Consider what Darwin expected to find in the rocks and sedimentary layers of the earth: all forms of life connected by “infinitely numerous transitional links” and “every stratum full of such intermediate links”. This is not seen in the fossil record, and the majority of paleontologists I’ve read agree with me on that, at least in what they have published.

Gould included… Stephen Jay Gould in Natural History, writes about species stasis and the absence of transitional forms; “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; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 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’.”

Gould, one of the most respected evolutionary scientists of his time, did not see the fossil record as including the transitional fossils needed to support Darwinian evolution. He and Niles Eldredge came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium (long periods of unchanging stability followed by rapid periods of evolutionary changes) in order to explain the lack of transitional fossils in the fossil record.

Graduated equilibrium only makes sense if there are a lack of transitions. The only good evidence I can find for it, in fact, is the lack of transitional fossils…a theory based on a lack of evidence.

Even Dawkins admits that the fossil record does not fit as well with traditional evolutionary theory as it should, Especially when it comes to the Cambrian: “…the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years [evolutionists are now dating the beginning of the Cambrian at about 530 million years], are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), p. 229.

As far as I see it, we all have the same evidence, and there are differing opinions on how to interpret it. These discussions usually end up being a waste of time, as we have our own opinions and will not change them, so I may not reply to additional comments in this discussion. I encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to read as much as possible form both sides of the equation and make up their own minds.

Check my other articles and resources page. Go to godlesons.com and see what they have available…any issue relating to God and His existence is of vital importance…if you don’t know whether or not there is a God, it would make sense to explore the possibility…maybe there is an afterlife…and maybe there is something God has revealed to us about what he requires of us while we’re in this life. It only makes sense to explore the question and decide what you believe one way or the other.

A lot of Gould’s work was focused on coming up with new evolutionary paradigms that didn’t require transitional fossils because he couldn’t find any.

This is just plain wrong. There are plenty of transitional fossils during the Cambrian era. The problem Gould was pointing out, and is most famous for, was that the gradualism that was subscribed to prior to his theory on punctuated equilibrium didn’t explain the speed at which many things were evolving at the time. It isn’t as if new species were seen popping out of nothing. It also isn’t as if things evolved instantaneously either. The Cambrian era lasted 70 million years. While geologically this is a relative instant, it isn’t an instant like creationists would like to believe.

Now, I think the big question about what transitional fossils are is generally the problem. If you want to see the head of a chimp on the body of a man, or a human with a prehensile tail, you will be sadly disappointed. That is not how evolution works. Unfortunately, I think that all too often creationists believe this is what they should see. What we should see is exactly what we do see. We should see fossils where there are more and more similarities with modern humans and less and less similarities with ancient apes. These fossils should also be found in earth layers that are subsequent in time. This is what we see.

So, unless you are wanting to see the head of a fish on the body of a dog, which would actually prove creationism, I don’t see how you can say there are no transitional fossils.

If you want to see pictures of transitional fossils, talkorigins.org has tons of them. They also have tons of information about transitional fossils and other evidence we have about evolution.

I understand that you are not a biologist or a paleontologist, but the information is available and there are plenty of people that make it very easy to understand. There are also plenty of people that are more than willing to help you understand and point you to the information you are looking for if you are really interested in learning what it is that we know about evolution and why we know it. You won’t even have to go to school to get a degree.

I have a degree in conservation biology, but I am not an evolutionary biologist. I can’t avoid using evolutionary theory in my line of work though, and most biologists can’t. If you do have questions, it is better to ask them than to just state things as you feel them to be true. I won’t have all the answers, but I can at least point you to people that do.

You will find that biologists are more than willing to discuss things with you for the most part, as long as you are actually interested in learning.

Anyway, good luck.

P.S. You may consider implementing a comment system like Disqus or Intensedebate. Or at the very least a plugin that allows people to get an email update when a comment is made if they choose to. It encourages people to return at least to respond to comments. At the very least, the Disqus and Intensedebate systems look quite a bit better than the standard Thesis comments.

There certainly are lots of fossils in museums around the world. Whether they are actual transitional forms from one species to another is the question. I have found no transitional forms in my reading that are undisputed within the paleontological community…even if we exclude creationist organizations from the discussion altogether.

Much of this question is a matter of interpretation. As you said, many of the intermediary fossils are considered to be new species or variations of the same species instead of transitions. Good arguments can be made for this for all of the proposed transitional fossils in the literature.

Dr Colin Patterson, who was the senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History at the time, wrote a book for the British Museum simply called ‘Evolution’ in the late 70′s. Evolutionary theory was well advanced by this time. Luther Sunderland wrote to Dr Patterson asking why he had not shown a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. Patterson then wrote back with the following, which was reproduced in its entirety, by Sunderland in ‘Darwin’s Enigma’:

‘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. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?’

He also wrote:

‘Yet Gould [Stephen J. Gould—the now deceased professor of paleontology from Harvard University] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. … You say that 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.’3 [Emphasis added].

Much of what is toted as transitional fossils today were available then, and you’d find only a few new discoveries that could be included in his book today…and none that would be considered ‘undisputed’. A lot of Gould’s work was focused on coming up with new evolutionary paradigms that didn’t require transitional fossils because he couldn’t find any.

You can look at a fossil and assume it is a transitional form…or you can look at the same fossil and assume it is a variation of another species, or a unique species itself. Much of this has to do with your worldview…naturalists will see transitional fossils and creationists will see new species or variations within a species.

Undisputed and undeniable transitional forms? The purpose of this article is to point out that there are none I can find, even within the paleontological community, and to point out that things that are presented to the public by media and science as watertight, may not be such a slam dunk.

I’m not a professional scientist and certainly not a paleontologist, but write about things as I see them. I’m sure we’ll continue to disagree on whether fossil finds are transitional or not. I’m also not a debater (nor do I have time to be) and will usually make one reply to a post instead of going through a lot of back and forth, so if I don’t continue to respond to future comments don’t take it personally!

Thanks again for your feedback.

Rod

I don’t know where you are looking for your fossil evidence, but it certainly isn’t in museums. Any large museum will have fossils for you to look at that show the evolution between man and more primitive apes.

On top of that, we have plenty of evidence in the genetic record that even if there were no fossils we could show that man evolved from apes. Look up endogenous retroviruses for example. I even give it a once over on my post A Layman’s Guide to Endogenous Retroviruses. Also there is the fusion of Chromosomes, not to mention the rest of the genetic evidence.

I don’t know what more evidence you want, but there is plenty, and claiming there are no transitional fossils is pure bunk.