7 Major "Missing Links" Since Darwin

National Geographic ^ | March 2009 | Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation

[Salman]

For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 2009), National Geographic News asked leading scientists for their picks of the most important fossils that show evolution in action ...

[wendy1946]

Sorry, I'm going to have to call BS on this one. Everybody with anything resembling brains or talent who's ever taken any sort of a look at that situation in the last 60 years has said the same basic thing i.e. that there simply ARE NO missing links or intermediate fossils. The lack of intermediate fossils is one of the two main motivations for the new version of evolution which you read about i.e. the Gould/Eldridge/Mayr notion of punctuated equilibria, or "punk-eek". If there were missing links lying around all over the place, Gould and his pals would not have bothered.

The Fossils In General

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them ..."

David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology)
Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum
Evolution, vol 28, Sep 1974, p 467

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places."

Francis Hitching
The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong
Penguin Books, 1982, p.19

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?"
Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127

"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line, there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89

"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be claimed to be the ancestor of any other group. We do not have in the fossil record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history and has been conservative in habitat."

G. S. Carter, Professor & author
Fellow of Corpus Christi College
Cambridge, England
Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution
University of Washington Press, 1967

"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear ... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
Natural History, 86(5):13, 1977

"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (p. 206)

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory (of evolution)." (p. 292)

Charles Robert Darwin
The Origin of Species, 1st edition reprint
Avenel Books, 1979

The Abundance of Fossils

"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about 120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."

David M. Raup, Curator of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology"
Field Museum of Natural History
Vol. 50, No. 1, (Jan, 1979), p. 25

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems,
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 9

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

When you make that statement you clearly illustrate your total lack of comprehension.

I don't think it's a comprehension issue but one of semantics.

When 'mountainlion' states "I don't believe in evolution" it seems clear to me that what was meant was "I don't believe that evolution as a mechanism for changes in species has been solidly proven and is poor theory".

Did you think 'mountainlion' thought evolution to be a religion or faith? It seems that way from your response. Sometimes you have to read a bit more into people's words when they fail to properly express themselves.

No offense intended...I'm just observing over coffee this morning.
If I'm off base, I'll sit down and shut up.

[Raycpa]

One of the problems about the creation/evolution debate is the nature of how God creates. Creationists insist that god is confined to a time line that proceeds from a starting point in the past and moves to the future and they adopt the same time reference which evolutionists use.

Creationists ignore the possibility that God can create outside of time. They are troubled with the idea that God might have “placed fossils” in the earth at the same time he created the earth because this makes it seem God is deceitful.

I would like to suggest that two of Jesus’s miracles as well as the creation of Adam demonstrate that God can create something in the present something that required the death of something and a process that ordinarily happens over time. Jesus created wine and bread. Both originate from plants which would have taken a long time to create, bake or ferment and would have required destruction of the original. However, both happened in an instant.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The missing link is faith.

missing link = holy grail

[bray]

People who believe in evolution also believe in the Tooth Fairy. All seven of those and especially the bird reptile have been shown to be frauds. But the drumbeat goes on for their attempts to disprove God.

Pray for America and Our Troops

[jimmyray]

Yes, pics of drawings...

These are from the talkorigins website (Left is the "turkana boy" and left is another drawing of a homo sapiens.)

Wonder why they do a comparison next to a "typical" european type skull. Compare the "turkana boy" skul to the human head shape (actual photo) in the bottom left corner.

Humans come in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes, and the skull is no different. The consensus of what is a "typical" homo sapiens skull is often presented when comparing man's so called ancestors, however, if one does a little research into skull shapes, you will find that the shapes vary greatly! This is the best that National Geographic's scientist can come up with? I am FAR from convinced! SCIENCE!!!

[Kolb]

"So evolution is just the same as a religion, so why is it promoted with tax dollars?"

fail

[Larry Lucido]

She had access to an Erga-nomic bicep machine.

[battletank]

I realize that. Why did you not address my comment about churches never paying any tax money?

[Darwin Fish]

where’s the spam guy?

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with gradualism:

1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear ...

2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
Natural History, 86(5):13, 1977

[chuck_the_tv_out]

Churches, like any charity, don’t have to pay taxes on income. Are you saying they should?

[Larry Lucido]

All right, enough with the Helen Thomas pictures!

[metmom]

Did you even bother to read the first paragraph?

Did YOU ever read the article?

For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 2009), National Geographic News asked leading scientists for their picks of the most important fossils that show evolution in action—seven of which are presented here, starting with this "fishapod."

Couple problems.....

First, is that there are no pictures of the fossils shown.

Second is the title of the article...."PHOTOS: 7 Major "Missing Links" Since Darwin"

It says *photos* instead of *drawings*.

Sheesh, a little accuracy and integrity in reporting from a publication that presents itself as *scientific* would be nice, for a change.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

a monosyllabulic argument. most impressive for an evolutionist! lol!

listen to the EVIDENCE man. you’ve been indoctrinated with something that is NOT true, and is very much part of leftism.

[metmom]

Why try to hijack the thread?

Why not just discuss the topic on hand without trying to make an issue of it by going off topic?

[chuck_the_tv_out]

Wonder why they do a comparison next to a "typical" european type skull. Compare the "turkana boy"

Just more leftarded racism and hate. They don't think the "turkana boy" is human, that's the fact.

[Mother Mary]

Excellent!

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed. Thanks for the ping!

[chuck_the_tv_out]

lol.