Well, that’s the suggestion:
People traditionally think that lungs and limbs are key innovations that came with the vertebrate transition from water to land. But in fact, the genetic basis of air-breathing and limb movement was already established in our fish ancestor 50 million years earlier. This, according to a recent genome mapping of primitive fish conducted by the University of Copenhagen, among others. The new study changes our understanding of a key milestone in our own evolutionary history.
University of Copenhagen – Faculty of Science, “We’re more like primitive fishes than once believed, new research shows” at ScienceDaily
Read that again: “the genetic basis of air-breathing and limb movement was already established in our fish ancestor 50 million years earlier” than a transition to land. That sounds like directed evolution, no?
The paper is closed access.
David Coppedge has some thoughts:
… why were genes for air-breathing lungs and limbs already present 50 million years before any animal decided to use them for land? Natural selection should have eliminated them. The only evidence they offer is genes from a fish called a bichir, which is capable of using its front fins for locomotion on the ocean floor. Yet all more “advanced” teleost fish supposedly lost these genes! Rather than seeing this as a problem for the Darwin tree-picture, they keep the genes they like and toss the genes they don’t like in order to maintain their latest vision of a fish-to-man transition.
David F. Coppedge, “You Are More than a Primitive Fish” at Creation–Evolution Headlines
The researchers have stumbled onto directed evolution but their careers depend on not recognizing that fact.