On Tue, 18 Feb 1997 19:39:06 -0800, Jeff Wyant wrote:
[...]
JW>2. I heard something the other day about the fossil record that
>sounded interesting to me. It was that there are no transitional
>animals in the fossil record.
This depend on how you define "transitional". If it means
"transitional" in the sense that B is transitional to C (Fig. 1
below):
C
/
B
/
A
Fig. 1
then there are no "transitional" forms in the fossil record:
"According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming
contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about
five million years, during an early period in the age of
mammals. Because this record is so complete, paleontologists
assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked
together to illustrate continuous evolution. On the contrary,
species that were once thought to have turned into others turn
out to overlap in time with their alleged descendants, and `the
fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition
from one species to another' " (Stanley, S.M., "Macroevolution",
1979, p39 in Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993, p51)
But if "transitional" is meant in the sense that:
C
/
D /
\ /
(B)
/
A
Fig 2.
D is "transitional" to C (B being a missing hypothetical ancestor),
because D has more assumed primitive derived characteristics from
[B] than C, then there are "transitional" forms. But note that this
is a special definition of the word "transitional", which does not
mean what the average perosn would think it means.
JW>They way it was explained is that there is no fossil with an
animal that is part reptile part bird.
This is true by defintion, ie. it is a tautology. Animals are
classified into either one taxonomic category or another, never
into two at once. Reptiles are in the vertebrate class Reptilia and
birds are in the class Aves.
But if it means that there is no animal that has *characteristics*
that are "part reptile part bird", then it is untrue: Archaeopteryx
indeed has characteristics that are "part reptile part bird". But it
has the unique defining characteristics of birds, namely feathers,
so it is classified as a bird.
However, that does not mean that Archaeoteryx is a "transitional
form" in the sense of Fig. 1 above. It is regarded as too late in
time and too specialiised to be ancestral to birds:
"Stahl notes in her text that: `Since Archaeopteryx occupies an
isolated position in the fossil record, it is impossible to tell
whether the animal gave rise to more advanced fliers or
represented only a side branch from the main line.' In the
preface to the 1985 Dover edition, she added the remark that
"retrieval of true bird fossils of Lower Cretaceous age has only
strengthened the argument that the famous feathered
Archaeopteryx may be an archaic side branch of the ancestral
avian stock. " [Stahl B., "Vertebrate History: Problems in
Evolution", 1985, pp.viii, 369, in Johnson P.E., "Darwin on
Trial", 1993, p191).
The common ancestor of all birds is unknown. However, because
Archaeopteryx does conserve some reptilian features (as do modern
birds), it is of course strong evidence that birds were originally
descended from reptiles.
JW>No record that has part scale and part feather.
This is true. Not only is there no record of a scale turning into a
feather, but Darwinists cannot even *imagine* how a scale could turn
into a feather:
"It is not easy to see how an impervious reptiles scale could be
converted gradually into an impervious feather without passing
through a frayed scale intermediate which would be weak, easily
deformed and still quite permeable to air. It is true that
basically a feather is indeed a frayed scale - a mass of keratin
filaments - but the filaments are not a random tangle but are
ordered in an amazingly complex way to achieve the tightly
intertwined structure of the feather. Take away the exquisite
coadaptation of the components, take away the coadaptation of
the hooks and barbules, take away the precisely parallel
arrangement of the barbs on the shaft and all that is left is a
soft pliable structure utterly unsuitable to form the basis of a
stiff impervious aerofoil. The stiff impervious property of the
feather which makes it so beautiful an adaptation for flight,
depends basically on such a highly involved and unique system of
coadapted components that it seems impossible that any
transitional feather-like structure could possess even to a
slight degree the crucial properties. In the words of Barbara
Stahl, in Vetebrate History: Problems in Evolution, as far as
feathers are concerned:
`how they arose initially, presumably from reptiles scales,
defies analysis.' " (Stahl B.J., "Vertebrate History: Problems
in Evolution", 1974, p349)
(Denton M., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", 1985, p209)
JW>With the lack of this there is no evidence that any animal
>evolved from any other.
This depends on what you mean by "evolved". If you mean "there is
no evidence" that birds were descended from a common reptilian
ancestor, I must disagree. There is such evidence. But common
ancestry is not necessarily evolution. It could equally be
*creation*:
"It would still be perfectly possible for theists to reject that
theory of evolution and accept instead a theory according to
which natural processes and laws drove most of evolution, but
God on occasion abridged those laws and inserted some crucial
mutation into the course of events. Even were God to intervene
directly to suspend natural law and inject essential new genetic
material at various points in order to facilitate the emergence
of new traits and, eventually, new species, that miraculous and
deliberate divine intervention would by itself leave
unchallenged such key theses of evolutionary theory as that all
species derive ultimately from some common ancestor. Descent
with genetic intervention is still descent-it is just descent
with nonnatural elements in the process." (Ratzsch D.L., "The
Battle of Beginnings", 1996, pp187-188)
But if by "evolved" you mean that birds developed from reptiles by a
step-by-step fully naturalistic mechanism of random inherited
variation plus cumulative natural selection, then I would agree with
you - "there is no evidence" for that. Such a `blind watchmaker'
evolutionary pattern could not fail to leave an enormous number of
fossil ancestors, as Darwin clearly saw:
"...so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have
formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then 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 serious objection which can be urged against the theory."
(Darwin C., "The Origin of Species", 6th Edition, 1967 reprint,
pp292-293).
As Johnson puts it:
"Because Darwinian evolution is a purposeless, chance-driven
process, which would not proceed directly from a starting point
to a destination, there should also be thick bushes of side
branches in each line. As Darwin himself put it, if Darwinism
is true the Precambrian world must have `swarmed with living
creatures'...".
(Johnson P.E., in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism:
Science or Philosophy?", 1994, pp13-14)
Darwin knew this and blamed "the extreme imperfection of the
geological record" and admitted that it had to be more imperfect
than even the geologists of his day would admit:
"...why is not every geological formation charged with such
links? Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford
plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of
life? Although geological research has undoubtedly revealed the
former existence of many links, bringing numerous forms of life
much closer together, it does not yield the infinitely many fine
gradations between past and present species required on the
theory; and this is the most obvious of the many objections
which may be urged against it....I can answer these questions
and objections only on the supposition that the geological
record is far more imperfect than most geologists believe."
(Darwin, p441)
JW>They just appear as fully formed new animals in the fossil
>record.
This is true:
"The history of most fossil species includes two features
particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most
species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on
earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same
as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited
and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a
species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of
its ancestors; it appears all at once and `fully formed.'"
(Gould S.J, "The Panda's Thumb", 1980, pp150-151).
The important point is that while animals appear with features that
are intermediate in a time zone that is intermediate, the
intermediate features themseves are each fully formed, ie.
Archaeopteryx has a mosaic of features that are intermediate between
reptiles and birds, but apart from the fact that it is not in an
intermediate time-zone (and hence cannot be claimed as
ancestral to birds), each of its mosaic features is "fully
formed". Archaeopteryx's feathers are "fully formed" feathers. Wise
points out this is a real problem for macroevolution:
"...the existence of stratomorphic intermediate groups and
species seems to be good evidence for evolution. However, the
stratomorphic intermediate evidences are not without difficulty
for evolutionary theory. First, none of the stratomorphic
intermediates have intermediate structures. Although the entire
organism is intermediate in structure, it's the combination of
structures that is intermediate, not the nature of the
structures themselves. Each of these organisms appears to be a
fully functional organism full of fully functional structures.
Archaeopteryx, for example, is thought to be intermediate
between reptiles and birds because it has bird structures (e.g,
feathers) and reptile structures (e.g., teeth, forelimb claws).
Yet the teeth, the claws, the feathers and all other known
structures of Archaeopteryx appear to be fully functional. The
teeth seem fully functional as teeth, the claws as claws, and
the feathers as any flight feathers of modern birds. It is
merely the combination of structures that is intermediate, not
the structures themselves. Stephen Jay Gould calls the
resultant organisms `mosaic forms' or `chimeras'" (Wise K.P.,
"The Creation Hypothesis"., 1994, p227-228)
This is explainable on the theory that an Intelligent Designer
created major features like the feather extremely rapidly (if not
instantaneously), leaving the rest of the organism to develop
naturally from the strong selection pressures that followed each
major design change.
JW>Therefore evolution never happened."
Agreed. The right conclusion but perhaps not always for the right
reasons? ;-)
[...]
God bless.
Steve
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