For the Rock Record: Geologists on Intelligent Design

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39 t h r e e · Missing Links Found Transitional Forms in the Fossil Mammal Record donald r. prothero INTRODUCTION The books of the intelligent design (ID) creationists are filled with examples and critiques of evolution from a biological or philosophical perspective, but they pointedly avoid discussing the fossil record or its implications. The longest and most widely read ID book (Behe 1996, p. 27) mentions paleontology only in a few paragraphs (focusing mostly on a common misinterpretation of the Cambrian Explosion). Johnson (1991) repeats many traditional creationist misstatements and lies about the fossil record but does not introduce any new arguments or evidence. The rest of the ID books are similarly silent about the fossil record. Jonathan Wells’s (2000) Icons of Evolution mentions only horse evolution and Archaeopteryx and ignores the rest of the fossil record. The ID creationist high school textbook Of Pandas and People (Davis and Kenyon 2004) discusses fossils in a single chapter of a 170-page book. ID creationists have been quoted on numerous occasions as conceding that microevolution occurs and that the Earth may be millions of years old: differences that distinguish them from the more extreme fundamentalist young-Earth creationists, who believe the Earth is only six thousand years old and who generally will not admit that microevolution occurs. When one looks at the contributors and critical reviewers of ID textbooks such as Of Pandas and People (Davis and Kenyon 2004, p. iii), it is clear why they are almost silent about fossils. Although the ID creationists include a few scientists with backgrounds in biology or chemistry, almost none (with the sole exception 40 · d o n a l d r . p r o t h e r o of Kurt Wise, a student of Stephen J. Gould at Harvard) earned an advanced degree in paleontology from a recognized, accredited noncreationist institution. To my knowledge, not a single ID creationist has ever published a paper on fossils in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, with the one possible exception found in the obscure Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. A paper on the Cambrian Explosion was snuck into the journal by an editor (who belonged to another ID organization), despite negative reviews and rejection by the other coeditors (see www.biolsocwash.org/; www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/ the-truth/sternberg). The little bit that ID creationists write about the fossil record shows that they have no firsthand training in collecting or interpreting fossils, because they rehash old myths and misconceptions from young-Earth creationism literature. As with the young-Earth creationists, their “research” on fossils consists mostly of reading popular books about paleontology and pulling quotes out of context. ID creationists try to impress the uninformed layperson with their Ph.D.’s in biochemistry or physics, but that background has no relevance to understanding paleontology and fossils. Without the appropriate background or training, they are no more qualified to make statements about the fossil record than they are to critique music theory or auto mechanics. Thus, their statements about fossils must always be read with the understanding that they do not actually work on these fossils, and have probably never even looked at the actual specimens (nor do they have the training to tell one bone from another if they did). In a volume such as this, it is useful to examine myths and misconceptions about the fossil record, and give a short update about the truth of these fossils. Since the evolution of birds from dinosaurs is covered elsewhere in this book, I will focus primarily on my area of expertise, fossil mammals. BUSHES, LADDERS, TRANSITIONAL FORMS, AND “MISSING LINKS” Much of the public (including most creationists) has mistaken notions about evolution. For example, people sometimes ask, “If humans evolved from apes, why are apes still around?” This question dates back to pre-Darwinian seventeenth - and eighteenth-century notions of life as a “great chain of being” or a “ladder of life” (scala naturae), where beings rise from lowly invertebrates to fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals to humans to cherubim and seraphim and angels and archangels and ultimately to God at the top. But as Darwin and many other scientists have shown, life is not a chain or ladder but a “branching bush,” m i s s i n g l i n k s f o u n d · 41 with many ancestral lineages...