Polypterus - Spiracles

[Dave B.]

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-evidence-animals-evolved-ability-air.html

"Polypterus had holes on top of its head but we never knew what they were actually for until we observed the fish over a long period of time and found they were breathing through their spiracles," Professor Long said.

"Until now we've only had theories about the origins of breathing in the evolution of fish to land animals – some early 19th Century scientists had these wacky ideas that fish just jumped onto the land and started gasping for breath and developing limbs," he said.

"But our research shows that the transformation actually started happening within the fish themselves while they were still in water."

 

[Visaki]

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-evidence-animals-evolved-ability-air.html

"Polypterus had holes on top of its head but we never knew what they were actually for until we observed the fish over a long period of time and found they were breathing through their spiracles," Professor Long said.

"Until now we've only had theories about the origins of breathing in the evolution of fish to land animals – some early 19th Century scientists had these wacky ideas that fish just jumped onto the land and started gasping for breath and developing limbs," he said.

"But our research shows that the transformation actually started happening within the fish themselves while they were still in water."

It feels like most of creationists today think that ToE means that "fish just jumped onto the land and started gasping for breath and developing limbs".

 

[Aught3]

That's really interesting. It's not clear to me from the article how the fish are using their spiracles, are they rising above the water surface in order to breath that way? Or is it more similar to a gill in extracting oxygen from the water?

 

[Dave B.]

That's really interesting. It's not clear to me from the article how the fish are using their spiracles, are they rising above the water surface in order to breath that way? Or is it more similar to a gill in extracting oxygen from the water?

Below is a link to some research that might help explain it better. The article didn't go into that much detail.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140123/ncomms4022/fig_tab/ncomms4022_F1.html