Page 70 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

THE TRANSITIONAL-FORM DILEMMA

that some land-dwelling reptile adapted to life in deep, open waters as
the result of chance.
This is an impossible scenario. A. S. Romer, an expert on the nat-
ural history of vertebrates, states that a very long period of time would
be necessary for the features peculiar to the Ichthyosaur to have
emerged—for which reason the origin of these creatures must go back a
very long way. He then accepts that no known Permian Period reptile
could possibly be regarded as these creatures’ ancestor. 33 This observa-
tion, made by Romer in the 1960s, is still valid today.
An article called “Rulers of the Jurassic Seas,” published in a spe-
cial supplement to Scientific American magazine in April 2003, stated
that Ichthyosaurs were suited not only to life on the coasts, but also to
the ocean depths—for which reason they would have to undergo ex-
treme adaptations in order to cross from the land to the sea, losing a
great many terrestrial features and acquiring new ones for life in
water. 34 This, however, would require a very long time before the final
animal actually emerged, via a tremendous number of transitional
forms. Yet in the fossil record, there is no trace of such transitional
forms that might be regarded as the ancestors of the Ichthyosaurs.