Fossil Fish Found

Breitbart reported yesterday that scientists found a fossil fish in Canada believed to be a transitional form of fish-to-land evolution. The article strikes me as using very confident words for a speculative type of find (overly confident words and phrases in bold):

Scientists have caught a fossil fish in the act of adapting toward a life on land, a discovery that sheds new light one of the greatest transformations in the history of animals.

Scientists have long known that fish evolved into the first creatures on land with four legs and backbones more than 365 million years ago, but they've had precious little fossil evidence to document how it happened.

"Caught... in the act" makes this fish sound like a criminal. And how about "Scientists have long theorized...?" Evolutionary changes within a species have long been known. But evolutionary changes from one entire species to another, and from one entire class within the phylum to another has not yet been proven. Not even with this new fish fossil.

Experts said the discovery, with its unusually well-preserved and complete skeletons, reveals significant new information about how the water-to-land evolution took place.

Some 375 million years ago, the creature looked like a cross between a fish and a crocodile. It swam in shallow, gently meandering streams in what was then a subtropical climate, researchers say. A meat-eater, it lived mostly in water.

Yet, its front fins had bones that correspond to a shoulder, upper arm, elbow, forearm and a primitive version of a wrist, Shubin said. From the shoulder to the wrist area, "it basically looks like a scale- covered arm," he said.

"Here's a creature that has a fin that can do push-ups," he said. "This is clearly an animal that is able to support itself on the ground," probably both in very shallow water and for brief excursions on dry land. On land, it apparently moved like a seal, he said.

If they only have skeletons, how do they know it looked like a "scale-covered arm?" And how do they know it was a creature in transition and not something that was supposed to be a fish version of a land-water animal, the way crocodiles and seals and penguins are land-water animals, only this fish just died out because Canada stopped being tropical? There are a whole lot of questions still to be answered, but the scientists don't even seem to be asking those questions.

Hugh Hewitt discussed this fish on his radio show last night, and he made a reasonable point: How could scientists believe that we all descended from a Canadian fish?