Transitional Forms Between Which Animals Would Support Evolution Theory?

Not a transitional fossil.

According to proponents of evolution, PRATTs are Points Refuted a Thousand Times—arguments by creationists confronting development that are hands refuted, yet go along coming up once more and again. I've dissected a few of them and then far to try to figure out what underlying misconceptions make them and then difficult to go rid of. Sometimes, it's vague or unclear language that lets them sidestep the counterarguments, so if you lot want a more productive debate, yous have to be very precise well-nigh your language. In the case of micro- versus macro-evolution, creationists mainly say that evolution is unbelievable or unreasonable. In that instance, I experience similar the manner to movement forward is to shift the argument from the facts to the plausibility of development'south claims and so that it can't exist dismissed so hands.

At present, it's time to get into the actual evidence for evolution and tackle possibly the biggest, virtually widely used, and most bitterly debated PRATT in this field:

"In that location are no transitional fossils."

Transitional fossils are fossils of animals or plants that are in the middle of evolving (over thousands of generations) from one type of creature to some other. The most famous transitional fossil, the i that was discovered within Darwin'southward lifetime, is Archaeopteryx, a prehistoric fauna that appears to be half-dinosaur and half-bird. The infamous "Missing Link" is another transitional fossil betwixt apes and humans that eluded scientists for a long time, although they eventually constitute it: Lucy.

But creationists merits that no transitional fossils have ever been establish anywhere, fifty-fifty though biologists tin can point to many specific examples. How did this happen?

It's a bit hard to observe an overarching fallacy behind the notion that there are no transitional fossils. Most of the arguments I can find at the surface level seem to involve finding fault with whatever individual example that is given. They may claim that a fossil isn't really transitional. ("Archaeopteryx isn't transitional. Birds appeared fully-formed earlier that.") That it was misidentified. ("Australopithecus sediba isn't transitional. It was simply a juvenile ape.") Or they just plain misinterpret evolutionary claims. ("Tiktaalik isn't a transitional 'fish with legs' because it couldn't walk. It just happened to have fins that looked like legs.") Ironically, the apply of examples similar these may be the very reason this statement keeps coming up over and over. Evolutionists respond to the assertion that there are no transitional fossils by bringing up new examples, and creationists go on shooting them downwardly.

At get-go, this may seem hopeless. Creationists believe evolution is false, so at that place will never be a specific example they find unassailable. Just there is some other level nosotros can hold this contend on: what does it mean for a fossil to exist transitional? What does the theory of development predict nosotros should see in full general as opposed to these specifics? And information technology'southward on this level that we can encounter the flaws in creationist thinking.

In one of the nigh infamous examples of creationists failing to understand evolution, in 2007, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron claimed (seemingly unironically) that if evolution were true, then we should run into a "Crocoduck"—a photoshopped fauna with the body of a duck and the head of a crocodile—as a transitional animal between a crocodile and a duck.

This is, of course, crazy. And this is an farthermost instance even by creationist standards, but they're not the only ones who have a distorted view of transitional species. Expect at some of Kent Hovind's statements in his debate with Aron Ra:

"Nobody'southward ever seen whatsoever animal produce a different fauna." (Function 2, 26:25)

"You lot're never going to get a whale or a hamster or a love apple to abound on your corn stalk." (Part 7, nine:25)

The trouble with this is that evolution doesn't predict a tomato growing on a corn stalk. In fact, it predicts that we should not come across that because corn is in the grass family unit, and tomatoes are in the nightshade family. 1 is not the descendant of the other; they are both descendants of a afar mutual ancestor among the earliest flowering plants.

But as with the other creationists higher up, that's simply a specific example, and non the best one they could make. To employ another instance from the Ra-Hovind fence, seals are believed to have evolved from primitive bears. This actually is an ancestor-descendant relationship, then it'south a valid case to look at. Creationists would say the thought that seals came from bears is ridiculous considering bears and seals are obviously different animals, and (more importantly) yous'll never meet a carry requite birth to a seal.

Only this is fallacious considering this is not what evolution claims. You wouldn't await a bear to give birth to a seal any more than you'd expect a wolf to give nascence to a Chihuahua. It takes many, many generations—millions of years with tiny changes each generation—for something that doesn't really even look like a bear yet to plow into something that first looks like an otter, and then a ocean lion, and finally a true seal. It'south the aforementioned principle (just with a bit larger change) as a wolf irresolute over many generations to something that looked like a Siberian Husky, then…well, Native American dogs aren't well documented, but it probably looked similar to a dingo for a while, and eventually a Chihuahua.

Likewise, the transitions are polish. Yous wouldn't expect to see a bear with a seal'south caput whatsoever more than than you'd await to see a wolf with a chihuahua's head, or vice versa. (Creationists might not exactly say that the theory of evolution requires these things, but they strongly imply it and count the fact that nosotros don't see it equally bear witness against evolution.) The changes are far smoother than that, and anything we meet in the middle of the gradual morphing from ane animal to the other is considered a transitional fossil.

The 2nd issue with transitional fossils is that some of them really are "missing" (for the moment). In that location are transitional forms that we oasis't constitute even so considering the fossil record is incomplete. Indeed, we expect it to exist incomplete because fossilization is very rare. At that place is a common creationist suggestion that we should never see whatsoever gaps or "missing links" in the fossil record if development is truthful, only we're probably never going to fill in all the gaps because and so few animals and plants become fossils.

Only this is non the biggest flaw in the argument. Creationists claim that the supposed lack of transitional fossils is evidence against evolution. Merely information technology'southward particularly aggravating when these aforementioned creationists claim (or at least strongly imply) that nosotros should "of a sudden" see a domestic dog give nativity to a true cat, a acquit requite nativity to a seal, or at the very least, a normal fish give nascence to a mutant fish with fully-formed legs—at a single point in the thousands or millions of generations in the evolutionist model. I could be generous and say that this is based on a misunderstanding of the already-disputed concept of punctuated equilibrium, but the fact remains that if it were true, it would perfectly explain the lack of transitional fossils! If a fish only "suddenly" developed legs, a far smaller fraction of private animals would exist transitional, and it would exist much less likely for there to be fossils of them.

This is the contradiction in creationist rhetoric regarding transitional fossils. They appear to expect very articulate-cut transitional forms when we don't see that in selective breeding of (for example) dogs, and and then they expect these transitional forms to be reliably preserved when, by that logic, they would be rare, and information technology is would exist very chancy. The fallacy, equally evolutionists oft point out, is simply a misunderstanding of the concept of traditional fossils, merely I think there are some more targeted questions that don't go raised so often that could improve clarify this misunderstanding. These questions won't resolve the problem of non accepting specific transitional fossils, but I retrieve transitional fossils come too shut to the primal principle of common descent for creationists to accept in general, and these questions will still reinforce the evolutionist position.

Question 1: Regardless of whether you believe it, exercise you take that the theory of development does not require an animal to give birth to a radically different i (the crocoduck beingness an extreme case), simply rather small changes over a not bad many generations, like to what we can run into directly with domestic dog breeding.

Question two: Volition you admit that if development did work past one kind of animal suddenly giving nativity to a completely unlike kind of beast, there would be so few transitional fossils that it would exist perfectly reasonable that we oasis't constitute any?

Source: https://sciencemeetsfiction.com/2019/08/17/the-evolution-debate-transitional-fossils/

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