Transitional fossil
From RationalWiki
A transitional fossil is a fossil of an organism that has traits from multiple evolutionary stages. Proponents of creationism claim that "evolutionists have had over 140 years to find a transitional fossil and nothing approaching a conclusive transitional form has ever been found," despite the discovery of archaeopteryx (a transitional form between reptiles and birds, and among the best examples of evolution) only two years after Darwin published The Origin of Species. Since then, many other transitional forms, such as ambulocetus and pakicetus[1][2] (land mammals to marine cetaceans), and tiktaalik[3] and acanthostega[4] (fish to tetrapods) have been found.
The National Academy of Sciences has commented on the abundance of transitional forms: "So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species."[5]
Finding transitional forms never impresses creationists. If a transitional form B, between known species A and C is found, they demand "transitional forms" between A & B and B & C. Apparently, the only thing that would satisfy them is a complete set of generation-by-generation fossils of every life-form in a direct line of descent from the first bacteria to Charles Darwin's grand-father.[6]
[edit] See Also
[edit] External links
There is an overview of many of these at talk.origins.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Aquatic Locomotion in Archaeocete Whales, in Science 14 January 1994
- ↑ Ambulocetus as a Fossil Transitional, Lenny Flank, 1995
- ↑ A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan, in Nature 6 April 2006.
- ↑ Acanthostega: TOL
- ↑ http://www.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html
- ↑ Erasmus Darwin. Only the rockingest 18th century doctor evar!
