Have scientists finally answered the creationists with new fossil showing link between sea and land animals?

• http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/science/06fossil.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin - Fossil called link from sea to land animals

Very interesting… thanks for the link…..

One wonders why a carnivorous predator would want to leave the water to go out on the land unless there was some kind of animal food source already on the land for it to go after. Which came first? The land predator, or the land prey? It’s hard to imagine a more compelling biological drive than food that would provide the motivation for evolving the ability to leave the water, so it seems like they still need to find a credible example of a vegetarian animal making the tradition from water to land to enjoy all the vegetation…. As for a neck, it seems easy to imagine how that can be useful in the water too, it doesn’t seem like only going out on land would drive the development of a neck….

Of course we’d also need vegetation life that made the transition from water to land. Wouldn’t it be odd to have vegetation on land without any kind of animal life? When we look around us at vegetation, (I was just at church this past weekend helping to weed our new landscaping in front of the church, so I got a chance to consider vegetation up close and personal), it’s survival is intertwined with animal life. Worms till the soil, other animals provide pollination services, etc. Some animals even provide a useful check on vegetation by eating it. Everwhere you look, one kind of life is depending on another kind. When using a microscope, it’s even more clearly the case.

When you think about the interconnectedness we see around us, it’s really hard to imagine how different kinds of life would have been striking out on it’s own separate from all the other kinds. Sure lichens are a very simple kind of life that go out and colonize inhospitable places, but it’s hard to imagine a more complex form of life that could do that without help from other forms of life.

Too bad there is probably no DNA to sequence in these fossils……

Still there are many animals today that one could look at, and you could say this one is simpler than that, and this one more complex than the other, and this one seems in between those two, we could make a whole sequence... Many biologists have went down this path of trying to make these arrangements. And yet, for the most part, these arrangements have later been found to not be very helpful. There is still the fundamental problem of actually demonstrating one species becoming something entirely different. Despite thousands of years of man's pressure, dogs are still dogs, the most highly developed breed will still happily intermingle with a wild mutt or a wolf. Dogs still reproduce after their kind.....

So far, the best explanation still seems to be a very old one....

• 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth....
• 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so....
• 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, ... and it was so. 1:12 ... and God saw that it was good....
• 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
• 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth..... 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature .... and it was so.
• 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good...
• 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, .... 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
• 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. - Genesis Chapter 1

The Bible could have easily told us of an evolutionary sequence, of one kind of sea creature slowly turning into land creatures, etc.

But it didn't.

Instead it tells us of a God who designed everything, and pronounced his creations good, good, and very good'.