Page 68 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

THE TRANSITIONAL-FORM DILEMMA

When it was realized that Seymouria, which evolutionists maintained was
the ancestor of reptiles, actually lived at the same time as them, that evolu-
tionary claim had to be abandoned.

ancestor is known prior to the appearance of true reptiles. The absence of such
ancestral forms leaves many problems of the amphibian-reptilian transition
unanswered. 29
Carroll, regarded as an authority on vertebrate paleontology, is
forced to accept that “The early amniotes are sufficiently distinct from
all Paleozoic amphibians that their specific ancestry has not been estab-
lished.” 30 The same thing is admitted by Stephen Jay Gould, who
wrote, “No fossil amphibian seems clearly ancestral to the lineage of
fully terrestrial vertebrates (reptiles, birds, and mammals).” 31
The most important animal to be suggested so far as a reptilian an-
cestor is the amphibian species Seymouria. However, fossil reptiles have
been discovered that were alive 30 million years before Seymouria’s first
appearance on Earth, showing that this could not have been a transi-
tional form. The oldest Seymouria fossils date back to the Sub-Permian
Period, 280 million years ago. However, the two oldest known reptile
species, Hylonomus and Paleothrys, were found in Sub-Pennsylvanian

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