Things that Turn Up

A couple cool things turned up lately, misplaced for a few thousand, or hundred-million, years:

First - The Gospel of Judas - a gnostic text in which Jesus asks Judas to betray him, since Jesus had to die to save the world, and to die, someone had to betray him to the Romans. This text had been discussed but never found - Irenaeus ("a hunter of heretics, and no friend of the Gnostics") condemned it, the ideas were around... It is the source, for example, of the Borges story "Three Versions of Judas", which describes the works of a theologian, Nils Runeberg, who argued that indeed when God came to earth to save humanity, he did not come as Jesus, he came as Judas - what, after all, could be a greater sacrifice than that? Like so many of Borges' stories, sorting out which parts were real and which were not is harder than it seems. Of course, Borges would have predicted that if you knew to look for something, you would find it eventually. You and I, gentle reader, need not practice the heresies of Tlon to learn more about this extraordinary book - we can look it up on National Geographic's site.

Meanwhile, speaking of what you can find if you seek - the discovery of a real "Missing Link" between sea and land creatures, a fish called Tiktaalik roseae. Scientists had predicted they would find it in the the Canadian arctic, and indeed they did. The beast is a fish, but with rudimentary limbs:

In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.

The technical term for this is "very cool." It is, of course, the source of some angst for creationists - the Times rather wryly quotes one demonstrating the missing link between man and weasel by saying

Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."

P.Z. Myers, happily, has pictures, diagrams - a wealth of information and edification! Not only that, but links to Tiktaalik art. Embrace your inner fish!