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Sequences of transitional fossils do not show direct ancestry. For example, with the fossil whale transition , which evolutionists consider as good a series of transitional fossils as one could hope to find, the fossils show extinct side lineages at best. Even if we had a fossil of every individual in the lineage, we could not verify direct ancestry. Fossils cannot show evidence of descent with modification even in principle.

...al change and diversification through time. The hundreds of thousands of fossils which have been discovered are consistent with this pattern, and they are not consistent with any other pattern that has been proposed. (In particular, they rule out the possibility that all present life forms ex...

Fossils are used to determine the order and dates of the strata in which they are found. But the fossil order itself is based on the order of strata and the assumption of evolution. Therefore, using fossil progression as evidence for evolution is circular reasoning.

Many strata are not dated from fossils. Relative dates of strata (whether layers are older or younger than others) are determined mainly by which strata are above others. Some strata are dated absolutely via radiometric dating. These methods are suffi...

Seashells and other marine fossils have been found on mountaintops, even very tall ones. These indicate that the sea once covered the mountains, which is evidence for a global flood.

...features of those mountains. The sea once did cover the areas where the fossils are found, but they were not mountains at the time; they were shallow seas. A flood cannot explain the presence of marine shells on mountains for the following reasons: Floods erode mountains and deposit their se...

Gould, Stephen J., 1998. The upwardly mobile fossils of Leonardo's living earth. In: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms , New York: Three Rivers Press, pp. 17-44. Previous Claim: CC363 | List of Claims | Next Claim: CC365 created 2003-6-21, modified...

Many of the fossils on which evolution is based on are reconstructed from the flimsiest evidence, even from a single tooth or bone. The conclusions based on such fossils are mere speculation.

Evolution is not based on fragmentary fossils. The theory would still be extremely robust with no fossils at all, based on evidence from modern life. Furthermore, there are more than enough substantially complete skeletons to support evolution. The whale tra...

Zimmer, Carl, 1998. At the Water's Edge . New York: Touchstone. Previous Claim: CC381 | List of Claims | Next Claim: CD001 created 2003-7-28, modified 2004-3-1

The knee of the "Lucy" fossil (the most complete Australopithecus afarensis fossil) was found over a mile away from the rest of the skeleton, so it cannot be used as evidence that Lucy walked upright. That evolutionists have never admitted this fact in print shows their dishonesty.

...ton called Lucy does not have an intact knee. A different, isolated knee fossil was found two to three kilometers away (Johanson and Edey 1981). Confusion over the two fossils apparently led to the false claim. Far from indicating evolutionist dishonesty, this claim shows how creationists fai...

Johanson, Donald C. and Maitland A. Edey, 1981. Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind . New York: Simon and Schuster. Lippard, Jim, 1999. (See above) Previous Claim: CC002 | List of Claims | Next Claim: CC004 created 2001-2-...

A fossilized human finger has been found from the Cretaceous.

...e, it has none of the fine structure one would expect from a finger. The fossil was not found in situ , so it cannot be conclusively associated with Cretaceous formations (Kuban 1996). Even if it were a real fossil finger, it would be of no value as evidence against evolution. Links: Kuban, G...

Kuban, G. J. 2012. (see above) Kuban, G. J. 1996. (see above) Previous Claim: CC112 | List of Claims | Next Claim: CC130 created 2001-2-18, modified 2004-3-10

There are no transitional fossils. Evolution predicts a continuum between each fossil organism and its ancestors. Instead, we see systematic gaps in the fossil record.

There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organi...

...-424. Gingerich, P. D., 1983. Evidence for evolution from the vertebrate fossil record. Journal of Geological Education 31: 140-144. Hallam, A., 1968. Morphology, palaeoecology and evolution of the genus Gryphaea in the British Lias. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B...

The fossil trees at Specimen Creek in the Yellowstone Petrified Forest show common tree ring signatures, indicating that they all lived at the same time. This rules out the conventional interpretation that the trees in successive layers all grew in place and were covered by successive volcanic eruptions.

...is other evidence, such as paleosols and in-place roots, that the trees fossilized in place (Fritz 1980; 1984; Yuretich 1984a; 1984b). Links: MacRae, Andrew, 1994. Yellowstone National Park (U.S.) fossil forests. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/yellowstone.html

Arct, Michael J., 1991 (Dec.) Dendrochronology in the Fossil Forests of the Specimen Creek Area Yellowstone National Park . Ph.D. dissertation, Loma Linda University. Fritz, W. J., 1980. Reinterpretation of the depositional environment of the Yellowstone "fossil forests". G...

Fossil Hominids The Evidence for Human Evolution Copyright © 1996-2016 by Jim Foley [Last Update: Feb 29, 2016 ] Permission is given to copy and print these pages for non-profit personal or educational use. This web site provides an overview of the study of hu...

...e provides an overview of the study of human evolution, and of the currently accepted fossil evidence. It also contains a very comprehensive treatment of creationist claims about human evolution. If you are not interested in creationism, you can easily skip those pages. If you are interested in creationism, you can go directly to the pages on c...

...you can go directly to the pages on creationist arguments ; they contain links to the fossils under discussion when necessary. What's new in paleoanthropology? The Denisovan genome Neandertal genes in modern humans Discovery of Australopithecus sediba An Ardipithecus ramidus skeleton First complete Neandertal mtDNA genome Skeleton of an A. afar...

...Phylogenetic Tree Copyright © 1999-2002 by Douglas Theobald, Ph.D. Back Figure 1.4.4. Fossil hominid skulls. Some of the figures have been modified for ease of comparison (only left-right mirroring or removal of a jawbone). (Images © 2000 Smithsonian Institution .) (A) Pan troglodytes , chimpanzee, modern (B) Australopithecus africanus , STS 5...

29 Evidences for Macroevolution Part 1: The Unique Universal Phylogenetic Tree Copyright © 1999-2002 by Douglas Theobald, Ph.D. Back Figure 1.4.4. Fossil hominid skulls. Some of the figures have been modified for ease of comparison (only left-right mirroring or r...

...ace in Nature. (1863) "Palaeontology and the Doctrine of Evolution." (1870) "When the fossil remains which are the evidences of these successive changes, as they have occurred in any two more or less distant parts of the surface of the earth, are compared, they exhibit a certain broad and general parallelism. " Huxley, in fact, used the word ev...

Contents "The only people who use 'evidences' (plural) are creationists or people who have spent far too much time reading their literature! 'Evidences' is a term from Christian apologetics ..." Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director for the National Center for Science Education. "Now, this bill...

...re creationists or people who have spent far too much time reading their literature! 'Evidences' is a term from Christian apologetics ..." Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director for the National Center for Science Education. "Now, this bill was of course drafted by a theologian or somebody versed in apologetics. There's an amusing bit of 'evidenc...

...r functions). Also see parahomology , analogy , and convergence . intermediate form A fossil or modern species that displays characters definitive of two or more different taxa or that displays characters morphologically intermediate between two different taxa. The existence of intermediate forms is a prediction of common descent. An intermedia...

...hich share a common gene pool. However, this concept breaks down for asexual species, fossil species, and even sexual species in many cases. In reality there are only degrees of reproductive and genetic isolation, so species are not absolute entities. Joseph Boxhorn has given a more detailed analysis of the species concept in the "Observed Inst...

...evels of evidential support (primarily taking into account all available phylogenetic evidence). Importantly, there exist multiple levels of homology in biology. What is evolutionarily homologous at one level may not be so at a lower level or at a higher level ( Dickinson 1995 ). The causal chain in biology is discontinuous, including genes, ge...

...tly, detailed and explicit predictions can be made about the possible morphologies of fossil intermediates. Figure 3.1.1. Comparison of the forelimbs of various relatives of modern birds . Forelimbs of (A) Ornitholestes , a theropod dinosaur, (B) Archaeopteryx , (C) Sinornis , an archaic bird from the lower Cretaceous, and (D) the wing of a mod...

...adistic methodology for more discussion). Additionally, independent evidence from the fossil record has confirmed that many of those structures were derived from others. The fossil record shows a general chronological progression of intermediate forms between theropod dinosaurs and modern birds, in which theropod structures were modified into m...

...ssil record has confirmed that many of those structures were derived from others. The fossil record shows a general chronological progression of intermediate forms between theropod dinosaurs and modern birds, in which theropod structures were modified into modern bird structures ( Carroll 1988 ; Carroll 1997 ; Sereno 1999 ). This series is exem...

...er 1994 , pp. 128-129), and an average primate generation is about 20 years. From the fossil record, we know that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor less than 10 million years ago (a conservative estimate - most likely less than 6 million years ago) ( Stewart and Disotell 1998 ). Thus, if chimps and humans are truly genealog...

...s Are Genetically Very Similar," Nature 276:264, Nov. 16, 1978 The molecular sequence evidence gives the most impressive and irrefutable evidence for the genealogical relatedness of all life. The nature of molecular sequences allows for extremely impressive probability calculations that demonstrate how well the predictions of common descent wit...

...v. 16, 1978 The molecular sequence evidence gives the most impressive and irrefutable evidence for the genealogical relatedness of all life. The nature of molecular sequences allows for extremely impressive probability calculations that demonstrate how well the predictions of common descent with modification actually match empirical observation...

...cardiovascular disease in its carriers. Prediction 5.4: Earth's strange past and the fossil record A very general conclusion made from the theory of common descent is that life, as a whole, was different in the past. The predicted evolutionary pattern is that the farther back we look back in time, the more different life should appear from the...

...in time, the more different life should appear from the modern biosphere. More recent fossils should be more similar to contemporary life forms than older fossils. This point is related to, yet subtly different from, prediction 1.4 and prediction 1.5 concerning predicted common ancestors. As we have seen, the standard phylogenetic tree predicts...

...ere. More recent fossils should be more similar to contemporary life forms than older fossils. This point is related to, yet subtly different from, prediction 1.4 and prediction 1.5 concerning predicted common ancestors. As we have seen, the standard phylogenetic tree predicts many common ancestors and their morphologies. However, given what we...

...volution 9: 398-407. Benton, M. J. and Hitchin, R. (1996) "Testing the quality of the fossil record by groups and by major habitats." Historical Biol. 12: 111-157. Benton, M. J. and Hitchin, R. (1997) "Congruence between phylogenetic and stratigraphic data on the history of life." Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. 264: 885-890. Benton, M. J., Hitchin, R.,...

...Biol. 48: 581Ð596. Benton, M. J. and Storrs, G. W. (1994) "Testing the quality of the fossil record: paleontological knowledge is improving." Geology 22: 111-114. Benton, M. J., Wills, M. A., and Hitchin R. (2000) "Quality of the fossil record through time." Nature 403: 534-537. Bergman, J. (2000) "Is the inverted human eye a poor design?" Pers...

...ology 22: 111-114. Benton, M. J., Wills, M. A., and Hitchin R. (2000) "Quality of the fossil record through time." Nature 403: 534-537. Bergman, J. (2000) "Is the inverted human eye a poor design?" Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 52: 18-30. Berzin, A. A. (1972) The Sperm Whale . Pacific Scientific Research Institute of Fisheries and...