Oldest flying fish found, according to Nature News and BBC News 31 October 2012. A group of researchers in China have found fossilised flying fish, “exceptionally well preserved in grey mudstone” in Xingyi in Guizhou province in southwest China. The fossils are dated as Middle Triassic, 235-242 million years old, making them the oldest flying fish known. They have been named Potanichthys xingyiensis, and are classified as belonging to an extinct group of fishes named Thoracopteridae, which had previously only been found in the Upper Triassic of Europe. The fish have large pectoral fins and a forked, asymmetrical tail similar to that seen in living flying fish, but they are different to living flying fish in other ways. The scientists suggest “gliding has evolved only twice among fishes: once in the Triassic Thoracopteridae, and again in the modern Exocoetidae” (living flying fish) in order to help them escape predators.
Editorial Comment: Did you notice how they were compelled to fit the data into evolution, rather than just report it? These fish may be different to living flying fish, but that is no more proof flying fish evolved twice than the existence of living flying fish is proof they evolved once. Since no-one has seen a non-flying fish evolve into flying fish, the data is we found some fish that have appendages similar to today’s flying fish and here’s how similar or how different they are. That’s why we go to such length to always tell you when we do put the data in a Biblical perspective so you know the problem here is not science vs religion but which historical perspective or framework do you accept by faith – Darwin’s, who wasn’t there, or the Creator God who was, who said; “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures … So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds … And God saw that it was good”. (Genesis 1:20-21)
If these fossils do turn out to be the oldest flying fish, then the fact that some flying fish are now extinct is a reminder that the world is going downhill and losing living things, not evolving upwards and gaining them. Again this is evidence consistent with the Biblical history of the world, but sadly has degenerated due to human sin and God’s judgement, and therefore many living things, including perhaps these newly discovered flying fish, have died out. Furthermore, the fact that these fish are “exceptionally well preserved in grey mudstone” indicates they were rapidly and deeply buried. Fish cannot be preserved well enough to show details of fins and scales, as these ones were, by slowly sinking to the bottom of the sea and then gradually being covered by sediment. These fossils are evidence for rapid catastrophic processes, not slow uniformitarian processes. Time is not preserved in the rock record but catastrophism is! (Ref. locomotion, ichthyology, fossilisation)
Evidence News 21 November 2012