Barbara J. Stahl,
St. Anselm's College, USA, in.Vertebrate
History: Problems in Evolution, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1974, pp.
148 and 195.."...
none of the known fishes is thought to be directly
ancestral
to the earliest land
vertebrates.
Most of them lived after the first amphibians
appeared and those that came before show no evidence of developing the
stout limbs and ribs that characterized the primitive tetrapods.....Since
the fossil material provides no evidence of other aspects
of the transformation from fish to tetrapod, paleontologists
have had to speculate
how legs and aerial breathing evolved.
"It is not
difficult to imagine how feathers, once evolved, assumed additional functions,
but how they arose initially, presumably from reptilian scales, defies
analysis."
pp. 349 and
350."The problem
has been set aside, not for want of interest, but for lack of evidence.
No fossil structure transitional between scale and feather is known and
recent investigators are unwilling to found a theory on pure speculation...
.
"It seems,
from the complex construction of feathers, that their evolution from reptilian
scales would have required an immense period of time and involved a series
of intermediate structures. So far, the fossil record does not bear out
that supposition.
p. 40."Because
of the nature of the fossil evidence, paleontologists have been forced
to reconstruct the first two thirds of mammalian history in great part
on the basis of tooth morphology."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Tom Kemp, Curator of Zoological
Collections at the Oxford University Museum in England, 'The reptiles that
became mammals',.New
Scientist.(newscientist.com),
vol. 92, March 4, 1982, p.583.."Each
species of mammal like reptile that has been found appears suddenly in
the fossil record and is not preceded
by the species
that is directly ancestral
to it. It disappears some time later, equally abruptly,
without leaving a directly descended
species, although we usually find that it has been replaced by some new,
related species."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Chicago's Field Museum of
Natural History curator, David Raup,
in a Field Museum bulletin,.Conflicts
Between Darwin and Paleontology, January, 1979, pages 22,25, accentuates
the above comment with:."We
are now 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has
been greatly expanded. We now have over a quarter of a million fossil species,
but the situation hasn't changed much...We have even fewer examples of
evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's
time.".(and
back then they had none! they only thought they had some)
Dr. David M. Raup, 'Conflicts
between Darwin and paleontology',.Field
Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50 (1), January, 1979, p.
22."Darwin's
theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence
from fossils and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very
important part of the general argument that is made in favor of Darwinian
interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly
true."
p.25."By
this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil
record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to
be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information, what
appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were
available, now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Elwyn L. Simons, Department
of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, USA, and Co-Editor of.Nuclear
Physics, "The origin and radiation of
the primates"..Annals
New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 167, 1969, p. 319.."In
spite of recent findings, the time and place of origin of order Primates
remains shrouded in mystery."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
A. J. Kelso, Professor of
Physical Anthropology, University of Colorado, 'Origin and evolution of
the primates', in.Physical
Anthropology, J. B. Lippincott, New York, second edition, 1974, p.
142.."... the
transition from insectivore to primate
is not documented by fossils. The basis of knowledge about the transition
is by inference
from living forms."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Dr. Robert Martin, Senior
Research Fellow, Zoological Society of London, article 'Man is not an onion',.New
Scientist (newscientist.com), August 4, 1977,
pp. 283 and 285.."In
recent years several authors have written popular books on human origins
which were based more on fantasy and subjectivity
than on fact and objectivity.
At the moment science cannot offer a full answer on the origin of humanity.
...As far as geologically more recent evidence is concerned, the discovery
in East Africa of apparent
remains of 'Homo'
in the same early fossil sites as both gracile
and robust.australopithecines
has thrown open once again the question of the direct relevance
of the latter to human evolution. So one is forced to conclude that there
is no clear cut scientific picture of human evolution."
