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June 18, 2003 One of the modern evolutionists biggest problems is the lack of transitional forms found in the fossil records. The so-called “gaps” in the fossil records that were noted over one hundred years ago have not been filled. A transitional form is an animal that is obviously becoming another kind of animal; a horse becoming a giraffe, perhaps, or a coral becoming a crab. These kinds of fossils are not being found, although desperately sought worldwide. Perhaps you remember the famous “Horse Evolution” chart from school. There was a nice little transition from “Eohippus” (Hyracotherium) all the way up to Equus. The little horses became big horses over millions of years. The Horse Series was a shining example for Darwinists of transitional forms, as a small animal became a horse. The horse series was constructed from fossils found in India, South America, North America and Europe, in a series from the smallest to the largest. (Modern horses range from 17" to 80" in size) (Thanks to the Biology Textbook Fraud website.) We now know that the various forms of horses have been found in layers with other forms. Eohippus has often been found in the same strata with Equus! Beyond that, there was no progression shown between the different animals. In fact, the rib numbers first decrease, then increase suddenly, and then decrease again. Hyracotherium had 18 pairs of ribs, Orohippus had 15, Pliohippus had 19, and Equus has 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also changes from six to eight and then back to six. Another problem is that while the “transitory types” are found in great numbers, there are no specimens in between them in size or character. Each of these animals seems to be a separate type and not part of an evolutionary chain at all. One could construct a series portraying the evolution of dogs from a Mexican Hairless up to a Great Dane and make it seem more likely than the horse series. “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 “…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. There will be scientists who claim that there are, indeed, transitional forms found in the fossil record and will lay out a list of mostly aquatic animals that are supposed to be partly fish, partly sharks or partly fish, partly amphibians. The part-fish, upon examination, have proven to be entirely fish. Fish have small pelvic bones that are embedded in muscle and not connected to the backbone unlike tetrapod amphibians, which have large pelvises that are firmly connected to the vertebral column. Without this anatomy, the amphibian could not walk. The morphological differences in this gap are obvious and profound. There may be fossil fish that resemble amphibians, but they do not exhibit the proper anatomy. It is also difficult to prove that the fossils resembling sharks and rays are not simply species of sharks and rays no longer in existence. What are found in the fossil records are many varieties of animals and plants that appear for the first time as fully functioning trilobites or sponges or dragonflies or dinosaurs with no evidence of a previous transitional form. Many of these animals are extinct, but that does not imply it is because they developed into a different animal. What did the Dodo bird develop into, for instance? (Other than dinner!) A precept of evolutionary teaching has been Uniformitarianism. Basically, that the rock formations found layered around the globe are the result of the debris of long ages of the earth, millions of years. Three layers of rock could have taken 180 million years to be deposited. Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), a lawyer without a scientific degree, proposed the Uniformitarian concept. The trouble with this concept is that the rock layers worldwide will not conform to the idea. Layers thought more ancient are consistently found above those expected to be more recent. Darwinists blithely explain that entire mountains were somehow turned upside down and/or transported 30-3,000 (!) miles or more in order to try to explain disorder in the rock layers. Also in nature you sometimes see mixed layers (like younger, older and then younger) or skipped layers (somehow going from 120 million years old to 280 million years old with no middle layers.) Polystrate fossils are another overwhelming problem to evolutionists. These are fossils that extend through two or more sedimentary layers of rock. Fossilized trees extending through layers of coal were common discoveries for coal miners of the 19th and 20th centuries. N.A Rupke, the geologist who coined the polystrate term, collected descriptions and pictures of hundred of such fossils around the world. In one case, Rupke produced a photograph of "a lofty trunk, exposed in a sandstone quarry near Edinburgh [Scotland], which measured no less than 25 meters and, intersecting 10 or 12 different strata, leaned at an angle of about 40 [degrees]" (1973, p. 154). Thus, this particular tree must have been buried while falling down! In fact, one scientist who examined the tree, George Fairholme, commented on the fact that an inclined trunk constitutes a much stronger testimony for rapidity in deposition than an upright one because“..While the latter might be supposed to have been capable of retaining an upright position, in a semi-fluid mass, for a long time, by the mere laws of gravity, the other must, by the very same laws, have fallen, from its inclined to a horizontal position, had it not been retained in its inclined position by the rapid accumulation of its present stony matrix”(1837, p. 394, emp. added as noted by Bert Thompson.) Polystrate fossils, not limited to trees but also animal fossils, are found in abundance in the real world. Megabreccias, giant boulders surrounded by many layers of strata, are another common occurrence. Evolutionists have no good explanation for such polystrates other than to suggest that in those particular cases the surrounding accumulation must have happened quickly. That is exactly what Creationists would say, however, crediting the Noahic flood described in the Bible as the source for the worldwide layers of fossil-bearing sediment. Alan V. Jopling, Dept. of Geology, Harvard "it is reasonable to postulate a very rapid rate of deposition; that is a single lamina would probably be deposited in a period of seconds or minutes rather than in a period of hours. ...There is factual evidence from both field observation and experiment that laminae composed of bed material are commonly deposited by current action within a period of seconds or minutes." Careful studies of the sedimentary layers of the earth point to layering caused by flood. The fossil layers are generally distributed as one would expect in a flood, the bottom dwelling sea life at the bottom, the fish at another level, shore-dwellers at another layer and the largest land animals near the top. (Particularly the ones capable of recognizing danger and able to run to higher ground). Certainly the specific gravity of some of the remains comes into play in the deposits and there are fossils in which animals are “caught” in an onslaught while eating another animal or giving birth! The sedimentary layers often exhibit ripples or signs of “turbidity current deposits” or sediments resulting from flood conditions. The layers are usually quite defined, with no signs of wear between them. Although Uniformitarianism calls for gradual layering, in the real world there are consistently sharp and obvious contrasts between layers. This would be the expected result with layering that would result from a worldwide flood. Some of the fossils found in sedimentary rock have been devastating to Darwinists. Tools and human remains have been found in the same layers as dinosaur bones. The Paluxy River region of Texas is a rich depository of tracks of humans found in sand ripples and also dinosaur tracks. A human handprint and even a fossilized human finger were also found in the area. We also find animals that supposedly lived 3-4-even 500 million years apart in the same rock strata. The top level Geologists realize that the rock strata in the real world in no way resemble the lovely “Geologic Column” of the textbooks. The knowledge is slowly filtering down to the school levels. I postulate that the reason obvious falsehoods are consistently taught in schools today is a religious one. Uniformitarianism is part of the belief system of Evolutionists. Like the scientists and curators who have deliberately misled the world concerning the Neanderthal remains, there are many teachers who cannot bear to reveal the truth to their students, as if reality can be avoided by subterfuge. The fossil record and the layers of sedimentary rock worldwide strongly deny both Uniformitarianism and Darwinism. It is the testimony of the rocks themselves that speak truth! "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually- fulfilled atheist." Richard Dawkins, Neo- Darwinian spokesman "A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back." Sir Francis Bacon ------------ About the author Kimbal Ross Binder: Erstwhile gym-rat, former independent driven by disgust for the Democratic Party into the arms of the Republicans, current parent and expert at puns, jokes that make people groan and eating Debbie's cooking. Mr Binder lives out in the boondocks of NW Indiana. Email Kimbal Ross Binder: radar@eternalisp.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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