Ray that Skates Past Evolutionary Logic

Rays are very flat fish that spend a great deal of time on the ocean floor. There is a category of rays known as skates. Why or how they were given that moniker, I have no idea. After watching them for a while, they seemed kind of cute to me.A Darwin devotee took a notion that because one known as the little skate has a shuffling motion and certain genes, it is a link to a common ancestor.

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According to evolutionary mythology, life originated and evolved in the sea, then some things went up onto land. (Try not to laugh, but the ancestors of whales supposedly left land and evolved into sea critters. But never mind about that now.) Not all evolutionists have chosen to ride this trail, but because other creatures have the same kinds of genes used in movement, it supposedly indicates common ancestry instead of common design by the Creator. If they give up on this idea, wait for the secular miracle of convergent evolution. That's my guess.

We humans can skate but some scientists think skates can walk—and that we and they are more closely related than previously thought. Skates are a group within what are known as rays (though sometimes ‘rays’ is meant to refer to only those which are not skates). Rays are the largest group of fish with skeletons made from cartilage, not bone. They are known for both their flat body shape and their bottom-dwelling habit.

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Since skates have often been observed shuffling around on the sea floor, there has been evolutionary speculation that they might provide clues about how land vertebrates first conquered the land. Scientists studying a small skate species, Leucoraja erinacea, now think they have found support for this idea, and they published their findings and ideas in the prestigious journal Cell.

You can read the entire article by clicking on "Walk like a skate?"



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