gladly follow you in a congregation

Thank you; that's very kind of you to say so.

Gee, I wish more people in the Denver area felt that way!!!

[Matthitjah]

Grace to you,

Since when did an abnormality become evidence of an ancient lost vestige?

When people are born with six fingers. I don't see folks trying to make hay out of the fact that man used to have six fingers on his ring hand.

It will be interesting to see their test results. However I have the funny feeling if it doesn't pan out the way they desire. It won't be mentioned again.

I also want to point up the fact that there is speculation that the ocean mammals used to be similar to land mammals. However there is no crossover species found to verify this.

The article is funny becaues it states that the vestiges resemble human hands. What a twist.

You know there are certain sects of the Nation of Islam that believe that men had wings and flew around the Great Pyramids.

Peace,

Dave

[Floatingaxe]

The article is funny becaues it states that the vestiges resemble human hands. What a twist.

I think that Flipper was "flipping" the bird!

[Candi770]

Interesting, but, have you ever considered that other species have malformations, just as humans can have??? I saw this on the news

and it just looked like some weird kind of fin.

[Gerioke]

Some of the prehistoric whales had similar fins, and the theory was they were used for clasping while mating. As for wisdom teeth, didn't we have larger jaws when we were monkeys?

If you don't believe we ever evolved from apes, how can you claim that as a reason for why God gave us wisdom teeth?

Sorry, they don't have a sarcasm emoticon

[apothanein kerdos]

How did this gene survive and then reappear after millions of years of evolution? This would seem to go against basic genetic theory, especially concerning evolution. It would show the weaker non-dominate and anti-compatible gene would be able to survive to fulfill a useless function that looks like nothing more than a mutation.

[apothanein kerdos]

How did this gene survive and then reappear after millions of years of evolution? This would seem to go against basic genetic theory, especially concerning evolution. It would show the weaker non-dominate and anti-compatible gene would be able to survive to fulfill a useless function that looks like nothing more than a mutation.

The gene is there, but inactive in regular members of the species. The defect activates the gene.

At least, that's what I seem to remember.

Right, but if it's a defect this still brings up the question of:

1 - Why/how did the gene survive if it was weaker?

2 - If it is a defect, how was it ever advantageous? A defect in humans might be being born without a left arm...how is this defect a good thing? Same question to the dolphin defect.

[apothanein kerdos]

Basically, what I believe happens in that case is that the genes for rear fins proved disadvantageous, and were deactivated. There was no reason for them to fail to be passed on, so they were never excised from the genetic code of the dolphins. If you've done any programming, this would be similar to "commenting out" program code that you don't want to be executed, but there is no reason to get rid of.

Using coding as an example would put you at a disadvantage as the example provides a purpose - a designer has to use a code for a time to build others up and then rid itself of the code.

Regardless, it still begs the question as to why it has survived and occurred. What also caused it to come back?

Dolphins evolved from land mammals. This means that proto-dolphins would have had hind legs which were adapted into fins to allow for better swimming. I could compare this phenomenon with the existence of a tail bone in humans- it's certainly not advantageous, but in our ancestors, its developed form was, and there is no evolutionary reason to get rid of it, so it remains.

Again, this is a baseless presupposition that begs the question - there is no fossil evidence that dolphins evolved from land animals. There is massive amounts of evidence to show that dolphins evolved into a smaller species and also became less of a predator (I believe, I have not done too much study on sea animals in evolution), but there is no evidence at all that they evolved from land animals. One of the older theories is that they were the branch from when the first sea creatures came on land - that they were a split off and therefore were never on land. Thus, you can't assume that this is what occurred when there is no evolutionary evidence for this.

Second, the evolutionary reason to get rid of it is that it can hamper a dolphin in the water. When swimming it would cause friction in the water, causing it to be slower and less likely to survive in the wild. This should be obvious.

[Ovedya]

Frankly I don't see any "evolutionary" advantage to a certain type of horse taking to the water in order to survive. If it is true that land animals "evolved" to the point of replacing limbs with fins, then we might expect to find at least some bones of the transitional animals in the sedimentary rocks. Where are they?

[Joshua-777]

Ya know they found a fish with 3 eyeballs, aswell, Mutation doesn't prove evolution.