"Fish Fins to Feet"

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Fish Fins to Feet

The transformation from fish fins to feet is thought so
difficult to achieve that it only happened once.[1] Estimates
for the time it took to complete the transition, start to finish,
are limited to 15 million years or less. This is because 15
million years is the distance from the earliest Frasnian to the
latest Famennian, i.e. from 378-363 million years ago. Rich
fossil beds display abundant flesh-finned fish such as
Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys in the earliest Frasnian,
but no legged-animals; yet 15 million years later in the late
Famennian, fully developed legged-animals are abundant.
Leading tetrapod expert Clack estimated that the transition
happened in less than 5-10 million years, because footprints
and trace fossils of legged animals Obruchevichthys and
Elginerpeton appear in the late Frasnian, 5 million years
before the well-defined forms Acanthostega and Ichthyostega
become plentiful.[2] Others see a slightly longer transition,
from 9 million years[3] to 12-15 million years.[4] Hence, by
all estimates, fish with fins transformed into land-walking
creatures with well-defined and fully functional legs in 5 to
15 million years or less. The possibility that it happened in
an even shorter time is still open, as a flood of freshly
discovered fossil tetrapods are still turning up. The first
important transformation from fins to feet is noticed in
Panderichthys, the most primitive fossil form to adapt its arm
bone into an immobile platform to support the body.[5]
This 5 to 15 million years is a short period of time when
compared to the amount of time it took for natural selection
to perfect legs. From the first appearance of legs in the fossil
record, until the time legs evolved into efficient running
machines, is about 135 million years. The first animals with
legs were extremely slow and cumbersome on land. This was
because legs were not positioned directly under the weight of
THIS SECTION: the body, but were flanged out to the sides. Thus, the earliest
four-legged animals could only waddle.
SUDDEN
ORIGINS AND
RAPID
EVOLUTION
IN THE FOSSIL
RECORD

Above: Archaeopteryx, the famous link

between birds and dinosaurs. Notice
unmistakable bird feathers have been
impressed into the rock. Also notice the threefingered hands with claws. This feature
confirms that it must have been related to the
carnivorous theropod dinosaurs which had the
same type of three-fingered clawed hand.

Also, legs were rather short for a long period of time,

failing to lift the head much above the ground. If a species
could have evolved the ability to grow long legs, it would
have proven a distinct advantage, for long legs would have
enabled that species to eat herbs forbidden to animals of a
lower height. As it was, legged-vertebrates did not even
evolve the ability to eat plants at all until the latter
Carboniferous. One would think, since they grew legs in less
than 15 million years, they should have evolved a digestive
system to cope with plants in less than 40 million years, but
such was not the case. Height could have also protected
animals' necks from the bite of predators. Under these

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"Fish Fins to Feet"

selective pressures, we might expect that tall animals should

have evolved fairly quickly. After all, if it only took 5 or 15
million years for evolution to turn a fish fin into a leg, it
should not take much longer for evolution to make the leg
more efficient. Yet this did not happen. Land animals
stayed low to the ground, even the largest of them barely able
to lift their heads much more than a couple feet off the forest
floor. Their legs flanged out to the sides, inefficiently
supporting their body weight, and slowing them down.

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These inefficiencies were retained for about 80 million

years, at which time modest improvements were made by the
mammal-like therapsids. Yet the therapsids' legs were still
flanged out to the side, and they failed to reach the height
necessary to eat herbs high in the trees.
The archosaurs achieved a breakthrough about 250
million years ago when they attained the ability to place their
weight directly under their legs, rather than having their legs
splayed out to the sides. The descendents of the archosaurs,
the dinosaurs, perfected this ability with the evolution of a
socket joint in the hip capable of both swift speeds and the
ability to stand on just two feet. They also added length to
their legs for greater height. Hence, it was not until the time
of the dinosaurs that legs finally reached their full potential
in terms of speed, strength, height, and efficiency. The first
dinosaurs evolved about 230 million years ago roughly 135
million years after legs first evolved. Thus, despite their
comparatively rapid evolution from fish fins, legs retained
grave inefficiencies for 135 million years.
The paradox is inconsistency in the rates of
evolutionary progress. It took only 5 to 15 million years for
fish fins to turn into legs, yet it took another 135 million
years for unsteady waddling legs to become sure-footed fast
running legs. The greater morphological change occurred in
the shorter period of time, and the lesser morphological
change occurred in the longer period of time. If natural
selection required a whopping 135 million years to make
adjustments to an existing form, then why did it require only
5 or 15 million years to invent a radically different form? It
is a matter of a strange discrepancy in the speed of
evolutionary change. If natural selection works only slowly
over time, as genetics suggests, then it must be asked what
force besides natural selection causes accelerations in the
amount of evolutionary change?

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Above: Survival of the Fittest is the

harsh reality of this dark and wicked cosmos.
Below: But some evolutionary transitions
happened too fast for Survival of the Fittest to
be the cause.

Click here to find out more about sudden origins and rapid
evolution in the fossil record.
The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by
many ancient Christian texts. Instead of an Almighty
Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the
universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity. The
angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.

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Page 3 of 4

There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is
just one among them. Satan the Devil writes scripture, and
thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1. Archaeology and
modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed
corrupted. Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve. Esoteric
prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the
dark forces that govern the cosmos. Such are the ancient
Christian writings.
Sciencevindicates the truth of these ideas. Evolution often
happens too fast for Darwins theory. Gaps in the fossil
record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts
together with natural selection. Astrobiology reveals that
intelligent life probably evolved long before us. The fossil
record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and
transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse
lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species. Evidently,
aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the
worlds religions.
This is not fiction. All these facts are thoroughly documented
in the links above.

[1] Lee, Michael S Y; Caldwell, Michael W. Adriosaurus and the Affinities of Mosasaurs,
Dolichosaurs, and Snakes. 2000, Journal of Paleontology 74(5), p 926
[2] Clack, Jennifer A. Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods. 2002, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, IN, p 91-96
[3] Carroll, Sean B; Grenier, Jennifer K; Weatherbee, Scott D. From DNA to Diversity: Molecular
Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design, 2nd Ed. 2005, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, p
186
[4] Carroll, Robert L. Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution. 1997, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK, p 300, 336
[5] Shubin, Neil H; Daeschler, Edward B; Coates, Michael I. The Early Evolution of the Tetrapod
Humerus. 2004, Science 304, p 93

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