[Black Wolf]

Just pointing out the obvious possible flaw in this conclusion, as any good creationist would do... How come the dolphin is evolution, while this poor fella is/was a mutation?

That chick was almost certainly not a mutation, but some sort of conjoined twins. Consider the pic - the chicken is obviously not a stable organism - look at the leg alignement mainly, and the fact that it died as an infant. The dolphin however is bilaterally symmetrical, has grown to what looks like an adult or near adult stage and generally has the appearance of a competent, survivable organism.

Moreover, the dolphin had limbs in that area of its body fairly recently along its evolutionary timescale - within the last 15 million or so years. There hasn't been a four legged bird ancestor in much, much longer - at least 200 million years, and I'd probably be able to push it back considerably further than that if I did any more research than looking up "thereopod" on wikipedia- and I very, very much doubt that there has ever been an organism in any evolutionary line with multiple anuses - certainly not anything from the chordate line anyway, so we're talking well over 500 million years (and even then you'd probably not find anything with more than one true anus).

By the way. Statistically, it is extremely unlikely that the only four-finned dolphin in the world was caught. There are others most likely like this one. And I don't think it's as much as a mutation bringing out old traits. It's more like the fact that dolphins might have lost their "legs" later than is generally thought. Perhaps (read: likely) there is a part in dolphin population that still has two extra fins.

Statistically unlikely, yes, but don't read too much into that. The fossil record agrees with around 2000 years of biological and pseudo biological observation. Moreover, any species or race of dolphin with two fins back there would be disadvantaged enough to be outcompeted by non rear finned dolphins pretty quickly (since they break the nice neat hydrodynamic shape). This one probably survived because it was born into a social pod of normally formed dolphins (in much the same way people with disadvantageous mutations like downs syndrome survive because they're propped up by the social conventions of human society) but an entire pod of these things would not survive fending on their own - they'd simply be outcompeted.

Besides, they don't need to have had a particularly recent loss to have these kinds of regressions - it just takes a slight genetic mistake to trigger old DNA (or suppress it in the first place), but it takes millions upon millions of years to get rid of it entirely - as Aldo says, all organisms carry around a lot of useless DNA in exactly the same way. It does degrade over time, which is why you don't see humans sprouting, say, reptillian scales. but 15 million years isn't all that long on an evolutionary timescale - and, at the end of the day this discovery does prove that the DNA for rebuilding the fins hasn't degrarded yet.

[Colonol Dekker]

Palm sized fins = legs? 

Bah.  i wanted freakioshly deformed twisted limbs................
Evolution   

[Herra Tohtori]

Bah.  i wanted freakioshly deformed twisted limbs................

Okay... mental image: A dolphin sprouting long, strong limbs instead of its main fins, two others at the rear end, and a fifth on formed from it's tails.

Add red and black colour scheme. Multiple eyes and a beam cannon at the forehead.

So long, and thanks for all the fish...


By the way, I see you have received a title... kind of.

[Colonol Dekker]

Bah..............I didn't notice. 
Still it beats some of the more "imaginitive ones"

[Herra Tohtori]

Like BlackWolf's title?

[Colonol Dekker]

*Looks at Blackwolfs title*

 ...............................I hazard to check that link but  still.

[TrashMan]

Just pointing out the obvious possible flaw in this conclusion, as any good creationist would do... How come the dolphin is evolution, while this poor fella is/was a mutation?

Because that mutation gave no survival or procreational advantage leading to its propagation across a species.

In that case humanity isn't evolving.
There is no filter to our procreation....

[vyper]

A severely handicapped individual is less likely to reproduce in our society than an able bodied one - even if they are helped to survive. There's your filter.

[aldo_14]

Just pointing out the obvious possible flaw in this conclusion, as any good creationist would do... How come the dolphin is evolution, while this poor fella is/was a mutation?

Because that mutation gave no survival or procreational advantage leading to its propagation across a species.

In that case humanity isn't evolving.
There is no filter to our procreation....

Yes there is; a simple consideration of sexual selection mechanics in modern society indicates the direction of our evolution; and that's excluding the third world and other situations where there isn't sufficient healthcare.

[Mefustae]

Not to mention that a few hundred years of equal-opportunity reproduction isn't exactly going to have a massive effect on a million-year process.

[aldo_14]

Not to mention that a few hundred years of equal-opportunity reproduction isn't exactly going to have a massive effect on a million-year process.

It's not equal opportunity, though.

[Mefustae]

But that was what TrashMan was implying.

[Colonol Dekker]

No he wasn't, Helping the less able and thinking "My she is a hotty, with her no arms and withered legs, Ohhhh yes she is :lust:" are two different things........

[NGTM-1R]

No he wasn't, Helping the less able and thinking "My she is a hotty, with her no arms and withered legs, Ohhhh yes she is :lust:" are two different things........

Dammit, I was trying to forget about the friggin' amputee porn. Thanks a lot.

[Colonol Dekker]

Gahhh stop doing that..........

[Janos]

No he wasn't, Helping the less able and thinking "My she is a hotty, with her no arms and withered legs, Ohhhh yes she is :lust:" are two different things........

Dammit, I was trying to forget about the friggin' amputee porn. Thanks a lot.

You shouldn't try.

Never forget.

[Flipside]

It depends largely on the degree of the mutation. Most animals have a whole batch of DNA which is dormant, they are left in place from earlier stages of evolution and can, under the right conditions, become active again. This is why I hate it when people call stuff 'Junk DNA', it's not 'Junk', it just a mixture of dormant stuff and bits we don't understand.

When you get a big mutation, sometimes the organism is incapable of dealing with the degree of it and the system fails. A lot of 'Freaks' in Victorian times were mutations at extreme levels.

If you consider that every single one of us is a mutant to one degree or another, that it is, in fact, the engine that drives evolution, then I'm frankly surprised that these things don't turn up more. Or possibly they turn up more, but don't get reported.

[BlackDove]

Mandatory reference when speaking of limbs, dolphins, and general sea populace.



Evolution

Okay, back to your topic.

[Rictor]

http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/11/05/0840227.shtml


Evolution @ work people.......

Oh wow! Great, it's a retarded fish frog!

[aldo_14]

It depends largely on the degree of the mutation. Most animals have a whole batch of DNA which is dormant, they are left in place from earlier stages of evolution and can, under the right conditions, become active again. This is why I hate it when people call stuff 'Junk DNA', it's not 'Junk', it just a mixture of dormant stuff and bits we don't understand.

When you get a big mutation, sometimes the organism is incapable of dealing with the degree of it and the system fails. A lot of 'Freaks' in Victorian times were mutations at extreme levels.

If you consider that every single one of us is a mutant to one degree or another, that it is, in fact, the engine that drives evolution, then I'm frankly surprised that these things don't turn up more. Or possibly they turn up more, but don't get reported.

In human DNA, there are something like 19,000 'psuedogenes' (genes which are incapable of creating proteins due to errors/corruption) identified, and 21,000 (estimated) protein coding genes, so it's quite possible we have more 'junk' than actual working DNA.  This is also a good indicator of evolution; firstly there's no natural selection on unexpressed pseudogenes, so you can more reliably estimate the rate of mutation (especially as many pseudogenes are actually corrupted copies of expressed genes).  Secondly, some of these genes crop up in other animals in their functional form; disabled olafactory (pseudo)genes from humans are found - expressed - in mice, for example.