>I think you are doing a gloss here, Steve. You shold know as well as
>anyone this is a serious problem for evolutionary theory. It is the basis
>for Gould and Eldridges proposal of PE, and Gould himself concedes this in
>his more cogent moments. Just because Ken Ham doesn't know the first thing
>about evolutionary theory (cogs and dats! Give me a break. The license of
>ignorance is broad indeed!), doesn't invalidate the problem for evolution.
>And the development of a few respectable lineages only exacerbates the
>problem of the absence of all the rest.
Eldridge and Gould's hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium was proposed to
explain why speciation, when it's seen in the fossil record, often appears
to occur relatively quickly with long periods of stasis in between. Gould and
Eldridge never stated that there were no examples of transitional fossils.
"But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary
forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic
about the reality of life's physical genealogy."
Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, May 1994
I think the Talk Origins FAQ by Kathleen Hunt that I mentioned earlier has a
very cogent explanation as to why there are gaps in the transitional fossil
record (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html).
Perhaps creationists have to explain why there DO appear to be transitional
sequences in the fossil record rather than demand that all lineages must show
a complete record which will never happen given the nature of the stratigraphic
record.
- Steve.
-- Steven H. Schimmrich Assistant Professor of GeologyPhysical Sciences Department schimmri@kutztown.edu (office) Kutztown University schimmrich@earthlink.net (home) 217 Grim Science Building 610-683-4437, 610-683-1352 (fax) Kutztown, Pennsylvania 19530 http://home.earthlink.net/~schimmrich/