The tetrapod link

The evolution from fish to tetrapod (four-legged animals, land animals) has always been a subject of debate, not the least in the creationist discussion. The last few years, much has become clearer about the transition from fish to tetrapod (amphibian). Classical Ichthyostega from Greenland, which is a devonian aphibian with a number of fish characteristics, is nevertheless a clear tetrapod. It is no longer however the most fish-like one. Nature reports new findings on Ventastega curiona, found in Latvia. (See Science Daily) The species has been known for some time, but newly described fossils (by among others Per Ahlberg from Upsala) shedsnew light on the animals limbs. This devonian tetrapod can be considered the most fish-like of them all. From the fish side, a very tetrapod like fish Tiktaalik was described from the devonian of Canada in 2006. Thus, the gap between tetrapods and fish is closing as we have more intermediate forms and better understand the development from fish extremities to tetrapod limbs.
Creationists may find that difficult, but I would say that my admiration for the Creators creativity only grows.

Teenage Dinosaur pregnancy

Researchers at Berkeley, California, have found that large dinosaurs were sexually mature before they were full-grown. The analysis of bones of both predatory Allosaurus and plant-eating Tenontosaurus show this pattern. Studied individuals laid eggs when only 10 resp 8 yrs of age. See http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/01/14_teendinos.shtml
The growing pattern of those dinosaurs was similar to that of mammals and birds rather than reptiles. A fast growing phase, slowing down at adolescence. Just like large mammals, including man, sexual maturity was reached just at the end of the fast growing phase. Small mammals like mice and birds reach sexual maturity only after becoming full-grown.

These results once again confirm the image of dinosaurs as creatures quite unlike big repriles like crocodiles, more living like birds and mammals. Resaerch of the last years shows that dinosaurs were agile creatures, with well developed social life, closely related to birds rather than to reptiles. The classical image of slow and unintelligent giants has been abandoned by scientists for quite some time now.

Meeting old friends of another kind...

During our visit in the Netherlands we made a visit to Burgers Zoo, one of the most beautiful zoos in Europe, in the town of Arnhem where I grew up. Here I could visit the chimpanzee colony, which was established 1972. In 1979-80 I spent more than a year with those chimps on a daily basis, working on an ethological project under the guidance of Frans de Waal (now one of the leading primatologists in the world, working in the US). Many of the chimps from that time are now gone, and a new generation grew up. But the oldes female from that time, named Mama, is still there 50 years of age, and her daughter Roos, who was very small then is now a mother herself. Also some other "old friends" were still around.

Chimp behaviour is fascinating. I can still spent the whole day just observing them. The chimps make one think about our own place in nature. Chimps and the other apes are the animals, physically most like ourselves. Even their behaviour reminds many times of humans. The way they have conflicts, their reconciliation (the aspect I worked on back then), their way of doing "politics", it seems so familiar to us. As we know today even their DNA is more than 95% identical with ours. Of course, chimps are our evolutionary cousins so to say. Paleontological evidence is abundant.

Still, there is this difference which is difficult to put our finger on. In spite of all those resemblances something makes us very different as well. Even if our bodies and our psyche remind of eachother, there is an aspect making human human. It might be that difference, that extra aspect which made the writer of Gen 1 use that unique word bara (create out of nothing) about the creation of man. It might be that which is said in Gen 2, that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living being (nefesh, a living soul). Gods breath - the hebrew word is ruach and can as easily be translated Gods spirit. The text also says man was made of dust - materia, our physical roots are in the material creation (as the evolutionary model confirms). But our spiritual roots come from the Spirit of God. That is why a chimp is so very like ourselves, but so very different.

A meeting - again - with my chimpanzee friends sure give a lot to think of.

Life's solution

Science and theology is one of my favorites, being a paleontologist by profession as well as a pastor. Just now I am re-reading Simon Conway Morris' book Life's solution - inevitable humans in a lonely universe.

I really must recommend that book. It is not a narrow specialist book, it is fully readable for anyone with a scientific interest. Written with humor also. Morris is challenging - with succes - the quite common view that evolution is a process steered by chance, humans happen to be one of the outcomes, but it could really have been anything. He challenges that other great paleontologist, the late Stephen J Gould, and his famous thesis that if the tape of evolution could be re-run the outcome would be quite different. It would not. Life has a tendency to move to certain specific solutions. Tendencies which apparently are rooted in the earliest organisms living long before the Scandinavian mountains I see from my kitchen window even started to form. The outcome in the end could not have become anything you can or can't imagine. It had to be humans - or something very much like humans. Evolutionary theory and theology have a bearing on each other. You get the feeling that evolution could very well be teleological (something of course the writer of Genesis 1 and 2 would happily agree with).

Simon Conway Morris is a believing evolutionist, as I am myself. He gives no room for genetic fundamentalism (with Richard Dawkins and his selfish gene as main advocates), nor for so-called creation science.
Curious?
Read the book if you haven't done that before.



A balanced book, written by a man with great knowledge and a very clear mind.