The Fossil record as demonstrative disproof of evolution: Living Fossils.

Started by Xavier, October 11, 2018, 10:59:56 PM

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Mono no aware

Quote from: Xavier on October 19, 2018, 06:08:24 AMI have two questions for you, Pon, regarding the fossil record and how we came forth from our alleged evolutionary ancestors (1) A transition from a last common ape-like ancestor branching out to humans and to modern apes would certainly have occurred over millions of years - this evolutionist BBC article (and what we were discussing in the other thread about poor England becoming astonishingly liberal in such a short time mainly because of evolution holds good here as well) concedes as much. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170517-we-have-still-not-found-the-missing-link-between-us-and-apes "the researchers calculated that humans and gorillas had last shared a common ancestor roughly 11 million years ago." Other evolutionary skeptics of this study put it even higher, e.g. "if the 14-million-year-old Ramapithecus really was a human ancestor [Of course it was not, please see the excerpt from In the Beginning posted earlier on this thread for more on this if interested - Xavier], gorillas and humans cannot possibly have shared a common ancestor just 11 million years ago, as Pauling and Zuckerkandl were suggesting." Some put it slightly lower.

Then, in these 11 million, or 14 million, or 7 or whatever million, years, the alleged ancestor (the missing link that is still missing) would have multiplied 10s of millions of times and there would have been a vast preponderance of fossils of the missing link species - most likely in the millions. How is it we find not even one?

The short answer is that fossilization is rare, and it would've been even rarer on the Serengeti plains where these ancestors emerged.  To the extent that fossilization occurs more frequently, it usually does so in areas such as riverbeds, swamps, and peat bogs.  So I'm not sure where you're getting your assumption that there ought to be "a vast preponderance of fossils of the missing link species - most likely in the millions."  That is absolutely not the rate of fossilization.  The reality of it is more like the odds of finding a needle in a haystack. 

But there has been found at least one intermediary fossil (or the cousin of an intermediary).  This would be the famous Lucy fossil, the bones of a hominin discovered in the Olduvai Gorge, which used to be a lakebed.  And the article you cited discussed the Ardi fossil, which was an ape-like hominid dating back four and a half million years.  Ardi may be more of a distant cousin, but is older than Lucy and shows more intermediary traits.  The Ardi ape looks to have divided its time between the trees and the ground, having had long arms and fingers for brachiation, but she also had pelvic, leg, and foot features that suggest bipedalism.