Question 1: The Fossil Record

[Simon]

According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms "is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." What new fossil finds, if any, have occurred since Darwin wrote these words nearly 150 years ago? Do they overturn Darwin's bleak assessment of evolutionary theory? If the absence of intermediate fossil forms holds as much today as it did back then, why should anyone accept evolution?

[commonsense]

When Darwin’s the origin of species was published in 1859, he conceded that "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory" was the fossil record failed to back up his evolutionary hypothesis. "why" he asked "if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?" He attributed the problem to the fossil record being incomplete and predicted that future discoveries would vindicate his theory. Two years later scientists unearthed the archaeopteryx in a German quarry. Evolutionists were thrilled the missing link between reptiles and birds was found. Its featured in books as just one example of many transitional links that have been found. Since that time its actually true the fossil record let Darwin down Michael Denton in his book Evolution: A Theory In Crisis summarized the bleak situation this way: “the universal experience of paleontology is that while the rocks have continually yielded new and exciting and even bizarre forms of life what they have never yielded is any of Darwin’s myriads of transitional forms. Despite the tremendous increase in geological activity in every corner of eh globe and despite the discovery of many strange and hitherto unknown forms, the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the origin. The intermediates have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains, a century later one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record" as a result the fossil record provides a tremendous challenge to the notion on organic evolution. But what about the archaeopteryx? The fossils of this magnificent creature its detailed image pressed into fine grane limestone still seemed to stand in contrast to this trend. There are several problems with archaeopteryx it does not show Darwinian evolution, how do you get from a reptile to a bird which is an astonishingly huge step. By some totally natural process or does this require the intervention of a designer? An archaeopteryx doesn’t show us one way or the other. Besides we see strange animals around today like the duck billed platypus which nobody considers transitional but which has characteristics of different classes. The archaeopteryx is not even close to half-bird half-reptile it’s a bird with modern feathers and birds are very different from reptiles in many important ways. Their breeding system, Their bone structure, their lungs, their distribution of weight and muscles. It’s a bird that’s clear not part bird part reptile. The archaeopteryx comes from the branch of evolutionary theory called cladistics. This takes Darwinian theory to the extreme. Cladists define homology or physical similarities, as being due to common ancestry. Then they say well the main way we can group animals in the evolutionary tree is through homologies which is already a bit of a circular argument. When they go back into the fossil record they assume birds came from reptiles by descent an dthe look for reptiles that are more bird-like in skeletal structure. But they find them millions of years after archaeopteryx. So here we have archaeopteryx which is undeniably a bird and yet the fossils that look like the reptilian ancestors of birds occur tens of millions of years later in the fossil record. The missing link is still missing. So archaeopteryx is not at all an ancestor of common birds paleontologists pretty much agree on that. There are too many structural differences. Larry Martin a paleontologists from the university of Kansas said clearly in 1985 that the archaeopteryx is not an ancestor of any modrn birds but a member of a totally extinct group of birds. Even evolutionist Pierre Lecomte du Nouy agrees we are not authorized to consider the archaeopteryx a true link. Since this time paleontologists have been on a frenzy to locate an actual reptilian fossil for birds. A few years ago the national geographic society announced that a fossil had been purchased at the Arizona mineral show that turned out to be the missing link between terrestrial dinosaurs and birds that could actually fly it was the archaeoraptor and had the tail of a dinosaur and the forelimbs of a bird. It was published in National Geographic magazine in 1999 that said there’s now evidence that feathered dinosaurs were ancestors to the first bird. Well the problem was it was a fake. a Chinese paleotologists proved that someone glued the dinosaur tail to a primitive bird. Someone created it to look like what scientists wanted.since then more have been found archaeoraptor is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field says Fedducia a reporter for Discover magazine. Money fuels this fraud the fossil trade has become big business. Anyone who can produce a good fake stands to profit. Another fake the bambiraptor appears.

Java man ooooh this ones fast the so called java man which actually consisted of only a skull cap, femur and three teeth oh yeah and a whole lot of imagination. To bad the Dubois’ shoddy excavation disqualified the fossil from consideration by today’s standards. The femur didn’t actually belong to the skull cap and the skull cap according to prominent Cambridge University anatomist Sir Arthur Keith was distinctly human and reflected a brain capacity well within the range of humans living today. Or maybe that 342 page scientific report from a fact-finding expedition of nineteen evolutionists demolished Dubois’ claims and concluded that Java man played no part in human evolution

[potwalloper.]

commonsense wrote

they have never yielded is any of Darwin’s myriads of transitional forms

We are still waiting for a definition of transitional fossil forms. This has been singularly absent throughout this debate in spite of at least five requests from contributors to the thread. What is your definition of a "transitional fossil form". As this appears to be fundamental to your argument a defintion seems pretty crucial...

[richic]

We are still waiting for a definition of transitional fossil forms. This has been singularly absent throughout this debate in spite of at least five requests from contributors to the thread. What is your definition of a "transitional fossil form". As this appears to be fundamental to your argument a defintion seems pretty crucial...

I think Darwin coined the term in his challenge of his own hypothesis anticipating that the fossil record would evidence a large number of creatures sharing dual species characterisics since he believed evolution occurred with fine gradation, not suddenly.

I think the most famous example was archaeopteryx, originally believed to be half bird and half reptile. An ape man would also probably qualify as a transitional form.

[perfessor]

We are still waiting for a definition of transitional fossil forms. This has been singularly absent throughout this debate in spite of at least five requests from contributors to the thread. What is your definition of a "transitional fossil form". As this appears to be fundamental to your argument a defintion seems pretty crucial...

I think Darwin coined the term in his challenge of his own hypothesis anticipating that the fossil record would evidence a large number of creatures sharing dual species characterisics since he believed evolution occurred with fine gradation, not suddenly.

I think the most famous example was archaeopteryx, originally believed to be half bird and half reptile. An ape man would also probably qualify as a transitional form.

I think this shows the straw-man nature of the creationist argument "There are no transitional forms." The reason that there are none is that creationists insist on seeing an ape-man (whatever that is), or half reptile half fish, or half reptile half bird. It is indeed true that evolution does not generally produce such blinking neon signs.

Scientists who study evolution have a different definition; and when asked "Where are the transitional forms?" will respond that there are many thousands (or millions) - where to begin? A transitional carries some characteristics of an earlier species, and some that are different. But there does not tend to be a sharp, sudden shift from one species to another. Let me make an analogy: The English of Chaucer was very different from that of today - we probably couldn't carry on a conversation. Shakespeare might have been able to talk with both Chaucer and us - a "transitional English speaker", if you will. But there was never a time when people spoke in sentences that were half Olde English, half modern dude-speak. Yet that is what Creationists expect evolution to produce.

[rjw]

Gidday Simon,

I came across this thread, noted your opening post and some of the following replies.

Some examples of “transitionals” were provided to which you responded:-

Simon:- The examples you provided are infered to be intermediate examples .. but where are the transitional fossils? The examples you gave don't seem to account for gradualism.

There is no difference in meaning between the words “intermediate” and “transitional”. Essentially you have asked “[t]he examples you provided are inferred to be transitional examples but where are the transitional fossils?”

They are inferred to be transitional simply because they have the correct characteristics (a mosaic of the purported ancestor and descendant) and they fall within the correct date range.

They can say very little or nothing about the rate of evolution – that is gradualism, punctuated equilibrium, “hopeful monsters” etc. Essentially in this quote of yours, you have confused two things – the concept of a transitional fossil and the rate of the evolutionary process.

You wrote:-

Simon:- As an aside .. We've got 7 specimens of Archaeopteryx .. 8 if you count a feather .. and some people are thinking that the whole thing is a hoax motivated by money, and that eventually it will be exposed as such - replacing the Piltdown man as the biggest hoax scientists ever fell for.

May I ask – how much mainstream scientific literature do you read – particularly that relating to evolution, fossils etc?


Regards, Roland

[richic]

I think this shows the straw-man nature of the creationist argument "There are no transitional forms." The reason that there are none is that creationists insist on seeing an ape-man (whatever that is), or half reptile half fish, or half reptile half bird. It is indeed true that evolution does not generally produce such blinking neon signs.

Scientists who study evolution have a different definition; and when asked "Where are the transitional forms?" will respond that there are many thousands (or millions) - where to begin? A transitional carries some characteristics of an earlier species, and some that are different. But there does not tend to be a sharp, sudden shift from one species to another. Let me make an analogy: The English of Chaucer was very different from that of today - we probably couldn't carry on a conversation. Shakespeare might have been able to talk with both Chaucer and us - a "transitional English speaker", if you will. But there was never a time when people spoke in sentences that were half Olde English, half modern dude-speak. Yet that is what Creationists expect evolution to produce

I was just quoting Darwin's definition so I thought that's what Darwin was expecting to see in the fossil record. I agree that creationsists have picked up on this, but I didn't realize it was a straw man argument. I need to get up to speed on this debate

I think your explanation about shared characteristics makes sense. So has current evolutionary theory abandoned this transitional form description that Darwin first propounded and that creationsists use in their straw man arguments?

Also what are some of the shared characterists in the transitional forms that science accepts? Is there a comprehensive theory for the mechanism of transference of these characteristics? What kind of evidence are we looking for or finding?

[bernee51]

Also what are some of the shared characterists in the transitional forms that science accepts? Is there a comprehensive theory for the mechanism of transference of these characteristics? What kind of evidence are we looking for or finding?

Methinks too much is made of the whole fossil thing and not enough emphasis placed on the obvious examples within our own species. The human brain and nervous sysytem, for instance, is a fine example. We have a neural cord (common in basic life forms which rely on perception), our brainstem is reptilian, the limbic system (Paleomammalian brain) is common to all mammals, the 'higher' mammals have a neocortex, man has a complex neocortex.

The mechanism - incorporation and transcendence. The 'higher' functions incorporate (do not actually replace) the 'lower' and the resulting organism transcends the former in functionality. This incorporation and transcendence is 'value free'. It is up to 'natural selection' to decide whether the resulting transcendent organism will be successful.

The other issue I have with the creationist/evolutionis 'battle' is that it has resulted in an almost exclusive view of evolution effecting only the physical world.

Evolution has occured and is occuring in all aspects of life - the physical, the biological, the mind (consciousness) and the spiritual.

[richic]

Methinks too much is made of the whole fossil thing and not enough emphasis placed on the obvious examples within our own species. The human brain and nervous sysytem, for instance, is a fine example. We have a neural cord (common in basic life forms which rely on perception), our brainstem is reptilian, the limbic system (Paleomammalian brain) is common to all mammals, the 'higher' mammals have a neocortex, man has a complex neocortex. .

Are the paleo-anthropoligists still searching for the "missing link" or have they abandoned that quest based on new scientific theories?

[Jose]

I think your explanation about shared characteristics makes sense. So has current evolutionary theory abandoned this transitional form description that Darwin first propounded and that creationsists use in their straw man arguments?

Oddly enough, I don't know what Darwin imagined for transitional fossils. Did he actually write anything about them, other than his oft-quoted observation that there are very few? I can't imagine he was imagining what I imagine creationists imagine (or something), which is an animal caught in the act of changing into something else. He described reality pretty well: there is diversity among individuals. Some compete better than others, and have more offspring. Their characteristics are the ones that are passed on. This is still valid today.

The question is what the transitional forms would be. Creationists like the straw-man argument that we need a fish-bird or something. Actually, we have simply individuals with their normal characteristics, as part of the genetic diversity of their species. If you start with velociraptor-like dinosaurs, which have small "proto-feathers," you'd need genetic variation that replaces the dinosaurian characteristics with birdlike characteristics--one mutation at a time. You won't get all mutations at once, because that doesn't happen. Instead, you get them one at a time. the characteristics are replaced one at a time. Maybe, first, we get replacement of proto-feathers on the arms with slightly bigger feathers on the arms. Maybe, next we get replacement of these with even bigger feathers. Sometime, we get loss of the claws on the hands (although we have a "screamer" bird in our biology department's collection, which still has claws on its wings, so maybe we didn't lose 'em all). Sometime, we get loss of teeth. The intermediates are individuals that have some of the newer characteristics and some of the older ones.

It may not be that we have abandoned Darwin's transitional form argument. We've just learned enough genetics to figure out what one might look like.

Also what are some of the shared characterists in the transitional forms that science accepts? Is there a comprehensive theory for the mechanism of transference of these characteristics? What kind of evidence are we looking for or finding?

Science accepts the evidence that nature provides. In the case of Archaeopterix, it provided pretty good feathers, and claws and teeth. Well, it looks like in that species, the proto-feathers had been replaced by real feathers, but the claws and teeth had not been replaced. Is it a bird with teeth, or a dinosaur with feathers, or is it an intermediate with a hodge-podge of characteristics of both? Looks like an intermediate to me.

It may not be a representative of the species that is the ancestor of chickens, and its lineage may have died out. Still, it is one representative of the genetic diversity that existed at that time, and gives us a clue as to what the real ancestor was likely to be like.

Are the paleo-anthropoligists still searching for the "missing link" or have they abandoned that quest based on new scientific theories?

Interesting question. I haven't heard the term "missing link" used at all for a long time. My guess is that it's a result of recognizing that there isn't going to be "a" missing link. There will be lots of links. We'll find some, and we won't find others. I think we imagine it more as a connect-the-dots picture, where we have dots at each end, and only some of the dots in between. When we find one missing dot, we still know there are others. Eventually, given a great deal of luck, we might find enough of the dots to be able to draw the curve with confidence. But, mathematically, there is an infinite number of points on a line. We can describe the line pretty well if we have enough points, but rarely is any one specific point ("the" missing link) going to be so important that we know nothing without it.

[richic]

Oddly enough, I don't know what Darwin imagined for transitional fossils. Did he actually write anything about them, other than his oft-quoted observation that there are very few?

Thanks for all the answers. Here is darwin's quote:
Charles Darwin: ."(Since) innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? "Origin of Species", p. 162. "Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain: and this perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." "Origin of Species," p. 293.

I can't imagine he was imagining what I imagine creationists imagine (or something), which is an animal caught in the act of changing into something else. He described reality pretty well: there is diversity among individuals. Some compete better than others, and have more offspring. Their characteristics are the ones that are passed on. This is still valid today.

He seems to believe that the record should show proof of gradual change.

The question is what the transitional forms would be. Creationists like the straw-man argument that we need a fish-bird or something. Actually, we have simply individuals with their normal characteristics, as part of the genetic diversity of their species. If you start with velociraptor-like dinosaurs, which have small "proto-feathers," you'd need genetic variation that replaces the dinosaurian characteristics with birdlike characteristics--one mutation at a time.

Does this mean DNA can be re-programmed to produce something else? Is this something we can do in a lab, say take the DNA of 'x' species and modify it to produce 'y' species? Have we done any computer modeling of this?

Science accepts the evidence that nature provides. In the case of Archaeopterix, it provided pretty good feathers, and claws and teeth. Well, it looks like in that species, the proto-feathers had been replaced by real feathers, but the claws and teeth had not been replaced. Is it a bird with teeth, or a dinosaur with feathers, or is it an intermediate with a hodge-podge of characteristics of both? Looks like an intermediate to me

Is homology the branch of science that covers this study?

Interesting question. I haven't heard the term "missing link" used at all for a long time. My guess is that it's a result of recognizing that there isn't going to be "a" missing link. There will be lots of links. We'll find some, and we won't find others. I think we imagine it more as a connect-the-dots picture, where we have dots at each end, and only some of the dots in between. When we find one missing dot, we still know there are others. Eventually, given a great deal of luck, we might find enough of the dots to be able to draw the curve with confidence.

I trying to get my arms around where we are then.
It sounds like we have agreement between creationsists and evolutionists that species mutate and evolve. We also have agreement that species share characteristics.

Today we don't have conclusive evidence of the mechanism for how one species evolves into another(a transitional form). I assume we also don't have evidence that they were all created and remain inside their respective species box.

Am I missing something?