Page 17 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

If a process of evolution had really taken
place on Earth, and had all living species actually
descended from a single common ancestor, then some
clear evidence of this would be discovered in the fossil
record. The well-known French zoologist Pierre Grassé says
this:
Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only
through fossil forms... only paleontology can provide them with the evidence
of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms. 2

In order to see why this should be so, we need a brief look at
the theory of evolution’s fundamental claim: that all living things
are descended from one another. A living organism, which previ-
ously came into existence in a random manner, gradually turned
into another, with all ensuing species coming into being—or
evolving—that same way. According to this unscientific claim, all
plants, animals, fungi and bacteria came into being in the same
manner. The 100 or so different animal phyla (comprising such
basic categories as mollusks, arthropods, worms and sponges)
all descended from one single common ancestor. Again ac-
cording to the theory, such invertebrates as these gradually,
in the course of time and the pressure of natural selection,
turned into fish, which turned into amphibians, which
turned into reptiles. Some reptiles turned into birds,
and others into mammals.
Evolutionary theory maintains that this
transition took place gradually over hun-
dreds of billions of years. That being
the case, then countless num-
bers of transi-