Evloution is not a valid scientific theory

There is no fossil record. There are geologic deposits and fossils in those deposits. Memory is living tissue. There is no evidence for past events. There is evidence of current. There is no true north, but there are corridors of refraction.

 

You can type as many meaningless sentences as you wish, it won't change the facts and won't turn Darwin's Religious Theory of Evolution into one that has anything to do with Science

Fossils

Coyne turns first to the fossil record. “We should be able,” he writes, “to find some evidence for evolutionary change in the fossil record. The deepest (and oldest) layers of rock would contain the fossils of more primitive species, and some fossils should become more complex as the layers of rock become younger, with organisms resembling present-day species found in the most recent layers. And we should be able to see some species changing over time, forming lineages showing ‘descent with modification’ (adaptation).” In particular, “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.”5

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin acknowledged that the fossil record presented difficulties for his theory. “By the theory of natural selection,” he wrote, “all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the present day.” Thus in the past “the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great.” But Darwin knew that the major animal groups—which modern biologists call “phyla”—appeared fully formed in what were at the time the earliest known fossil-bearing rocks, deposited during a geological period known as the Cambrian. He considered this a “serious” difficulty for his theory, since “if the theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed… and that during these vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures.” And “to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” So “the case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.”6

Darwin defended his theory by citing the imperfection of the geological record. In particular, he argued that Precambrian fossils had been destroyed by heat, pressure, and erosion. Some of Darwin’s modern followers have likewise argued that Precambrian fossils existed but were later destroyed, or that Precambrian organisms were too small or too soft to have fossilized in the first place. Since 1859, however, paleontologists have discovered many Precambrian fossils, many of them microscopic or soft-bodied. As American paleobiologist William Schopf wrote in 1994, “The long-held notion that Precambrian organisms must have been too small or too delicate to have been preserved in geological materials… [is] now recognized as incorrect.” If anything, the abrupt appearance of the major animal phyla about 540 million years ago—which modern biologists call “the Cambrian explosion” or “biology’s Big Bang”—is better documented now than in Darwin’s time. According to Berkeley paleontologist James Valentine and his colleagues, the “explosion is real, it is too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record.” Indeed, as more fossils are discovered it becomes clear that the Cambrian explosion was “even more abrupt and extensive than previously envisioned.”7

What does Coyne’s book have to say about this?

“Around 600 million years ago,” Coyne writes, “a whole gamut of relatively simple but multicelled organisms arise, including worms, jellyfish, and sponges. These groups diversify over the next several million years, with terrestrial plants and tetrapods (four-legged animals, the earliest of which were lobe-finned fish) appearing about 400 million years ago.”8

In other words, Coyne’s account of evolutionary history jumps from 600 to 400 million years ago without mentioning the 540 million year-old Cambrian explosion. In this respect, Coyne’s book reads like a modern biology textbook that has been written to indoctrinate students in Darwinian evolution rather than provide them with the facts.

Coyne goes on to discuss several “transitional” forms. “One of our best examples of an evolutionary transition,” he writes, is the fossil record of whales, “since we have a chronologically ordered series of fossils, perhaps a lineage of ancestors and descendants, showing their movement from land to water.”9

“The sequence begins,” Coyne writes, “with the recently discovered fossil of a close relative of whales, a raccoon-sized animal called Indohyus. Living 48 million years ago, Indohyus was… probably very close to what the whale ancestor looked like.” In the next paragraph, Coyne writes, “Indohyus was not the ancestor of whales, but was almost certainly its cousin. But if we go back 4 million more years, to 52 million years ago, we see what might well be that ancestor. It is a fossil skull from a wolf-sized creature called Pakicetus, which is bit more whalelike than Indohyus.” On the page separating these two paragraphs is a figure captioned “Transitional forms in the evolution of modern whales,” which shows Indohyus as the first in the series and Pakicetus as the second.10

But Pakicetus—as Coyne just told us—is 4 million years older than Indohyus. To a Darwinist, this doesn’t matter: Pakicetus is “more whalelike” than Indohyus, so it must fall between Indohyus and modern whales, regardless of the fossil evidence.

(Coyne performs the same trick with fossils that are supposedly ancestral to modern birds. The textbook icon Archaeopteryx, with feathered wings like a modern bird but teeth and a tail like a reptile, is dated at 145 million years. But what Coyne calls the “nonflying feathered dinosaur fossils”—which should have come before Archaeopteryx—are tens of millions of years younger. Like Darwinists Kevin Padian and Luis Chiappe eleven years earlier, Coyne simply rearranges the evidence to fit Darwinian theory.)11

So much for Coyne’s prediction that “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.” And so much for his argument that “if evolution were not true, fossils would not occur in an order that makes evolutionary sense.” Ignoring the facts he himself has just presented, Coyne brazenly concludes: “When we find transitional forms, they occur in the fossil record precisely where they should.” If Coyne’s book were turned into a movie, this scene might feature Chico Marx saying, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”12

There is another problem with the whale series (and every other series of fossils) that Coyne fails to address: No species in the series could possibly be the ancestor of any other, because all of them possess characteristics they would first have to lose before evolving into a subsequent form. This is why the scientific literature typically shows each species branching off a supposed lineage.

In the figure below, all the lines are hypothetical. The diagram on the left is a representation of evolutionary theory: Species A is ancestral to B, which is ancestral to C, which is ancestral to D, which is ancestral to E. But the diagram on the right is a better representation of the evidence: Species A, B, C and D are not in the actual lineage leading to E, which remains unknown.





It turns out that no series of fossils can provide evidence for Darwinian descent with modification. Even in the case of living species, buried remains cannot generally be used to establish ancestor-descendant relationships. Imagine finding two human skeletons in the same grave, one about thirty years older than the other. Was the older individual the parent of the younger? Without written genealogical records and identifying marks (or in some cases DNA), it is impossible to answer the question. And in this case we would be dealing with two skeletons from the same species that are only a generation apart and from the same location. With fossils from different species that are now extinct, and widely separated in time and space, there is no way to establish that one is the ancestor of another—no matter how many transitional fossils we find.

In 1978, Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History wrote: “The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.”13 Nature science writer Henry Gee wrote in 1999 that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate.” When we call new fossil discoveries “missing links,” it is “as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Gee concluded: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”14


5 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 17-18, 25.
6 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Sixth Edition (London: John Murray, 1872), Chapter X, pp. 266, 285-288. Available online (2009) here.
7 J. William Schopf, “The early evolution of life: solution to Darwin’s dilemma,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 9 (1994): 375-377.
James W. Valentine, Stanley M. Awramik, Philip W. Signor & M. Sadler, “The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary,” Evolutionary Biology 25 (1991): 279-356.
James W. Valentine & Douglas H. Erwin, “Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments: The Fossil Record,” pp. 71-107 in Rudolf A. Raff & Elizabeth C. Raff, (editors), Development as an Evolutionary Process (New York: Alan R. Liss, 1987).
Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,” Scientific American 267 (November, 1992): 84-91.
“The Scientific Controversy Over the Cambrian Explosion,” Discovery Institute. Available online (2009) here.
Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2002), Chapter 3. More information available online (2009) here.
Stephen C. Meyer, “The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang,” pp. 323-402 in John Angus Campbell & Stephen C. Meyer (editors), Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2003). More information available online (2009) here.
8 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, p. 28.

9 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, p. 48.
10 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 49-51.
11 Kevin Padian & Luis M. Chiappe, “The origin and early evolution of birds,” Biological Reviews 73 (1998): 1-42. Available online (2009) here.
Wells, Icons of Evolution, pp. 119-122.
12 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 25, 53.
Chico Marx in Duck Soup (Paramount Pictures, 1933). This and other Marx Brothers quotations are available online (2009) here.
13 Gareth Nelson, “Presentation to the American Museum of Natural History (1969),” in David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach, “The reform of palaeontology and the rise of biogeography—25 years after 'ontogeny, phylogeny, palaeontology and the biogenetic law' (Nelson, 1978),” Journal of Biogeography 31 (2004): 685-712.
14 Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time. New York: Free Press, 1999, pp. 5, 32, 113-117.
Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006). More information available online (2009) here.

 

Doesn't it give you pause to consider that so few scientists agree with you?

 

Of course not. How many scientists subscribed to Ptolemaic (Geocentric) model , even in the face of very strong criticism, until Copernican model was accepted?

I won't go to burn in stakes for this, but so far can say I have some major doubts about Darwinism in light of critical analysis of what it claims based on what is known.

 

To be clear though, what do you mean about Darwinism? Are you implying that evolution is un-scientific, or specifically that evolution in Darwin's model is unscientific? That being, the sole mechanics of evolution, responsible for life, are natural selection, and random mutation.

 

I don't distinguish greatly between original Darwinism and modern New Synthesis, because even though much evidence found to be contrary of Darwin's theory, New Synthesis is not actually refuting the Darwinism and is not a manifestation of some fundamentally new theory (like Copernican astronomy vs. Ptolemaic would be), but instead it's primary focus is to patch up original theory and make endless excuses in order to fit ever growing contradictory evidence into what the picture would have to be had they followed Darwin's model.

That's like flying into cosmos, observing that Earth isn't flat nor center of the Universe, but still insisting & making arguments as to why it still IS flat and remains at the center of it all.

At least we can excuse Darwin, he didn't have much of evidence we have today and may have sincerely believed in his own theory, much like Claudius Ptolemaeus did 2000 years ago.
It could have even sounded convincing back then.

However there is no way I can accept these tall tales as scientifically valid today.
Those who know available evidence and still insist it's valid theory evidently seek pleasure in following the path of Baron Münchausen.
Others, who have no clue about theory yet zealously defend it, are what i call Darwinist dogma worshipers.
While I find both amusing , what they present by all means is not scientific.

 

Let's separate your meaningless statements from my quotes

 

Glad you could join us man. This thread is a little weird, but if you bear with us it's possible we could have a meaningful discussion. You need to read the earlier posts to get the flavor, but I think you'll soon pick it up. Deep breathing exercises help.

 

I think you'd like this board game, judging on how much you seem to like Munchausen...

 

I think it would be more to the liking of Darwinists since they are the ones telling tall tales here.

 

Jumbuli writes]"You can type as many meaningless sentences as you wish, it won't change the facts and won't turn Darwin's Religious Theory of Evolution into one that has anything to do with Science"

Your claim that my sentences are without meaning is unsubstantiated. Your claim is a statement of lack of comprehension on your part. To comprehend means to apprehend with.

 

"There are numerous examples of transitional forms in the fossil record, providing an abundance of evidence for change over time. Pakicetus is described as an early ancestor to modern whales. Although pakicetids were land mammals, it is clear that they are related to whales and dolphins based on a number of specializations of the ear, relating to hearing. ...
The nostril placement in Aetiocetus is intermediate between the ancestral form Pakicetus and the modern gray whale — an excellent example of a transitional form in the fossil record!
Our understanding of the evolution of horse feet is derived from a scattered sampling of horse fossils within the multi-branched horse evolutionary tree. These fossil organisms represent branches on the tree and not a direct line of descent leading to modern horses. But, the (record) does clearly show transitional stages whereby the four-toed foot of Hyracotherium, otherwise known as Eohippus, became the single-toed foot of Equus. "
"http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_03

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Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ
Part 2B


Copyright © 1994-1997 by Kathleen Hunt


[Last Update: March 17, 1997]





...Lagomorphs

• Barunlestes (see above) The possible Asian rodent/lagomorph ancestor.
• Mimotoma (Paleocene) -- A rabbit-like animal, similar to Barunlestes, but with a rabbit dental formula, changes in the facial bones, and only one layer of enamel on the incisors (unlike the rodents). Like rabbits, it had two upper incisors, but the second incisor is still large and functional, while in modern rabbits it is tiny. Chuankuei-Li et al. (1987; also see Szalay et al., 1993) think this is the actual ancestor of Mimolagus, next.
• Mimolagus (late Eocene) -- Possesses several more lagomorph-like characters, such as a special enamel layer, possible double upper incisors, and large premolars.
• Lushilagus (mid-late Eocene) -- First true lagomorph. Teeth very similar to Mimotoma, and modern rabbit & hare teeth could easily have been derived from these teeth.
• After this, the first modern rabbits appeared in the Oligocene.

Known species-to-species transitions in lagomorphs:

• The mid-Tertiary lagomorph Prolagus shows a very nice "chronocline" (gradual change over time), grading from one species to the next. Gingerich (1977) says: "In Prolagus a very complete fossil record shows a remarkable but continuous and gradual reorganization of the premolar crown morphology in a single lineage."
• Lundelius et al. (1987) mention transitions in Pleistocene rabbits, particularly from Nekrolagus to Sylvilagus, and from Pratilepus to Aluralagus. Note that both these transitions cross genus lines. Also see the lagomorph paper in Chaline (1983). Some of these transitions were considered to be "sudden appearances" until the intervening fossils were studied, revealing numerous transitional individuals.

Condylarths, the first hoofed animals

• Protungulatum (latest Cretaceous) -- Transitional between earliest placental mammals and the condylarths (primitive, small hoofed animals). These early, simple insectivore- like small mammals had one new development: their cheek teeth had grinding surfaces instead of simple, pointed cusps. They were the first mammal herbivores. All their other features are generalized and primitive -- simple plantigrade five-toed clawed feet, all teeth present (3:1:4:3) with no gaps, all limb bones present and unfused, pointy-faced, narrow small brain, eyesocket not closed.

Within a few million years the condylarths split into several slightly different lineages with slightly different teeth, such as oxyclaenids (the most primitive), triisodontines, and phenacodonts (described in other sections). Those first differences amplified over time as the lineages drifted further and further apart, resulting ultimately in such different animals as whales, anteaters, and horses. It's interesting to see how similar the early condylarth lineages were to each other, in contrast to how different their descendants eventually, slowly, became. Paleontologists believe this is a classic example of how 'higher taxa" such as families and orders arise.
Says Carroll (1988, p.505): "In the case of the cetaceans [whales] and the perissodactyls [horses etc.], their origin among the condylarths has been clearly documented....If, as seems likely, it may eventually be possible to trace the ancestry of most of the placental mammals back to the early Paleocene, or even the latest Cretaceous, the differences between the earliest ancestral forms will be very small -- potentially no more than those that distinguish species or even populations within species. The origin of orders will become synonymous with the origin of species or geographical subspecies. In fact, this pattern is what one would expect from our understanding of evolution going back to Darwin. The selective forces related to the origin of major groups would be seen as no different than those leading to adaptation to very slightly differing enviromments and ways of life. On the basis of a better understanding of the anatomy and relationships of the earliest ungulates, we can see that the origin of the Cetacea and the perissodactyls resulted not from major differences in their anatomy and ways of life but from slight differences in their diet and mode of locomotion, as reflected in the pattern of the tooth cusps and details of the bones of the carpus and tarsus." (p. 505)
Species-to-species transitions among the condylarths:

• The most common fossil mammal from the lower Eocene is a little primitive weasel-looking condylarth called Hyopsodus. It was previously known that many very different species of Hyopsodus were found at different sites, with (for example) very different tooth size. In 1976, Gingerich analyzed the tooth size of all the known fossils of Hyopsodus that could be dated reliably and independently. He found that "the pattern of change in tooth size that emerges is one of continuous gradual change between lineages, with gradual divergence following the separation of new sister lineages." When tooth size is charted against time, it shows the single lineage smoothly splitting into four descendant lineages. (This was one of the first detailed & extensive studies of speciation.)
• By 1985, Gingerich had many more specimens of Hyopsodus and of several other Eocene condylarth lineages as well, such as Haplomylus. For example: "Haplomylus speirianus ...gradually became larger over time, ultimately giving rise to a new species Haplomylus scottianus... Hyopsodus latidens also became larger and then smaller, ultimately giving rise to a still smaller species, Hyopsodus simplex." These analyses were based on hundreds of new specimens (505 for Haplomylus, and 869 for Hyposodus) from Clark's Fork Basin in Wyoming. Note, however, that several other species from the same time showed stasis (particularly Ectocion, which was previously reported to show change, but in fact stayed much the same), and that not all species transitions are documented. So transitions are not always found. But sometimes they are found.

Cetaceans (whales, dolphins)

Just several years ago, there was still a large gap in the fossil record of the cetaceans. It was thought that they arose from land-dwelling mesonychids that gradually lost their hind legs and became aquatic. Evolutionary theory predicted that they must have gone through a stage where they had were partially aquatic but still had hind legs, but there were no known intermediate fossils. A flurry of recent discoveries from India & Pakistan (the shores of the ancient Tethys Sea) has pretty much filled this gap. There are still no known species-species transitions, and the "chain of genera" is not complete, but we now have a partial lineage, and sure enough, the new whale fossils have legs, exactly as predicted. (for discussions see Berta, 1994; Gingerich et al. 1990; Thewissen et al. 1994; Discover magazine, Jan. 1995; Gould 1994)

• Eoconodon or similar triisodontine arctocyonids (early Paleocene) Unspecialized condylarths quite similar to the early oxyclaenid condylarths, but with strong canine teeth (showing first meat-eating tendencies), blunt crushing cheek teeth, and flattened claws instead of nails.
• Microclaenodon (mid-Paleocene) -- A transitional genus intermediate between Eoconodon and the mesonychids, with molar teeth reorganizing in numerous ways to look like premolars. Adapted more toward carnivory.
• Dissacus (mid-Paleocene) -- A mesonychid (rather unspecialized Paleocene meat-eating animal) with molars more like premolars & several other tooth changes. Still had 5 toes in the foot and a primitive plantigrade posture.
• Hapalodectes or a very similar mesonychid (early Eocene, around 55 Ma) -- A small mesonychid with very narrow shearing molars, a distinctively shaped zygomatic arch, and peculiar vascularized areas between the molars. Probably a running animal that could swim by paddling its feet. Hapalodectes itself may be just too late to be the whale ancestor, but probably was a close relative of the whale ancestor. Says Carroll (1988): "The skulls of Eocene whales bear unmistakable resemblances to those of primitive terrestrial mammals of the early Cenozoic. Early [whale] genera retain a primitive tooth count with distinct incisors, canines, premolars,, and multirooted molar teeth. Although the snout is elongate, the skull shape resembles that of the mesonychids, especially Hapalodectes...."
• Pakicetus (early-mid Eocene, 52 Ma) -- The oldest fossil whale known. Same skull features as Hapalodectes, still with a very terrestrial ear (tympanic membrane, no protection from pressure changes, no good underwater sound localization), and therefore clearly not a deep diver. Molars still have very mesonychid-like cusps, but other teeth are like those of later whales. Nostrils still at front of head (no blowhole). Whale- like skull crests and elongate jaws. Limbs unknown. Only about 2.5 m long. This skull was found with terrestrial fossils and may have been amphibious, like a hippo.
• Ambulocetus natans (early-mid Eocene, 50 Ma) -- A recently discovered early whale, with enough of the limbs and vertebrae preserved to see how the early whales moved on land and in the water. This whale had four legs! Front legs were stubby. Back legs were short but well-developed, with enormous broad feet that stuck out behind like tail flukes. Had no true tail flukes, just a long simple tail. Size of a sea lion. Still had a long snout with no blowhole. Probably walked on land like a sea lion, and swam with a seal/otter method of steering with the front feet and propelling with the hind feet. So, just as predicted, these early whales were much like modern sea lions -- they could swim, but they could also still walk on land. (Thewissen et al., 1994)
• Rodhocetus (mid-Eocene, 46 Ma) -- Another very recent (1993) fossil whale discovery. Had hind legs a third smaller than those of A. natans. Could probably still "waddle" a bit on land, but by now it had a powerful tail (indicated by massive tail vertebrae) and could probably stay out at sea for long periods of time. Nostrils had moved back a bit from the tip of the snout.
• Basilosaurus isis, Protocetes, Indocetus ramani and similar small-legged whales of the mid-late Eocene (45-42 Ma) -- After Rodhocetus came several whales that still had hind legs, but couldn't walk on them any more. For example, B. isis (42 Ma) had hind feet with 3 toes and a tiny remnant of the 2nd toe (the big toe is totally missing). The legs were small and must have been useless for locomotion, but were specialized for swinging forward into a locked straddle position -- probably an aid to copulation for this long-bodied, serpentine whale. B. isis may have been a "cousin" to modern whales, not directly ancestral. Another recent discovery is Protocetes, a slightly more advanced whale from the late Eocene. It was about 3m long (dolphin sized), and still had primitive dentition, nostrils at end of snout, and a large pelvis attached to the spine; limbs unknown. Finally Indocetus is known from only fragmentary remains, but these include a tibia. These late Eocene legged whales still had mesonychid-like teeth, and in fact, some of the whale fossils were first mis-identified as mesonychids when only the teeth were found. ( See Gingerich et al. (1990) for more info on B. isis.)
• Prozeuglodon (late Eocene, 40 Ma) Another recently discovered whale, found in 1989. Had almost lost the hind legs, but not quite: still carried a pair of vestigial 6- inch hind legs on its 15-foot body.
• Eocetus, & similar "archeocete whales" of the late Eocene These more advanced whales have lost their hind legs entirely, but retain a"primitive whale" skull and teeth, with unfused nostrils. They grew to larger body size (up to 25m by the end of the Eocene), an had an elongate, streamlined body, flippers, and a cartilaginous tail fluke. The ear was modified for hearing underwater. Note that this stage of aquatic adaptation was attained about 15 million years after the first terrestrial mesonychids.
• Dorudon intermedius -- a late Eocene whale probably ancestral to modern whales.

In the Oligocene, whales split into two lineages:

1. Toothed whales:
   • Agorophius (late Oligocene) -- Skull partly telescoped, but cheek teeth still rooted. Intermediate in many ways between archaeocetes and later toothed whales.
   • Prosqualodon (late Oligocene) -- Skull fully telescoped with nostrils on top (blowhole). Cheek teeth increased in number but still have old cusps. Probably ancestral to most later toothed whales (possibly excepting the sperm whales?)
   • Kentriodon (mid-Miocene) -- Skull telescoped, still symmetrical. Radiated in the late Miocene into the modern dolphins and small toothed whales with asymmetrical skulls.
2. Baleen (toothless) whales:
   • Aetiocetus (late Oligocene) -- The most primitive known mysticete whale and probably the stem group of all later baleen whales. Had developed mysticete-style loose jaw hinge and air sinus, but still had all its teeth. Later,
   • Mesocetus (mid-Miocene) lost its teeth.
   • Modern baleen whales first appeared in the late Miocene.

Perissodactyls (horses, tapirs, rhinos)

Here we come to the most famous general lineage of all, the horse sequence. It was the first such lineage to be discovered, in the late 1800's, and thus became the most famous. There is an odd rumor circulating in creationist circles that the horse sequence is somehow suspect or outdated. Not so; it's a very good sequence that has grown only more detailed and complete over the years, changing mainly by the addition of large side-branches. As these various paleontologists have said recently: "The extensive fossil record of the family Equidae provides an excellent example of long-term, large-scale evolutionary change." (Colbert, 1988) "The fossil record [of horses] provides a lucid story of descent with change for nearly 50 million years, and we know much about the ancestors of modern horses."(Evander, in Prothero & Schoch 1989, p. 125) "All the morphological changes in the history of the Equidae can be accounted for by the neo-Darwinian theory of microevolution: genetic variation, natural selection, genetic drift, and speciation." (Futuyma, 1986, p.409) "...fossil horses do indeed provide compelling evidence in support of evolutionary theory." (MacFadden, 1988)
So here's the summary of the horse sequence. For more info, see the Horse Evolution FAQ.

• Loxolophus (early Paleocene) -- A primitive condylarth with rather low-crowned molars, probably ancestral to the phenacodontid condylarths.
• Tetraclaenodon (mid-Paleocene) -- A more advanced Paleocene condylarth from the phenacodontid family, and almost certainly ancestral to all the perissodactyls (a different order). Long but unspecialized limbs; 5 toes on each foot (#1 and #5 smaller). Slightly more efficient wrist.

GAP: There are almost no known perissodactyl fossils from the late Paleocene. This is actually a small gap; it's only noticeable because the perissodactyl record is otherwise very complete. Recent discoveries have made clear that the first perissodactyls arose in Asia (a poorly studied continent), so hopefully the ongoing new fossil hunts in Asia will fill this small but frustrating gap. The first clue has already come in:

• Radinskya yupingae (late Paleocene, China) -- A recently discovered perissodactyl-like condylarth. (McKenna et al., in Prothero & Schoch, 1989.)
• Hyracotherium (early Eocene, about 55 Ma; previously "Eohippus") -- The famous "dawn horse", a small, doggish perissodactyl, with an arched back, short neck, omnivore teeth, and short snout. 4 toes in front and 3 behind. Compared to Tetraclaenodon, has longer toes, interlocking ankle bones, and slightly different tooth cusps. Probably evolved from Tetra. in about 4-5 my, perhaps via an Asian species like Radinskya. Note that Hyrac. differed from other early perissodactyls (such as tapir/rhino ancestors) only by small changes in tooth cusps and in body size.
• Hyracotherium vassacciense (early Eocene) -- The particular species that probably gave rise to the equids.
• Orohippus (mid-Eocene, ~50 Ma) -- Small, 4/3 toed, developing browser tooth crests.
• Epihippus (late Eocene, ~45 Ma) -- Small, 4/3 toed, good tooth crests, browser.
• Epihippus (Duchesnehippus) -- A later subgenus with Mesohippus-like teeth.
• Mesohippus celer (latest Eocene, 40 Ma) -- Three-toed on all feet, browser, slightly larger
• Mesohippus westoni (early Oligocene) -- A slightly later, more advanced species.
• Miohippus assiniboiensis (mid-Oligocene) -- This species split off from early Mesohippus via cladogenetic evolution, after which Miohippus and Mesohippus overlapped for the next 4 my. Distinctly larger, slightly longer skull, facial fossa deeper and more expanded, subtly different ankle joint, variable extra crest on upper cheek teeth. In the early Miocene (24 My) Miohippus began to speciate rapidly. Grasses had just evolved, & teeth began to change accordingly. Legs, etc., started to change for fast running.
• Kalobatippus (late Oligocene) -- Three-toed browser w/foot intermediate between Mio. & Para.
• Parahippus (early Miocene, 23 Ma) -- Three-toed browser/grazer, developing "spring foot". Permanent establishment of the extra crest that was so variable in Miohippus. Stronger tooth crests & slightly taller tooth crowns.
• 'Parahippus' leonensis (mid-Miocene, ~20 Ma) -- Three-toed browser/grazer with the emphasis on grazer. Developing spring-foot & high-crowned teeth.
• 'Merychippus' gunteri (mid-Miocene, ~18 Ma) -- Three-toed grazer, fully spring-footed with high-crowned teeth.
• Merychippus primus (mid-Miocene, ~17 Ma) -- Slightly more advanced.
• Merychippus spp. of mid-late Miocene (16-15 Ma) -- 3-toed grazers, spring-footed, size of small pony. Diversified into all available grazer niches, giving rise to at least 19 successful three-toed grazers. Side toes of varying sizes, very small in some lines. Horsey hoof develops, leg bones fuse. Fully high-crowned teeth with thick cement & same crests as Parahippus. The line that eventually produced Equus developed as follows: M. primus, M. sejunctus, M. isonesus (these last two still had a mix of primitive, hipparion, and equine features), M. intermontanus, M. stylodontus, M. carrizoensis. These last two looked quite horsey, with quite small side toes, and gave rise to a set of larger three-toed and one-toed horses known as the "true equines". Crystal clear, right?

SMALL GAP: It is not known which Merychippus species (stylodontus? carrizoensis?) gave rise to the first Dinohippus species (Evander, in Prothero & S 1988).

• Dinohippus (late Miocene, 12 Ma) -- One-toed grazer, spring-footed. Very equine feet, teeth, and skull, with straighter teeth & smaller fossae. First was D. spectans, followed by D. interpolatus and D. leidyanus. A slightly later species was D. mexicanus, with even straighter teeth and even smaller fossae.
• Equus (Plesippus), also called the "E. simplicidens" group (Pliocene, ~4 My) -- Three closely related species of one-toed spring-footed high-crowned grazers. No fossae and very straight teeth. Pony size, fully "horsey" body -- rigid spine, long neck, long legs, fused leg bones with no rotation, long nose, flexible muzzle, deep jaw. The brain was a bit larger than in early Dinohippus. Still had some primitive traits such as simple teeth & slight facial fossae, which later Equus species lost. These "simple Equus" species quickly diversified into at least 12 new species in 4 different groups. During the first major glaciations of the late Pliocene (2.6 Ma), certain Equus species crossed to the Old World. Worldwide, Equus took over the niche of "large coarse-grazing plains runner".
• Equus (Hippotigris) (Pleistocene) -- Subgenus of modern 1-toed spring-footed grazing zebras.
• Equus (Equus) (Pleistocene) -- Subgenus of modern 1-toed spring-footed grazing horses & donkeys. [note: very rarely a horse is born with small side toes, indicating that some horses retain the genes for side toes.]

Compare Equus to Hyracotherium and see how much it has changed. If you think of animals as being divided into "kinds", do you think Equus and Hyracotherium can be considered the same "kind"? Tapirs and rhinos:

• Loxolophus, see above
• Tetraclaenodon, see above
• Homagalax (early Eocene) -- Very like its sister genus Hyracotherium, but had cross-lophs on teeth. Note that these early perissodactyls differed only in slight details of the teeth.
• Heptodon (late early Eocene) -- A small early tapiroid showing one more tooth cusp change. Split into two lineages:
  1. Helaletes (mid-Eocene) which had a short proboscis, then Prototapir (late Oligocene), much like modern tapirs but without such a flexible snout, then Miotapirus (early Miocene), an almost- modern tapir with a flexible snout, then Tapirus (Pliocene) the modern tapir.
  2. Hyrachyus (late Eocene), a tapiroid with increased shearing function in its teeth. Led to the late Eocene hyracodontids such as Hyracodon (rhino-tapiroids, or "running rhinos") that show increasing development of high-crowned teeth and larger body size. They led to Caenopus (early Oligocene), a large, hornless, generalized rhino which led to the modern horned rhinos of the Miocene & Pliocene. Our living genera first appear in the Pliocene, about 4 Ma.

Species-species transitions:

• Horses: Gingerich (1980) documented speciation from Hyracotherium grangeri to H. aemulor. Prothero & Schoch (1989) mention some intermediate fossils that link late Orohippus to Mesohippus celer. MacFadden (1985) has documented numerous smooth transitions among the three-toed horses, particularly among Merychippus and the various hipparions. Hulbert (in Prothero & Schoch, 1989) showed that Dinohippus smoothly grades into Equus through successive Pliocene strata. Simpson (1961) describes gradual loss of the side toes in Pliohippus through 3 successive strata of the early Pliocene.
• Rhinos: Wood (1954) said of the rhino fossils "whenever we do have positive paleontological evidence, the picture is of the most extreme gradualism" (quoted in Gingerich, 1977), and Kurten (1968) describes a smooth transition between Dicerorhinus species.

Elephants

• Minchenella or a similar condylarth (late Paleocene) -- Known only from lower jaws. Has a distinctive broadened shelf on the third molar. The most plausible ancestor of the embrithopods & anthracobunids.
• Phenacolophus (late Paleocene or early Eocene) -- An early embrithopod (very early, slightly elephant-like condylarths), thought to be the stem-group of all elephants.
• Pilgrimella (early Eocene) -- An anthracobunid (early proto-elephant condylarth), with massive molar cusps aligned in two transverse ridges.
• Unnamed species of proto-elephant (early Eocene) -- Discovered recently in Algeria. Had slightly enlarged upper incisors (the beginnings of tusks), and various tooth reductions. Still had "normal" molars instead of the strange multi-layered molars of modern elephants. Had the high forehead and pneumatized skull bones of later elephants, and was clearly a heavy-boned, slow animal. Only one meter tall.
• Moeritherium, Numidotherium, Barytherium (early-mid Eocene) -- A group of three similar very early elephants. It is unclear which of the three came first. Pig-sized with stout legs, broad spreading feet and flat hooves. Elephantish face with the eye set far forward & a very deep jaw. Second incisors enlarged into short tusks, in upper and lower jaws; little first incisors still present; loss of some teeth. No trunk.
• Paleomastodon, Phiomia (early Oligocene) -- The first "mastodonts", a medium-sized animals with a trunk, long lower jaws, and short upper and lower tusks. Lost first incisors and canines. Molars still have heavy rounded cusps, with enamel bands becoming irregular. Phiomia was up to eight feet tall.

GAP: Here's that Oligocene gap again. No elephant fossils at all for several million years.

• Gomphotherium (early Miocene) -- Basically a large edition of Phiomia, with tooth enamel bands becoming very irregular. Two long rows cusps on teeth became cross- crests when worn down. Gave rise to several families of elephant- relatives that spread all over the world. From here on the elephant lineages are known to the species level.
• The mastodon lineage split off here, becoming more adapted to a forest browser niche, and going through Miomastodon (Miocene) and Pliomastodon (Pliocene), to Mastodon (or "Mammut", Pleistocene).

Meanwhile, the elephant lineage became still larger, adapting to a savannah/steppe grazer niche:

• Stegotetrabelodon (late Miocene) -- One of the first of the "true" elephants, but still had two long rows of cross-crests, functional premolars, and lower tusks. Other early Miocene genera show compression of the molar cusps into plates (a modern feature ), with exactly as many plates as there were cusps. Molars start erupting from front to back, actually moving forward in the jaw throughout life.
• Primelephas (latest Miocene) -- Short lower jaw makes it look like an elephant now. Reduction & loss of premolars. Very numerous plates on the molars, now; we're now at the modern elephants' bizarre system of one enormous multi-layered molar being functional at a time, moving forward in the jaw.
• Primelephas gomphotheroides (mid-Pliocene) -- A later species that split into three lineages, Loxodonta, Elephas, and Mammuthus:
  1. Loxodonta adaurora (5 Ma). Gave rise to the modern African elephant Loxodonta africana about 3.5 Ma.
  2. Elephas ekorensis (5 Ma), an early Asian elephant with rather primitive molars, clearly derived directly from P. gomphotheroides. Led directly to:
     • Elephas recki, which sent off one side branch, E. hydrusicus, at 3.8 Ma, and then continued changing on its own until it became E. iolensis.
     • Elephas maximus, the modern Asian elephant, clearly derived from
     • E. hysudricus. Strikingly similar to young E. hysudricus animals. Possibly a case of neoteny (in which "new" traits are simply juvenile features retained into adulthood).
  3. Mammuthus meridionalis, clearly derived from P. gomphotheroides. Spread around the northern hemisphere. In Europe, led to M. armeniacus/trogontherii, and then to M. primigenius. In North America, led to M. imperator and then M. columbi.

The Pleistocene record for elephants is very good. In general, after the earliest forms of the three modern genera appeared, they show very smooth, continuous evolution with almost half of the speciation events preserved in fossils. For instance, Carroll (1988) says: "Within the genus Elephas, species demonstrate continuous change over a period of 4.5 million years. ...the elephants provide excellent evidence of significant morphological change within species, through species within genera, and through genera within a family...." Species-species transitions among the elephants:

• Maglio (1973) studied Pleistocene elephants closely. Overall, Maglio showed that at least 7 of the 17 Quaternary elephant species arose through smooth anagenesis transitions from their ancestors. For example, he said that Elephas recki "can be traced through a progressive series of stages...These stages pass almost imperceptibly into each other....In the late Pleistocene a more progressive elephant appears which I retain as a distinct species, E. iolensis, only as a matter of convenience. Although as a group, material referred to E. iolensis is distinct from that of E. recki, some intermediate specimens are known, and E. iolensis seems to represent a very progressive, terminal stage in the E. recki specific lineage."
• Maglio also documented very smooth transitions between three Eurasian mammoth species: Mammuthus meridionalis --> M. armeniacus (or M. trogontherii) --> M. primigenius.
• Lister (1993) reanalyzed mammoth teeth and confirmed Maglio's scheme of gradual evolution in European mammoths, and found evidence for gradual transitions in the North American mammoths too.

Sirenians (dugongs & manatees)

GAP: The ancestors of sirenians are not known. No sirenian-like fossils are known from before the Eocene.

• Early Eocene -- fragmentary sirenian fossils known from Hungary.
• Prorastomus (mid-Eocene) -- A very primitive sirenian with an extremely primitive dental formula (including the ancient fifth premolar that all other mammals lost in the Cretaceous! Could this mean sirenians split off from all other mammals very early on?) The skull is somewhat condylarth-like. Had distinctive sirenian ribs. Not enough of the rest of the skeleton was found to know how aquatic it was.
• Protosiren (late Eocene) -- A sirenian with an essentially modern skeleton, though it still had the very primitive dental formula. Probably split into the two surviving lineages:
  1. Dugongs: Eotheroides (late Eocene), with a slightly curved snout and small tusks, still with the primitive dental formula. Perhaps gave rise to Halitherium (Oligocene) a dugong-ish sirenian with a more curved snout and longer tusks, and then to living dugongs, very curved snout & big tusks.
  2. Manatees: Sirenotherium (early Miocene); Potamosiren (late Miocene), a manatee-like sirenian with loss of some cheek teeth; then Ribodon (early Pliocene), a manatee with continuous tooth replacement, and then the living manatees.

​

 

Speaking of perceptions, curious observation I make here.

The user nicknamed thedope has first appeared here almost the same time when Okiefreak has publicly declared his intention not to discuss this subject with me anylonger.

I also notice this user thedope has unusual for a new member interest, persistence and follow up of almost every single post of mine on this thread and any other thread where the specific subject of evolution is discussed.

Now we all know Baron Okiefreak von Munchausen has some grudges against me (as is evident from numerous posts where he called me a donkey hole, troll and what not) , for being challenged to prove his baseless assertions. He was repeatedly embarraced by me while failing to do so.

Now I am not suggesting here thedope is an alter-ego of Okiefreak , who is hereby hopelessly trying to get me from the opposite extreme (while still too dimwitted to recognize that there are no parrallels in doubting positive assertion and making one).

This is only an observation of phenomena that may or may not be random
Even though I also note the timing of latest postings by both Okiefreak and thedope, they appear too close to each other, still it could be just a coincidence, and user thedope may not be connected to Baron Okiefreak Munchausen in anyway, but who knows. I don't have an evidence to insist either way.

I don't really pay much attention or contemplating the substance of this user's posts anyway, since anything he writes is too obviosuly meaningless and digressionary by intention (which also reminds me of Okiefreak).

Whatever case might be (whether thedope is a :sifone: on his own or alterego/accomplice of Baron Okiefreak Munchausen), I just find it all very amusing and fun and a clear evidence of one's inability to make the point by means of intelligible and plausible argumentation

 

Note the UNDERLINED AND HIGHLIGHTED part of the quote below

(see full article here:
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=381132&page=29 post # 287)


Fossils

Coyne turns first to the fossil record. “We should be able,” he writes, “to find some evidence for evolutionary change in the fossil record. The deepest (and oldest) layers of rock would contain the fossils of more primitive species, and some fossils should become more complex as the layers of rock become younger, with organisms resembling present-day species found in the most recent layers. And we should be able to see some species changing over time, forming lineages showing ‘descent with modification’ (adaptation).” In particular, “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.”5

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin acknowledged that the fossil record presented difficulties for his theory. “By the theory of natural selection,” he wrote, “all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the present day.” Thus in the past “the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great.” But Darwin knew that the major animal groups—which modern biologists call “phyla”—appeared fully formed in what were at the time the earliest known fossil-bearing rocks, deposited during a geological period known as the Cambrian. He considered this a “serious” difficulty for his theory, since “if the theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed… and that during these vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures.” And “to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” So “the case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.”6

Darwin defended his theory by citing the imperfection of the geological record. In particular, he argued that Precambrian fossils had been destroyed by heat, pressure, and erosion. Some of Darwin’s modern followers have likewise argued that Precambrian fossils existed but were later destroyed, or that Precambrian organisms were too small or too soft to have fossilized in the first place. Since 1859, however, paleontologists have discovered many Precambrian fossils, many of them microscopic or soft-bodied. As American paleobiologist William Schopf wrote in 1994, “The long-held notion that Precambrian organisms must have been too small or too delicate to have been preserved in geological materials… [is] now recognized as incorrect.” If anything, the abrupt appearance of the major animal phyla about 540 million years ago—which modern biologists call “the Cambrian explosion” or “biology’s Big Bang”—is better documented now than in Darwin’s time. According to Berkeley paleontologist James Valentine and his colleagues, the “explosion is real, it is too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record.” Indeed, as more fossils are discovered it becomes clear that the Cambrian explosion was “even more abrupt and extensive than previously envisioned.”7

What does Coyne’s book have to say about this?

“Around 600 million years ago,” Coyne writes, “a whole gamut of relatively simple but multicelled organisms arise, including worms, jellyfish, and sponges. These groups diversify over the next several million years, with terrestrial plants and tetrapods (four-legged animals, the earliest of which were lobe-finned fish) appearing about 400 million years ago.”8

In other words, Coyne’s account of evolutionary history jumps from 600 to 400 million years ago without mentioning the 540 million year-old Cambrian explosion. In this respect, Coyne’s book reads like a modern biology textbook that has been written to indoctrinate students in Darwinian evolution rather than provide them with the facts.

Coyne goes on to discuss several “transitional” forms. “One of our best examples of an evolutionary transition,” he writes, is the fossil record of whales, “since we have a chronologically ordered series of fossils, perhaps a lineage of ancestors and descendants, showing their movement from land to water.”9

“The sequence begins,” Coyne writes, “with the recently discovered fossil of a close relative of whales, a raccoon-sized animal called Indohyus. Living 48 million years ago, Indohyus was… probably very close to what the whale ancestor looked like.” In the next paragraph, Coyne writes, “Indohyus was not the ancestor of whales, but was almost certainly its cousin. But if we go back 4 million more years, to 52 million years ago, we see what might well be that ancestor. It is a fossil skull from a wolf-sized creature called Pakicetus, which is bit more whalelike than Indohyus.” On the page separating these two paragraphs is a figure captioned “Transitional forms in the evolution of modern whales,” which shows Indohyus as the first in the series and Pakicetus as the second.10

But Pakicetus—as Coyne just told us—is 4 million years older than Indohyus. To a Darwinist, this doesn’t matter: Pakicetus is “more whalelike” than Indohyus, so it must fall between Indohyus and modern whales, regardless of the fossil evidence.

(Coyne performs the same trick with fossils that are supposedly ancestral to modern birds. The textbook icon Archaeopteryx, with feathered wings like a modern bird but teeth and a tail like a reptile, is dated at 145 million years. But what Coyne calls the “nonflying feathered dinosaur fossils”—which should have come before Archaeopteryx—are tens of millions of years younger. Like Darwinists Kevin Padian and Luis Chiappe eleven years earlier, Coyne simply rearranges the evidence to fit Darwinian theory.)11

So much for Coyne’s prediction that “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.” And so much for his argument that “if evolution were not true, fossils would not occur in an order that makes evolutionary sense.” Ignoring the facts he himself has just presented, Coyne brazenly concludes: “When we find transitional forms, they occur in the fossil record precisely where they should.” If Coyne’s book were turned into a movie, this scene might feature Chico Marx saying, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”12

There is another problem with the whale series (and every other series of fossils) that Coyne fails to address: No species in the series could possibly be the ancestor of any other, because all of them possess characteristics they would first have to lose before evolving into a subsequent form. This is why the scientific literature typically shows each species branching off a supposed lineage.

In the figure below, all the lines are hypothetical. The diagram on the left is a representation of evolutionary theory: Species A is ancestral to B, which is ancestral to C, which is ancestral to D, which is ancestral to E. But the diagram on the right is a better representation of the evidence: Species A, B, C and D are not in the actual lineage leading to E, which remains unknown.





It turns out that no series of fossils can provide evidence for Darwinian descent with modification. Even in the case of living species, buried remains cannot generally be used to establish ancestor-descendant relationships. Imagine finding two human skeletons in the same grave, one about thirty years older than the other. Was the older individual the parent of the younger? Without written genealogical records and identifying marks (or in some cases DNA), it is impossible to answer the question. And in this case we would be dealing with two skeletons from the same species that are only a generation apart and from the same location. With fossils from different species that are now extinct, and widely separated in time and space, there is no way to establish that one is the ancestor of another—no matter how many transitional fossils we find.

In 1978, Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History wrote: “The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.”13 Nature science writer Henry Gee wrote in 1999 that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate.” When we call new fossil discoveries “missing links,” it is “as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Gee concluded: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”14


5 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 17-18, 25.
6 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Sixth Edition (London: John Murray, 1872), Chapter X, pp. 266, 285-288. Available online (2009) here.
7 J. William Schopf, “The early evolution of life: solution to Darwin’s dilemma,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 9 (1994): 375-377.
James W. Valentine, Stanley M. Awramik, Philip W. Signor & M. Sadler, “The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary,” Evolutionary Biology 25 (1991): 279-356.
James W. Valentine & Douglas H. Erwin, “Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments: The Fossil Record,” pp. 71-107 in Rudolf A. Raff & Elizabeth C. Raff, (editors), Development as an Evolutionary Process (New York: Alan R. Liss, 1987).
Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,” Scientific American 267 (November, 1992): 84-91.
“The Scientific Controversy Over the Cambrian Explosion,” Discovery Institute. Available online (2009) here.
Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2002), Chapter 3. More information available online (2009) here.
Stephen C. Meyer, “The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang,” pp. 323-402 in John Angus Campbell & Stephen C. Meyer (editors), Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2003). More information available online (2009) here.
8 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, p. 28.

9 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, p. 48.
10 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 49-51.
11 Kevin Padian & Luis M. Chiappe, “The origin and early evolution of birds,” Biological Reviews 73 (1998): 1-42. Available online (2009) here.
Wells, Icons of Evolution, pp. 119-122.
12 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 25, 53.
Chico Marx in Duck Soup (Paramount Pictures, 1933). This and other Marx Brothers quotations are available online (2009) here.
13 Gareth Nelson, “Presentation to the American Museum of Natural History (1969),” in David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach, “The reform of palaeontology and the rise of biogeography—25 years after 'ontogeny, phylogeny, palaeontology and the biogenetic law' (Nelson, 1978),” Journal of Biogeography 31 (2004): 685-712.
14 Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time. New York: Free Press, 1999, pp. 5, 32, 113-117.
Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006). More information available online (2009) here.

 

Evidence of Gradual Change http://biologos.org/questions/fossil-record/ :

Organisms have changed significantly over time. In rocks more than 1 billion years old, only fossils of single-celled organisms were found. Moving to rocks that are about 550 million years old, fossils of simple, multicellular animals can be found. At 500 million years ago, ancient fish without jawbones surface; and at 400 million years ago, fish with jaws are found. Gradually, new animals appear: amphibians at 350 million years ago, reptiles at 300 million years ago, mammals at 230 million years ago and birds at 150 million years ago.1 Even within these groups, major changes have occurred through time. For example, dinosaurs dominated the reptile fossils from 230 to 65 million years ago; early birds had teeth and tails; and early mammals were no larger than mice.2 As the rocks become more and more recent, the fossils look increasingly like the animals we observe today.
When considering what the fossil record tells us about evolution, an important question is whether the fossil record supports the evolutionary claim that new species arise through gradual change. In Coming to Peace With Science, biologist Darrel Falk examines this key aspect of evolution in relation to the fossil record. The following four examples from Falk’s discussion indicate the fossil record does support evolution and, more specifically, new species arise through gradual change. (See Chapter 4 of Coming to Peace With Science.)
The Transition to Land: Sea Creatures to Land Animals

Fossils of land animals, or tetrapods, first appear in rocks that are about 370 million years old. In older rocks, only sea creatures are found. The most notable feature of these new land animals is their legs, located in the same place as the fins on sea creatures. Until recently, there was no clear connection between sea creatures and land animals. All of the known fossils seemed to be clearly one or the other. But in 1998, scientists found a fossilized fin of just the right age — 370 million years old — with eight digits similar to the five fingers humans have on their hands and distinct humerus, radius and ulna like an early tetrapod, as shown in Figure 1.3



However, the fin was undoubtedly that of a fish, which means this fossil is strong evidence of a transitional form. The fossil’s eight digits are particularly supportive of evolutionary change. With few exceptions, terrestrial vertebrates have no more than five digits on their limbs. The only other exceptions to the five digit rule occur during a narrow time period about 370 million years ago when land animals first appeared on the scene. This is a strong indication the exceptions to the five digit rule are examples of evolutionary, gradual change.4
Another transitional form, called Tiktaalik, was discovered in northern Canada in 2006. Tiktaalik had forelimbs with the properties of fins that were also able to support weight on land. Tiktaalik was found in a rock formation that was approximately 375 million years old, in line with same narrow time period mentioned above.5
Turtles

Turtles are a good example of transitional forms from later dates in the fossil record. Turtles have a distinct body structure — namely their characteristic protective shell. Compared to other vertebrates, this body plan is very old and has experienced relatively little change. Fossilized turtles first appear 210 million year old rocks. At 255 million years old, rocks reveal fossils of creatures with small, bony plates in the center of their backs.6 These plates were not large enough to protect and insulate like a turtle shell. They are thought to have given structural support to the backbone. At 248 million years old, fossils reveal a species with bony, disconnected plates covering most of its back and another species with fused plates covering the entire back. These plates were similar, though not identical, to standard turtle shells. The species also had other skeletal features similar to turtles. The appearance of these early turtle-like fossils just before the true turtle fossils appear points to the gradual evolution of turtles.
From Reptiles to Mammals

Fossil records show a transition from reptiles to mammals during the same time period as the transitional turtle fossils. Mammals first appeared in the fossil record about 230 million years ago, nearly 70 million years after reptiles first appeared. One group of reptiles, the cynodonts, first appeared about 260 million years ago and became increasingly mammal like in more recent fossils — circa 245 million years ago. This change can be seen most clearly in the bone structure of the ear...

Mammalian ears have three special bones: the malleus, incus and stapes (shown in the bottom right of the image, and known to school children as the hammer, anvil and stirrup in human ears). These detect vibrations and allow hearing. Mammals also have a jaw with two bones that make up the hinge: the dentary and squamosal bones. Cynodonts, on the other hand, had only one bone in their middle ear: the stapes. Their jaw hinge was formed by two different bones located close to the stapes: the articular and quadrate bones.
Scientists found a species of cynodonts, dating to just before the emergence of mammals, that had a double jaw hinge, or dentary-squamosal, like that of a mammal. Cynodont fossils that dated back even further had an articular-quadrate hinge located very close to the ear drum. The articular-quadrate appears to have served two roles: to function as a hinge and to transmit sound vibrations. The articular and quadrate bones seem to have transitioned slowly into the ear, as the dentary and squamosal took over for the jaw. No other fossils have been found that share a similar structure to the transitional cynodonts and date back before the time of mammals. Likewise, soon after mammals appeared, these cynodonts became extinct. This timing implies that the cynodont fossils record the transition from reptiles to mammals. The timelines fossil records provide are strong evidence of gradual, evolutionary change.9
Whales

Fossillized whales provide yet another example of gradual change from one species to another. Whales live in the water, but they are also mammals. Although land animals are believed to have evolved from water animals, whales are thought to have evolved from land animals at a later time.
Recently, a 52-million-year-old whale fossil, Pakicetus, was found in Pakistan. It was clearly a small, wolf-sized whale, but it did not have the characteristic fat-pad, a structure that allows the whale’s jaw vibrations to be used for hearing. Also, its teeth were much like those of the terrestrial animals already thought to be related to whales. Scientists then found fossils of a more recent — 40 million years ago — and larger — 50 feet — specimen of Basilosaurus. Appearing later in the fossil record than Pakicetus, this whale showed less resemblance to terrestrial animals, although it still had a small but well-formed mammalian limb. Not long after the discovery of this specimen, the fossil record of a new species, which had full length hind limbs and a tail, was found.10 According to its age and structure, this new species, Ambulocetus, appeared to be a transition species between Pakicetus and Basilosaurus.11 More and more fossils continue to surface in this region of Pakistan, which further illustrate the gradual change from land animals to whales.
Transitional Forms: Few and Far Between

These examples all illustrate an important point: transitional forms occur just when one might expect to see a change from one body type to another. However, a common objection is that few transitional fossils have been discovered, thus many lineages cannot be traced smoothly.
There are several reason for these gaps in the fossil record. First, fossilization is a very rare event. In total, scientists have unearthed only 250,000 fossil species. Considering the vast number of species throughout history, this is a remarkably small fraction — the 10 million species alive today constitute about 1 percent of all the species that existed. This is partly because many organisms do not leave any trace. Typically, in order to leave a fossil remnant, the organism needs to have hard, bony parts, and the organism’s body must to be buried quickly in sediment.
But even among the 250,000 unearthed fossil species, there are still few transitional forms. One explanation relates to the fact that transitional species tend to appear in small populations, where rapid changes in the environment can provide a stronger evolutionary drive. A small population may produce a higher proportion of transitional species, but by virtue of its small size it would yield fewer fossils.


For example, Falk gives the hypothetical example of two bird populations: a small island community of 100 birds and a large mainland group of 100,000.12 On the island, one bird undergoes a genetic change that gives it a longer beak, enabling it to produce an average of two offspring instead of one. The long beak increases the survival rate and the likelihood of reproduction via natural selection. Its two long-beaked offspring would be more likely to survive than the other birds in the community, yielding 4 percent of the population with long beaks in the following generation. In a relatively short time, the long-beaked birds would take over the population. If these same changes took place on the mainland, the first long-beaked bird would leave two offspring, which means two out of one hundred thousand birds would inherit long beaks. Assuming the same reproduction rate, later generations would include four, eight and then 16 birds with longer beaks. However, in a community of 100,000, the percentage of long-beaked birds would be much lower. Therefore, it would take much longer for this change to affect the entire population. This delay is further compounded because many genetic changes are recessive. This means a species’ offspring must inherit two copies of the gene in order for it to be expressed, which requires that a long-beak can be found only among birds whose parents both carried the long-beaked gene. Due to the increased likelihood of inbreeding in smaller populations, it is far more probable that a bird in this community will have two copies of the same gene.13 Whereas, in a larger population, a long-beaked bird is more likely to end up mating with a short-beaked bird, and the long-beak trait would not be passed on.
Finally, because fossilization itself is a rare event, smaller populations are sure to produce fewer fossils. Because this is where many of the transitional species are expected to develop, this makes the fossilization of transitional species even more unlikely. Given all of the above constraints, the fact that transitional species have been found at all is remarkable, and it offers further support of gradual, evolutionary change.
Notes

1. Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 83-84.
2. Ibid., 84.
3. Image from Falk, 113.
4. Ibid., 111-115; E. B. Daeschler and Neil Shubin, “Fish with Fingers?” Nature 391 (1998): 133; M. I. Coates and J. A. Clack “Fish-like Gills and Breathing in the Earliest Known Tetrapod” Nature 352 (1991): 234-36; M. I. Coates, J. E. Jeffrey, and M. Ruta, “Fins to Limbs: What the Fossils Say. Evolution and Development 4 (2002): 390-401.
5. E. B. Daeschler, N. Shubin, and F. Jenkins, “A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan,” Nature 440 (2006): 757-763.
6. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 103.
7. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 103; based on Michael Lee, “The Turtle’s Long-lost Relatives,” Natural History 103 (1994): 63-65.
8. Image taken from Falk, 119. Taken from F. H. Pough, J. B. Heiser, and W. N. McFarland, Vertebrate Life, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 607.
9. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 115-120; F. H. Pough, J. B. Heiser, and W. N. McFarland, Vertebrate Life, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 607; M.J. Benton, Vertebrate Paleontology: Biology and Evolution, (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 228-231; E.H. Colbert, M. Morales, and E.C. Minkoff, E.C., Colbert’s Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of Backboned Animals Through Time, (New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001), 274-277; T.S. Kemp, The Origin and Evolution of Mammals, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 75-78.
10. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 107-109; for a general summary, see K. Wong, “The Mammals That Conquered the Seas,” Scientific American 286, no. 5 (2002): 70-79. For a technical discussion see J.G.M. Thewissen, E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Husain, “Skeletons of Terrestrial Cetaceans and the Relationship of Whales to Artiodactyls,” Nature 413 (2001): 277-81; P.D. Gingerich, M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan and M. S. Malkani, “Origin of Whales from Early Artiodactyls: Hands and Feet of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan,” Science 293 (2001): 2239-42; and J.G.M. Thewissen, Lisa Noelle Cooper, Mark T. Clementz, Sunil Bajpai, and B. N. Tiwari, “Whales originated from aquatic artiodactyls in the Eocene epoch of India,” Nature 450 (2007): 1190-1194.
11. Paleontologists can never be confident that the species identified in a fossil is the transitional species in a lineage. All they ever know is that the specimen they identified is probably closely related to the actual transitional species.
12. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 126-130.
13. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science, 127.

 

Note the UNDERLINED AND HIGHLIGHTED part of the quote below


(see full article here:
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=381132&page=29 post # 287)



Fossils

Coyne turns first to the fossil record. “We should be able,” he writes, “to find some evidence for evolutionary change in the fossil record. The deepest (and oldest) layers of rock would contain the fossils of more primitive species, and some fossils should become more complex as the layers of rock become younger, with organisms resembling present-day species found in the most recent layers. And we should be able to see some species changing over time, forming lineages showing ‘descent with modification’ (adaptation).” In particular, “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.”5

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin acknowledged that the fossil record presented difficulties for his theory. “By the theory of natural selection,” he wrote, “all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the present day.” Thus in the past “the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great.” But Darwin knew that the major animal groups—which modern biologists call “phyla”—appeared fully formed in what were at the time the earliest known fossil-bearing rocks, deposited during a geological period known as the Cambrian. He considered this a “serious” difficulty for his theory, since “if the theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed… and that during these vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures.” And “to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” So “the case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.”6

Darwin defended his theory by citing the imperfection of the geological record. In particular, he argued that Precambrian fossils had been destroyed by heat, pressure, and erosion. Some of Darwin’s modern followers have likewise argued that Precambrian fossils existed but were later destroyed, or that Precambrian organisms were too small or too soft to have fossilized in the first place. Since 1859, however, paleontologists have discovered many Precambrian fossils, many of them microscopic or soft-bodied. As American paleobiologist William Schopf wrote in 1994, “The long-held notion that Precambrian organisms must have been too small or too delicate to have been preserved in geological materials… [is] now recognized as incorrect.” If anything, the abrupt appearance of the major animal phyla about 540 million years ago—which modern biologists call “the Cambrian explosion” or “biology’s Big Bang”—is better documented now than in Darwin’s time. According to Berkeley paleontologist James Valentine and his colleagues, the “explosion is real, it is too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record.” Indeed, as more fossils are discovered it becomes clear that the Cambrian explosion was “even more abrupt and extensive than previously envisioned.”7

What does Coyne’s book have to say about this?

“Around 600 million years ago,” Coyne writes, “a whole gamut of relatively simple but multicelled organisms arise, including worms, jellyfish, and sponges. These groups diversify over the next several million years, with terrestrial plants and tetrapods (four-legged animals, the earliest of which were lobe-finned fish) appearing about 400 million years ago.”8

In other words, Coyne’s account of evolutionary history jumps from 600 to 400 million years ago without mentioning the 540 million year-old Cambrian explosion. In this respect, Coyne’s book reads like a modern biology textbook that has been written to indoctrinate students in Darwinian evolution rather than provide them with the facts.

Coyne goes on to discuss several “transitional” forms. “One of our best examples of an evolutionary transition,” he writes, is the fossil record of whales, “since we have a chronologically ordered series of fossils, perhaps a lineage of ancestors and descendants, showing their movement from land to water.”9

“The sequence begins,” Coyne writes, “with the recently discovered fossil of a close relative of whales, a raccoon-sized animal called Indohyus. Living 48 million years ago, Indohyus was… probably very close to what the whale ancestor looked like.” In the next paragraph, Coyne writes, “Indohyus was not the ancestor of whales, but was almost certainly its cousin. But if we go back 4 million more years, to 52 million years ago, we see what might well be that ancestor. It is a fossil skull from a wolf-sized creature called Pakicetus, which is bit more whalelike than Indohyus.” On the page separating these two paragraphs is a figure captioned “Transitional forms in the evolution of modern whales,” which shows Indohyus as the first in the series and Pakicetus as the second.10

But Pakicetus—as Coyne just told us—is 4 million years older than Indohyus. To a Darwinist, this doesn’t matter: Pakicetus is “more whalelike” than Indohyus, so it must fall between Indohyus and modern whales, regardless of the fossil evidence.

(Coyne performs the same trick with fossils that are supposedly ancestral to modern birds. The textbook icon Archaeopteryx, with feathered wings like a modern bird but teeth and a tail like a reptile, is dated at 145 million years. But what Coyne calls the “nonflying feathered dinosaur fossils”—which should have come before Archaeopteryx—are tens of millions of years younger. Like Darwinists Kevin Padian and Luis Chiappe eleven years earlier, Coyne simply rearranges the evidence to fit Darwinian theory.)11

So much for Coyne’s prediction that “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.” And so much for his argument that “if evolution were not true, fossils would not occur in an order that makes evolutionary sense.” Ignoring the facts he himself has just presented, Coyne brazenly concludes: “When we find transitional forms, they occur in the fossil record precisely where they should.” If Coyne’s book were turned into a movie, this scene might feature Chico Marx saying, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”12

There is another problem with the whale series (and every other series of fossils) that Coyne fails to address: No species in the series could possibly be the ancestor of any other, because all of them possess characteristics they would first have to lose before evolving into a subsequent form. This is why the scientific literature typically shows each species branching off a supposed lineage.

In the figure below, all the lines are hypothetical. The diagram on the left is a representation of evolutionary theory: Species A is ancestral to B, which is ancestral to C, which is ancestral to D, which is ancestral to E. But the diagram on the right is a better representation of the evidence: Species A, B, C and D are not in the actual lineage leading to E, which remains unknown.





It turns out that no series of fossils can provide evidence for Darwinian descent with modification. Even in the case of living species, buried remains cannot generally be used to establish ancestor-descendant relationships. Imagine finding two human skeletons in the same grave, one about thirty years older than the other. Was the older individual the parent of the younger? Without written genealogical records and identifying marks (or in some cases DNA), it is impossible to answer the question. And in this case we would be dealing with two skeletons from the same species that are only a generation apart and from the same location. With fossils from different species that are now extinct, and widely separated in time and space, there is no way to establish that one is the ancestor of another—no matter how many transitional fossils we find.

In 1978, Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History wrote: “The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.”13 Nature science writer Henry Gee wrote in 1999 that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate.” When we call new fossil discoveries “missing links,” it is “as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Gee concluded: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”14


5 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 17-18, 25.
6 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Sixth Edition (London: John Murray, 1872), Chapter X, pp. 266, 285-288. Available online (2009) here.
7 J. William Schopf, “The early evolution of life: solution to Darwin’s dilemma,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 9 (1994): 375-377.
James W. Valentine, Stanley M. Awramik, Philip W. Signor & M. Sadler, “The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary,” Evolutionary Biology 25 (1991): 279-356.
James W. Valentine & Douglas H. Erwin, “Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments: The Fossil Record,” pp. 71-107 in Rudolf A. Raff & Elizabeth C. Raff, (editors), Development as an Evolutionary Process (New York: Alan R. Liss, 1987).
Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,” Scientific American 267 (November, 1992): 84-91.
“The Scientific Controversy Over the Cambrian Explosion,” Discovery Institute. Available online (2009) here.
Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2002), Chapter 3. More information available online (2009) here.
Stephen C. Meyer, “The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang,” pp. 323-402 in John Angus Campbell & Stephen C. Meyer (editors), Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2003). More information available online (2009) here.
8 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, p. 28.

9 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, p. 48.
10 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 49-51.
11 Kevin Padian & Luis M. Chiappe, “The origin and early evolution of birds,” Biological Reviews 73 (1998): 1-42. Available online (2009) here.
Wells, Icons of Evolution, pp. 119-122.
12 Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 25, 53.
Chico Marx in Duck Soup (Paramount Pictures, 1933). This and other Marx Brothers quotations are available online (2009) here.
13 Gareth Nelson, “Presentation to the American Museum of Natural History (1969),” in David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach, “The reform of palaeontology and the rise of biogeography—25 years after 'ontogeny, phylogeny, palaeontology and the biogenetic law' (Nelson, 1978),” Journal of Biogeography 31 (2004): 685-712.
14 Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time. New York: Free Press, 1999, pp. 5, 32, 113-117.
Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006). More information available online (2009) here.

 

Whale Evolution: http;//www.pbsorg/wgbh/evolution/library/03/4/1_034_05.html
Call it an unfinished story, but with a plot that's a grabber. It's the tale of an ancient land mammal making its way back to the sea, becoming the forerunner of today's whales. In doing so, it lost its legs, and all of its vital systems became adapted to a marine existence -- the reverse of what happened millions of years previously, when the first animals crawled out of the sea onto land.

Some details remain fuzzy and under investigation. But we know for certain that this back-to-the-water evolution did occur, thanks to a profusion of intermediate fossils that have been uncovered over the past two decades.

In 1978, paleontologist Phil Gingerich discovered a 52-million-year-old skull in Pakistan that resembled fossils of creodonts -- wolf-sized carnivores that lived between 60 and 37 million years ago, in the early Eocene epoch. But the skull also had characteristics in common with the Archaeocetes, the oldest known whales. The new bones, dubbed Pakicetus, proved to have key features that were transitional between terrestrial mammals and the earliest true whales. One of the most interesting was the ear region of the skull. In whales, it is extensively modified for directional hearing underwater. In Pakicetus, the ear region is intermediate between that of terrestrial and fully aquatic animals.

Another, slightly more recent form, called Ambulocetus, was an amphibious animal. Its forelimbs were equipped with fingers and small hooves. The hind feet of Ambulocetus, however, were clearly adapted for swimming. Functional analysis of its skeleton shows that it could get around effectively on land and could swim by pushing back with its hind feet and undulating its tail, as otters do today.

Rhodocetus shows evidence of an increasingly marine lifestyle. Its neck vertebrae are shorter, giving it a less flexible, more stable neck -- an adaptation for swimming also seen in other aquatic animals such as sea cows, and in an extreme form in modern whales. The ear region of its skull is more specialized for underwater hearing. And its legs are disengaged from its pelvis, symbolizing the severance of the connection to land locomotion.

By 40 million years ago, Basilosaurus -- clearly an animal fully adapted to an aquatic environment -- was swimming the ancient seas, propelled by its sturdy flippers and long, flexible body. Yet Basilosaurus still retained small, weak hind legs -- baggage from its evolutionary past -- even though it could not walk on land.

None of these animals is necessarily a direct ancestor of the whales we know today; they may be side branches of the family tree. But the important thing is that each fossil whale shares new, whale-like features with the whales we know today, and in the fossil record, we can observe the gradual accumulation of these aquatic adaptations in the lineage that led to modern whales.

As evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin points out, "In one sense, evolution didn't invent anything new with whales. It was just tinkering with land mammals. It's using the old to make the new."

 

“The sequence begins,” Coyne writes, “with the recently discovered fossil of a close relative of whales, a raccoon-sized animal called Indohyus. Living 48 million years ago, Indohyus was… probably very close to what the whale ancestor looked like.” In the next paragraph, Coyne writes, “Indohyus was not the ancestor of whales, but was almost certainly its cousin. But if we go back 4 million more years, to 52 million years ago, we see what might well be that ancestor. It is a fossil skull from a wolf-sized creature called Pakicetus, which is bit more whalelike than Indohyus.” On the page separating these two paragraphs is a figure captioned “Transitional forms in the evolution of modern whales,” which shows Indohyus as the first in the series and Pakicetus as the second.10

But Pakicetus—as Coyne just told us—is 4 million years older than Indohyus. To a Darwinist, this doesn’t matter: Pakicetus is “more whalelike” than Indohyus, so it must fall between Indohyus and modern whales, regardless of the fossil evidence.

(Coyne performs the same trick with fossils that are supposedly ancestral to modern birds. The textbook icon Archaeopteryx, with feathered wings like a modern bird but teeth and a tail like a reptile, is dated at 145 million years. But what Coyne calls the “nonflying feathered dinosaur fossils”—which should have come before Archaeopteryx—are tens of millions of years younger. Like Darwinists Kevin Padian and Luis Chiappe eleven years earlier, Coyne simply rearranges the evidence to fit Darwinian theory.)11

So much for Coyne’s prediction that “later species should have traits that make them look like the descendants of earlier ones.” And so much for his argument that “if evolution were not true, fossils would not occur in an order that makes evolutionary sense.” Ignoring the facts he himself has just presented, Coyne brazenly concludes: “When we find transitional forms, they occur in the fossil record precisely where they should.” If Coyne’s book were turned into a movie, this scene might feature Chico Marx saying, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”12

There is another problem with the whale series (and every other series of fossils) that Coyne fails to address: No species in the series could possibly be the ancestor of any other, because all of them possess characteristics they would first have to lose before evolving into a subsequent form. This is why the scientific literature typically shows each species branching off a supposed lineage.

In the figure below, all the lines are hypothetical. The diagram on the left is a representation of evolutionary theory: Species A is ancestral to B, which is ancestral to C, which is ancestral to D, which is ancestral to E. But the diagram on the right is a better representation of the evidence: Species A, B, C and D are not in the actual lineage leading to E, which remains unknown.





It turns out that no series of fossils can provide evidence for Darwinian descent with modification. Even in the case of living species, buried remains cannot generally be used to establish ancestor-descendant relationships. Imagine finding two human skeletons in the same grave, one about thirty years older than the other. Was the older individual the parent of the younger? Without written genealogical records and identifying marks (or in some cases DNA), it is impossible to answer the question. And in this case we would be dealing with two skeletons from the same species that are only a generation apart and from the same location. With fossils from different species that are now extinct, and widely separated in time and space, there is no way to establish that one is the ancestor of another—no matter how many transitional fossils we find.

In 1978, Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History wrote: “The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.”13 Nature science writer Henry Gee wrote in 1999 that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate.” When we call new fossil discoveries “missing links,” it is “as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Gee concluded: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”14