Origin of eyes

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071019/sc_livescience/originofvisiondiscovered;_ylt=Ai0VSVTIcQ5RLsQo7CwfHXys0NUE

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90781/90878/6287064.html

You are reading these words right now because 600 million years ago, an aquatic animal called a Hydra developed light-receptive genes—the origin of animal vision.

It wasn't exactly 20-20 vision back then though.

Hydras, a genus of freshwater animals that are kin to corals and jellyfish, measure only a few millimeters in diameter and have been around for hundreds of millions of years.

The gaps just got a lot smaller.

How ironic that they use names of mythical creatures for evolutionary purposes.

Nature is full of partial eyes of all descriptions. It quite deflates fundie arguments against evolution -- in any case, they were conceiving the eye front to back, whereas the eye's development was from back to front, and makes a lot better sense so understood.

Though my most powerful antifundie argument is one couched in religious terms: would an immortal capital-B Being, with literally all the time in the Universe, have any compelling reason to do other than to take the time to do it right? Remember when Genesis was written, and who it was written for: a tribal people without science, and in the late Bronze Age. We've gotten better at teasing out the world's information since those days.

Who would have thought that God would have given an aquatic animal called a Hydra eyes... :D