"Missing Link" Claim for Fossils Debunked by Creationist Group

A leading creation science organization responded quickly to the latest well-publicized "missing link" claim by evolutionary researchers, Baptist Press reports. While major media outlets trumpeted the discovery of fossils near the North Pole said to belong to a 375-million-year-old fish, Answers in Genesis called attention to the "cautionary words being used about this creature." The fish, known as Tiktaalik, "is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land," as described by The New York Times. Researchers claim that Tiktaalik's fins contain evidence of evolving limbs, digits, elbows and shoulders. David Menton, an Answers in Genesis lecturer, helped craft the creationist rebuttal: "[Tiktaalik] is not an amphibian or a reptile. It belongs to a group of fish called lobe-fin fish" who have bones similar to other vertebrates. Other lobe-fish, such as coelacanth, also have them. Coelacanth supposedly vanished 135 million years ago before its hyped 1938 discovery in waters near Madagascar. "It was known in the fossil record a long time before we found a living one," Menton said. "They are a fish; they do not walk on the land; they use these fins to swim."
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From Crosswalk.com