Fish
that come under the coelacanth family were once accepted as
strong evidence for transitional forms. Basing their argument
on coelacanth fossils, evolutionary biologists proposed that
this fish had a primitive (not completely functioning) lung.
Many scientific publications stated the fact, together with
drawings showing how coelacanths passed to land from water.
All these rested on the assumption that the coelacanth was an
extinct species.
When they only had
fossils of coelacanths, evolutionary paleontologists
put forward a number of Darwinist assumptions regarding
them; however, when living examples were found,
all these assumptions were shattered.
Below, examples of living coelacanths. The picture
on the right below shows the latest specimen of
coelacanth, found in Indonesia in 1998.
 
|
However on December 22, 1938,
a very interesting discovery was made in the Indian Ocean.
A living member of the coelacanth family, previously presented
as a transitional form that had become extinct 70 million
years ago, was caught! The discovery of a "living" prototype
of the coelacanth undoubtedly gave evolutionists a severe
shock. The evolutionary paleontologist J. L. B. Smith said,
"If I'd meet a dinosaur in the street I wouldn't have been
more astonished."88 In the years to come,
200 coelacanths were caught many times in different parts
of the world.
Living coelacanths
revealed how groundless the speculation regarding them was.
Contrary to what had been claimed, coelacanths had neither
a primitive lung nor a large brain. The organ that evolutionist
researchers had proposed as a primitive lung turned out to
be nothing but a fat-filled swimbladder.89
Furthermore, the coelacanth, which was introduced as "a reptile
candidate preparing to pass from sea to land," was in reality
a fish that lived in the depths of the oceans and never approached
nearer than 180 meters from the surface.90
THE
FISH OF THE CAMBRIAN
The fundamental reason why evolutionists
imagine coelacanths and similar fish to be "the
ancestor of land animals" is that they have bony
fins. They imagine that these gradually turned into
feet. However, there is a fundamental difference
between fish bones and the feet of land animals
such as Ichthyostega: As shown in Picture 1, the
bones of the coelacanth are not attached to the
backbone; however, those of Ichthyostega are, as
shown in Picture 2. For this reason, the claim that
these fins gradually developed into feet is quite
unfounded. Furthermore, the structure of the bones
in coelacanth fins is very different from that in
the bones in Ichthyostega feet, as seen in Pictures
3 and 4. |
Following this, the coelacanth suddenly lost
all its popularity in evolutionist publications. Peter Forey,
an evolutionary paleontologist, says in an article of his
in Nature:
The discovery of Latimeria
raised hopes of gathering direct information on the transition
of fish to amphibians, for there was then a long-held belief
that coelacanths were close to the ancestry of tetrapods.
...But studies of the anatomy and physiology of Latimeria
have found this theory of relationship to be wanting and
the living coelacanth's reputation as a missing link seems
unjustified.91
This meant that the only serious claim of a transitional
form between fish and amphibians had been demolished.
  
88 Jean-Jacques
Hublin, The Hamlyn Encyclopędia of Prehistoric Animals,
The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., New York, 1984, p. 120.
89 www.ksu.edu/fishecology/relict.htm
90 http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9809/23/living.fossil/index.html
91 P. L. Forey, Nature, vol. 336,
1988, p. 727. |
Speculations
About Coelacanths
