Tiktaalik roseae

Em Abril escrevi um pequenino post com o título “Elo perdido”. Hoje, a revista New Scientist apresenta um interessante artigo “Meet your ancestor”.

Transcrevo o editorial:

"Now that´s what you´d call an intelligent theory"

"It is not enough for a scientific theory to explain what we see: it must also make testable predictions. In one of the most celebrated cases, the physicist Paul Dirac combined quantum theory and relativity to forecast the existence of antimatter before anyone had even dreamed it existed.

We tend not to think of evolution as a predictive theory. After all, the course of evolution is dictated by a series of historical accidents. Yet many predictions have been made using evolutionary theory, such as the existence of a universal genetic code for the translation of DNA into proteins.

In the latest example of the predictive power of evolution, researchers set out to find fossil evidence of the fishes that first moved onto land. Combining the principles of evolution with previous fossil finds told them when the fishes should have lived, thus giving the age of rocks that should harbour them. The researchers located where such rocks existed and went digging. The spectacular result is Tiktaalik roseae, an almost perfect intermediate between fish and amphibians (see "Meet your ancestor").

The pope's advisers, who are reportedly flirting with intelligent design, may want to ponder the story of these fishes. Before they make any dogmatic pronouncement, they should consider that Tiktaalik joins thousands of other transitional forms connecting species that once existed or still do, and it is a sure bet that more will be found. Tiktaalik's discovery highlights yet again that no other idea comes close to evolution for explaining the development of life and providing testable assertions about it."