A few weeks back, I wrote about the voodoo science that evolutionists invoke when they estimate the number of extinct species. You might pop over there real quick and read it if you haven't already but I'll recap my point briefly. You've probably heard it cited that more than 99% of all species that have ever lived are extinct. According to Wiki, there have been an estimated 5 billion species throughout the history of the world. However, only around 2 million species have been identified – either currently living or known through the fossil record. There is no fossil trace for more than 99.9% of the species evolutionists claim have existed. Their vastly inflated estimate is merely the consequence of assuming an ancient earth which virtually demands countless generations to fill all those millinea.
One major weakness of evolution is the glaring lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. Darwin himself said that “innumerable transitional forms must have existed.... [J]ust in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous.” Why are there so few candidates for transitional forms when so many must have lived? Evolutionists blame the lack of transitional forms on the extreme rarity of fossilization. In a real sense, they are hiding the transitional forms that must have existed among all those imagined species that must have existed but never left any fossils. How convenient.
A couple of days ago, I was listening to a debate on YouTube between a creationist and evolutionist. The evolutionist was making the usual straw man arguments and appeals to authority but he finally did trot out some real “evidence” by showing a series of alleged transitional forms representing whale evolution. I reject the evolution-of-the-whale story, by the way, but I'll save my criticism of the series for another post. Anyway, having just written about how few fossils there are compared to the number of species evolutionists claim have lived, I remember thinking how unlikely it should be for such a complete series to exist. Suddenly, another realization hit me that pokes another huge hole in the story of evolution.
I couldn't find a stat about how many living species are also found as fossils but I know there are several. There are bats, frogs, fish, turtles, sharks, crocodiles, and scores of other modern species that I know have been found in the fossil record (in some cases they're even called, “living fossils”). There are about 1.5 million living species that have been named. There are another 250,000 or so species only known from fossils. All together, there are less than 2 million identified species out of 5 billion believed to have existed. So more than 99.96% of all the species claimed to have lived have left no fossil trace. Not a single fossil! Are you still with me? OK, let me get to the point:
According to Wikipedia, “More than 50 specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex have been identified, some of which are nearly complete skeletons.” I find it incredibly odd that 99.96% of all the species that have supposedly lived left no fossils yet this particular species has left dozens. I mean, what are the odds? It doesn't stop there, though. On Humanorigins.si.edu website, we read that “Australopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species—paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals!” If you agree that it should be unlikely to find t-rex fossils by the dozens, you'll agree it's downright queer that we find A. afarensis by the hundreds! Keep in mind too that these are larger, terrestrial creatures – the least likely to fossilize; we find trilobite fossils by the millions! If evolutionists are right, why are some species so over-represented in the fossil record when billions of other species aren't found at all?
As I've said, the billions of species claimed by evolutionists are merely a consequence of their belief in an old earth yet their claims don't square with the facts. What we observe in the fossils is the exact opposite of what evolutionists allege. They say there have been billions of species, the vast majority of which left no fossilized individuals. What we observe are relatively few species abundantly represented by dozens, hundreds, or even millions of fossils.
There is no longer any room for billions of years in the fossil record. The missing links are still missing. The storytelling is over. Their billions of species is a lie. What we observe (aka, “the evidence”) is much more consistent with a recent creation and a catastrophic flood.
Unfortunately this is not information that teachers can't provide, even as against evolution because ACLU will sue them for preaching religion in public schools.
ReplyDeleteJosue,
ReplyDeleteDid you hear a couple of months back that a group of scientists sent a letter to our President asking him to prosecute groups that deny climate change? Secular scientists are turning into thought police where they determine what is true and no dissent is allowed. The amount of hypocrisy they can display is almost amusing: on the one hand, they talk about how science is always subject to peer review and rigorous debate – on the other hand, they continuously retreat to the position of, “the science is settled” on issues like evolution and global warming.
Thank you for your comments. Let's keep speaking out against the secular establishment. Even if we don't change their minds, we can still have the satisfaction of knowing we annoy the heck out of them.
God bless!!
RKBentley
I also have found it remarkable that there are over fifty known T. rex fossils compared to, say, exactly one (albeit a very fine specimen) of Eomaia scansoria, a shrew-sized mammal of the early Cretaceous. Given that "big fierce animals are rare" is one of the iron laws of ecology, there were surely a higher number of Eomaia than of Tyrannosaurus at any point in their respective heydays. Why such a disparity? One answer that occurs to me is that big animals, while they ought to be rarer, are easier to find: paleontology isn't conducted by digging randomly, but by spotting something interesting sticking out of eroding ground -- and big fossils are easier to spot. For that matter, big animals are more likely to leave scraps behind to be fossilized after the scavengers get done with them.
ReplyDeleteGiven that most of the umpteen millions of undiscovered species are small invertebrates (something like half of them are probably beetles belonging to known genera), we should probably presume the same about extinct species. Those five billion extinct species would be mostly tiny and inconspicuous.
Note also that "the fossil record" means, in practice, so much of it as has been discovered and described. Paleontologists can't strip-mine the entire planet and recover every fossil embedded in the Earth's crust. What has been found is what they thought worth recovering in the parts searched.
Also, the fossil record isn't nearly incomplete enough for your purposes in the part of it you really care about. Creationists agree that all fossil hominids are either as human as you and I, or mere apes, as clearly nonhuman as Koko the gorilla. The problem is, they disagree about which category quite a few of these fossils "clearly" fall into. The Dmanisi skulls, KNM-ER1470, even the Trinil skullcap of Homo erectus. I'm pretty sure that could serve as a definition of "transitional form." Complaining about why we have more fossils of T. rex than of intermediates between whales and their terrestrial ancestors is a distraction, and unworthy of you.
Steven J,
ReplyDeleteThere are millions of fossils already recovered and sitting in museums, universities, and private collections all over the world. Of course we can't recover every single fossil that exists but we have enough to make a statistical sampling of the number of species represented. There are only around 250,000 extinct species known through fossils. Are there more undiscovered species? I'm sure there are but I have no reason to think it's another “umpteen million.”
You haven't really said anything to cast doubt on my assessment. What we observe from fossils – in general – is a relatively few number of species abundantly represented by multiple specimens.
Think about this, too: we consider various dogs breeds to still be part of the same species. If some alien race found the skulls of a poodle and a pit bull, he would likely identify them as different species. I suspect the same thing is true of the species we've identified through fossils. I strongly suspect that we have found different varieties of certain animals and identified them as different species. In cases of sexually dimorphic animals, for example, we may have identified a male and a female as different species. We may have identified juvenile and adult specimens as different species. I remember reading once that five different plant fossils had been named as different species until it was discovered they were all part of the same tree! The 250K species we've named probably overestimates the number of species represented by those fossils.
You said, “Those five billion extinct species would be mostly tiny and inconspicuous.”
There is no evidence for any of them. You might as well say the 5 billion extinct species were made up of elves, satyrs, and fawns. It would be just as scientific. What your side has is story-telling. They've invented a plausible sounding story about how many species must have lived and of what sort they were. They have zero evidence for it. The species only exist in the minds of the evolutionists who dream them.
Thank you for your comments. God bless!!
RKBentley