Page 133 - The Evolution Impasse 2

Origin of Turtles 131

hoped would pro vide an swers to
the prob lems fac ing his the o ry,
would in fact on ly make them
worse.
To be fair, he was aware of at
least some of these prob lems. In the
ap pen dix to his book, ti tled
"Difficulties of the Theory," he even
ad mit ted them. However, the an -
swers he sup plied to these prob lems
lacked any sci en tif ic va lid i ty. The
American phys i cist Lipson com -
ments on Darwin's "dif fi cul ties":
On read ing The Origin of Species, I
found that Darwin was much less sure
of him self than he is of ten rep re sent ed
to be; the chap ter en ti tled "Difficulties
Remains of the old est known sea tur tle.
of the Theory," for ex am ple, shows
Found in Brazil, this 110-mil lion-year-old
con sid er a ble self-doubt. As a phys i cist, fos sil is in dis tin guish a ble from present-
I was par tic u lar ly in trigued by his day spec i mens.
com ments on how the eye would have
aris en. 138
high ly suc cess ful or der is ob scured
Darwin hoped that as sci en tif ic by the lack of ear ly fos sils, al though
re search pro gressed, these dif fi cul - tur tles leave more and bet ter fos sil
ties would be re solved. On the con - re mains than do oth er ver te brates.
tra ry, how e ver, lat er sci en tif ic find - By the mid dle of the Triassic Period
ings on ly wor sened them. (about 200,000,000 years ago), tur tles
were nu mer ous and in pos ses sion of
ba sic tur tle char ac ter is tics. . .
ORIGIN OF TURTLES
Intermediates be tween tur tles and
Turtles, mem bers of the rep tile cot yl o saurs, the prim i tive rep tiles
fam i ly, emerge sud den ly in the fos sil from which tur tles prob a bly sprang,
record to geth er with their unique are en tire ly lack ing." 139
shells. As ev o lu tion ist sour ces put it, Robert Carroll, an ex pert on ver -
"Unfortunately, the or i gin of this te brate pa le on tol o gy, states that "im -