You're probably correct Bill, but you should also read the response of Colin
Patterson to the way his views have been misrepresented by Sunderland and
kin - try Talk Origins Archive. The "transitional form" thing has been
totally misrepresented by the YECs, much to their advantage, and is based
entirely on a convenient semantic confusion. Patterson was talking about
lower level taxonomic transitions i.e. from species to species. YECs talk
about between classes and higher categories.
Species to species transitions are poorly documented in the fossils, but
thanks to the arguments that arose in the 70s palaeontologists now have
several hundred species-to-species transitions recorded. Why are they so
badly recorded? Because to document one requires thousands of specimens over
large areas to be collected... not the usual palaeontological exercise prior
to Gould and Eldredge shaking the tree in the late 60s. And also most fossil
species are represented by a few bits and pieces, not thousands of intact
specimens.
YECs have distorted the real facts. Surprise.
Adam
PS
See below...
>From: Bill Payne <bpayne15@juno.com>
>To: dpmaddox@arn.net
>CC: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Re: Need help with a quote.
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 20:52:48 -0600
>
>Hi Darryl,
>
>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.
Notice that and what is REALLY being asked by the standards of science...
plenty of species have been found that document the kinds of changes
required between taxonomic orders. The reptile-to-mammal transition is the
best documented, but no clear line of descent can be discerned
non-controversially [what Patterson really means.] Why? Because so many
features changed between the two classes of vertebrates and often the
various species in-between the two developed those features independently.
But such in-between features do exist, just like the in-between creatures...
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.
A good and conservative answer made by a good scientist. But Archaeopteryx
is still a "transition" because it has primitve features and advanced
features that show it to be in-between. Was it a direct ancestor?... maybe
[but you can't say with 100% accuracy.] Was it "transitional"? Very
definitely.
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.
Good science, but bad propaganda... if Patterson was a part of the imagined
conspiracy against truth would he really say this? No. But he believes in
scientific method and in palaeonotlogy that doesn't give 100% accuracy...
except in the propaganda of liars and manipulators like the YECs.
> 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)
>
>From the front of the book: "...Mr. Sunderland has done an excellent job
>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
As are the nutcase works of Zechariah Sitchin and Immanuel Velikovsky.
Documentation is NOT scholarship.
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