Amphibians

Evolution Says .....

Amphibians evolved from fish. They evolved into the reptiles. The fossil evidence proves this. Acanthostega, Seymouria and Ichthyostega are intermediates between amphibians and reptiles.

The Facts Are .....

(1) The Ichthyostega is said to be a four-legged intermediate between amphibians and land animals. Fossils of this creature, however, have well-developed legs rather than half leg-like fins. The hypothetical fish that gave rise to all four legged creatures is still unknown. David Attenborough, "Life on Earth", Reader's Digest: Sydney, 1980 p:157

(2) Acanthostega gunnari, a four-legged fossil found in Stensiö Bjerg (Greenland) in 1987, is often quoted as being an intermediate between fish and amphibians. Like the fossil, Ichthyostega, it has no fins and its leg bones are nothing like those of fossil fish (eg Eusthenopteron). It does have a mixture of fish-like and animal-like characteristics, but like a platypus, a mosaic of characters does not mean that it actually was an evolutionary intermediate. It would be better to think of it as a four-legged amphibian like the salamander or newt. J.A. Clack & M.I. Coates, "Acanthostega - A Fish out of Water?", in D. Vézina & M. Arsenault (eds), "7th International Symposium on Studies of Early Vertebrates", Abstracts, p:12

(3) The fossil species Seymouria is offered as proof of the transition of amphibia to reptiles. However, its assessed age according to the geologic column is some 20 million years after reptiles are supposed to have already appeared. Scott M. Huse, "The Collapse of Evolution", Baker Book House: Grand Rapids (Michigan), 1983 p:45

(4) "Evolution of this (complex) kind must always need long periods of time, but in spite of this the fossils give us little evidence of its course in the evolution of the Amphibia. Even the most primitive amphibians we know, the Ichthyostegalia, were as adults fully adapted to terrestrial life in many of their characters, for instance in their pentadactyl limbs." Written by Evolutionist G.S. Carter in his book "Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution", University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1967 p:263

(5) "The origins of the modern amphibia, such as frogs, has been the subject of considerable debate, a fact indicating the difficulty involved in tracing their ancestry back to the early amphibia that roamed the earth, and also to the fish stocks from which they, in turn, had evolved .... Just when and how the first frogs evolved remains unknown". Written by Michael J. Tyler in "Australian Frogs", Viking O'Neil: South Yarra (Victoria), 1989 p:1-2