If the coelacanth is from the group of fish thought to have evolved?

Question

into amphibians and then ALL land vertebrates (including man) then why has it and it's genetic code remained stable for 360 million years? And when in 1938 a living coelacanth was found why did scientists try and squeeze another fish from the same group (meaning not much different from the living one)into their theory even though there was no strong scientific evidence that it fit any better than the previous fossil? Isn't that backward thinking? Shouldn't you have proof before you come up with a theory? It seems to me that scientists have a theory and when the outcome isn't what proves their theory true, they just come up with another "guess" to make it work. I wouldn't mind if there was evidence for evolution but there isn't any. All of the old icons of evolution have been proven untrue but since there is no real scientific proof of how we got here the scientists just hold on to what they've got.

Haven't been proven untrue?! Are you out of your mind? What about the Miller experiment? Darwin's tree of life, the missing link, haeckel's embryos? Java man?archaeoraptor?

Answer 1

There are, in fact, NO fossil coelacanth because it's a relatively modern species. That is, it's genetic code hasn't been stable, but has continued to change.

It is a myth that there are "living fossils" whose genetic codes have remained unchanged for millions of years. In reality, we know that life continues to evolve and all of the common examples of "living fossils" are fallacious. For instance, modern cockroaches aren't much like the cockroaches that first showed up in the fossil record (which had six wings, among other things). Sharks are particularly eroneous in this label, given the amazing amount of evolution they've undergone. There were no hammerheads during the age of dinosaurs, for one thing.

The only thing that connects the Coelacanth to the ancestors of amphibians is the lobe fins. This doesn't make it any more a living fossil than the ray fins on most fish make THEM living fossils to the ancestors of the fish from which lobe-finned fish evolved!

As for your examples of evidence "proven false", none of them stand. Miller-urey still shows that amino acids can form, which is all it was ever intended to do. "Darwin's tree of life" doesn't even make sense, what are you talking about there? We still have a tree of life, we just aren't beholden to Darwin for it. What "missing link"? Creationists have been pretending that some link is missing, but they can't seem to find any gap that seriously needs filled. Haeckel faked some drawings, but nobody really cares but creationists. The rest of us moved on. We have plenty of evidence without him. Archaeoraptor was never considered good evidence and the fake was caught the moment a scientist examined the fossil. Only creationists consider it relevant and only because they desperately need "bad evidence" that they can focus on instead of all the mountains of evidence that they cannot address (like hundreds of thousands of very non-missing links).

Answer 2

The coelacanth's genetic code remained stable (for however long) because none of the mutations that arose in it were selected for by the environment. Same thing has happened to aligators/crocodiles -- relatively stable for 10's of millions of years.

>>"Shouldn't you have proof before you come up with a theory?"

Theory is based on evidence, not proof. We can't solve for amphibians and then provide a proof for it the way we can solve for x in math an then provide a proof for it. To put it more correctly, theories are based on evidence, not proof, from various fields of study, over countless numbers of years. As new evidence arises (as is the very real case in the coelacanth), theories either a) include the new evidence, b) are fixed to include the new evidence that wasn't known before, or c) discarded for a better theory. In actual fact, b and c are quite similar, where b only means that part of the theory has to be reconsidered, while c discards the theory all together. In the coelacanth case, b was what occurred. No scientific theory can possibly hope to include every bit of evidence that might come up in the future. That's just the nature of science; as new things are discovered, new ideas get thrown around, tested, and accepted or rejected.

As for the theory of evolution in particular, I'd like to know what part of it there isn't any "real scientific proof" for? There are libraries full of papers citing empirical evidence for it. The fact that you don't agree with it means you either don't understand it or are unwilling to accept it. Although, I have to hand it to you...I have yet (until now) seen the coelacanth attempted to be used as a case against evolution.

Edit: In response to your additional details, in no particular order...

The Millery-Urey experiments, while having some problems (back in the 50's), have spawned numerous similar experiments, and what scientists are finding is that there are very many different ways the first possible self replicating biomolecules may have come about.

Same thing for Haeckel's diagrams. Sure, they weren't correct at the time, but when it was found out, textbook writers stopped using them. It doesn't matter, anyway, because its the embryos within groups that still show similarities, not how Haeckel represented them. To take a large group as an example, all vertebrates still show evidence of a notocord, dorsal nerve cord, phayngeal pouches, and a post-anal tail at some point in embryological development.

Same thing for Darwin's tree of life. It was incomplete when he devised it, but the principle still applies, incorporating all current or extinct life as it is found.

What about Java Man?

The "missing link" is a fallacy continued by creationists. There are many transitional fossils for various lineages, including humans. Assuming scientists are going to find some half human/half ape fossil is silly and shows no understanding of evolution.

And archeoraptor...archeoraptor has nothing to do with science. It was created from different organisms by fossil hunters trying to make it marketable to collectors, not scientists. And there have been no scholarly papers on it, because science doesn't accept it.

Answer 3

Your thinking is a bit skewed. Amphibians may have evolved from fish that were like Coelocanths, but not all coelocanths evolved into amphibians. Like most creatures on Earth, they are spread out and are under different environmental and other selective pressures. Some of them may have become separated from others in tidal lakes, rivers, pools etc, and developed and evolved differently. This lead to splitting into differing species and eventually into amphibians etc.

There is a lot of evidence for evolution. You just have to know how to understand it, and not dismiss it out of hand. The coelocanth does indeed prove that evolution has occurred, because our relationship to it can be shown by DNA analysis. What we have is a creature that existed millions of years ago, exists today, and to which we are related. It is quite strong evidence.
It was indeed rare to find a creature that exists in fossil records which is still around today, but it is not unique. Sharks, crocodiles and some flat worms have also been found as fossil records.
None of the old icons of evolution have been proven untrue.

Like any scientific theory, it is added to and revised slightly, but the basic premise is still the same. If anything, DNA evidence, in particular, has strengthened the theory.

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Answer 4

Who ever said that the coelacanth was the ancestor of amphibians? It may have originally been postulated as such as it has boned fins, but science has moved on since then. Why haven't you? No biologist today makes that claim.

Furthermore, you make the same old tired mistake that creationists make by failing to understand that evolution of a species does not automatically result in the extinction of a "parent" species. If the coelacanth was the ancestor of amphibians, which it isn't, its genetic code being stable doesn't undermine that fact one iota. It's like asking why there are still apes around, if people evolved from them. It's also incredibly ignorant.

You say there isn't any evidence for evolution? Are you out of your mind?