The Transitional Fossil Challenge for Creationists

Had you not made it known that A was the skull of a modern chimp, I'd have told you that these were all human skulls...
As a guess, I'm gonna say L is the first human skull. I base this on the overall shape of the skull, the gentle curves that the Chimp skull seems to lack, in my opinion. As per question three, because it stumped me and I was unable to answer the riddle.

Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion

Oh, and as any fundamentalist christian knows, that photo is from talkorigins.org. Therefore, it's wrong.

I'd wager that J is the first human skull. No real reason and a bunch of superficial ones. Mainly, when in doubt, I pick J.

"Every man makes a god of his own desire."
-Virgil

How is that a very good example. All it proves is that there are similiarities between Chimps and Humans in their skulls. What method was used for dating? Were they found in the correct order in the geological strata's?

Why is it not feasible that a creator would use similar building blocks, structures for the various species, etc.?

Next you will be putting up the evolution of the horse diagram.

and we just went over this stuff on monday and thankfully, no one even brought up the creationist argument and intelligent design but if they had, our teacher who seems to be very well educated about this matter despite the fact that he is a history professor and this is a science matter (but science and history seem to me to be very dependent on each other in more ways than i could list) , would have schooled them (i mean cleared up any misinformation and confusion),

what all of my science teachers and professors have said is that we don't discuss anything to do with religion, in a science class. Religion is not reasonable, there aren't any objective evidence to support claims in any religion. and then they say, science and scientists and researchers and science believers have proven their theories that turn into laws through a lot-lot of evidence taken over and through years and years of hard work of scientists---- then proving them to be right or wrong, having them constantly doubted/questioned
and the most reasonable one about man and how man came into being or developed and what we are and how we came to be what we are is Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species , of natural selection, and survival of the fittest and his evidence and his life's work
and people further more elaborated on his work and took more ideas from it

well that is what i whole heartedly beleive in and hold to be true thus far unless some really, i mean really convincing evidence of fossil records.or other geological and paleontological records come about/are found

"Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right."

LOL, this is completely random, but I think I could be considered a missing link, because I still get weird urges every now and then to use my feet to pick up things ( I can even tie shoelaces with my toes--they're freakishly long!), so I guess its me reverting back to my primate roots.

~ munky boi ~ ^_^

"Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable." ~Sir Arthur Keith, in the forward to the 1959 100th anniversary of Darwins "Origin of Species".
I wouldn't suggest you read this entire article, just skim through it. It has
good info in it.

"Time magazine's new ape-man
Publication's latest evolution contention less-than-believable
Author: James Perloff

In 1999, following the controversial de-emphasis of evolution in Kansas schools, Time magazine struck in its August 23 issue with an editorial denouncing creationists and a huge cover story called "How Man Evolved." The latter displayed man's supposed oldest ancestor –Ardipithecus ramidus – while neglecting to tell readers that its fragments had been found scattered over an area of about one mile, and put together to form a "missing link."

Time's cover was of a reconstructed ape-man skull, yet well less than half the skull consisted of actual fossil fragments – the rest was plaster, molded by imagination. The most recent issue of Time, dated July 23, takes no less liberty. On the cover is a painting of an ape-man called Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba with the headline "How Apes Became Human." Inside, the article begins: "Meet your newfound ancestor." The painting is based on some fragmentary bones recently found in Ethiopia by a graduate student named Yohannes Haile-Selassie.

Time assures its readers that the creature walked upright. The evidence for this? A single toe bone. Time displays the bone with the unequivocal caption: "THIS TOE BONE PROVES THE CREATURE WALKED ON TWO LEGS." But not until the last page of the eight-page article do readers learn that the toe bone was actually found some ten miles from the other bones. What evidence exists that the toe bone belonged to Haile-Selassie's other specimens? None, other than speculation.

There is great danger in basing conclusions on a single bone. In 1922, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, an ardent evolutionist, was shown a single tooth found in Nebraska by geologist Harold Cook. After examining it, Osborn declared it belonged to an early ape-man, whom he named Hesperopithecus haroldcookii in Cook's honor. Popularly, it became known as "Nebraska Man." Osborn hailed the tooth as "the herald of anthropoid apes in America." At the American Museum of Natural History, William K. Gregory and Milo Hellman, specialists in teeth, said after careful study that the tooth was from a species closer to man than ape. Harris Hawthorne Wilder, a zoology professor at Smith College, wrote: "Judging from the tooth alone the animal seems to have been about halfway between Pithecanthropus [Java Man] and the man of the present day, or perhaps better between Pithecanthropus and the man of the Neanderthal type. ..." In England, evolutionist Grafton Elliot Smith convinced the Illustrated London News to publish an artist's rendering of Nebraska Man. The picture, which appeared in a two-page spread and received wide distribution, showed two brutish, naked ape-persons, the male with a club, the female gathering roots. All this from one tooth. However, further excavations at Cook's site revealed that the tooth belonged neither to ape nor man, but to a peccary, a close relative of the pig.

Or take the Piltdown Man. It was declared an ape-man, 500,000 years old, and validated by many of Britain's leading scientists, including Grafton Elliot Smith, anatomist Sir Arthur Keith and British Museum geologist Arthur Smith Woodward. At the time the discovery was announced (1912), the New York Times ran this headline: "Darwin Theory Proved True." For the next four decades, Piltdown Man was evolution's greatest showcase, featured in textbooks and encyclopedias. But what did the Piltdown Man actually consist of? A very recent orangutan jaw, which had been stained to look old, with its teeth filed down to make them more human-looking, planted together with a human skull bone, also stained to create an appearance of age.

Those who think such mistakes no longer occur need only consider the Archaeoraptor, promoted in a 10-page color spread in the November 1999 National Geographic as the "true missing link" between dinosaurs and birds. The fossil was displayed at National Geographic's Explorers Hall and viewed by over 100,000 people. However, it too turned out to be a fake – someone had simply glued together fragments of bird and dinosaur fossils. Even if Time turns out to be correct, and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba walked on two feet, would it prove he was our "newfound ancestor"?

This assertion is based on a long-standing evolutionary assumption, usually stated something like this: "Humans are the only creatures that have evolved to the point where they can walk on two feet; therefore, if we can find the fossil of an animal that could walk on two feet, such a creature was our ancestor." However, the assumption that two-footed mobility establishes human kinship is groundless. Gorillas occasionally walk bipedally; Tanzanian chimpanzees are seen standing on two legs when gathering fruit from small trees; Zaire's pygmy chimpanzee walks upright so often that it has been dubbed "a living link." Science News reports of the latter: "Like modern gorillas they tend to be knuckle-walkers on the ground, yet they seem to be natural bipeds, too, frequently walking upright both on the ground and in the trees." So even if a fossil creature did have some limited ability to stand on two feet, it doesn't make it man's ancestor any more than these modern apes.

And man is not the only bipedal creature. Birds are bipedal; so was the T.-rex. Therefore, are they human ancestors? Time refers to "fossil discoveries as far back as Java Man in the 1890s" as validating the relationship between man and ape. But Time does not relate much of what is known about those finds. The Java Man story began with Ernst Haeckel, the German zoologist who has become notorious for using fraudulent drawings of embryos to prove the theory of evolution (See the July issue of WorldNet Magazine). Haeckel was convinced that an ape-man must have existed, and he named it Pithecanthropus alalus: ape-man without speech.

One of Haeckel's students, Eugene Dubois, became determined to find Pithecanthropus. Haeckel believed men might have separated from apes somewhere in Southern Asia. So in 1887, Dubois signed up as a doctor with the Dutch medical corps in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), intending to hunt for fossils during all his spare time. Dubois, it should be noted, had no formal training in geology or paleontology at the time, and his "archaeological team" consisted of prison convicts with two army corporals as supervisors. Years of excavation produced little of significance. Then, in 1891, along Java's Solo River, the laborers dug up a skullcap that appeared rather apelike, with a low forehead and large eyebrow ridges. Dubois initially considered it from a chimpanzee, even though there is no evidence that this ape ever lived in Asia. However, the following year, the diggers unearthed a thigh bone that was clearly human. Dubois, like Piltdown's discoverers, presumed that an apelike bone somewhere near a human bone meant the two belonged to the same creature, constituting Darwin's missing link. Haeckel, who had not even seen the bones, telegraphed Dubois: "From the inventor of Pithecanthropus to his happy discoverer!"

In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe and displayed his fossils. The response from experts was mixed, however. Rudolph Virchow, who had once been Haeckel's professor and is regarded as the father of modern pathology, said: "In my opinion, this creature was an animal, a giant gibbon, in fact. The thigh bone has not the slightest connection with the skull." The circumstances of Dubois' find were unorthodox. He had apparently been absent when the convicts dug up his fossils. Maps and diagrams of the site were not made until after the excavation. Under such conditions, a modern dig would be disregarded. In 1907, an expedition of German scientists from various disciplines, led by Professor M. Lenore Selenka, traveled to Java seeking more clues to man's ancestry in the region of Dubois' discovery. However, no evidence for Pithecanthropus was found. In the stratum of Dubois' find, the scientists found hearths and flora and fauna that looked rather modern. The expedition's report also noted a nearby volcano that caused periodic flooding in the area. Java Man had been found in volcanic sediments. The report observed that the chemical nature of those sediments, not ancient age, probably caused the fossilization of Pithecanthropus. Nevertheless, the Selenka findings and various deficiencies of Dubois' work were largely ignored, and Java Man became one of evolution's undisputed "facts."

Then there was Peking Man, worked on and validated by a number of Piltdown alumni, including Davidson Black, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Smith. In seeing textbook portrayals of Peking Man, few students learned that the skulls had been found in scattered little fragments, and that the reconstructions were actually composites taken from various individuals. Where fragments were missing, plaster substituted, and the famous final images of Peking Man were the creations of a sculptress named Lucille Swann. Later, all of the Peking Man fossils mysteriously vanished, except for a couple of teeth, preventing Peking Man from being subjected to the kind of checking that doomed Piltdown Man.

Neanderthals were long portrayed as ape-men, stooped over. This misconception was largely the result of a faulty reconstruction by French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who mistook the skeleton of a man with kyphosis (hunchback) for an ape-man in the process of becoming upright. Another snag: Neanderthal skulls are larger than those of modern humans. This flies in the face of evolutionary tradition, which says that man evolved progressively from creatures with smaller brains and skulls. In any event, Neanderthals are no longer classed as "ape-men," and some evolutionists have even discarded them as human ancestors. Which basically leaves us with australopithecines, currently in vogue as man's ancestor. However, australopithecine fossils show that they had long forearms and short hind legs, like today's apes. They also had long curved fingers and toes, like those apes use for tree-swinging. This may pose a problem for Time's thesis, since it claims the toe bone of Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba was over 5 million years old, yet relatively human-like – implying that it was more evolved than the toes of australopithecines, who supposedly came 2 million years later. The main substance to the claim that australopithecines are our ancestors is some evidence suggesting that the famed "Lucy" and her peers may have walked upright. But as noted, limited bipedality does not prove human ancestry, and a number of scientists – contrary to the impression created in Time – have disagreed that australopithecines are man's relatives. Britain's Lord Solly Zuckerman, who was raised to peerage for his scientific achievements, was a leading authority on australopithecines, having subjected them to years of biometric testing. He stated:

For my own part, the anatomical basis for the claim that the australopithecines walked and ran upright like man is so much more flimsy than the evidence which points to the conclusion that their gait was some variant of what one sees in subhuman primates, that it remains unacceptable.

Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis. Stephen Jay Gould called him "our leading expert on the quantitative study of skeletons." Oxnard concluded:

[T]he australopithecines known over the last several decades are now irrevocably removed from a place in the evolution of human bipedalism, possibly from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in the direct human lineage. All of this should make us wonder about the usual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bipedality and tool-using and -making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social structures. Even facial features are happily (and non-scientifically) reconstructed.

The July 23 Time includes a graphic showing the evolution of man, starting with the supposed Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba, with progressively more human figures culminating in man. However, it is very easy to arrange bones to demonstrate "evolutionary progress." In 1927, Osborn, along with other evolutionists, created a diagram of man's evolution. Skulls were displayed in progressive order. No. 1 in the sequence was the fraudulent Piltdown Man. No. 4 was a Neanderthal; No. 6 Cro-Magnon Man. No. 8 was labeled "Australian" (aborigine). No. 9? "Negro." No. 10? "Chinese." No. 11 (and last)? "Caucasian."

Because 99 percent of an organism's biology resides in its soft anatomy, it is very easy to invest a bone with imagination. For this reason – despite the protests of Darwinists – evolutionary anthropology is not a science like physics or chemistry. The laws of physics and chemistry can be demonstrated in a high school laboratory. Evolutionary anthropology, on the other hand, consists of speculations about unobserved events that supposedly occurred millions of years ago. Science cannot observe the past with the same authority as the present. As Lowenstein and Zihlman noted in New Scientist: "The subjective element in this approach to building evolutionary trees, which many paleontologists advocate with almost religious fervor, is demonstrated by the outcome: There is no single family tree on which they agree."

There was a wealth of evidence concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy: hundreds of eyewitnesses interviewed by the Warren Commission; the Zapruder movie that caught the actual slaying; the autopsy; fingerprint evidence; ballistics evidence. Nevertheless, controversy has never stopped raging about what actually took place. Scores of books challenged the evidence, offering widely differing explanations as to who killed Kennedy, from what angle(s) he was shot, etc. Even the autopsy results were challenged in a best-selling book.

Granted, the Kennedy assassination was a politically charged event. Nonetheless, if that much disagreement can occur over something that happened just 38 years ago, how can a paleontologist pick up a fragment of bone, supposedly 5 million years old, and declare its meaning with a high degree of certainty? Unlike the Kennedy assassination, there are no eyewitnesses who saw this creature, no Zapruder movie of it, no soft tissues to examine.

Other weaknesses permeate the Time article. It states that Haile-Selassie's bones are known to be 5.6-5.8 million years old, because this "can be accurately gauged by a technique known as argon-argon dating." It says the result was "confirmed by a second dating method." However, argon-argon dating has been demonstrated in various studies to be unreliable, and Time doesn't mention what the second method was.

Time refers to the "astonishingly complete skeleton of Lucy"– but those words belie the fact that about 60 percent of Lucy's skeleton, including most of the skull, was missing.

In explaining why apes began to walk upright, Time quotes anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy: "To walk upright you have to do so in synchrony. If the ligaments and muscles are out of synch, that leads to injuries. And then you'd be cheetah meat." But even fully coordinated, healthy human beings cannot outrun a cheetah! Time also neglects the fact that species vary widely within themselves. Darwinian anthropologists use cranial capacity (skull size) to judge the evolutionary status of our supposed ancestors, but even in modern humans, cranial capacity ranges from 700 to 2200 cubic centimeters, and has no bearing on intelligence.People's bone structure varies greatly, based on heredity, age, sex, health and climate. Some are big-boned, some small-boned. There are sumo wrestlers and pygmies. Doubtless, our ancient forebears were also diverse in their looks. How, then, can one assign a single fossil bone to a distinct place in human history? Apes vary widely, too; australopithecines may simply be a type that became extinct. Science journalist Roger Lewin, though an outspoken evolutionist, has noted:

It is an unfortunate truth that fossils do not emerge from the ground with labels already attached to them. And it is bad enough that much of the labeling was done in the name of egoism and a naive lack of appreciation of variation between individuals; each nuance in shape was taken to indicate a difference in type rather than natural variation within a population.

Another oddity surfaces in Time's diagram of the evolution of humans, chimps and gorillas. Human ancestors are shown going back almost 6 million years. But no chimpanzee or gorilla ancestors are depicted before a million years ago. If chimps and humans really diverged about 7 million years ago, as Time asserts, then where are all the fossils of chimpanzee and gorilla ancestors? Why does every bone fragment turn out to be a human ancestor? Perhaps that question was answered by Dr. Tim White, anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Though quoted in Time, and noted as Haile-Selassie's thesis adviser, he has previously stated: "The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone."

As creationist Marvin Lubenow notes, "No one will care if you discover the oldest fossil broccoli, but if you are fortunate enough to discover the oldest fossil human, the world will beat a path to your door." "

Well, I must say I believe I was some part of the inspiration for this blog. And I must say I am impressed by your popularity here beagle. You do fit your description, though Darwins Lapdog may be even more appropriate.
I never replied to your reply to my original blog.
This is one thing that caught my attention

What I said
discrepencies between reproductive, circulatory, and optic organs between mammals, reptiles, and birds,

What D.B. said
(E) Discrepencies between organs of mammals

This is crap. Comparative anatomy is one of the BIG AREAS of science that supports modern evolutionary theory at the expense of creationism. For instance there is a distinct homology in the arm bone structure of humans (who use their arms as arms), bats (who use their arms as wings), dolphins (who use their arms as flippers), dogs (who use their arms as legs), and moles (who use their arms as shovels). This is certainly not due to any requirement from FUNCTION. Modern evolutionary theory explains the observation as being the produce of historical contingency ... all those animals shared a common ancestor with that type of arm bone structure. Creationism explains it as ... God just deciding to use the same design for the hell of it.

The problem with your reply is, I was not talking about mammals specificly. I was making a point about non transitional element between reptiles and birds, repltiles and mammals, and so forth. For example, the number of chambers in the heart. The leap from photosensitive spots to camera eye. But I wont bore you, I wouldnt wanna write a whole thesis on this.

I hope I am not "quote mining" but this is the one error in your impecible logic I could find in your enormous reply. Then again, I am only a budding scientist, not a PHD, so I can't profess to have the same knowledge in argument, spinning (I joke), and science in general that you do. I know that you will have plenty of time to write me a extensive reply, and I look forward to reading it as far as I can.

"It's Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away" -Neil Young

A. Darwins Beagle

B. I'm bored with this

C. In case you didn't notice, the Creationists arent taking your question seriously

D. So why are you?

E. Is your goal to change anyones mind, or just insult the bullshitting God fearing Bible thumpin idiot Creationists as much you can?

F. Thank you for answering my question about transitional fossils.

G."It's Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away" -Neil Young

D.B- Er ... Archaeopterix has a distinctly reptilian skull with teeth, no keeled sternum, a boney tail, claws etc. Dinosaurs and birds share a distinctive hip structure. Dinosaurs even had feathers.

Thats exactly it, Archeoptrix had feathers. Have we ever found fossils of feather like scales? Archeoptrix has fully developed feathers, an extremely complex and sensitive organ on a birds body. That does not sound transitional.

"It's Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away" -Neil Young

I'm sorry but you skirted the point there a little bit. I didn't claim that archeoptrix didn't have reptilian features. I claimed simply that Archeoptrix had fully formed complex feathers. I asked you specificly, have we ever found feather like scales, or transitional feathers.

"It's Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away" -Neil Young

Hi, D.B. my answers are:
(1) I can't tell. I don't feel qualified to differentiate.
(2) I can't tell. Again. I'm not qualified.
(3) Certainly not qualified.

But your diagram is most interesting.

Be so kind as to help with a bit of research since you obviously are well informed, D.B. NOTE: Pardon if most or all of my terminology is incorrect.

I want to collect overwhelming, convincing and unambiguous documentation that can prove the transitional evolution of humans from their earliest ancestors.

For my collection, pictures are great but more is needed. Ordering the information chronologically by the dating of the fossils is an excellent idea. It seems (so far) in my research that much of the documentation for evolution is buried in snippets any many different books or have I just not found the one definitive reference yet?

Here's what I have in mind for my reference but perhaps you have an even better suggestion to add to the collection.

I'd want to build a reference (or find one already existing) of transitional human fossils with at least the following information organized chronologically by the dates of the fossils:

1. A photo of each fossil (like you have) is great, of course. That's why I'm hoping you can point me to the rest of this information.
2. The "name" of each fossil. I suppose fossils are cataloged by some naming convention in museums and laboratories. (My friend and I are thinking about visiting as many as we can to see which "our own eyes" and video tape the experience.)
3. The current location of the fossil (i.e. What musuem, or laboratory)
4. Who discovered the fossil.
5. A list of books, scientific papers or other published materials that corroborates the information from at least 2 or 3 different scientists who agree on the facts related to the fossil. For example, it's dating, species, etc.
6. A list of scientists with published references stating whether they believe the fossil supports evolution or creation and whether each scientist generally supports natural selection, special creation or some variation of those.

My idea is to build a list of unambiguous references where, at least, the evolutionary scientists agree either entirely on each fossil or at least a large majority.

Oh, I expect the anti-evolution writers to have arguments against, so in fairness I guess my reference work needs to list the arguments in favor and against each fossil. So I won't be accused of ignoring the other side. I think that a complete reference like this may actually convince people with any honesty.

So, would you be so kind as to either point me in the direction of some already existing reference work of this detailed nature? Or point me to where I can find it? Or, that failing, at least provide some of the missing pieces?

So far, I've ordered over a dozen books I found in references, both in and out of print and waiting for them to arrive. My goal is to build a library of reference material that is irrefutable.

Oh, please provide or point me to where this kind of information can be found related to your excellent collection of photos on this blog. Of course, I want my reference ultimately to include not only skulls but other parts of bone structure as well.

Logically, it shall be easy to find hundreds or thousands of such fossils among the millions of fossils cataloged around the world. Anyway, I don't need thousands but a good couple hundred showing with this kind of detailed evidence could certainly sway anyone open minded.

I'm actually a little surprised not to find this kind of detailed reference information on the internet just be googling "transitional human fossil". Yours was the best (in my opinion) because you have pictures. But I need all the rest of the details for my reference.

By the way, lest you despair of the futility of trying to convince my friends, I think this will be helpful in just convincing myself if no one else.

NOTE: After reviewing my post before submitting, I thought of one other curious question. I bought a copy of Origin of Species and have been reading it. One thing that confused me ab