The "Transitional Fossil" FAQ

Finally, Mr. Wallace gets to the empirical data:
 

Yet Mr. Wallace still tries to misdirect the reader from what is supposed to be the main point of his rebuttal, and of Ms. Hunt’s FAQ, where she plainly states in her conclusion:

"Creationists often state categorically that ‘there are no transitional fossils’. As this FAQ shows, this is simply not true. That is the main point of this FAQ."

As far as transitional fossils other than vertebrates, he may want to imply because Ms. Hunt didn’t address it, there is no information to be found? I have provided a few links for the objective minded inquirer to get started with:

Invertebrate Paleontology
Paleontology home page
Arthropod Fossils and Phylogeny
Invertebrate Publications, AMNH
Invertebrates
Transitional fossils - the link that Mr. Isaak provides on his essay that Mr. Wallace missed and didn’t address.

 Segmentation and Vertebrate Origins

 Plant Fossil Record
 Links for Palaeobotanists 1
 Plant Fossils of West Virginia

Microfossil Stratigraphy Presents Problems for the Flood
Nannofossil Lab
FSU Paleontology -
Paleolimnology & Diatom Home Pages

As I have shown so far, Wallace’s statement "the myth of fossil transitions plainly denied by the evolutionist authorities" is really a myth itself.  I will continue to show that his "objective, critical look at the contents" is false. It is fair to say that all of his criticisms toward Ms. Hunt and her FAQ are completely unsubstantiated.
 

Yet Mr. Wallace fails to show any of this if it is supposedly missing. It is a misconception of science to suggest that viewpoints must all be universally excepted. This is not a problem for the vast majority of productive scientists. This information of differing viewpoints can be found in the references provided by Ms. Hunt.  However, what is missing from his document so far is any honesty—period.
 

This shows a misconception on classification, morphology, and comparative anatomy. What Mr. Wallace seems to be saying is that even if all of his arguments fail (which they do), and even if everything in Ms. Hunts presentation makes sense (which it does), it still isn’t just so. What he needs to do is make a list of the characteristics that are similar for one group (the ones "that help"), and those that are not similar to the other group (those that "don’t help"). He could then show us how those characteristics fit into creationist preconceptions of a "created kind" group if it is no difficult task!

Whale "Evolution"

On this section Mr. Wallace just paraphrases from articles by Dr. Gish. It will be shown that Mr. Wallace’s resource which supposedly is a "well-documented treatment of this subject (replacing evolutionary dogma with objective, critical evaluation)" is nothing more than a book misleading misquotes and conjecture, used by creationists to perpetuate those misconceptions.
 

1. back of a mammal skull
a well preserved cranium that is distinctive in that it has a high, narrow sagitall crest bordered posteriorly by prominent lamboidal crests.

2. Two jaw fragments
 

3. some teeth
upper molars that are tritubercular teeth with a large central protocone, large pointed paracone, reduced metacone, and no accessory cusps. Lower molars have a massive trianglular protoconid cusp and a simple keeled talonid. The resemble those of terrestrial mesonychid Condylarthra and are similar to teeth of middle Eocene archeocete Cetacea.
 

I recommend following that link too for illustrations of how it is actually that refutation of whale evolution that is contrived from little substance.
 

Wallace says that the fossil material for Pakicetus was "conjured" up. He wants the reader to think that paleontologists just arbitrarily label fossils for no reason. In fact there is strong evidence on just those fossils that it is an ancestral whale, if he had only read the article by the author he mentions.  The report [Philip D. Gingerich, et. al., "Origin of Whales in Epicontinental Remnant Seas: New Evidence from the Early Eocene of Pakistan" Science, Vol. 220, April 22, 1983, pp. 403-406.] gives a detailed explanation of what those fossils are, what they looked like and why they are interpreted as they were. One characteristic is that is special to Pakicetus is the unique earbones that show the beginnings of an adaptation to hearing underwater. Other unique characteristics found in those fossils are as follows: dorsally placed orbits, palatine fissures, nasal opening over incisors, hypoglossal foramen present and separated from jugular foramen, small mandibular foramen, P4/ with 3 roots and single cusp, lower molars with paraconid and metaconid and only a hypoconid on talonid basin. If you were to read the article, you could see that they were more than just a "skull, jaw fragments, and teeth".

Here’s a link to a page by Gingerich himself for more information: What, When, and Where is a Whale?
 

One can read a more entertaining presentation of this argument by Gish in his book on pages 327 to 329.

Here Mr. Wallace wants to insert a logical fallacy that if we can find one fraud, then they all must be frauds.  Piltdown man certainly was a hoax, but it was not totally embraced by the evolutionist community like the picture that Mr. Wallace paints. It was the mainstream scientists who exposed the hoax, not creationists..

Nebraska man had a short lived history and was not a hoax.. It was discovered and named by Henry Osborn, and there was skeptisism about it from the beginining. The same scientist did more research and found that he was mistaken. He corrected his error in the same scientific litereature he first published his discovery in [Gregory W.K. "Hesperopithecus apparently not an ape nor a man". Science, 66:579-81 (1927)]. Since that time, it has never been seen in mainstream scientific literature, but one would think the error is still perpetuated as it is always found in creationist literature.
 
 

This argument Mr. Wallace seems to have be taken from page 231 & 232 of Gish’s book.  The information does not come from a paper by Walker and Leakey, but from news report by a different author, [Boyce Rensberger, "A New Ape In Our Family Tree",  Science 84, Vol. 5, No.1, p. 16, 1984]. If Mr. Wallace has read that article he would have read something else that Walker "cautiously alluded to":

"Until now most of us have been inclined to think of Sivapithecus as an ancestral orang that had little or nothing to do with human evolution," Walker says. "But I think the case is quite strong that we are dealing with what could be the ancestral anthropoid, the common ancestor of apes and humans."

That’s science!
yes there is rise and fall, caution is to be taken, but by far there many examples of transitional fossils that have withstood extreme scrutiny that Wallace seems to ignore.
 Fossil Hoax
 

If Wallace needed this information he could have found it in the references provided by Hunt where a more detailed explanation is given, rather just focusing on characteristics that are not used to classify. Instead Wallace parrots from page 203 in Gish’s book that superficially addressed the same references. What Wallace and Gish don’t understand is that the fossils show what paleontologists and even Darwin predicted, adding further confirmation to its classification as ancestors of modern whales.

These characteristics and explanations are found in the following two articles Hunt provided:
- Berta, A. 1994. "What is a whale?" Science 263:180-181. [commentary on discovery of Ambulocetus natans]
- Thewissen, J.G.M., S.T. Hussain, and M. Arif. 1994. "Fossil evidence for the origin of aquatic locomotion in archaeocete whales". Science 263:210-212.
 

Mchedlidze is his only citation to build his "straw whale".  This is a fine example of the problems creationists have when they just parrot false claims from other creationists. The distortion just gets worse. All he does is paraphrase from Gish’s book on page 205. The part the Mr. Wallace (or Gish) is probably referring to is in the beginning of chapter 5 "Phylogenetic Relationships of Cetacea". We see that Mchedlidze is just pointing out the controversy of the lineage, and in the following pages he discusses in great detail each view, focusing mostly on the genera Mirocetus, Aetocetus, and Ferecetotherium from the family Basilosauridae.  It is in the next chapter is where he gives us his own conclusion:

"Late Paleocene forms of early Cetacea (Mirocetus, Aetocetus, Ferecetotherium) are characterized by a peculiar combination of Archaeoceti and toothless cetacean features. They appear to occupy an intermediate position between Archaeoceti and Mysticeti.
Whalebone whales [Mysticeti] are closely connected phylogenetically with Archaeoceti, while toothed cetacean probably constitute an independent branch of the common stock of archaic mammals.
Whalebone whales have evolved from some forms of late Eocene or early Oligocene Archaeoceti, Ferecetotherium, which lived until the late Oligocene may be considered one of those forms which do not differ much from the group of Archaeoceti that gave rise to whalebone whales."
[Mchedlidze, (1984), pp. 118-119]

Mr. Wallace tells us that a book [Robert L. Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1988] has inspired a "rush to attribute whale ancestry to anything resembling the wolf-like creatures", but he fails to cite any papers where this is happening, or tell us which "wolf-like" creatures are erroneously classified as mesonychids. If Wallace had read the book he would see that it is a carefully detailed description of what fossils are and how they are interpreted. On pages 520 & 521 he would find what the real morphological characteristics are that are used in attributing specimens to the Mesonychia. His severe ignorance to paleontology makes it inexcusable for him to make such statements unless he can provide some evidence to support his sweeping generalized accusations. Examination of the evidence found in all his resources seems to be more troublesome for Wallace with his imagination.
 

Another sweeping generalization by Wallace based on his ignorance to paleontology and distortion of data. Based on his say so we are supposed to believe that because he is not objective and can't see reality, nobody can.

For more information on ancient whales:
Origin of Cetacea - by P.D. Gingerich
Eocene Cetaceans
Fossil Whales in Hyperspace

The Old Archaeopteryx Trick

Again Mr. Wallace just paraphrases from pages 132-139 of Gish’s book of misquoting which itself is just a rehash of an earlier version of the same diatribe in the article "As a Transitional Form Archaeopteryx Won’t Fly"

Mr. Wallace quotes Mr. Isaak as stating that Archaeopteryx was more reptile than bird. He then cites some authors to try and discredit Isaak with a "straw reptile/bird" argument showing that Archaeopteryx was more bird than reptile in a feeble attempt to first show that he is at odds evolutionist experts. He is trying to distract the reader from the original issue of whether there are transitional fossils or not. Somehow he thinks that by showing it is more bird that reptile it will not be a transitional fossil. (But he doesn’t even do that!) Lets see what his cited experts have to say...
 

By his emphasis, it appears that Mr. Wallace wants deceive us to think that (just like Isaak suggested is a creationist misconception in his essay) that not only was it more bird like, it was 100% a modern bird. His quote was the last sentence of a three page article addressing whether Archaeopteryx represented a terrestrial stage in evolution from dinosaur to bird. The author was comparing its claw curvature to modern ground- and tree-dwelling birds. So if we look at the quote in context:

(The part Wallace quoted is in black, parts omitted or discrepant are in red)
"In consideration of the above morphological features, flight adaptations that represent shared, derived characters (synapomorphies) with modern volant birds, I conclude that Archaeopteryx was arboreal and volant, considerably advanced aerodynamically, and probably capable of flapping, powered flight to at least some degree (20). Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense, a bird."
[Alan Feduccia, "Evidence from Claw Geometry Indicating Arboreal Habits of Archaeopteryx", Science, Vol. 259, 1993, p. 793.]

Mr. Wallace is trying to misdirect us from the topic of transitional fossils in this part. The question is not whether Archaeopteryx is more bird than reptile. The question is how are all these features used in considering it as a transitional fossil? These are all references that Mr. Wallace must have lifted from Gish’s book. They all say the same thing, that Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil, but the characteristics to determine its transition are what is questionable.

L.D. Martin, J.D. Stewart, and K.N. Whetstone, "The Origin of Birds: Structure of the Tarsus and Teeth", The Auk, Vol. 97, pp. 86-93, 1980. The authors of this paper examine the leg bones and teeth of Archaeopteryx to argue that it may share a common ancestor relationship with crocodiles rather than theropod dinosaurs.

Rayner, M.J . "Vertebrate flight and the origins of flying vertebrates", Evolution and the Fossil Record, eds. K. Allen & D. Briggs. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1989, pp. 188-217. Rayner presents different models to study the flight performance of Archaeopteryx.  He considers Archaeopteryx as a bird capable of forward light but not slow flight which predicts a gliding origin of flight for all groups of vertebrates.

Alick D. Walker, "Evolution of the pelvis in birds and dinosaurs", Problems in Vertebrate Evolution, eds. S. Mahala Andrews, et. al., Academic Press Inc. New York, 1977. Walker argues that features of dinosaur and bird pelvises suggest that birds did not originate from theropod dinosaurs. He shows that birds like Archaeopteryx probably originated from quadruped, arboreal ancestors in the late Triassic to mid-Jurrasic time.
A.D. Walker, "The pelvis of Archaeopteryx", Geology Magazine, 117 (6), 1980, pp. 595-600. Walker examines the pelvis bones of three specimens of Archaeopteryx to determine when the rotation of the pubis occurred during bird evolution.

Storrs L. Olson and Alan Feduccia, "Flight capability and the pectoral girdle of Archaeopteryx", Nature, Vol. 278, March 15, 1979, pp. 247-248. The authors argue that evidence from the pectoral girdle of Archaeopteryx suggest that it would have been a powered flyer instead of a terrestrial, cursorial predator.

K.N. Whetstone, "Braincase of Mesozoic Birds: I. New Preparation of the "London" Archaeopteryx", Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2(4): pp 439-452, February 1983. Whetstone argues that the braincase morphology of Archaeopteryx does not show it to be the direct ancestor of modern, ornithurine birds. He suggests that Archaeopteryx and modern birds share an early common ancestor.
 

Wallace thinks that fossils that are believed to be older than Archaeopteryx will supposedly make the transitional nature of Archaeopteryx less defensible. Even though he provided no quotes for the citations, I wanted to be objective and looked them up anyway. First we have:

[Tim Beardsley, "Fossil bird shakes evolutionary hypotheses", Nature, Vol. 322, August 21, 1986, p. 677]
A news article about Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee who intends to assign fossil remains of  what he claims are birds to a new genus, Protoavis. He believes they are ancestors of modern birds and not Archaeopteryx. It offered no data, and briefly discusses the impending controversy of bird evolution once Chatterjee publishes his work. I will select a few quotes out that should also shake up Wallace’s creationism hypothesis too:

"Fossil remains claimed to be of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been found in the 225-million-year old Dockum Formation..."

"Protoavis also has reptilian features: four teeth in the forward part of its jaw, a tail and clawed fingers."

"It also tends to confirm what many palaeontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds. It is in some ways more reptilian than Protoavis,..."

[Richard Monastersky, "The Lonely Bird: Claims of the earliest avian fossil launch a paleontologic flap", Science News, Vol. 140, August 17, 1991, pp. 104-105.]
This was a news article, not a research paper where the author reports about the claim that Protoavis may be a bird fossil discovered by Chatterjee. He discusses the controversy with  Chatterjee and quotes several paleontology experts (including one mentioned earlier by Wallace):

"‘I’m very skeptical and unimpressed,’ says Peter Houde, an evolutionary biologist who focuses on birds at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
North Carolina’s Feduccia voices ever stronger doubt: ‘You really need to have some critical evidence, and what Chatterjee has is a bunch of tea leaves in the bottom of a dark cup.  It’s just like reading tea leaves.’" [bold added]

"Of course, before scientists interpret the importance of Protoavis, they must resolve the central question: Was it a bird or even a close relative of birds? Many authorities in the field think it will be extremely difficult for Chatterjee to convince people unless he finds better specimens to back up his claim."

[Alun Anderson, "Early Bird Threatens Archaeopteryx’s Perch", Science, Vol. 253, 1991, p. 35.]
This again is a research news article, not a research paper where the author reports about Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee, and even mentions a paper and journal that Chatterjee is to publish that Mr. Wallace should have cited instead. Again the article is a discussion on Chatterjee at odds with other paleontologist’s speculations about Protoavis. Anderson does quote Feduccia (of who Wallace offered us as an authority) as saying:

"‘Calling this the original bird is irresponsible," says Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina.  A world authority on Archaeopteryx, he has seen illustrations of Chatterjee’s fossil and compares the reconstruction of its fragments to "reading tea leaves in the bottom of a dark cup." [bold added]

"Can all those links [of dinosaurs to birds] simply be thrown and replaced by an uncertain ancestor 75 millions years older than Archaeopteryx? ‘For such a dramatic explanation you really would need substantial evidence, and it’s really not there,’ says Feduccia. ‘all you can say about Protoavis is that it’s a small Triassic reptile of unknown affinity.’" [bold added]

"Since [Eldredge and I] proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms.  Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but are abundant between larger groups. The evolution from reptiles to mammals, as mentioned earlier, is well documented."
[Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory", Discover, May 1981, p. 37 (my bold)]

"Creationist pseudoscience is, perhaps, the greatest threat against reason now prevalent in America."
[Stephen Jay Gould, on the jacket of Abusing Science by Philip Kitcher, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1982.]

"We believe that punctuational change dominates the history of life: evolution is concentrated in very rapid events of speciation (geologically instantaneous, even if tolerably continuous in ecological time). [Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, "Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered", Paleobiology, Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 1977, p. 115]

"Evolutionary theory, Darwin’s second topic, is a ferment of exiting and useful debate, with new concepts (including neutral mutation theory, mass extinction by cometary impact, punctuated equilibrium) integrated around a Darwinian core.  The fact of evolution , Darwin’s first topic, is as well established as anything in science.  Evolution is the central organizing principle of biology.  The famous statement of our premier evolutionist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, bears repeating in closing: nothing in biology makes any sense except in the light of evolution." [Stephen Jay Gould, Dictionary of Science and Technology, Academic Press, 1992, p. 785 (my bold)]

"The supposed lack of intermediary forms in the fossil record remains the fundamental canard of current antievolutionism.  Such transitional forms are scarce, to be sure, and for two sets of good reasons - geological (the gappiness of the fossil record) and biological (the episodic nature of evolutionary change, including patterns of punctuated equilibrium and transition within small populations of limited geographic extent). But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life’s physical genealogy." [Stephen Jay Gould, "Hooking Leviathan by Its Past", Natural History, May 1994, p. 8]

"Natural selection is an immensely powerful yet beautifully simple theory that has held up remarkably well, under intense and unrelenting scrutiny and testing, for 135 years." [Stephen J. Gould, "The Evolution of Life on the Earth" , Scientific American, Vol. 271, No. 4, October 1994, p. 85]

Surely if it existed, creationist spokespersons such as Mr. Wallace would present the empirical evidence from the fossil record. We are repeatedly told of overwhelming and conclusive evidence against evolution, yet the hands-on paleontologists and the data they have accumulated tell a very different—and more objective—story...

There are many transitional fossils.

More links of interest:
 Transitional Forms: Fish to Amphibian Transition Documented - By Glenn R. Morton.
 Computer Models of Selection, Cambrian Explosion and Punctuated Equilibrium - By Glenn R. Morton.
 Transitional fossils - Bibliography for transitional fossils by Martin R. Leipzig and Wesley R. Elsberry
 The Fossil Record 2 -a near-complete listing of the diversity of life through time, compiled at the level of the family. By M. J. Benton, (editor).
 BMS (British Micropalaeontological Society) -University of Bristol Earth Sciences Palaeontology Research Group.