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I'm not sure who would claim this

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unless he was totally ignorant of the fossil record, or didnt understand Darwin.

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Because the discovery of Archeaoptyrix,

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made in Darwin's lifetime, was and is seen as good evidence for bird evolution form reptiles. Thomas Huxley himself championed this fossil as proof of Darwin's theory.

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The long-term stasis, following a geologically abrupt origin, of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists

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It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution A great many sequences of two or a few temporally intergrading species are known, but even at this level most species appear without known intermediate ancestors, and really, perfectly complete sequence of numerous species are exceedingly rare ... These peculiarities of the record pose one of the most important theoretical problems in the whole history of life; is the sudden appearance ... a phenomenon of evolution or of the record only, due to sampling bias and other inadequacies?

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The "argument from imperfection" ( with its preposition purposefully chosen by analogy to the "argument from design") works adequately as a device to save gradualism in the face of an empirical signal of quite stunning contrariness when read at face value."

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But how can imperfection possibly explain away stasis (the equilibrium of punctuated equilibrium)? Abrupt appearance may record an absences of information, but *stasis is data*. Eldredge and I became so frustrated by the failure of many colleagues to grasp this evident point - though a quarter century of subsequent debate has finally propelled our claim to general acceptance (while much else about punctuated equilibrium remains controversial) - that we urged the incorporation of this little phrase as a mantra or motto. Say it ten times before breakfast every day for a week, and the argument will surely seep in by osmosis: "stasis is data: stasis is data ..."
The fossil record may, after all, be 99 percent imperfect, but if you can, nonetheless, sample a species at a large number of horizons well spread over several million years, and if these samples record no net change, with beginning and end points substantially the same, and with only mild and errant fluctuation among the numerous collections in between, then a conclusion of stasis rests on the *presence* of data, not on absence!

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So if stasis could not be explained away as missing information, how could gradualism face this most prominent signal from the fossil record? The most negative of all strategies - a quite unconscious conspiracy of silence - dictated the canonical response of paleontologists to their observations of stasis.

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All paleontologists recognized the phenomenon, but few scientists write papers about failure to document a desired result. As a consequence, most nonpaleontologists never learned about the predominance of stasis, and simply assumed that gradualism must prevail, as illustrated by the exceedingly few cases that became textbook "classics": the coiling of *Gryphae*, the increasing body size of horses, etc. [note: Apparently Gould himself discusses the failure of these records of change, for instance horse evolution turned out to be undocumented....sorry, Phemox] Thus, when punctuated equilibrium finally granted theoretical space and importance to stasis, and this fundamental phenomenon finally emerged from the closet, nonpaleontologists were often astounded and incredulous.

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scientists now know that whales evolved from land mammals called "pakicetids"

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You mean scientists think pakicetids evolved into whales? Because as far as I know there is no scientist who is 400 million years old. At least last time I checked.

I like the idea behind this one. A mammal like animal falls into the ocean and out pops a whale. Ok. Let's go over this one.



By the way, I like how they scale these animals to make it seem like they're the same size. If creationists did something that subtle, we'd be accused of trying to mislead the public about evolution.

I don't think I found any two sources that completely agreed on whale evolution, strangely enough, but I'll go with this one. Its from the BBC. I'm going to skip their first example because its completely useless, it might as well be the same animal as their second one, and the second one is the one you mentioned, Matt.



Ah, yes! What scientists like to call the 'earliest whale.' The resemblance is uncanny.

How dumb do evolutionists have to make themselves sound before people realize the theory of evolution really is dumb?



The dotted parts are the only parts of the skeleton that were actually discovered. I don't need to mention that there is much room for bias to leak in. Where you don't know the rest of the animal, its possible to add whatever you want that would still make the animal viable. Don't believe me? Pakicetus was originally thought to be a swimming creature with fin-like appendages. Wait! That's right it turned out it was basically a wolf like creature. Oops.

Then there was the pig's tooth that was thought to be early man. The filed down and stained ape skull that was thought to be early man. And then...etc etc etc. I don't trust scientists with a strong bias for evolution to actually be able to properly fill in the gaps. Like I said, evolution only works when imagination is allowed to enter the picture.

Not to mention that even with the imagination this creature still looks like a land animal.



Ok, so a land animal turned into example number 4? A land animal immediately transitioned into a water animal that basically already looks like a whale. That's convincing.

And the last one (number 5) is a whale, we all already understand whales well enough. The problem I see here is the problem I see everywhere else. You go from having mutliple examples of the kind of animal A that transitions into animal B, and then multiple examples of animal B. In other words you have three fossils of land animals, all obviously land animals. And then two different variations on whales. I'm not very dazzled.

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The idea that evolution as a concept is somehow threatened in the scientific world is rediculous and untrue

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evolution is true, and is the guiding force behind much modern biology.

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You seem still to believe that science and especially evolution somehow disproves God.

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But they are still scientists, and thus do not limit their thinking to exclude natural explanations for life and nature.

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\And yet you haven't been able to come up with even just one valid and true contradiction, but you keep repeating yourself nonetheless as if there are dozens of them.

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At some point during the growth of an insect larva, a gene called Dll switches on and helps organize some of its cells into legs. If for some reason Dll is shut off, the insect will produce only stumps. In the early 1990s scientists were surprised to discover that almost identical copies of this gene can be found in mammals and other vertebrates--and that they too switch on as legs form. This was surprising for two reasons. For one thing, insects and vertebrates have radically different limbs: ours have bone inside and muscle outside, while bugs are the reverse--their flesh is protected by an armored exoskeleton. For another thing, insects and vertebrates are only distantly related: our last common ancestor lived perhaps a billion years ago and was assumed to be limbless, like a flatworm. Researchers therefore imagined the two lineages evolved their limbs--and the genes that build them--independently.

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Aren't you trying to put science away in a box to be able to ignore it even easier? It's tough to understand your behavior, but maybe it's because you already know better and don't what to give up on wishful thoughts? I'm not out to offend you by saying all this, I'm just trying to understand, which I can't ...

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