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Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference not the evidence of fossils.

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WHAT EVOLUTIONARY LINKS ARE MISSING?

". . . 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?

I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understnading of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should as 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."

Personal letter (written 10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to Luther D. Sunderland; as quoted in Darwin's Enigma by Luther D. Sunderland, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984,p.89

All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are charateristically abrupt."

Stephen Jay gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard, University), "The return of hopeful monsters". Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(6), June-July 1977, p.24.

Since 1859 one of the most vexing properties of the fossil record has been its obvious imperfection. For the evolutionist this imperfection is most frustrating as it precludes any real possibility for maping out the path of organic evolution owing to an infinity of "missing links". The fossil record is replete with evidence favoring organic evolution provided by short sequences of species with overlapping mophologies arranged in a clinal manner with time; the same is true for many sequences of genera and even for a fairish number of families. However, once above the family level it becomes very difficult in most instances to find any solid paleontological evidence for morphological intergrades beween one suprafamilial taxon and another. This lack has been taken advantage of classically by the opponents of organic evolution as a major defect of the theory. In other words, the inability of the fossil record to produce the "missing links" has been taken as solid evidence for disbelieving the theory.

Arthur J. Boucot, Ph.D (geology) (Professor of Geology, Oregon State University, USA) in Evolution and Extinction Rate Controls, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1975, p.196.

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

The geological record is extemely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.

Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never "seen" in the rocks.

Palenontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.

Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), Evolution's erratic pace. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(5), May 1977, p.14.

Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record.

David B. Kitts, Ph.D. (zoology), (School of Geology and Geophysics, Department of the Hisotry of Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA) Paleontology and evolutionary theory. Evolution, vol. 28, September 1974, p.467

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