Several professional paleontologists and biologists have called the theory of evolution into question
Charles Darwin: ."(Since) innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? "Origin of Species", p. 162. "Why 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." "Origin of Species," p. 293.
Stephen J. Gould: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persist as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils..We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.""Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, vol. 86 (May 1987), p. 14.
"Although Archaeopteryx is often proposed as a transitional form, "its fossils do not count." Punctuated Equilibria, 1977.
Stephen J. Gould & George Simpson, "New categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not lead up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences." "Evolution's Erratic
Pace", Natural History, May 1977,at 12,12. John G. Fleagle: "the lack of transitional forms hasn't stopped the paleoanthropologists from selecting their favorite candidates for the anthropoid's predecessors."217 Gish quote of Elizabeth Culotta, Science 256:1516, 1992
Alec J. Kelso: "No fossils of transitional forms that link primates to tree shrews (insectivores), or to anything else.
Alec J., Kelso, R.D Martin,. and others "There is thus no evidence in the present world or in the world of the past to link primates to any other creatures. Right at the very start, then, an evolutionary origin of man is invalidated by actual empirical scientific evidence, The primates, as a group, stand completely isolated from all other creatures. From Gish "The Fossils Say No, 1995, p. 216
David Raup & Stephen Stanley: "Unfortunately, the origins of most higher categories are shrouded in mystery: commonly new higher categories appear abruptly in the fossil record without evidence of transitional forms."
Principals of Paleontology, 1971, p. 306. Boyce Rensberger: "The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed, or fox-like creatures, living nearly 50 million years ago, to today's much larger one-toe horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown." "Ideas on evolution Going Through a Revolution among Scientists," Houston chronicle, 5 Nov. 1980, sec. 4, p. 15.
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Lucy. An artist's impression. |
Niles Eldridge: "...there are all sorts of gaps: absence of gradationally intermediate 'transitional forms' between species, but also between larger groups-between, say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." "Monkey Business," p. 65.
Patricia G. Gensel: "We still lack any precise information concerning the presumed aquatic ancestors from which land plants evolved, and the search for evidence of these precursors and of probable transitional stages continues." "The Evolutions of Early Land Plants," American Scientist, Vol. 75, Sept./Oct. 1987, p. 480.
Frank M. Carpenter, "There is, however, no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin; the oldest insects known show no transition to other arthropods." "Fossil Insects," 1952, p. 18.
Henry N. Andrews: "The spore bearing organs of these Permian mosses have not been found, so that more precise comparisons with living forms are not possible. Their importance lies in the fact that they are well-preserved, they are unquestionably mosses, and sufficiently similar to modern ones in their vegetative organization as to suggest no major chnages in moss evolution since that time." "Studies in Paleontology," 1961, p. 401.
Neal Gillespie: "..."species appeared full-blown suddenly, endured unchanged, and became extinct without leaving descendants". Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation 7, (1979) (U. of Chicago Press). p. 26.
George Simpson: (noted Harvard paleontologist) "The regular absence of transitional forms is an almost universal phenomenon...all orders of classes of animals (and) analogous categories of plants." The Sudden Appearance of Higher Categories, in Evolution of Life. 149 (S. Tax ed. 1960)
Also as (paleontologist Am. Museum of Nat. History) "As it became more and more evident that the great gaps remained despite wonderful progress in finding the members of lower transitional groups and progressive lines, it was no longer satisfactory to impute this absence of objective data entirely to chance. The failure of Paleontology to produce such evidence was so keenly felt that a few disillusioned naturalists even decided that the theory of organic evolution, or general organic continuity of descent was wrong, after all.". "Tempo and Mode of Evolution" (1944), p 115,
Barbara Stahl: "It is not difficult to imagine how feathers, once evolved, assumed additional functions, but how they arose initially, presumably from reptilian scales, defies analysis." "The problem has been set aside, not for lack of interest, but for lack of evidence. No fossil structure transitional between scale and feather is known, and recent investigators are unwilling to found a theory on pure speculation." "It seems, from the complex structure of feathers, that their evolution from reptilian scales would have required an immense period of time and involved a series of intermediate structures. So far, the fossil record does not bear out that supposition." .." "Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution", McGraw-Hill, N. Y., 1974, p.349-350.
James W. Valentine & Douglas H. Erwin (Valentine is at the U. of Cal. at Santa Barbara, and Erwin at Michigan State U.)"Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments: The Fossil Record," "If ever we were to expect to find ancestors to or intermediates between higher taxa, it would be in the rocks of late Precambrian to Ordovician times, when the bulk of the world's higher animal taxa evolved. Yet transitional alliances are unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing then...We conclude that the probability that species selection is a general solution to the origin of higher taxa is not great, and that neither of the contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem applicable to the origin of new body plans." in "Development as an Evolutionary Process," N. Y., 1987, pp. 84-86.
Ann Gibbons, John Ruben (Lung Structure and Ventilation in Therapod Dinosaurs and Early Birds," Science, Vol. 278, 14 Nov. 1997, pp. 1267-1270) ".. argues that a transition from a crocodilian to a bird lung would be impossible, because the transitional animal would have a life-threatening hernia or a hole in its diaphragm." "Lung Fossils Suggest Dinos Breathed in Cold Blood," Science, Vol. 278, 14 Nov. 1997, p. 1230.
Ernest Lutz: "There is neither evidence of a lineage from reptiles to Archaeopteryx nor from it to any living birds. Further, and also most importantly, natural selection is inadequate as a possible mechanism to explain the descent of Archaeopteryx. In view of the evidence science has oversold the case of Archaeopteryx as a transitional form." "A Review of Claims About Archaeopteryx in the Light of the Evidence," Creation Research Soc. Quarterly, June 1995, p. 18.
Newsweek, Nov. 1980: "In the fossil record missing links are the rule; the story of life is as disjointed as a newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated." "Is Man a Subtle Accident?" Newsweek, 3 November, 1980, p. 95.
Colin Patterson: "..."Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils... You say I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." In letter to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979. Cited in: Sunderland, Luther D., Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, 1988), p. 89.
Alfred S. Romer: "The origin of the rodents is obscure. When they first appear, in the genus Paramys, we are already dealing with a typical if rather primitive true rodent with the definitive ordinal characters well developed. Presumably of course they had arisen from some basal, insectivorous, placental stock, but no transitional forms are known." "Vertebrate Paleontology," 1966.
