TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS

If life evolved slowly and gradually by accumulation of small beneficial mutations by natural selection, there should have been literally trillions of transitions over time. Dr. Jerry Bergman has written, “If only one out of a million of these transitions were preserved in the fossil record, we would have good evidence of the gradual evolution of all life, but the hoped for fossil “links” have not been found to exist.”*

Many evolutionists recognize this nonexistence of transitional fossils in the rock record and have abandoned gradualism for what they call “punctuationalism,” the idea that evolution proceeds by quantum leaps, accomplishing major changes very rapidly. The problem with this notion is that it is an argument from a complete lack of evidence and certainly cannot be defined as scientific.

Amazingly, even though these transitional forms are unknown to evolutionary scientists, they are quick to bridge the gaps when talking to the media and the general public. Public school Biology textbooks state that there are many transitional forms. The examples given are almost always the same three – Archaeopteryx, the therapsids (mammal-like reptiles), and the horses. Occasionally, other examples are given, but the fact that so few are generally documented for our school kids is eloquent testimony to the scarcity that is reality. If evolution was really a fact all fossils should be transitional! Careful scientific consideration of these examples (and all others) shows that true transitional fossils exist only in the minds of evolutionists.

Proposed transitional stages for horse hoofs at U of O Museum, Eugene, Oregon

Let’s consider some tests for determining a true transitional form. A true transitional form would need to have incipient structures such as half scales and half feathers in a supposed reptile evolving into a bird. Or, another example would be emerging flippers from the legs of a land animal on the way to changing into a whale. There should be seen a long series of gradual changes intermediate from one major kind of life to another. These sorts of tests have never been passed by any of the examples hyped.

In addition, the supposed transitional forms actually look to be fully functional with neither vestigial structures for providing evolutionary steps nor developing structures destined for future use. In many cases it would be better to describe a proposed transitional form as a “Mosaic” (an example is the Platypus). A mosaic has useful features including some found in certain other animals, but all uniquely engineered with their own special combination of structures for their own intended purposes.

These engineered features and structures are seen spread throughout all kinds of life forms, and this matches the expectations of one who believes in a Creator God in the beginning. They do not correlate with the idea of mindless, random-chance changes over time. The conclusion is that “true transitional fossils have not been found, and there is no scientific reason to believe that they exist.”**

There is no evidence in the rock record of macroevolutionary change. What is seen in the fossils is abrupt appearance, stasis, and a complete lack of transitional forms. These facts alone should make it clear that the theory of evolution is nothing but a fairy tale.

*Mitchell, J.D., Fossils: Description & Interpretation within a Biblical Worldview, 2017, CEC Publications, p. 272.

** Ibid, p. 3.

J.D. Mitchell

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