I don't know whether my view is a minority among other vertebrate
paleontologists or not. I believe not. However, among creationists, it
certainly seems to be. Whether Archaeopteryx is a bird with reptile teeth
or a reptile with feathers is a semantics issue. If an organism had a 50/50
distribution of characters (was nearly exactly intermediate between two
ends) one could equally defend either relationship. If archae had an equal
number of bird and reptile characters, one could call it either a toothed
bird or a feathered reptile. Archeopteryx, however, does not have an equal
distribution of characters. It has at least 12 characters known in
reptiles, but not in any bird. It has only two that are shared uniquely
with birds. (It may actually have a few more avian characters. Whetstone,
1983, Jour. Vert. Paleo. 2(4):439-452, says the braincase of archae seems to
be more avian than reptilian.) What is important here is not the semantics
issue, but that there existed an animal that had characters from two
taxonomic classes that are totally separate today. If Archaeopteryx is not
morphologically intermediate, how would one recognnize something that was?
>>The existance of morphological intermediates by itself does not prove or
>>disprove any specific cosmology because one can always propose hypotheses
>>for the existence of these rare cases. They do not prove evolution because
>>the necessary steps from one form to another are still missing; archae is
>>only one of many steps that would be necessary to evolve from a reptile to a
>>bird. The missing steps are explained away by the ad hoc statement of
>>incompleteness of the fossil record. Similarly, creationists can also
>>explain away the problem by the ad hoc statement that God originally created
>>a more complete scale of nature, most species of which are now extinct.
>>Either of these ad hoc statements have equal probability of being true until
>>tested. What creationists cannot do, however, is argue that morphological
>>intermediates do not exist. Creationists need to spend less efffort
>>attacking evolution and more time devising testable hypotheses consistent
>>with their cosmology, and then changing their hypotheses to remove those
>>aspects that have been falsified.
>
>This was what drove me from being a YEC. I kept devising these tests for
>the geological data I worked with every dat. I finally had to admit to
>myself that nothing was turning up roses for the global flood concept.
>
I agree with you. That is the challenge we face today. It is our task to
work together to test different ideas until we can understand what we see.
This is the essence of science. This does not require that we change our
understanding of cosmological questions, only that our understandings from
the two different realms, science and cosmology, converge to an ultimate truth.
Good to hear from you, Glenn. Keep in touch.
Lee A. Spencer, Ph.D.
Vertebrate Paleontologist
Southwestern Adventist University
Keene, Tx 76059