Page 222 - The Evolution Impasse 2

220 Transitional Forms, The (The Transitional Species)

ev o lu tion ist and au thor of Vertebrate tween two suc ces sive spe cies, ex hib -
Paleontology and Evolution, ad mits it ing char ac ter is tics of each. For ex -
this, al be it re luc tant ly: "We have no am ple, there must have been crea -
in ter me di ate fos sils be tween rhi pid - tures with both gills and lungs, fins
is tian fish and ear ly am phib i ans." 252 and feet, alive dur ing the mil lions of
(See Amphibians.) years be tween the time that fish first
The ev o lu tion ist pa le on tol o gist left the wa ter and be came am phib i -
Barbara J. Stahl wrote a book, ans. Evolutionists call these im ag i -
Vertebrate History: Problems in nary crea tures "tran si tion al forms."
Evolution, in which she says: If this the o ry were true, there
Although the re la tion ship of the rhi - would have to be mil lions, even bil -
pid is tians to the am phib i ans will be lions of such crea tures that lived in
dis cussed in great er de tail in the next the past, and some of these mon stro -
chap ter, it should be said here that si ties must have left re mains in the
none of the known fish es is thought to fos sil record. But so far, the fos sil
be di rect ly an ces tral to the ear li est land record has re vealed not one sin gle
ver te brates. Most of them lived aft er
tran si tion al form. In his book The
the first am phib i ans ap peared, and
Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
those that came be fore show no ev i -
writes these words in his chap ter en -
dence of de vel op ing the stout limbs and
ti tled "Difficulties on Theory":
ribs that char ac ter ized the prim i tive te -
Why, if spe cies have de scend ed from
tra pods. 253
oth er spe cies by in sen si bly fine gra da -
tions, do we not ev ery where see in nu -
mer a ble tran si tion al forms? Why is
TRANSITIONAL FORMS,
not all na ture in con fu sion in stead of
THE (THE TRANSITIONAL
the spe cies be ing, as we see them, well
SPECIES)
de fined? . . . But, as by this the o ry in -
The the o ry of ev o lu tion claims nu mer a ble tran si tion al forms must
that all liv ing spe cies on Earth, past have ex ist ed, why do we not find them
and present evolved from one an - em bed ded in count less num bers in the
crust of the earth? . . . Why then is not
oth er. The trans for ma tion from one
ev ery ge o log i cal for ma tion and ev ery
spe cies to an oth er, ac cord ing to this
stra tum full of such in ter me di ate
the o ry, oc curred slow ly and in sta -
links? Geology as sur ed ly does not re -
ges. Therefore, there must have been
veal any such fine ly grad u at ed or gan ic
at least sev er al tran si tion al forms be -
chain; and this, per haps, is the most
The Evolution Impasse II