Page 108 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

THE TRANSITIONAL-FORM DILEMMA

may just have lasted a long time [without becoming extinct]. Such exam-
ples are called “Ghost Lineages”; we assume these animals existed earlier
when we have probable ancient ancestors for them a long way back, and per-
haps possible descendants back then too. 70
This account is an excellent summary of the
cladistic method, revealing what a grave distor-
tion it really is. Evolutionists openly distort
results from the fossil record, according
to the requirements of their own theo-
ries. There can be no meaning in a
distortion that assumes that with a
70-million-year-old fossil species
A drawing of
actually lived 170 million years
Archaeopteryx
ago, and then constructing a family
relationship upon that.
Peter Dodson, a professor of anatomy from Pennsylvania
University, states that the appearance of so-called dino-birds after the
presence of the first true birds represents a serious problem, and that
the solution offered by the cladistic method is a forced one:
I continue to find it problematic that the most birdlike maniraptoran theropods
are found 25 to 75 million years after the origin of birds? Ghost lineages are
frankly a contrived solution, a deus ex machina required by the cladistic
method. Of course, it is admitted that late Cretaceous maniraptorans are not
the actual ancestors of birds, only “sister taxa.” Are we being asked to believe
that a group of highly derived, rapidly evolving maniraptorans in the Jurassic
gave rise to birds, as manifested by Archaeopteryx, and then this highly pro-
gressive lineage went into a state of evolutionary stasis and persisted un-
changed in essential characters for millions of years? 71
The cladistic method is actually a veiled admission of the theory
of evolution’s defeat in the face of the fossil record. To summarize:
1) Darwin proposed that once the fossil record was examined in
detail, transitional forms would be found to fill the gaps between all the
known species. That was his expectation.

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