(Archaeopteryx
Lithographica) Transitional fossil between reptiles and birds.
Diagram of lateral
protohuman skulls in a transitional progression
Comparison of skulls of
Modern Chimp, Afarensis (Lucy’s family), Homo Erectus and modern man.
Reconstruction of Lucy’s
skeleton in dental plaster to show how she stood upright.
Comparison of the pelvis
bones of Lucy, modern human, and a chimpanzee.
So, in a world of millions of species, and many thousands of vertabrate species, here we have the thousands of transitional fossils we might expect…i mean….uh, oh…you mean we have only a sketchy, disputed fossil (archeaopteryx) and some evidence of variation within a species? (human, horse)? What about the transitions that created pigs, dogs, cats, camels, giraffes, zebras, bears, elephants, kangaroos, wombats, wolves, lynxes, swallows, whales, dolphins, cattle, yaks, llamas, koalas, bats….and thats just touching present day species…..and we have possible evidence for THREE? Is that more rational than the unending ‘coincidences’ that a Christian experiences?
Steve,
Fossilization is an extremely rare process. Virtually every bone that has ever existed has simply turned to dust. Fossilization happens only under extraordinary circumstances. We are very fortunate to have the ones we do have.
I’m not an expert. I have read about other transitional fossils but I think that these by themselves clinch the case for speciation.
Exactly! By the same logic will one be able to obtain 3 randomly found automobile frames from all times and succinctly trace their ancestry and evolution from Model T to today’s hybrids.
As Capella says, he’s not an expert. There are literally thousands of transitional fossils, but he’s only familiar with some of the more important/famous of them. There are bits in the fossil record we haven’t filled in yet, but that only means we haven’t dug up all the fossils yet–just as there are gaps in the archeological record of human history.
Also, taking just protohuman fossils that have so far been discovered, if we had the same representations of sequence of automobiles as we do of protohumans stretching from the beginning to end, I think we would see a definite sequence of artificial selection in cars.
wow, this steve guy really seems to have a whole lot of evidence coming from his side….get real man…..just because you think you can prove evolution wrong…(which you cant) still doesn’t make your “creation theory” correct. To remphasize, just by proving A wrong does not make B right. Failed logic on your part
“If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which has been proved to be true. But I do not think there is any such proof since none has been shown to me.”
— Cardinal Robert Bellarmine
Yes indeed, those crazy scientists that dedicate their entire academic and professional lives to biology, paleontology, geology, and history don’t know what the heck they are talking about.
Does anyone else find it interesting, by the way, that even such seemingly incredible genetic mutations like having 6 fingers, two heads, dwarfism, etc. are relatively common occurrences. Polydactylism being more common, of course, than having two heads… Anyway I bet that if you live in a proper city (not a tiny rural town) there are at least a half dozen people living amongst you that have extra fingers! So we know that significant mutations occur with some degree of regularity in a species, and we know that genetics are passed on from parent to child. We also know that some mutations can be bad; take siamese twins, for example — a hundred years ago, such an abnormality would have been a death sentence. Also, we know that genetic abnormalities can be quite beneficial — as in bacteria and viruses evolving to trick our immune system into leaving it alone, or at least altering its chemical and molecular appearance to throw our immune system off. Granted, evolution occurs more quickly in bacteria since they reproduce thousands of times per minute, but given millions of years, one would be insane to believe that mammalian species do not evolve as well. In fact, as Capella and Leon point out there are many pieces of fossil and DNA evidence to support such evolutionary occurrences.
Anyway, don’t disregard the opinions of thousands upon thousands of scientists who, for the last few hundred years, have dedicated a collective total of billions of man hours of research to this subject as well as to others that indirectly contribute our understanding of this subject. Don’t make the assumption, as the Catholic church did, that because you do not understand the complexities of scientific research, that the simpler explanation of the bible is more rational.
Remember that humans have been around for the blink of the eye in terms of life itself… And within that blink of an eye, we developed the first (one string) instrument a mere 40,000 years ago.
Matthew,
Good comments.
I remember when I was a little child, my mother babysat a kid that had 6 fingers which of course really fascinated me.
Capella
In response to Steve, please visit the testimony of Kevin Padian in Kitzmiller v. Dover
http://www.sciohost.org/ncse/kvd/Padian/Padian_transcript.html
There are thousands of fossils, and every single one confirms evolutionary change over time.
For Capella, Yes, fossilization is a rare process, and it is estimated that less than 1% of species are represented in the fossil record, but 1% of millions of species is a lot.
I’ve spent the past 10 years as a geologist and a vertebrate paleontologist, but you don’t have to take my word for it- that’s the beauty of science. Go to a museum. Go to a website other than “answers in Genesis”. Read at least 10 books on evolution. Open your mind, and think rationally. Ask yourself, if all the theories of geology and biology have a mistaken basis, why does it all work so well? How do we find oil and natural gas if the current models of the Earths age are so wrong? How do we engineer new drugs to fight evolving bacteria if evolutionary ideas are so wrong? How come a transitional form between fish and amphibians ( like Tiktaalik roseae) be predicted in Devonian age rock, and then , lo and behold, that form is found in correct stratigraphic sequence?
Bob,
Thanks for your injection of expertise. The testimony linked is also very good reading.
Capella
Steve pulls out the hoary old obscurantist chestnut that differentiates between adaptation and evolution. Either he is ignorant of the topic that he is discussing or being deliberately obtuse.
Just as an example, over the past decade and a half there has been advances in clarifying the evolution of whales including the discovery of the ancestral form Ambulocetans natans.
Anyway, the whole question of “transitional fossils” is simply an attempt to muddy the waters. If we have a species A and an ancestral species B then if we discover a transitional species C, the creationists simply demand another two transitional forms – one between B and C and the other between C and A. The argument is undefeatable.
Jim,
Good point. Also creationists/ID people seem to argue as if examples of every animal that have ever lived have successfully fossilized and are readily available to fossil hunters instead of recognizing the fact that fossilization is the extremely rare process that it is.
Capella
Why is it that everybody thinks it has to be and eithor/ or? Either you believe in “evolution” or you believe in “creation”. Present day man is STILL evolving. We have changed even in the last 100 years. Can’t it be that we have “evolved” from the original “creation” of man??????
Jane,
That’s an excellent point and you are certainly not alone. Many people who accept science are also believers in some kind of creator.
We may differ on the creator part, but we can agree on the science.
When we say “creationists” we are generally referrering to young earth or old earth creationists who either take the bible literally word for word (i.e. the universe was spoken into existence and man was made instantly from dirt) or those who try to shoe-horn modern cosmology and evolution into the Genesis creation myths ( i.e. each day of the Genesis 1 creation story was billions of years, the flood was a local flood, etc…).
Thanks for your comment.
The very term “transitional form” implies a misunderstanding of how evolution proceeds. Every organism that has ever lived was, in its day, a species in its own right. On the other hand, every organism that has ever lived could also be considered a “transitional form”, since evolution is never complete. It doesn’t proceed according to a plan, whereby Species A evolves into Species B, with a “transitional form” in between the two. It is a seamless, continuous process, puctuated only by branching points, whereby Species A divides into Species B and C. Even the term “species” is a term of convenience, since we humans feel the need to give everything a name. Technically, Species B and C were born on the day when there was no longer any interbreeding between two subgroups of Species A…but it would take another 10,000 years before anyone would notice any differences between the two groups. The problem is, this all takes some thinking about, which most people aren’t prepared to do.
You know if we would’ve put God for all the answers to the questions we’ve asked ourselves we wouldn’t be this advenced.For exemple:What makes the sun go up or down or the moon to have phases?What gives us rain?What is litning?If we put God for all these answers we would of never discovered electricity,gravity formulas and so one.It’s by dismissing the magic of the mythical Gods that we advenced in technology,medicine and psychology.And if we continue to dissmisse all Gods maybe we will find peace.I don’t remember who said this but I quote:When the last King is strangled with the endtrails of the last priest then we’ll have piece.
Yes as John points out we ourselves are a transitional ‘form’ of creature that we like to call Homo Sapien.If our species is still around in a million years it won’t be us…this sort of reality is a blow to human pride in a way-we like to think that we are the pinnacle,that we have ‘arrived’.Then to Marco,yes we have made huge progress,but we cannot be simplistic,for Monotheism was the basis of science ie.God is separate from his creation therefore the creation can be studied.That doesn’t make Judaism,Christianity or Islam true,but it did give us a leg up in the EVOLUTION of scientific understanding because Monotheism is better than Polytheism,but now Atheism is replacing both.But I fear that it will be a long time until we conquer our conquering instincts.Our instincts for status and territorial domination and our ‘fight or flight’ hormones are still ‘catching up’ with our reasoning abilities.(We have tried getting rid of kings and priests.It was called Communism and it failed to bring world peace.)
This comment is for all…even the ones that never write. Why did evolution happen long ago and far away? Where is it now? If we evolved from monkeys…why do we still have monkeys? Where are the intermediates? I mean, afterall if humans exist and monkeys exist, where are the in betweeners (probably not really even a word but it serves the point)? Surely no one would argue that humans exist…as well as we still see apes in our time. If we evolved…what evolved first? Our eyes…ears…mouths…stomachs…lungs? How did our bodies survive without the other parts being in place? These questions are only too make us think…logically.
Respectfully,
Daniel Shawley
Daniel,
Evolution happened and it’s still happening. We evolved from a common ancestor to apes and monkeys, but we didn’t evolve from apes or monkeys. There are a lot of “intermediates” that have been found between our common ancestor and humans, see the above article and it’s links.
As far as the order of body parts evolving, suffice to say that body parts typically evolved simultaneously. Some aspects of humans are vestigial or no longer serve a purpose such as the appendix, goose bumps, “tails,” etc… which isn’t a indicator of good “design.”
Also consider our brains which are multi-tiered from the inward out with a reptilian complex, the old mammalian brain, and capped with a cerebral cortex. Perfectly logical considering it’s sequence of evolution and again an indicator of extremely poor “design.”
I’m hearing a lot of talk about there being thousands of transitional fossils, but I don’t see any. Would someone please link me to some more?
Archaeopteryx, for example, is seemingly the number one gem for evolution. But from what I’ve studied, it’s only because it has claws on its wings and teeth. Now, there are plenty of birds with teeth, plenty of birds with claws, and plenty of extinct species. So that’s all I see, really. An extinct bird.
I respect science, and I don’t think we should stop technological advancements by saying that God is the cause for everything, but it’s a combination of archeological finds which match the Bible (such as the top of Mt. Sinai being burnt from God writing the ten commandments), science disproving scientists (footprints of men and dinosaurs found in the same age of rock) and lack of evidence for evolution in general that won’t let me believe it.
On top of that, every ‘missing link’ that I’ve heard of has been proven fraudulent.
According to paleontologists Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil. If you don’t believe it is based on layperson observations, that’s your right.
There is a general lack of archaeological evidence for much of the early myths in the Bible such as massive amounts (at least hundreds of thousands) of Israelites wandering in the Sinai desert as nomads for 40 years, a global flood occurring within the last ten thousand years, etc…
However I would like to know where you got the idea of archeological finds of scorching on the top of Mt. Sinai proving a god wrote the ten commandments into some stone. First I’ve heard of that one and I’ve heard so many of these over the decades.
The so called footprint of man found with a dinosaur footprint in Glen Rose Texas has been exposed to be a fraud. The first so called “man” footprint was a dinosaur footprint that had part of the print occurred with sand before it was photographed.
Even many creationists no longer assert these footprints as being genuine because they are so easily discredited as fakes by the scientific community when they are examined.
There have only been a couple of transitional fossils that I know of that have been genuinely proved fraudulent and these (Piltdown Man, Nebraska man, etc…) came from the early part of the 20th century and were almost immediately determined as fakes by the scientific community as soon as they were available for scrutiny (Piltdown Man for example was locked away for decades).
There are many transitional fossils that are genuine, accepted by the scientific community including the ones I’ve mentioned and provided photographs of in this article.