Page 149 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

HARUN YAHYA

being answered. The further one investigates, the more complicated the
situation becomes. How could mammals—a group including such dif-
ferent species as primates, horses, bats, whales, polar bears, squirrels
and ruminants—have evolved from reptiles by means of mutations and
natural selection? This question goes unanswered.

Archaeopteryx, which lived some 150 million years ago, is the
species animal most often put forward by evolutionists as evidence for
evolution. A great many of them suggest that Archaeopteryx is an extinct
transitional form, exhibiting both reptile and bird characteristics.
However, such modern evolutionist authorities as Alan Feduccia dis-
count this claim as false.
The latest studies on fossils of Archaeopteryx have revealed that this
was no transitional form, but a species of bird, with a few features
slightly different from those of birds living today.
Herewith, some evolutionist claims regarding Archaeopteryx as a
transitional form, and answers to them:

1. The subsequently discovered breastbone: Until recently,
Archaeopteryx was portrayed as having no sternum or breastbone,
which lack was put forward as most important evidence that it was un-
able to fly. (The breastbone lies under the rib cage and is where the mus-
cles essential for flight are attached. All modern-day bird, flying or
flightless, and even bats, which belongs to a family very different from
birds, have breastbones.)
The seventh Archaeopteryx fossil discovered in 1992 proved, how-
ever, that this argument was false. That fossil did in fact possess the
breastbone which up until then, evolutionists had discounted. 118
This discovery removed the fundamental basis of the claims that
Archaeopteryx was a semi-bird, and flightless.

147