No Evidence for Evolution It is often said by creationists like Ray Comfort that there is no observable evidence for evolution; the fossil record doesn’t count as there are no transitional forms between two species and you can’t see evolution happening. Whilst many who understand evolution are aware that effectively every living thing is a transitional form between its parents and its offspring, the apparent lack of fossils “between” two distinct species means, in their minds, there are no transitional fossils. One of the problems with providing evidence of transitional fossils with regards to humans is that the preservation potential of land based animals is relatively low, even more so in tropical areas where most remains are devoured before they have the chance to be buried and fossilised. This combined with the relatively small populations size means that it is practically impossible to find a continuous chain of parent to offspring of fossils that would show all transitional forms. This isn’t true of all species though. Marine animals have a much higher preservation potential, particularly when their remains drop to the deep ocean floor, and combined with a larger populations size means you have a more continuous fossil series that can illustrate evolution in the fossil record. One of my favourite examples of this was put together by Don Lindsay and illustrates the complete sequence of fossil remains for foraminifera (a type of plankton). These fossils are found when drilling down into the ocean sediments, for example with oil wells, and examining the rocks that are drilled through. As you drill down deeper the rocks get older and older and so you can see directly the range of animals that lived in that part of the ocean at that specific time. don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/orbulina_big.jpg The above link takes you to an image that shows one such sequence of foraminifera found in a sunken atoll in the Marshall Islands. The top left hand corner (no. 1) is Globigerinoides trilobus whilst the bottom right hand corner (no. 15) is Orbulina universa. Both of these species are alive in today’s oceans and are separate species. However you can see that Globigerinoides trilobus has transitioned into Orbulina universa over successive generations with a couple of intermediate species that no longer exist, namely Globigerinoides bisphericus (no. 3) and Praeorbulina sicana (no. 4, 5 &6). If we look at the distribution of the fossils of these foraminifera in the drilled rocks we can see that G. trilobus is found through the whole 100m section of the well. G bisphericus is found from 90m to 65m, Praeorbulina from 80m to 55m and O. universa is found from 65m to the present day. (image 2 shows this sequence). This illustrates how a population of G. trilobus transitioned into O. universa with a few intermediate species of G bisphericus & Praeorbulina in the fossil record, giving you directly observable and repeatable (you can drill another well and see the same result) evidence for evolution. don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/orbulina_chart_big.gif
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:08:36 +0000
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