Missing Link?
Missing Links. The search for the human missing link tends to overshadow the fact that millions of transitional forms of every species would have been necessary for all creatures to have developed as Darwinian evolution suggests.
I won’t be going into detail on individual examples, but today we’re discussing missing links in the fossil record. For further information on specific missing links, go to the Rational Faith Resources page and look to the bottom for some of the ‘origins’ resources. You can also go to www.Google.com and search ‘missing links‘.
Missing Links and Darwinian Evolution
One of Darwin’s problems with his own theory was the lack of missing links in the fossil record. In The Origin of Species he put it like this:
“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 is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.”
There would have to be countless examples of missing links in the fossil record if all species had developed gradually by mutations and natural selection. A major focus of paleontology over the last hundred years has been the search for these missing links. The problem is…even though there have been millions of fossil discoveries recorded…the links are still missing.
Missing Links: Problems with Transitional Forms
In order to find missing links in the fossil record, there would have to have been transitional forms between species that lived, died, and were fossilized. These are what we do not see in the fossil record. However, there are also big issues with the idea of transitional forms in general.
If a fish is to evolve into a land animal and fins have to change to legs…why would a transitional form with fins that are evolving into legs survive? Chances are much better that it would be disadvantaged with inferior fins…while the legs were still not developed to work as well as they should. The law of natural selection makes it difficult to believe that this transitional creature would survive. The same thing would be likely to happen as forelimbs changed to wings as a terrestrial animal transitioned into a bird.
These big transitional changes are difficult to imagine. How could transitional forms (missing links) have a survival advantage with such huge changes required?
The sheer volume of the number of changes needed would also mean that with any type of gradual evolution, there should be many, many more transitional links in the fossil record than there are ‘completed’ species. Instead we see many gaps, or ‘missing’ links.
The problem is not with natural selection. An example would be animals with thicker coats surviving better in colder climates, so they are naturally selected for their survival advantage. Similar changes may be found within species in the fossil record. The fact that changes like this do occur just doesn’t carry over to the huge changes required between kingdoms, phyla and classes…and those are the links that are missing in the fossil record.
Missing Links: Some Major Categories
Where are the links missing? The big categories are the most conspicuous. The media often pick up on stories surrounding some of the following areas whenever a scientist discovers something that has ANY possible potential to be classified as a missing link…and it often continues to be prevalent long after it has been disproved.
The biggest issues with the least evidence of any possible missing links:
- The biggest would be non-living matter to living cell.
- Single celled organism to multi-celled.
- Invertebrates to vertebrates.
Some other examples that have theories and even fossils that some scientists argue could be missing links:
- Fish to Amphibian.
- Amphibian to Reptile.
- Reptile to Mammal.
- Reptiles to bird.
- Primate to man.
For the first three categories simply do not have any good hypothetical models to explain them from an evolutionary perspective, and certainly no good examples of fossils that could be potential missing links, so there is nothing much to discuss. What we see in the fossil record is the sudden appearance, fully developed, of all animal classes.
There are, however, a few theories with corresponding potential transitional fossils…
I’ll discuss a couple of these next time, so stay tuned…and don’t forget to comment if you have something to say!
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The lack of transitional fossils is an exceptional example of why Darwin’s ‘theory’ of evolution is exactly that- a ‘theory’. Merriam-Webster defines a theory as ‘a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena’. That is not to say it is scientifically PROVEN- just PLAUSIBLE. I think so many today take evolution as fact and forget that we have yet to prove it as a mechanism by which our change has been metered out- much less how we were created from the beginning.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Reilly. You always have something insightful to say…I think I’ll just compile a bunch of your comments and put together an article the next time I’m having a busy week :)
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