Edited by Mark I. Vuletic (hume@vuletic.com).
5.1: There are no transitional
forms between fish and amphibians. REPLY.
5.2: There are no transitional forms between amphibians and
reptiles. REPLY.
5.3: There are no transitional forms between reptiles and mammals.
REPLY.
5.4: There are no transitional forms between early hominids and
Homo sapiens. REPLY.
5.5: There are no transitional forms between whales and their
alleged Mesonychid ancestors. REPLY.
5.6: The feather impressions in fossils of Archaeopteryx are
forgeries. Feathers were pressed into a thin layer of artificial
cement, or else the feather impressions were chiseled in directly.
REPLY.
5.7: Archaeopteryx is not a true transitional form; any reptilian
characteristics it displays are mirrored in modern birds, like
the hoatzin. REPLY.
5.8: Protoavis precedes Archaeopteryx in the fossil record; hence,
Archaeopteryx cannot be a transitional form. REPLY.
5.9: The Cambrian explosion is a sure sign of the activity of a
Creator, suddenly creating a multitude of complex forms out of
nothing. There are no fossils before the explosion. REPLY.
5.10: There are gaps in the fossil record; but evolution predicts
that there should be no gaps. REPLY.
5.11: Fossils are the remains of the organisms that perished in
Noah's Flood. REPLY.
5.12: In their search for transitional forms, evolutionists have
been taken in by outright fraud, as in the case of Piltdown Man,
and by unfounded speculation, as in the case of Nebraska Man.
REPLY.
5.1: There are no transitional forms between fish and amphibians. REPLY: The crossopterygian fish Eusthenopteron is linked to the early amphibian Icthyostega by a number of characteristics:
(i) Eusthenopteron has the same pattern of skill bones as Icthyostega.
(ii) Eusthenopteron has internal nostrils, which are found only in land animals and sarcopterygians (a greater taxonomic group encompassing lungfish and crossopterygians).
(iii) Eusthenopteron has teeth like those of amphibians.
(iv) Eusthenopteron has a two-part cranium (icthyostegids are the only other vertebrates to have this characteristic)
(v) Eusthenopteron has the same vertebral structure as Icthyostega (list adapted from McGowan 1984:152-153)
Furthermore, studies of the skeletal characteristics of Acanthostega, the most primitive tetrapod known (360 million years old) reveal that "tetrapod anatomy evolved while our ancestors lived exclusively underwater -- and it evolved for life underwater. The first vertebrate that walked onto land didn't crawl on fish fins; it had evolved well-tuned legs millions of years beforehand" (Zimmer 1995:120). Acanthostega has arms "poorly designed for support" (Zimmer 1995:124) yet functional enough in water, allowing the creature to pull itself along the bottom of plant-rich coastal lagoons, and also making it superior at ambushing prey compared to fish, which must stay afloat by keeping their fins "in constant motion, kicking up easily detected waves" (Zimmer 1995:126). Additionally, Acanthostega, despite being a tetrapod, has a hearing system more similar to fish than to land-going creatures, and breathed like a fish (Zimmer 1995:125). Paleontologists have also "found fragments from five more tetrapods, all of which were roughly contemporaries of Acanthostega and some of which were more advanced and thus closer to a terrestrial life" (Zimmer 1995:126).
5.2: There are no transitional forms between amphibians and reptiles. REPLY: Seymouria is a classic transitional form between the amphibians and reptiles. Alfred Romer writes of Seymouria that
it exhibits such a combination of amphibian and reptilian characters that its proper position in the classification of vertebrates has been much disputed. (Romer 1966:94)
and that Seymouria
seems to be an anthracosaurian which stands almost exactly on the dividing line between amphibians and reptiles; we have here a demonstration of the fact that there is no clear-cut distinction between the two classes in skeletal structures. (Romer 1966:95)
Colbert and Morales have equally good things to say about the seymouriamorphs:
Here, we see the effects of a rather well-documented paleontological record. With such a record at hand the divisions between groups break down. The evidence of the seymouriamorphs indicates, too clearly for the peace of mind of those students who wish to categorize animals within neat boundaries of classification, that evolution is a continuum. (Colbert and Morales 1991:86-89)
5.3: There are no transitional forms between reptiles and mammals. REPLY: Two genera (Probelesodon and Massetognathus) of the cynodonts, a small subdivision of the synapsids, display characteristics of both reptiles and mammals, as well as qualities that are ambiguous between reptiles and mammals. The reptilian features are:
(i) lower jaw comprises several bones
(ii) jaw joint formed between articular and quadrate bones
(iii) small cranium
(iv) ribs in neck region
(v) number of bones in fingers and toes exceeds 2,3,3,3
The mammalian features are:
(i) teeth specialized for different functions
(ii) lower jaw with prominent coronoid process
(iii) double condyle at back of skull for neck articulation
(iv) axis with odontoid process
(v) ilium slopes forward
The ambiguous characteristics are:
(i) cheek teeth have simple cusps
(ii) jaw joint formed between hollow in the lower jaw and flat surface in the skull
(iii) prominent ribs confined to chest region, but there are short ribs in front of the pelvis
(iv) legs not splayed, but not vertically beneath body either (list from McGowan 1984:138)
Probainognathus, another genus of the cynodonts, has both reptilian and mammalian jaw joints, and shows the first step in the change of the reptilian jaw joints into the mammalian ear ossicles. This does away with the creationist charge that a reptile-mammal transitional form could not have chewed its food while its jaw was being unhinged and repositioned for hearing (McGowan 1984:139). Also, Probainognatus would have had no trouble hearing during rearticulation, as reptiles exploit the transmission of sound from the ground through their jawbones (Kitcher 1982:111).
5.4: There are no transitional forms between early hominids and Homo sapiens. REPLY: I defer this criticism to Jim Foley's definitive Fossil Hominids FAQ at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/. Many readers will be especially interested in http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/compare.html which shows that the fossils are so transitional in nature that not even the creationists can agree with one another whether the fossils represent "apes" or men.
5.5: There are no transitional forms between whales and their alleged Mesonychid ancestors. REPLY: Writing in 1994, creationist Michael Behe opines that
if random evolution is true, there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the Mesonychid and the ancient whale. Where are they? It seems like quite a coincidence that of all the intermediate species that must have existed between the Mesonychid and whale, only species that are very similar to the end species have been found. (Behe 1994:61)
But sure enough, as cell biologist Kenneth Miller points out,
By 1994, [Phillip] Gingerich and fellow paleontologists, including Hans Thweissen, had found not one, but three intermediate species [Pakicetus inachus, Ambulocetus natans, and Rodhocetus kasrani] linking land mammals to the archeocetes, the oldest swimming mammals. The midpoint of the series, a marvelous animal called ambulocetus natans (the "swimming whale who walks"), displayed exactly the combination of terrestrial and acquatic adaptations that critics of evolution had called impossible, even in principle. (Miller 1999:264)
5.6: The feather impressions in fossils of Archaeopteryx are forgeries. Feathers were pressed into a thin layer of artificial cement, or else the feather impressions were chiseled in directly. REPLY: A team of scientists has conducted a battery of tests on the holotype of Archaeopteryx lithographica to prove the authenticity of the feather impressions (Charig et al. 1986). They found absolutely no evidence of artificial cement on the fossils. One test photographically compared hairline cracks running through the impressions on the slab and counterslab, and revealed a perfect correspondence between the cracks, demonstrating that "the block was cracked though vertically before it was split horizontally into two slabs, thus indicating the unquestionable absence of any added cement layer on either surface" (Charig et al. 1986:624). Detailed examination of the feather impressions through scanning electron microscopy revealed "a degree of minute detail that [the scientists believed] would be impossible to carve, even today [1986], and a total absence of any chisel marks" (Charig et al. 1986:624).
It is worth noting that Sir Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who first claimed Archaeopteryx was a forgery, claimed that it was a fossil of a reptile with fake feather impressions around it (Charig et al. 1986:623), underscoring just how reptilian Archaeopteryx is, in contrast with creationist assertions that Archaeopteryx was "just a bird."
5.7: Archaeopteryx is not a true transitional form; any reptilian characteristics it displays are mirrored in modern birds, like the hoatzin. REPLY: Archaeopteryx is indeed a transitional form. It has been classified as a bird almost arbitrarily because it has feathers, not because it is "truly" a bird. The avian features Archaeopteryx possesses are:
(i) a wishbone
(ii) feathers
(iii) a bony sternum in one of the latest specimens (Svitil 1994)
Archaeopteryx also has many reptilian characteristics, such as
(i) a pubic peduncle
(ii) a long, bony tail
(iii) no pygostyle
(iv) three well-developed fingers (with the same number of bones as most dinosaurs)
(v) three well-developed metacarpal bones
(vi) unfused metacarpal bones
(vii) separate metatarsal bones
(viii) no hypotarsus
(ix) abdominal ribs (list from McGowan 1984:117)
Archaeopteryx has many more reptilian characteristics than the hoatzin. Even Fred Hoyle, who erroneously claimed that Archaeopteryx was a forgery, claimed that it was a reptilian fossil with fake feather impressions. But the objection by comparison to the hoatzin is entirely off track anyway, as Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form merely because of its remarkable blend of reptilian and avian characteristics - Archaeopteryx also existed at the same time as the theropod reptiles and resembled them highly (Futuyma 1982:188). Given its temporal and physical correlation to reptiles, plus its less numerous, but distinct, avian qualities, Archaeopteryx stands immune to any creationist attack.
5.8: Protoavis precedes Archaeopteryx in the fossil record; hence, Archaeopteryx cannot be a transitional form. REPLY: (i) Protoavis, to my knowledge, is still in some dispute.
(ii) However, the creationist objection in any case falsely presumes that only one lineage of reptiles evolved into birds or bird-like reptiles, when, in fact, there is more than one such lineage. Given this fact, Archaeopteryx will continue to demonstrate how the alleged boundary between reptiles and birds can be bridged, even if Protoavis turns out to be an earlier transitional form than Archaeopteryx. The validity of Protoavis is thus irrelevant to the validity of Archaeopteryx as transitional form (Wheeler 1993).
5.9: The Cambrian explosion is a sure sign of the activity of a Creator, suddenly creating a multitude of complex forms out of nothing. There are no fossils before the explosion. REPLY: (i) There are, in fact, plenty of fossils of organisms that lived in the Precambrian, such as jellyfish, coelenterates, annelids, and even cyanobacteria that date back as far as 3.4 billion years (McGowan 1984:103). There are admittedly comparatively few Precambrian fossils when compared with the number present during the "explosion", but it is not as though there is no evidence for any life prior to the Cambrian. The evidence for the prior existence of life is, on the contrary, beyond a shadow of doubt.
(ii) The comparative paucity of fossils before the "explosion" is to be expected, because the majority of organisms prior to the "explosion" were soft-bodied, and thus significantly more difficult to fossilize. To this, creationists sometimes respond by pointing out that there are in fact some soft-body fossils (as I just mentioned) prior to the "explosion." But the evolutionist contention is not that there are no conditions under which one can have such fossils, but rather that such conditions are rare. To expect a cornucopia of soft-body fossils prior to the "explosion" because there are rare conditions under which they can form, is like claiming that because there have been occasions when people have been struck by meteorites, therefore we should expect just as many people to be struck by meteorites as by automobiles.
5.10: There are gaps in the fossil record; but evolution predicts that there should be no gaps. REPLY: (i) Evolutionary theory says nothing about the probability of fossilization. The probability of fossilization is a matter for taphonomists and geologists to expound upon, and the verdict is that the probability of fossilization is generally very low.
(ii) The number of fossil transitional forms that have been found, especially considering the low probability of fossilization, is remarkable, and decisively refutes creationism, which predicts that there should be no transitional forms at all. It should be of no comfort to creationists that we do not have millions of transitional fossils - just as one angel would refute naturalism, one fossil of Eusthenopteron (much less Archaeopteryx or Basilosaurus isis) is enough to refute creationism.
5.11: Fossils are the remains of the organisms that perished in Noah's Flood. REPLY: Robert J. Schadewald offers six arguments that cast great doubt upon the idea of a historical worldwide Noachian Flood:
[i] The Karoo Formation contains the remains of some 800 billion vertebrate animals. If one conservatively estimates that the Karoo Formation contains a mere 1% of the vertebrate fossils on earth, this means that before the flood the earth would have held 2100 vertebrates of varying sizes per acre.
[ii] If marine fossils comprise 0.1% of the volume of sedimentary rock, this means that before the Flood these organisms would have covered the earth to a depth of at least 1.5 feet.
[iii] The varves of the Green River formation would, by the standard interpretation, take 20 million years to form. For the varves to have been formed during the Flood by shallow flows of mud-laden water (as the creationists conjecture), would have necessitated a sequence of 40 million flows covering tens of thousands of square miles every two-thirds of a second.
[iv] Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives - being the only human occupants on the Ark (Genesis 6:18, 7:13) - must have carried all of the diseases specific to man in their bodies, were the disease organisms to survive the Flood. Given that only two of most of the animals of each kind were on board, some of the specific disease organisms known today would have been wiped out by the eventual immunity of the two.
[v] Hydraulic sorting during the Flood would have caused large trilobites to have always been found in lower strata than small trilobites, becasue of hydrodynamic drag properties. This is not what is actually found. Victim habitat and mobility arguments are similarly shown to be wrong be the fact that fossils of flowering plants - despite their relative immobility and their existence at all elevations - never appear before the Cretaceous era.
[vi] There are overturned strata, explainable by conventional geology, but impossible to explain by the working of the Flood. How could the Flood cause upside down raindrop craters and brachiopod burrows? (Schadewald 1983:448-453).
5.12: In their search for transitional forms, evolutionists have been taken in by outright fraud, as in the case of Piltdown Man, and by unfounded speculation, as in the case of Nebraska Man. REPLY: (i) Regarding Piltdown Man, W. L. Strauss reports:
It may be wondered why 40 years elapsed before the hoax was discovered. Two factors enter here: first, there was no reason at all to suspect the perpetration of a fraud, at least, not until flourine analysis indicated the relative recency of the specimens, thus making the association of a human cranium and an anthropoid-ape jaw, either anatomically or geologically, hardly credible; and, second,, methods for conclusively determining whether the specimens were actual fossils or faked ones short of their wholesale destruction, were developed only in recent years. (Strauss 1954:580).
There is no gap in the charts of human ancestry where Piltdown Man used to be. Numerous authentic fossils have firmly established Australopithecus where the single Piltdown specimen once stood.
(ii) Creationists, too, have had their share of frauds, and have foisted them upon the public with apparently deceitful intentions. A good set of examples is the Paluxy River tracks - a smattering of ostensibly human footprints among dinosaur tracks, intended to prove that man and dinosaurs were contemporaneous. All of the "human" tracks can be show to be one of three things: (i) parts of dinosaur tracks, (ii) erosion holes, or (iii) contemporary human carvings (Scott n.d.)
The Paluxy "man-tracks" have even been denounced by some creationists, but continue to be exhibited in creationist literature.
(iii) The "construction" of Nebraska Man may be conceded as a serious mistake on the part of a single, overzealous scientist. Countless other hominid fossils, however, have stood the test of time, and supply ample evidence for human evolution. And at least no evolutionist today cites Nebraska Man as evidence for evolution, unlike the creationists who continue to cite the discredited Paluxy tracks long after their real nature has been exposed.
One might also note that creationists have likewise fallen prey to wild speculation in the reconstruction of hominids from fossils - Reverend Carl Baugh and his associates, for instance, who
appeared on an area television station's evening news claiming that a Cretaceous fossil tooth found at Dinosaur Valley State Park was human and thus invalidated the standard geological column. They later recanted when microscopic examination demonstrated that the item in question was a fossil fish tooth. (Eve and Harrold 1991:129, emphasis added)
References
M. J. Behe. 1994. Experimental support for regarding functional classes of proteins to be highly isolated from each other. pp. 60-71 in Buell and Hearn 1994.
J. Buell and V. Hearn. 1994. Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? Richardson, TX: Foundation for Thought and Ethics.
A. J. Charig et al. 1986. Archaeopteryx is not a forgery. Science 232:622-625.
E. H. Colbert and M. Morales. 1991. Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of the Backboned Animals Through Time: Fourth Edition. New York: Wiley-Liss.
R. A. Eve and F. B. Harrold. 1991. The Creationist Movement in Modern America. Boston: Twayne.
D. J. Futuyma. 1983. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. New York: Pantheon.
P. Kitcher. 1982. Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
K. R. Miller. 1999. Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. New York: Cliff Street Books.
C. McGowan. 1984. In the Beginning...: A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists Are Wrong. Buffalo: Prometheus.
A. Romer. 1966. Vertebrate Paleontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
R. J. Schadewald. 1983. Six 'Flood' arguments creationists can't answer. In Zetterberg 1983:448-453.
E. C. Scott. n.d. 'Scientific Creationism,' Evolution and Race. Berkeley: National Center for Science Education. [Pamphlet]
H. Shapeley et al. 1965. The New Treasury of Science. New York: Grolier.
W. L. Strauss. The great Piltdown hoax. In Shapely et al. 1965:574-581.
K. Svitil. 1994. Seven perching dinos. Discover 15(1):52-54. January.
T. J. Wheeler. 1993. Were there birds before Archaeopteryx? Creation/Evolution 13(2):25-35.
J. P. Zetterberg (ed.). 1983. Evolution versus Creationism: The Public Education Controversy. Phoenix: Oryx Press.
C. Zimmer. 1995. Coming onto the land. Discover 16(6):118-127.