Missing Links

In theory, taxonomy (the study of the similarities of animals and plants) should provide solid evidence for evolution.  Similarity and progression is the logical outcome of evolutionary lines of descent, if evolution ever occurred.  The fact is, however, that taxonomy gives very little, if any, support for evolution.  This because the famous 'missing links' are just that - missing.

A modern get-out is to argue that we are not looking for 'missing links' but 'transitional features, i.e. characteristics of two types of organism found together.  On this basis Archaeopteryx is supposed to show typical reptilian and bird features, which then qualifies it for having 'transitional features.

Unfortunately, and certainly for Archaeopteryx, this doesn't help.  To take this particular bird (for so it is now considered to be - see below), it does indeed have some characteristics which reptiles also have, such as scales and a clawed wing, but then so do 'modern' birds.  Most birds have scales on their legs, and the Hoatzin has a clawed wing, but no-one is going to claim these as transitional features in those animals.  So why are they viewed as such in organisms such as Archaeopteryx?

The crucial nature of the fossil evidence in this case cannot be overstated.  Le Gros Clarke states quite plainly

"That evolution did occur can only be scientifically established by the discovery of the fossilized remains of representative samples of those intermediate types which have been postulated on the basis of the indirect evidence.  In other words the really crucial evidence for evolution must be provided by the palaeontologist whose business it is to study the fossil record." (Le Gros Clark 1955)

Actually he is wrong.  This would not be scientific evidence in the strict sense of that term.  But it is the absolute minimum required to establish that the theory is at all plausible.  It would not be scientific evidence because scientific evidence can only be established by experiment, and we cannot go back in time to see what actually happened.  Sad but true.

Unfortunately there are no missing links (De Nouy 1947, Gould & Eldridge 1977).  There are no transitional creatures found in the last 500 million years of rock production (Guardian 1978, Gould 1980 p 181).  In case you were wondering, that takes us right from the time of the earliest fossils in the Cambrian era to modern times.

Darwin more-or-less rested his case on the evidence of the fossils - but the evidence simply wasn't there.

"The number of intermediate and transitional links between all living and extinct species must have been inconceivably great." (Darwin 1956 p 294)

"As by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (Darwin 1956 p 157)

His answer to this difficulty was that the geological record was incomplete, in other words that many fossils have been unaccountably lost.  This cannot now be the excuse.  It has been estimated that approximately 250,000 species of fossils have been found and classified compared to some 9 million living species.  The lack of intermediate forms is therefore not due to imperfections in the geological record but simply that such forms never existed.  The gaps in the geological record are real, and furthermore they correspond to gaps in the living world today.

Darwin is far from being the only one complaining about this problem.

"Many of the discontinuities tend to be more and more emphasised with increased collecting." (Newell 1959)

"'Links' are missing just where we most fervently desire them, and it is all too probable that many 'links' will continue to be missing." (Romer 1949)

Colin Patterson is the senior Taxonomist at the British Museum of Natural History, a museum which houses some 60 million fossil specimens, the largest collection in the world.  In a personal letter to Luther Sutherland in 1988 he said

"If I knew of any (evolutionary transitions), fossil or living, I would certainly have included them (in my book - Evolution)." (Patterson 1988)

Which comment seems pretty definitive, to me.

Dr Raup is the curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.  In 1979 he wrote

"We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much.... We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time." (Raup 1979)

Since Darwin was complaining bitterly about the absence of evidence, this, frankly, is damning.

"It is a feature of the fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly.  They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution." (Simpson 1960)

Simpson is being a little disingenuous here.  All taxa (main groups of living organisms) appear abruptly, and without any lead-in from 'simpler' forms of life.  This is what the lack of missing links is all about.

One of the most serious aspects of this whole business of 'missing links' is that the missing links are not present because for the most part they would be impossible (Dewar 1938 pp 23-4, Chandler 1961 p16, Mayr 1970 p 253, Gould 1980 p 189).  Denton lists several prize examples himself (Denton 1985).

So much for generalities.  What about specifics?

"Classifications of animals to this day practically always begin with Protozoa and end with Vertebrata ....  Some taxonomists vehemently deny that this is a sequence from lower to higher (although students are usually told that it is.)" (Simpson 1959)

Protozoa are animals consisting of a single cell.  Trochelminthes (rotifers) are the smallest of the Metazoa, the next most complex group, each having about 800 cells.  They are roughly the same size as the largest of the Protozoa such as Amoeba or Paramecium, but there are no intermediate forms between the two groups.

There are no animals with 2, 4, 6, 8 or 16 (etc.) cells, and there is not the remotest evidence that any such creatures have ever lived.  Yet such forms must have existed in the past if evolution happened.  This gap between the Protozoa and the Metazoa has never been filled, and that is as true in the fossil record as it is of the situation today.  Just to compound the problem, neither is there any evidence that single celled animals appeared first.

In any case, even a convincing sequence of 'changes' is no evidence for evolution, in point of strict fact.  This little detail is all too often missed.  All we know is that these animals or plants lived.  We do not know that they developed from one form to the next, however obvious this might seem.

One very 'obvious' 'evolving' sequence that I have seen is that of a certain type of fossil shell-fish.  It looks amazing, and, if one is predisposed to believe it, it is a very convincing sequence.  There they are, the fossils changing from very simple shells to very complex ones, full of ridges and knobs.  It is indeed a sequence, but it is not evolution.  This increase in shell complexity also happens today with cockles (a type of shell-fish), but it is because lakes dry up and become saltier.  Immediately the original conditions are re-established the shell goes back to normal.  The cockle remains a cockle.

There is nothing in the fossil record to fill the gaps between the fish and the amphibia, between the amphibia and the reptiles, or between the reptiles and the birds.  This may appear to be an unrealistic claim in the light of all the 'missing links' which are regularly hyped up in the media.  Unfortunately 'missing links' never seem to stay the course.

Lung-fish, the supposed link between fish and amphibians, are actually amphibian in major characteristics such as heart, skeleton and lungs.  None of their characteristics are intermediate, and the informed consensus is that lung-fish are not ancestral to anything (Rosen et al 1981).  In fact recognisable lung-fish supposedly lived 350 million years ago, as good a proof as any for the stability of a species.

Archaeopteryx is not now considered a transitional form (a missing link), although it was believed to be the intermediate between reptiles and birds only a few years ago.  To begin with it has the wrong fossil date compared with 'earliest' birds.  Birds lived some 75 million years earlier than Archaeopteryx (Anderson 1991, Beardsley 1986, Monastersky 1991).

Archaeopteryx has a bony sternum, and therefore could fly as well as any bird.  The first specimens found lacked a sternum, and it was this which probably encouraged the workers to classify it as an intermediate.  I think we ought to take a lesson here not to jump to conclusions before all the evidence is in.

Archaeopteryx also had the brain-case of a typical modern bird.  Feducca is quite definitive:

"Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in a modern sense, a bird." (Feducca 1993)

When a missing link is trumpeted by an Evolutionist it gets maximum media coverage.  Some time later, inevitably, its provenance is questioned amongst the experts, it is discredited for some reason or other, and then, as a 'missing link', it gets quietly shelved.  This is the situation with every 'missing link' ever 'discovered', and, needless to say, this last stage in the proceedings never gets a public airing.  I have to say that I would have far more sympathy for the scientific community if they were more honest, more 'up-front', about this part of the proceedings.  Instead we are brought up against the rather childish attitude of the school boy who has been caught trying to drop a nicked apple behind him.  And I don't buy the argument that the media are to blame - the scientific community, especially this part of it, is quite happy to have the publicity at first.  Why don't they sing out later?

There are huge gaps in comparative anatomy that have never been filled.  It is often stated that so-called fundamentalists place their faith in these gaps to disprove evolution.  The truth of the matter is that it is the evolutionists who place their faith in these gaps.  Until the gaps are filled the theory of evolution must rest on faith alone, faith in the unseen, the unknown, the wildly improbable and the illogical.  The missing links remain just that - missing.

References:
(Press your 'Back' button to return to the text from any of these references.)

Anderson, A., Science 253 (1991) 35
Beardsley, T., Nature 322 (1986) 677
Chandler, A.C., 'Introduction to Parasitology', (1961) 10th ed, New York: J.Wiley & Son
Darwin, C., 'Origin of Species' Dent (1956)
Denton, M., (1985) 'Evolution, a theory in crisis', Adler & Adler, Maryland, ch. 9
Dewar, D., 'More Difficulties of the Evolution Theory', London: Thynne & Co. (1938)
De Nouy, P.L., 'Human Destiny', New York, Longmans, Green and Co. (1947) 72
Feducca, A., Science 253, 1993, 790-93
Gould, S.J., & Eldridge, N., Paleobiology 3 1977, 147
Gould, S.J., 'The Panda's Thumb' (1980) New York: W.W.Norton and Co.
Le Gros Clark, W., Discovery Jan 1955 p 7
The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, 119(22),1
Mayr, E., (1970) 'Populations, Species and Evolution', Cambridge Mass: Harvard. Monastersky, R., Science News 140 (1991) 104-5
Newell, N.D., Proceedings of the American Physical Society Apr 23 1959 p 267
Patterson, C., (1988) personal letter to Luther Sutherland, 10/4/79, as quoted in L.Sutherland, 'Darwin's Enigma', 4th Ed, Santee, CA: Master Books (1988) 89
Raup, D.M., 'Conflicts between Darwin and Palaeontology', Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, Jan 1979, 22, 25.
Romer, A.S., 'Genetics, Palaeontology and Evolution' Ed Jepson, Mayr & Simpson Princetown Univ Press (1949) p 114 Rosen, D.E., Forey, P.L., Gardiner, B.B., and Patterson, C., (1981) "Lung-fishes, Tetrapods, Palaeontology, and Plesiomorphy", Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 167,163-275
Simpson, G.G., Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society April 1959 p 296
Simpson, G.G., 'The Evolution of Life' Chicago (1960) p 144