[mc5cents]

A rather good essay on the subject by Ann Coulter here.

From the article:

We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record -- for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)

But that's not what the fossil record shows. We don't have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the "trade secret" of paleontology. (Lots of real scientific theories have "secrets.")

If you get your news from the American news media, it will come as a surprise to learn that when Darwin first published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, his most virulent opponents were not fundamentalist Christians, but paleontologists.

Unlike high school biology teachers lying to your children about evolution, Darwin was at least aware of what the fossil record ought to show if his theory were correct. He said there should be "interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps."

But far from showing gradual change with a species slowly developing novel characteristics and eventually becoming another species, as Darwin hypothesized, the fossil record showed vast numbers of new species suddenly appearing out of nowhere, remaining largely unchanged for millions of years, and then disappearing.

Darwin's response was to say: Start looking! He blamed a fossil record that contradicted his theory on the "extreme imperfection of the geological record."

One hundred and fifty years later, that record is a lot more complete. We now have fossils for about a quarter of a million species.

[mc5cents]

Here is another Coulter piece that is very good too. Here.

[Vide]

"One hundred and fifty years later, that record is a lot more complete. We now have fossils for about a quarter of a million species."

Let's have a little context with that:

Scientists have described over 1.7 million of the world's species of animals, plants and algae, as of 2010.

From Wikipedia:

Total number of species (estimated): 7–100 million (identified and unidentified), including:

• 5–10 million bacteria;^[21]
• 1.5 million fungi;^[22]
• ~1 million mites^[23]
• 10–30 million insects;^[24]

Number of identified eukaryote species: 1.6 million, including:^[25]

• 3,067 brown algae
• 321,212 plants, including:
  • 10,134 red & green algae
  • 16,236 mosses,
  • 12,000 ferns & horsetails,
  • 1,021 gymnosperms,
  • 281,821 angiosperms;
• 74,000-120,000 fungi;^[22]
• 17,000 lichens;
• 1,367,555 animals, including:
  • 1,305,250 invertebrates
    • 2,175 corals
    • 85,000 mollusks
    • 102,248 arachnids
    • 47,000 crustaceans
    • 1,000,000 insects
    • 68,827 other invertebrates;
  • 62,305 vertebrates
    • 31,300 fish,
    • 6,433 amphibians,
    • 9,084 reptiles,
    • 9,998 birds,
    • 5,490 mammals;

So, let's be conservative and say just 100k vertebrate and hard invertebrate species at a time, with an average species life of (say) 5m years (again conservative - what did horses and humans look like 5m years ago?). A fossil record of (say) 500m years gives us 500m/5m x 100k = at least 10 million fossil species that we might expect to discover. Even using that (very) low-ball number, we've only uncovered 2.5% of the record so far.

The tired old "Zeno's Paradox" argument ("but what about the missing link between Mesohippus and Miohippus?") is ignorant, stupid or insane.