Page 18 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

THE TRANSITIONAL-FORM DILEMMA

tional forms should have emerged and left some trace of their existence
during the course of that immeasurably long period.
Half-fish, half-amphibian creatures, which still bore piscine char-
acteristics despite having acquired four legs and lungs, should have
lived in the past. Alternatively, reptile-birds that retained some reptilian
features but had also acquired some avian ones must also have come
into being. Since these species were part of a transitional process, they
must also have been flawed, or even deformed. For instance, a transi-
tional reptile’s front legs should have resembled bird’s wings a little
more with every passing generation. But over the course of hundreds of
generations, this creature will have neither completely functional front
legs, nor completely functional wings—in other words it will exist in a
flawed, handicapped form. These theoretical creatures which evolu-
tionists believe to have lived in the past are known as transitional forms.
If creatures of that type really had existed in the distant past, then
they must have been numbered in the millions, even in the billions, and
their fossil remains should be excavated all over the world. Darwin ac-
cepted the logic of that, and
himself stated why there
should be a large number of
transitional forms:
By the theory of natural selection
all living species have been con-
nected with the parent-species of
each genus, by differences not
greater than we see between the
natural and domestic varieties of
the same species at the present day;
and these parent-species, now gen-
erally extinct, have in their turn
been similarly connected with
more ancient forms; and so on
Charles Darwin backwards, always converging to

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