On Fri, 03 Dec 1999 15:34:16 -0600 "Darryl W. Maddox" <dpmaddox@arn.net>
writes:
The paragraph
>contained a paraphrase (I guess it was a paraphrase, it wasn't in quotes
>in the paragraph nor was a reference cited.) which said that "The
>current curator of the British Museum states, 'Of the millions of
>fossils we house, not one shows an animal in a transitional state'".
I'm fairly sure that would be from Dr. Colin Patterson. Patterson wrote
a book for the British Museum of Natural History, _Evolution_, in which
he invited comments from readers. I got this info from _Darwin's Enigma_
by Luther D. Sunderland, who wrote Patterson and asked "why he did not
put a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. On 10
April 1979 he replied as follows:
...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration
of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or
living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist
should be used to visulise such transformations, but where would he get
the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were
to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?
I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now,
I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I
believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my
understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American
Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no
transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied
with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the
fossil record. You say that I should at least 'show a photo of the
fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on
the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a
watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and
descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is archaeopteryx the
ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: There is no way of
answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one
form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be
favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science,
for there is no way of putting them to the test.
So, much as I would like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of
gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of
animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual
justification necessary for the job...." (Darwin's Enigma, pp 89-90)
of amassing critical opinion from the scientific community relative to
fossil evidence..." Robert Jenkins, Prof of Biology, Ithaca College
I would agree; the book is well documented.
Bill