Flatfish Update -- Transitional Fossils Found!

A few years ago (!) I wrote a post called The Bat, the Bird, and the Flatfish about how those animals are better explained by evolution than by intelligent design.

To me, it's obvious that this flatfish evolved from an earlier fish with eyes on opposite sides of its head. Many of my readers, of course, were unconvinced, saying that it makes perfect sense for God to have created the flatfish just the way it is.

Well here's some more evidence for evolution:

Fossil evidence had already shown that flatfish ancestors had one eye on each side of the head. But no evidence had existed for a transition between a symmetrical skull and one-sided skull. Matt Friedman, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, looked more closely at 45-million-year-old fossils of primitive flatfish and found the transition species: One eye had moved, but it had not crossed the midline of the fish’s body, as seen in today’s flatfish, Friedman reports.

The fossils, Friedman says, deliver a clear picture of how this flatfish group changed from a standard fish with eyes on both sides to one with eyes on only one side of the head.

The flatfish eyes and skeletal structure underwent small, incremental changes, says Alex Schreiber, a developmental biologist who studies flatfish at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., and was not involved in the study. The fishes’ evolution was, in essence, gradual, he says.

I'm sure this will finally convince all the creationists who have been holding out due to the "missing links" in the fossil record and we'll never have to argue about evolution again. ;-)

Tip o' the hat to Frum Heretic.