Does evidence of transitional forms exist ? (Hominid and other)

Rats, and just when I was getting ready to roll out 100 million years of transitional amonites...

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:
"So, how do Young Earth Creationists explain this evidence ?"
--I was hoping I wouldn't get myself in too many more topics. But what I've found is that all the transitionals that scientists would be to propose by common descent of humans is they are either apes, unusual apes, or their human. Which one doesn't fit into one of these catagories?

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Here's my absolute all-time favorite quiz, TC. Why don't you tell US which one's ape, near-ape, human, near-human? Good luck.

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Originally posted by Jeff:
Any response from the gallery ?

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What in the heck are these things we've posted here ?
Does ANYONE in the Creationist camp have an answer ?

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How will we EVER explain them ?

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Kind Regards,

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jeff

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Nah, there won't be any response. Anytime anyone posts any concrete evidence for any scientific point, the creationists simply wait until the post slides off the bottom of the page. Witness my apparently now-defunct attempt to engage Cobra in a substantive argument on HIS OWN THEORY!!!. As was pointed out in the "Debate" thread (albeit for different reasons), the debate between science and creationism will never be resolved: but only because the creationists refuse to debate when cornered...

Not only have you failed to address the evidence but you have reduced to abject lies and misrepresentations. It’s one thing to argue from authority, it’s quite another to misquote, lie about, and misrepresent the supposed authority. Evolutionist lies LOL.BTW: What is it about creationists and authority? Must have something to do with the witnessing instead of evidentiary nature of their belief system.As far as Stephen Gould goes, this particular quote has been refuted so many times even AiG won't use it anymore. Here's a couple of more germane, in context, quotes from Dr. Gould:

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Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists whether through design or stupidity, I do not know as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.
"Evolution as Fact and Theory," Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, p. 260

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The anatomical transition from reptiles to mammals is particularly well documented in the key anatomical change of jaw articulation to hearing bones. Only one bone, called the dentary, builds the mammalian jaw, while reptiles retain several small bones in the rear portion of the jaw. We can trace, through a lovely sequence of intermediates, the reduction of these small reptilian bones, and their eventual disappearance or exclusion from the jaw, including the remarkable passage of the reptilian articulation bones into the mammalian middle ear (where they became our malleus and incus, or hammer and anvil). We have even found the transitional form that creationists often proclaim inconceivable in theory for how can jawbones become ear bones if intermediaries must live with an unhinged jaw before the new joint forms? The transitional species maintains a double jaw joint, with both the old articulation of reptiles (quadrate to articular bones) and the new connection of mammals (squamosal to dentary) already in place! Thus, one joint could be lost, with passage of its bones into the ear, while the other articulation continued to guarantee a properly hinged jaw. Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence of all transitional forms by ignoring those that have been found, and continuing to taunt us with admittedly frequent examples of absence.
"Hooking Leviathan by Its Past," Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History, New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997, pp. 360-361.

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I think that pretty well takes care of any lingering doubts about one of the two foremost modern writers on evolution.Additional Gould quotes available here.As for the Raup quote (although I haven’t found the actual quote to see what was left out), it should be understood that Dr. Raup is a specialist in extinctions. He accepts Darwinian evolution a la punctuated equilibrium. He is principally known for insisting that all major and minor extinctions are caused by impact events (a theory which is in dispute). Raup has argued that the statistics of species diversity during the Proterozoic, for example, are consistent with the hypothesis that all mass extinctions, large and small, are due to impact. The quote needs to be understood in context of the continuing argument by the PE adherents (Gould, etc), vs the strict gradualists — and not as a scientist arguing against evolution.Although Mr. P has pretty much covered Dr. Patterson, I would like to complete the alleged quote so readers can see it in context.

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I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument."
-- Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.

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The quote is indeed taken from a letter from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland. The purpose of the letter was to protest Sunderland’s misrepresentation of Patterson’s position. The next few sentences are:

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... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test.

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So, what Patterson is saying is that perhaps modern birds descended from the species Archaeopteryx, or perhaps they descended from a cousin species. He just doesn't know how to prove which is the case. Therefore, he refuses to make a claim he can't fully back up. BTW: Over the last 20 years since Patterson wrote this, substantial additional evidence has been found — so much so that, if Dr. Patterson were alive, he would find himself much more inclined to accept the evidence for Archeopteryx.For additional commentary, see this site.Lying for god doesn't help the creationist cause. OTOH, keep it up: the more your transparent deception is revealed, the less credible is the whole creationist argument.

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Originally posted by Percipient:
Please refrain from characterizing your co-debaters responses as lies. Pointing out the problems in their arguments should be sufficient.

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--Percy

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In general, I concur wholeheartedly. On the other hand, how would you personally characterize the deliberate misrepresentation of the "authorities" quoted?

Percy: Point taken (and excellent example, btw).I fear I tend to become a bit, err, dogmatic when the exact same misquotation is rehashed over and over and over - in spite of being thoroughly refuted innumerable times - occasionally for decades. Especially when the quotation is specifically designed to illustrate an obvious distortion (i.e., the Evil Global Evolutionist Conspiracy (TM)).Specific knowledge of a subject area aside, common sense in any reasonably intelligent person (which redstang assuredly is), would lead one to question a seemingly contradictory statement such as these (and most of the other quotes in the famous "Revised Quote Book" from which the above were lifted). After all, why in the world would Stephen Gould, a paleontologist who has devoted his life's work to evolution, who invented the theory of punctuated equilibrium as a mechanism for evolution, who is one of the foremost writers on Darwinian evolution, and whose primary beef with biologists rests on his disagreement with strict gradualism (and not evolution), even be considered as someone denying the facts of the science he has made his life's work? If you read a one-line quote from the Cardinal of New York that somehow seem to indicate he was denying the existence of god, it would behoove you to question the validity of the quotation - regardless of your particular belief system.The only ways in which such quotations could be taken at face value are:
1) the reader is ignorant;
2) the reader accepts the quotation, and because it matches his/her worldview, is willing to perpetuate it without question;
3) the reader is deliberately attempting to deceive.Since 1 and 2 require either blind faith or lack of intelligence (or both), which is NOT the case with redstang, only number 3 seems to apply.I will attempt to use your example methodology in future rebuttals of this type of post. Still, it is very frustrating...

Once again, we are dealing with out-of-context quotations (rather than misquotations or fabrications, this time). Both of the scientists quoted were discussing the erroneous early idea of orthogenesis, or the direct lineal descent of horses from Eohippus. Here's an explanation:

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Orthogenesis was an idea that was popular in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth century but has been rejected by scientists since no one could provide a viable mechanism for it and more importantly the evidence showed it to be wrong. Orthogenesis is the notion that evolution proceeds in straight lines. This can refer to the idea that evolution proceeds straight from species A to species B without any side branches. More importantly, it refers to the idea that an evolutionary lineage changes steady, uniform way with no reversals. Sometimes, but not always, it was imagined that species were evolving steadily towards a goal. Usually this trend was supposed to be caused by some mysterious inner force of the species that compelled it to evolve. Some supporters of orthogenesis would say that once a trend got started in a lineage that it would unchangingly continue until extinction occurred. (From this site

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That these scientists are referring to orthogenesis, and not horse evolution, is evidenced by Westoll's reference to "early classical evolutionary tree" and Hardin's "There was a time when...". In other words, both scientists were absolutely correct: there is no such thing as straight-line evolution as depicted by orthogenesis. Hardin's further comment on textbooks is also spot on: textbooks often oversimplify or even perpetuate errors. Blame the publishers, not the science.People who rely on websites like AiG for their information are likely to get it wrong, because AiG is notorious for misrepresenting the positions of scientists. Of course, if the website fits your worldview and you have no interest in learning the true nature of the claims, that's another story.

Hi Schraf: Good response. See my post #60 in this thread where I pointed out once again to Redstang that the quotes he was getting from AiG were erroneous. In this case, the lack of context is the culprit, rather than deliberate misrepresentation. In both instances, the authors were discussing the discredited late-19th Century idea of "orthogenesis". Both were discussing the early history of evolutionary thought - not modern theory. Westoll talks about the "early classical evolutionary tree" and Hardin talks about "there was a time (i.e., in the past) when the existing fossils of the horses seemed to indicate a straight-lined evolution" (IOW orthogenesis). AiG is SOOOOO predictable.

Hi jhmyself:Welcome to the forum. You pose an excellent question - "If evolution is true, why don't we see micro-changes in the fossil record?" And you're right, I'm not sure that specific question has been addressed. From what book did you get the quote (just curious — it works out better if you provide citations for your quotes)?

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Originally posted by jhmyself:
Hi. I've been reserching evolution recently (because of a school assignment, partialy, but also because I'm curious about the evidence that either side has for or against it). I've been reading a book that had a chapter on the fossil record, and it made a point that I don't believe has been discussed here. Maybe that's because no one's thought about it. Maybe it's because I'm an idiot for believing what some moron wrote in a book. But this is basicaly the argument:

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"If evolution realy did occur from small, micro evolutionary changes over millions of years, then we should have at least thousands of fossils showing each and every micro evolutionary step. pointing to a small handfull of "transitional" fossils wouldn't be enough."

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I'm curious to know how valid this argument is.

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There are several fundamental problems with what may be the idea behind the quote (that’s why I asked which book it came from). To wit, this would not be what we would expect to find in reality. The statement as written implies a fair amount of anti-evolutionary bias, argument from incredulity fallacy, and false analogy (strawman’) argumentation.One of the key reasons why we wouldn’t expect to see this is the difficulty in anything actually fossilizing in the first place — of all the millions upon millions of organisms that have lived and died on this planet since the first unicellular life arose, only a relatively tiny handful died in conditions where they could be fossilized. And of that handful, many (possibly even the majority) that did fossilize were destroyed by natural processes: everything from erosion (wind, water, glaciers, etc) to volcanism (buried or destroyed) to bioturbation (wrecked by burrowing animals) to plate subduction (melted back into the molten core of the planet) to destruction by geology (ground to powder during an overthrust event or shattered by upthrust). Others, possibly more than have already been recovered, are buried so deep that finding them is impossible. The discovery of a fossil of anything is the exception, rather than the rule. The demand that every single animal be fossilized (which is what the quoted statement is implying) is an impossibility.Turning it around: if every organism that died was fossilized, and if every fossil was perfectly preserved, and if every perfectly preserved fossil could be found, then my prediction would be we WOULD find microtransitions. However, that’s pure wishful thinking. The fact that the fossil record is as complete as it is (enough to develop good hypotheses), and so many gross morphological transitions ARE documented, is in itself something of a miracle. Does this answer your question?

Well, after all, I said it was one of the key reasons...

Jet - your question was answered in the first post on this thread. For an even more complete answer, see the whale evolution discussion (post #114 on this thread). Care to address those, or at least explain your reasoning as to why they aren't "transitional" in your lexicon?

And yet another substantive, highly detailed and crushing reply from our resident Christian exemplar.

That would be saltation, not evolution. So no. Large scale morphological change in multi-cellular organisms is rarely if ever observed. The primary reason being that such massive change is almost invariably fatal. Most such "monsters" won't survive past the embryo stage.Punctuated equilibrium - at least the modern toned-down version is now pretty well accepted for certain lineages at certain times. It is, after all, merely an observation of a pattern found in certain lineages over time - most notably those marine organisms that Gould and Eldredge studied most. It has to do with mode and tempo, not mechanism. You're repeating a creationist strawman here. You might consider actually looking up some non-creationist references on PE. It could be illuminating for you to see what the scientists studying the issue have to say about it. By all means read both the pro- and con- arguments. It's a nice nutshell of the scientific process in action. Probably. Most major adaptive changes take time. Interestingly, such transitions (like glider to flyer) could take as little as a few hundred or thousand generations. Wouldn't even necessarily be a blip on the geological record when you're talking about grain on the order of a million+ years, let alone about a time distance from present on the order 100 my. What never ceases to amaze me is not that they haven't found all the "'tweens", but that they've found anything at all. Not only that, but found multiple specimens of Archy - it must have been a REALLY common sight back in its day.1. Why? Since several older fossils of ground-dwelling dinos were feathered, that's not an issue. As to utility, given the number of gliders alive today with unique adaptations - ranging from the flattened chest of the flying snake (Chrysopelea spp) to skin flaps of the world champion sugar gliders (Petaurus breviceps) - it isn't a far stretch to see a smallish tree-dweller go from gliding to powered flight. And since the gliding ability of the numerous animals running around today don't seem to be major problems for their other, primary means of locomotion, the idea that "wings" had to be fully formed to be useful is shown to be erroneous. (If you can't tell, I prefer the "top down" vs "bottom up" pathway for the evolution of flight. I could be wrong.)2. No. Evolution couldn't care less what the future might bring. At the shortest timescales, evolution helps populations adapt over multiple generations to the conditions found in the population's current habitat. Since the environment is constantly changing, today's adaptation might very well be tomorrow's liability. If the change is drastic enough and in a short enough time frame, the odds are you're dead. Period. If not, or if your species has enough plasticity, then maybe - just maybe - you'll squeek through, until the next challenge comes along.3. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, the record is simply not complete enough - nor is it expected to be so - to get a geneological series of begats. In a nutshell, the reason is this: most critters don't fossilize when they die. Fossilization requires a whole host of specific conditions (i.e., rapid burial so it doesn't decompose or be eaten by scavengers, right conditions of acidity, moisture, temperature, soil composition), etc. Add to that geologic processes - everything from erosion to plate tectonics and vulcanism - which have a tendency to destroy most of what DOES get fossilized. Finally, consider the sheer magnitude of the pure luck involved that some buried fossil will erode to just the point where it's on the surface but NOT destroyed by erosion just at the right moment when some paleontologist happens to glance down and see it. In the particular case of Archy, we're talking small forest dweller, which one of the worst possible combinations for fossilization in the first place. Again, it is simply amazing to me that we have such a clear picture - or even any picture. I admit it's a bit disappointing that a lineal ancestor of Archy hasn't been discovered. However, under the circumstances, it isn't really that surprising. My guess is they'll keep looking. What kind of rediculous argument is this? This sounds like something Ken Ham or Kent Hovind came up with. Since DNA - the specific sequences of nucleic acids in the chromosomes of living organisms - are what is used to determine relatedness, please explain how comparing the volume of water in non-living and living matter is even remotely germane? The odds of two different living things sharing even 80% homology at the DNA level WITHOUT being related - however distantly - is simply astronomical. We're talking literally thousands of points of congruence. If they were totally different - if there was no congruence between different forms of life at the genetic level, then you might have a case for either ID or even special creation. Now you're back at the "root" of the "tree of life". Here's a very readable article on what scientists think is the answer to your question (note, this is not a peer-reviewed article, but rather a "pop sci" explanation. As such, it's neither overwhelmingly detailed nor necessarily authoritative. However, it IS a good overview). My Name is LUCA -- The Last Universal Common Ancestor. Enjoy. "Virtually identical" means what, exactly? The modern coelocanths are utterly different - not even in the same genus - as their Cretaceous ancestors. Same for the modern nautiloids - the last impoverished remnant of a once-dominant order. Bacteria? What? Which one? Bacteria certainly have been around for 3.5 gy, but you'll have to really stretch it to point to a single bacterial lineage that stretches anywhere near that long. Amphibians? Which ones do you think are "living fossils"? Insects found in amber? They're still insects - along with 750,000 other species. However, they AREN'T the same as those found today. Try again.

Well, I don't debate websites. Perhaps you can pick out something you consider exceptionally compelling, synopsize it here, then be prepared to defend it. If this is your only answer to my post, then may I consider the remainder of my points - since uncontested - to have been accepted by you?

Now this is interesting. When I first replied to this post of yours, you had two bare links with no comment. Now, a mere few hours later, I find you've gone back after my post and substantively altered yours - so that now mine looks ridiculous. Is this a new creationist tactic from "Evolution Slaying for Dummies (TM)"? Kendemeyer does the same thing. It isn't one that I've encountered in the typical creationist repertoire.To give you the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume you're unfamiliar with discussion board etiquette. If, after someone replies, you feel that a substantive re-work of your original post is needed (i.e., beyond correcting simple grammatical or typographical errors), the appropriate methodology is to add a new post to clarify or modify. This keeps the flow of discussion headed in the right direction without suspicions of dishonesty or lack of integrity.Now I have to go back and respond once again to a post to which I ALREADY replied, to avoid potential charges that I'm ignoring the substance of your remarks. You wouldn't be planning anything underhanded like that, now would you? However, that is not the definition of transitional form as commonly understood. A transitional form is one which bears features of two or more taxa. It is NOT necessarily expected to be in the lineal descent (i.e., A begat B). In fact, the further back you go, the more likely a given fossil will represent a sister or cousin, not an ancestor. Archy falls into this category - most paleontologists don't consider it the ancestor of birds. They DO consider it representative of what a putative ancestor of birds would look like at that point in time, with features predicted by evolution. The fact that Archy itself is difficult to categorize in any but an arbitrary fashion as falling into the "bird" or "reptile" category is indicative of its transitional status. Depending on who you ask, Archy will be classed as one or the other. Right - it has features of both. As I mentioned, depending on who you ask it will be classed as one or the other (your points one and two). This is more or less arbitrary based on whether the individual classifying it thinks that the bird-like features are more important than the reptile bits, or vice-versa. This is the quintissential example of transitional. As to your point three, you may "opt" for it, but the evidence of the fossil features itself falsifies your contention. After all, if it had no relation to either group, why would it share features of both, rather than neither? This is simply silly. A platapus isn't a transitional. It doesn't have features of a duck. It doesn't have features of a beaver or muskrat. In fact, I can't think of any placental mammal with which it shares features of any kind. It's a monotreme - a nearly extinct lineage totally distinct from both marsupials and placental mammals. Its closest relative is a kind of anteater-looking critter called an echidna. There are only three species of monotremes left on the planet - not unsurprising when you consider that its relatively primitive plumbing and other features place monotremes down at the base of the mammalian tree. Of course they can. We can find primitive monotremes that are definitely monotremes based on the particular skeletal adaptations needed for egg-laying. That's how we know they're monotremes in the first place. Besides, most of the monotreme fossils that have been found, including a 110 myo fossil ancestor of the platypus, bear more resemblance to the therapsids (i.e., primitive mammal-like reptiles) than they do to modern mammals. They're a transitional, of course, but not the one you're on about.