Re: An end to miracles

[Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

Since I have an interest in living fish (I have 4 aquariums) it had
just occured to me that all the land-crawling fish-types nowadays are
fresh water fishes-mud skippers, lung fish, bichers, rope fish, etc-
with only occasional land-crawling by such saltwater fishies as grunions
(which flop about more than any actual crawling).  
  Furthermore, the amphibians (supposedly very similar to the first land
dwelling vertbrates) of today seem rather intolerant of salt exposures
on their sensitive skins (and I don't believe they will lay eggs in
alkaline pools of water in deserty areas either).
   So the fairly common concept "when the first fish crawled out of the
sea and became a land dweller" suddenly seemed to be terribly
inaccurate, and I was wondering if the idea was attributed to a fossil I
was unawares of, or if it was a anti-Darwinistic sarcastic comment that
had some-how been preserved in the literature.

-Betty Cunningham

Allan Edels wrote:

>     Some work currently being done by Ted Daeschler (Academy of Natural
> Sciences of Philadelphia) indicates, as you said, that fresh-water
> lobed-finned fishes evolved into land walkers.
>     _Hynerpyton_  (I've misspelled it, I'm sure - sorry Ted) was found in a
> fresh-water assemblage.  (370 mya).  It has a very strong shoulder,
> sufficient enough to lift itself out of the water (at least its front end).
>     He also has a lobed-finned fish that shows eight finger-like bones in
> the fins - about where you might expect a hand or foot to be.