KellanStec

Let’s talk about transitional fossils. One bold statement was made by Mr. Young: There is no such thing as a transitional fossil. Based on his knowledge of evolution that he had demonstrated thus far, there wasn’t much reason to believe the things he said at this point. Once again, Mr. Young makes a number of either false or deceitful claims in a failed attempt to turn evolution on its head.

First, not every living being is fossilized. This is why we do not have a complete fossil record, showing gradual transitions within a species. So, expecting to have abundant transitional forms is a very demanding expectation. Additionally, how many transitional forms would it take to create a gradual timeline of evolution? For each transitional form entered into a morphological timeline, it opens up two more holes that need to be filled.

One of my questions dealt with whale evolution. Here is my exact question:

There are a number of examples of transitional fossils for many currently existing organisms. One of these examples is the cetaceans, or the group of animals that includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins. We know that these animals’ ancestors were probably land dwellers because 1) they require to resurface for air, 2) their bone structures in their hands resemble land mammals more than they do fish, and 3) the movements of their spines are more characteristic of mammals than they are of fish, who move their spines horizontally. Thus, we would expect to find some transitional fossils filling this gap between land dwellers and sea dwellers.

We’ve found them. We have numerous fossil examples that demonstrate a transition from land-dwelling to sea-dwelling creatures. Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, and Basilosaurus were discovered in successive geological strata, and have bone structures we would expect to find in an animal that is slowly changing for life at sea. We see shortening of hind limbs, change from feet to flippers, and shift of the nasal cavity towards the top of the head, as well as numerous other developments. We also see the partial development of hind limbs in the embryos of modern whales today. Does creationism have a rational explanation for the existence of this phenomena accounting for both the skeletal similarities between the seemingly transitional fossils and modern whales, and the embryonic development features of today’s cetaceans?

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. May 30, 2006 vol. 103 no. 22 8414 – 8418

Mr. Young proceeded to open up his powerpoint of prepared answers, and showed the audience a picture of only one of the specimens I mentioned (pictured right). He did not even bother to answer the rest of my question, and skimmed the first paragraph, so there was no context for the question. His point in showing this photograph was that we don’t even have a complete skeletal specimen, and that there wasn’t even a pelvis in this fossil. He mocked scientists for jumping to conclusions.

The problem is, he was either blamelessly wrong, or was deliberately trying to fool the audience. The photo is sort of deceiving anyway, since it is two-dimensional and does not show us the other side of the skeleton. The fact of the matter is, we have much more of the fossil than the photo leads us to believe. He was absolutely dead wrong.

Pictured to the left is that we actually have of the fossil now. This is after another summer of digging, and more of the specimen being collected. This remainder was dug up 15 years ago. We now have much of the pelvis, and much of the spine. It might not look like much, but remember that animals are usually symmetrical. Having a bone on one side means having it on the other. Mr. Young has had plenty of time to fix his mistake, why didn’t he? Why didn’t he analyze the other specimens I mentioned in this manner? Wasn’t this speaker supposed to be well-informed on this very subject?

I’m not finished. Another tool used to mock science was the Lucy skeleton. He used a clip from the Nova Evolution series in which it demonstrated a scientist piecing together the pelvis. The way it was originally pieced together didn’t fit with other skeletal features that showed it was bipedal. He again used the clip to mock scientists for forcefully making the pieces fit the assumption that Lucy was bipedal with a grinder, after which he dismissed the fossil as “just a chimpanzee”.

First of all, there is much more than a simple preconceived notion of bipedalism that made Dr. Loejoy believe that the bone was in the incorrect form. There are biological reasons they believed this; one of them being the knee joint:

I was surveying late one afternoon when we were out collecting some elephant teeth, and I looked down on the ground and found in a couple of pieces of this knee joint … As Lovejoy pointed out, the joint had all the hallmarks of a creature that moved around on two legs, not on all fours. Walking upright is something that only humans can do. And it needs a special kind of knee joint, one that can be locked straight. A chimp gets around on all fours. If it tries to walk upright, its knee joint doesn’t lock. It’s forced to walk with a bent leg and that’s tiring.
Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2106hum1.html

You can read more about Lucy and reconstructing the pelvis here. I won’t go into further detail, but the article does a good job of describing what happened and why.

Young himself made the point in his presentation that one can not be absolutely certain of anything, because absolute certainty is omniscience–something that only a supernatural being possesses. He contradicted himself with the bold, absolutist statement “there is no such thing as a transitional fossil”. Omniscient Brian ignores evidence and recycles bad Answers in Genesis arguments.

I disagree with his statement that you can never be certain of everything to a degree. I believe that through rational thought and scientific inquiry, one can know the world to near certainty. To step outside of the bounds of evidence should lead to an “I don’t know” conclusion. Through numerous fossils, biological and behavioral similarities, and DNA evidence, we can be nearly certain that Humans and other primates share a common ancestor. This is not based on belief in anything besides physical and empirical evidence, for me at least. Had Young at least kept up with the scientific literature in the past decade, he could have avoided these gaping holes in his argument and done some actual research.

This concludes posting number three. The next will most likely be the last. I will conclude with my thoughts on the speaker, and discuss a conversation I had after the presentation.

Filed under: Science, Religion by kellanstec