Evolution: fish to land animals transition (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 26, 2020, 16:00 (1456 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "We expected the humerus would carry a strong functional signal as the animals transitioned from being a fully functional fish to being fully terrestrial tetrapods, and that we could use that to predict when tetrapods started to move on land," said Pierce. "We found that terrestrial ability appears to coincide with the origin of limbs, which is really exciting."

DAVID: I admire these folks persevering across a big gap with no little steps to follow. By using computer simulations they could model a transition, but that doesn't tell us the underlying cause or causes.

dhw: How about this? Terrestrial ability on land coincided with the origin of limbs, just as marine ability coincided with the reversion of limbs to fins, when the cell communities adapted their structures in order to cope with their new environment. Evolution is the history of cells combining and cooperating to find new ways of improving their chances of survival by adapting to or exploiting new conditions.

No explanation of the huge gaps in design from step to new step. Your answer is designing cells, and I ask who taught them how to design such complexity? Magical cells or more logically a designing mind.