السجل الاحفورى يقول :لا للتطور
مقتطفات من دوريات علمية لاعترافات اشهر علماء الجيولوجيا والاحافير حول عدم اهلية السجل الاحفورى للدلالة على التطور:-
"على عكس ما يكتبه معظم العلماء، فان سجل الاحافير لا يدعم نظرية داروين ، لأننا نستخدم تلك النظرية لتفسير السجلات الحفرية. ولذلك نحن مذنبون بالوقوع فى الاستدلال الدائري حين نقول ان السجل الأحفوري يدعم هذه النظرية".
Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution, because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so, we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory.
((Ronald R. West , "Paleontology and Uniformitarianism ," in Compass , , p. 216)).
“Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead,
he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.
”
(Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)
"وفقا للتطور،فانه من المتوقع ان الحفريات توثق التغيير التدريجي المطرد بين الأجداد والاحفاد. ولكن هذا ليس ما تظهره الحفريات. وبدلا من ذلك ، وجدت ثغرات فى كل سلاسل تطور السلالات "
. (إرنست ماير أستاذ متفرغ، متحف علم الحيوان المقارن في جامعة هارفارد ، ما هو التطور ، عام 2001، p.14).
“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record.”
(Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb,, p. 189.)
"جميع علماء الحفريات يعلمون أن السجل الأحفوري يحتوي على القليل جدا من الاشكال الوسيطة؛ والانتقال بين المجموعات الرئيسية مفاجئ وحاد على نحو مميز .
التدريجيين عادة يتذرعون بالنقص الشديد في السجل الأحفوري للخروج من هذه المعضلة . "
(غولد، ستيفن الإبهام والباندا ، ، ص 189.)
“Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion …it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. …Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species.”
(Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, , p. 89.)
"وفقا للتطور الداروينى ، فان التغير كان في حالة حركة مستمرة ... ويتبع ذلك منطقيا أن السجل الأحفوري يجب أن يعج بأمثلة من الأشكال الانتقالية المتدرجة . ... وبدلا من سد الثغرات في السجل الأحفوري مع ما يسمى الحلقات المفقودة ، وجد معظم علماء الحفريات انفسهم فى مواجهة مع حقيفة الفجوات في السجل الأحفوري ، مع عدم وجود ادلة على وجود حلقات وسيطة متدرجة بين الأنواع موثقة احفوريا ".
(شوارتز ، جيفري H.، ألاصول المفاجئة ، ، ص 89.)
_
“He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search….It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.” (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, , pp.45-46.
تنبأ داروين بأن الأجيال القادمة من علماء الحفريات من شأنها أن تملأ هذه الفجوات فى السلاسل الانتقالية من خلال البحث الدؤوب .... لكن أصبح من الواضح تماما أن السجل الأحفوري لن يؤكد هذا الجزء من تنبؤات داروين.. فالسجل الأحفوري يبين ببساطة أن هذا التوقع كان خاطئا ".
(إلدريدج، نايلز، أساطير تطور الإنسان ،، pp.45-46.)
“There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration…The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps.”
(George, T. Neville, “Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective,” Science Progress, vol. 48 January , pp. 1-3.)
" لا حاجة للتحجج مجددا بفقر السجل الأحفوري. لانه قد أصبح غنيا بشكل قوى ، ... ورغم ذلك فان سجل الحفريات لا يزال مكونا من الثغرات. "
(جورج، T. نيفيل" المتحجرات في المنظور التطورى ، " العلوم ، المجلد. 48 يناير ، ص 1-3).
“Despite the bright promise – that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of ‘gaps’ in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record.” (Kitts, David B., “Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory,” Evolution, vol. 28, , p. 467.)
"على الرغم من الوعد المتفائل بأن علم المتحجرات وسيلة لرصد التطور، فانها قدمت بعض الصعوبات لأنصار التطور اكثرها وطأة هو وجود" ثغرات "في السجل الأحفوري. فالتطور يتطلب أشكالا وسيطة بين الأنواع وعلم المتحجرات لا يوفر ذلك . ولذلك فان الفجوات ظاهرة بالسجل. "
(كيتس، ديفيد ب" الحفريات ونظرية النشوء والارتقاء "، تطور، المجلد 28، ، ص 467.)
About 80% of all known fossils are marine animals, mostly various types of fish. Yet there is no evidence of intermediate forms. “The most common explanation for the total lack of fossil evidence for fish evolution is that few transitional fossils have been preserved. This is an incorrect conclusion because every major fish kind known today has been found in the fossil record, indicating the completeness of the existing known fossil record.”
(Bergman, Jerry, “The Search for Evidence Concerning the Origin of Fish,” CRSQ, vol. 47, 2011, p. 291. )
ما يقارب 80٪ من جميع الحفريات المعروفة هي من الحيوانات البحرية وأنواع مختلفة من الأسماك معظمها. وحتى الآن لا يوجد دليل على أشكال وسيطة. "و التفسير الأكثر شيوعا لعدم وجود أدلة مجموعه الأحفوري لتطور الأسماك هو أن عددا قليلا من الحفريات الانتقالية هو ما تم الحفاظ عليه . وهذا الاستنتاج غير صحيح لأن كل نوع الأسماك الرئيسية المعروفة اليوم تم توثيقها في السجل الأحفوري، مما يدل على اكتمال السجل الأحفوري بالقائمة المعروفة. "
(بيرغمان، جيري،" البحث عن الأدلة المتعلقة بأصل السمك " CRSQ ، المجلد 47، 2011، ص 291.)
“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find.”
(Raup, David M., “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, , p. 23.)
بدلا من رصد ظهورا تدريجيا للحياة، فان الجيولوجيين من زمن داروين وحتى وقتنا الحاضر وجدوا ان سجل الاحافير متفاوتا للغاية وغير متسق مع النهج المفترض ،فتظهر الانواع فى التسلسل بشكل مفاجئ جدا ، وتبدى درجة ضئيلة أو معدومة من التغير أثناء وجودها في السجل.......
"(Raup، ديفيد M.،" النزاعات بين داروين وعلم الحفريات، " نشرة، متحف فيلد للتاريخ الطبيعي ، المجلد 50، ، ص 23.)
Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, “A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks…One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this ‘fact’ in their Flood
(Raup, David, “Geology” New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, .)
"هناك عدد كبير من العلماء المدربين تدريبا جيدا خارج مجال البيولوجيا التطورية وعلم المتحجرات قد تحصلوا للأسف على فكرة مفادها أن السجل الأحفوري هو أكثر بكثير مما تفترضه الداروينية. وربما يأتي هذا من التبسيط في المصادر الثانوية: فالكتب المدرسية على مستوى منخفض، والمواد المطروحة شبه شعبية، وهلم جرا. وربما كان هناك ايضا بعض التفكير بالتمني في السنوات التي تلت داروين، كان امل أنصاره ملحا في العثور على التعاقب اللذى تنبأ به .
لكن لم يتم العثور علىيها ومات هذا التفاؤل ، وتسللت بعد ذلك بعض ضروب من الخيال الى الكتب ...وكانت واحدة من المفارقات فى نقاش التطور و الخلق هو أن الخلقيين قد قبلوا فكرة خاطئة أن السجل الأحفوري واضح ومفصل لتطور منتظم ومن ثم ذهبوا إلى مسافات بعيدة لاستيعاب هذا "الواقع"
(Raup، ديفيد، "الجيولوجيا" نيو ساينتست ، المجلد 90، p.832،.)
متحف فيلد بشيكاغو، أستاذ الجيولوجيا، جامعة. شيكاغو،....
“Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record.”
(Padian, K., The Origin of Turtles: One Fewer Problem for Creationists, 1991, p. 18.)
"التحولات بين المجموعات الرئيسية من الكائنات الحية. . .من الصعب تحديديها في السجل الأحفوري ".
(باديان، K.، أصل السلاحف: مشكلة واحدة للخلق .، 1991، ص 18)
“A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates.”
(Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, , p. 163.)
"ثمة مشكلة مستمرة في البيولوجيا التطورية تتمثل فى غياب أشكال وسيطة بالسجل الأحفوري. فالتحولات التدريجية على المدى الطويل بالأنساب نادرة او ذات تأثيرات تافهه على الشكل . فعادة تكون سجلات الانساب المتعاقبة ثابة شكليا عبر الزمن وغير مترابطة ".
(وليامسون، PG، الوثائق الباليونتولوجي من انتواع في حقب الحياة الحديثة من الرخويات حوض توركانا، ، ص 163.)
“What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories.”
(Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, , p. 524.)
"ما وجد في الواقع لم يكن سوى انقطاعات: حيث تنفصل جميع الأنواع عن بعضها البعض من خلال الثغرات ولا توجد اشكال و سيطة بين الأنواع. . . وكانت هى المشكلة الأكثر خطورة على مستوى الفئات العليا "
. (ماير، E.، الأنواع الحيوانية والتطور ، ، ص 524.)
“The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed.”
(Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, , p. 71.)
"السجل الأحفوري المعروف لم يأتى قط بما يتوافق مع التدرج. .......... . . 'شعر غالبية علماء الحفريات ان أدلتهم تتناقض ببساطة مع فرضية داروين التى تعتمد تراكم لتغيرات دقيقة وبطيئة، تؤدى إلى تحول الأنواع . . .".
(ستانلي، SM، الجدول الزمني التطوري ، ، ص 71.)
“The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history – not the artifact of a poor fossil record.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, , p. 59.)
"السجل يقفز، وتظهر كل الأدلة أن السجل حقيقي: الفجوات التي نراها تعكس أحداث حقيقية في تاريخ الحياة - "
(إلدريدج، N. وتاترسال، I.، أساطير تطور الإنسان ، ، ص 59.)
“The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change.”
(Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, , p. 163.)
"فشل السجل الأحفوري بشكل قاطع لإثبات هذا التوقع الخاص بتغيير متدرج وناعم."
(إلدريدج، N. وتاترسال، I.، أساطير تطور الإنسان ، ، ص 163.)
“The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity – of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form.”
(Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, , p. 40.)
"السجل الأحفوري نفسه لا يقدم أي وثائق تدعم الانتقال التدريجي فى حيوان واحد أو من محطة إلى أخرى لشكل مختلف تماما."
(ستانلي، SM، الجدول الزمني التطوري: ، ، ص. 40.)
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”
(Gould, Stephen J., “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?,” , p. 140.)
" عدم وجود أدلة احفورية لمراحل وسيطة بين التحولات الكبرى في التصميم العضوي، في الواقع نحن نعجز حتى في خيالنا، لبناء حلقات وسيطة في كثير من الحالات مثلت مشكلة مستمرة ومزعجة للتطور التدريجى ."
(غولد، ستيفن J.،“Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging عام ، ص 140.)
“Two major reasons for the existence of so many divergent theories on the origin of the vertebrates are the significant difference in morphology between vertebrates and the invertebrate phyla and the complete lack of any intermediate forms in the fossil record.” (Storer, Tracy I., et al., General Zoology, , p. 634.)
"اثنين من الأسباب الرئيسية لوجود الكثير من النظريات المتباينة حول أصل الفقاريات هي الاختلاف الشكلى الكبير بين الفقاريات واللافقاريات والافتقار التام إلى أي أشكال وسيطة في السجل الأحفوري."
(ستورر، تريسي I. ، وآخرون، علم الحيوان العام ، ، ص 634.)
“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information…” (Raup, David M., “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50, , p. 25.)
" بعد نحو 120 عاما داروين ومع توسع السجل الأحفوري بشكل كبير. لدينا الآن ما يزد عن ربع مليون نوع احفوري ولكن لم يتغير الوضع كثيرا. فسجل التطور لا يزال يثير متشنج وغير متدرج ، ويا للسخرية، لدينا أمثلة حتى أقل للتحول التطوري مما كان لدينا في وقت داروين. فبعض الحالات الكلاسيكية للتغيير الدارويني في السجل الأحفوري، مثل تطور الحصان في أمريكا الشمالية، كان لا بد من التخلص منها أو تعديلها نتيجة لمعلومات أكثر تفصيلا ... "
(Raup، ديفيد M ، "النزاعات بين داروين وعلم الحفريات،" متحف فيلد للتاريخ الطبيعي نشرة، المجلد 50، ، ص 25.)
“One of the most pervasive myths in all of paleontology…is the myth that the evolutionary histories of living beings are essentially a matter of discovery. Uncertainties in our interpretations of the fossil record are ascribed to the incompleteness of that record. Find enough fossils, it is believed, and the course of evolution will somehow be revealed. But if this were really so, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has occurred.”
(Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, , p. 127.)
"واحدة من الخرافات الأكثر انتشارا في علم المتحجرات ... هى خرافة أن مشكلة التاريخ التطوري للكائنات الحية هي أساسا مسألة الاكتشاف وارجاء الشكوك في تفسيراتنا للسجل الأحفوري لعدم اكتمال هذا السجل. لاننا لم نجد ما يكفي من الحفريات بعد، والتى سوف يتم الكشف عنها بطريقة أو بأخرى . ولكن إذا كان هذا حقا هو الصحيح ، يمكننا أن نتوقع بثقة أنه بعثورنا الفعلى على أكثر الحفريات الأدمية فأن قصة تطور الإنسان تصبح أكثر وضوحا. في حين انه قد حدث العكس ".
(إلدريدج، N. وتاترسال، I.، أساطير تطور الإنسان ، ، ص 127.)
“Indeed, it is the chief frustration of the fossil record that we do not have empirical evidence for sustained trends in the evolution of most complex morphological adaptations.”
(Gould, Stephen J. and Eldredge, Niles, “Species Selection: Its Range and Power,” 1988, p. 19.)
"المحبط فى السجل الأحفوري انه ليس لدينا اى أدلة تجريبية للاتجاهات المطردة في تطور معظم التكيفات المورفولوجية المعقدة."
(غولد، ستيفن وإلدريدج، نايلز "اختيار الأنواع: مجموعتها "، 1988، ص 19.)
“It should come as no surprise that it would be extremely difficult to find a specific fossil species that is both intermediate in morphology between two other taxa and is also in the appropriate stratigraphic position.” (Cracraft, J., Systematics, Comparative Biology, and the Case Against Creationism, , p. 180.)
من الصعب للغاية العثور على أنواع احفورية محددة وسيطة شكليا بين اثنين من الأنواع الأخرى، ومتواجدة أيضا في الطبقة المناسبة."
“Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all.”
(Futuyma, D., Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution,, p. 190-191.)
"مما لا شك فيه، فان السجلات الأحفورية وفرت بيانات قليلة مخيبة للآمال لرسم سلسلة تدريجية. ولا تزال غير قادرة على توثيق أصول العديد من المجموعات على الإطلاق "
(Futuyma، D.،. العلوم في المحاكمة: .، ، ص 190-191)
“We must learn to accept the fossil record at face value and construct our theories around it, not the other way round. Too often we have endeavored to force it into a particular mold or to ignore awkward facts contained in it. …We still have a long way to go before we look at the fossil record for what it is and not for what we would like it to be. Historically, from Lyell and Darwin onwards, people have looked at the fossil record with a particular pattern in mind. They have failed to find the pattern they sought and have appealed to the incompleteness of the fossil record to explain way this anomaly. We are still doing this…” (Paul, C.R.C., “The Adequacy of the Fossil Record,” , p. 115-116.)
"يجب علينا أن نقبل السجل الأحفوري كما هو ومن ثم نبنى نظرياتنا حوله، وليس العكس. فكثيرا ما سعينا للى عنقة في قالب معين أو لتجاهل الحقائق المحرجةالواردة فيه. ولا يزال امامنا طريق طويل لنقطعه قبل أن ننظر في السجل الأحفوري على ما هو عليه وليس من أجل ما نود له أن يكون .
“It is, however, very difficult to establish the precise lines of descent, termed phylogenies, for most organisms.”
(Ayala, F. J. and Valentine J. W., Evolving: The Theory and Process of Organic Evolution, , p. 230.)
“Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, , p. 95.)
"تم العثور على الأنواع التي كان يعتقد ذات مرة انها قد تحولت إلى اخرى لتتداخل في الوقت المناسب مع هذه الأحفاد المزعومة.
في الواقع سجل الحفريات لا يوثق بشكل مقنع انتقال واحد من نوع واحد إلى آخر ".
(ستانلي، SM، والجدول الزمني التطوري:. الحفريات والجينات، وأصل الأنواع، ، ص 95)
“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition.” (Stanley, Steven M., Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, p. 39.)
"فشل السجل الأحفوري المعروف فى توثيق مثال واحد من تطور السلالات وإنجاز التحولات المورفولوجية الرئيسية."
(ستانلي، ستيفن M.، التطور الكبير: خطة عملية ....، 1979 ص 39.)
“Many fossils have been collected since 1859, tons of them, yet the impact they have had on our understanding of the relationships between living organisms is barely perceptible. …In fact, I do not think it unfair to say that fossils, or at least the traditional interpretation of fossils, have clouded rather than clarified our attempts to reconstruct phylogeny.”
(Fortey, P. L., “Neontological Analysis Versus Palaeontological Stores,” , p. 120-121.)
"تم جمع العديد من الحفريات منذ عام 1859، الاطنان منها، إلا أن اثرها على فهمنا للعلاقات بين الكائنات الحية بالكاد محسوسا .
“Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record.” (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.22.)
“To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial.” (Gould, Stephen J., “The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis,” , p. 81.)
The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record.
Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I.
The Myths of Human Evolution
Columbia University Press; , p. 59
For more than a century biologists have portrayed the evolution of life as a gradual unfolding ... Today the fossil record ... is forcing us to revise this conventional view.
Stanley, S. M.,
The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, N.Y., p.3
“Gaps in the fossil record – particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution – are not surprising.”
(Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, , p. 107.
“The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record.”
(Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)
“Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large.” (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)
“We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups.”
(McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, , p. 95.)
“If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory.”
(The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)
“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.”
(Gee, Henry, “Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)
“To recall what I said in chapter 1, no fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way, whether we are talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs, or chains of ancestry and descent. Everything we think we know about the causal relations of events in Deep Time has been invented by us after the fact. …To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story — amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.
” (Gee, Henry, In Search of Deep Time, 1999, pp. 113,116-117.)
“Fossil discoveries can muddle over attempts to construct simple evolutionary trees–fossils from key periods are often not intermediates, but rather hode podges of defining features of many different groups… Generally, it seems that major groups are not assembled in a simple linear or progressive manner–new features are often “cut and pasted” on different groups at different times.”
(Shubin, Neil, “Evolutionary Cut and Paste,” Nature, vol. 349, 1998, p. 39.)
“It is a mistake to believe that even one fossil species or fossil ‘group’ can be demonstrated to have been ancestral to another. The ancestor-descendant relationship may only be assumed to have existed in the absence of evidence indicating otherwise . . . The history of comparative biology teaches us that the search for ancestors is doomed to ultimate failure, thus, with respect to its principal objective, this search is an exercise in futility. Increased knowledge of suggested ‘ancestors’ usually shows them to be too specialized to have been direct ancestors of anything else . . . In contrast to what is usually stated, therefore, a more complete sample of the fossil record in itself would only complicate the problem of assessing the interrelationship of the fossil species.”
(Nelson, Gareth V., “Origin and Diversification of Teleostean Fishes,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, , pp. 22-23.)
“Fossil discoveries can muddle over attempts to construct simple evolutionary trees–fossils from key periods are often not intermediates, but rather hode podges of defining features of many different groups… Generally, it seems that major groups are not assembled in a simple linear or progressive manner–new features are often “cut and pasted” on different groups at different times.” (Shubin, Neil, “Evolutionary Cut and Paste,” Nature, vol. 349, 1998, p. 39.)
“The fossil record of evolutionary change within single evolutionary lineages is very poor. If evolution is true, species originate through changes of ancestral species: one might expect to be able to see this in the fossil record. In fact it can rarely be seen. In 1859 Darwin could not cite a single example.”
(Ridley, Mark, The Problems of Evolution, 1985, p. 11.)
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nods of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record.” (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, , p. 181.)
“The main problem with such phyletic gradualism is that the fossil record provides so little evidence for it. Very rarely can we trace the gradual transformation of one entire species into another through a finely graded sequence of intermediary forms.”
(Gould, S.J. Luria, S.E. & Singer, S., A View of Life, , p. 641.)
“The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide acceptance among paleontologists. it attempts to account for the following paradox: Within continuously sampled lineages, one rarely finds the gradual morphological trends predicted by Darwinian evolution; rather, change occurs with the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldredge and Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these events are not preserved. …The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. Apart from the obvious sampling problems inherent to the observations that stimulated the model, and apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground.”
(Ricklefs, Robert E., “Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution,” Science, vol. 199, , p.59.)
“Few paleontologists have, I think ever supposed that fossils, by themselves, provide grounds for the conclusion that evolution has occurred. An examination of the work of those paleontologists who have been particularly concerned with the relationship between paleontology and evolutionary theory, for example that of G. G. Simpson and S. J. Gould, reveals a mindfulness of the fact that the record of evolution, like any other historical record, must be construed within a complex of particular and general preconceptions not the least of which is the hypothesis that evolution has occurred. …The fossil record doesn’t even provide any evidence in support of Darwinian theory except in the weak sense that the fossil record is compatible with it, just as it is compatible with other evolutionary theories, and revolutionary theories and special creationist theories and even ahistorical theories.” (Kitts, David B., “Search for the Holy Transformation,” review of Evolution of Living Organisms, by Pierre-P. Grassé, Paleobiology, vol. 5, 1979, pp. 353-354.)
“I agree …that ancestral-descendant relationships cannot be objectively recognized in the fossil record.”
(Schoch, R.M., “Evolution Debate,” Science, April 22, , p. 360.)
“With the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing that palaeontlogists could have accepted gradual evolution as a universal pattern on the basis of a handful of supposedly well-documented lineages (e.g.Gryphaea, Micraster, Zaphrentis) none of which actually withstands close scrutiny.”
(Paul, C.R.C., “Patterns of Evolution and Extinction in Invertebrates,”, p. 105.)
“But it is the pattern that interests us most here. And if the fossil record tells us anything about evolutionary pattern, it is that some episodes of diversification can happen so rapidly that no detailed, stratified record showing the gradual development from primitive to advanced is ever formed.”
(Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, , p. 47.)
“Non-paleontologists readers…should be aware of several common occurrences within the professional paleontologic literature which could conceivable be confusing. …For instructional purposes, some authors illustrate a series of fossils which show a progression in morphology, but which are not chronologically successive. These therefore are not evolutionary sequences, even though they resemble such.”
(Cuffey, R. J., “Paleontologic Evidence and Organic Evolution,” , p. 264.)
“There is no central direction, no preferred exit to the maze – just a series of indirect pathways to every twig that ever graced the periphery of the bush.”
(Gould, Stephen J., “Life’s Little Joke,”Natural History, , p. 21.)
“The proper metaphor of a bush also helps us to understand why the search for a ‘missing link’ between advanced ape and incipient human – that musty but persistent hope of chimera of popular writing – is so meaningless. A continuous chain may lack a crucial connection, but a branching bush bears no single link at a crucial threshold between no and yes. …No branch point can have special status as the missing link – and all represent lateral relationships of diversification, not vertical sequences of transformation.
(Gould, Stephen J., “Empire of the Apes,” Natural History, , p. 20.)
“I conclude, therefore that some (many/most?) phylogenies will never be known, certainly not in full detail.” (Ruse, “Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution,” , p. 116.)
“Large evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any.” (Wesson, R.,Beyond Natural Selection, 1991, p. 206.)
“Phylogeny…is ‘in the vast majority of cases…unknown and possibly unknowable’ (Sneath and Sokal 1973, p. 53.) On the latter point, I have come to the same conclusion.” (Patterson, Colin, “Morphological Characters and Homology,” 1982, p. 61.)
“Most groups of organisms are best visualized as highly complex phylogenetic bushes …In large parts of the natural system it is impossible to demonstrate that one particular taxonomic sequence is superior to other alternatives.” (Mayr, E. The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance, , p. 242.)
Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.
Eldredge, N., 1989
Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics : Species , Niches, and Adaptive Peaks
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company , New York , p. 22
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 imperceptible changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution.
((G.G. Simpson, in The Evolution of Life, p. 149)).
All the major groups of animals have maintained the same relationship to each other from the very first [from the very lowest level of the geologic column] . Crustaceans have always been crustaceans, echinoderms have always been echinoderms, and mollusks have always been mollusks. There is not the slightest evidence which supports any other viewpoint.
((A.H. Clark, The New Evolution: Zoogenesis , p. 114)).
The abrupt appearance of higher taxa in the fossil record has been a perennial puzzle. Not only do characteristic and distinctive remains of phyla appear suddenly, without known ancestors, but several classes of phylum, orders of a class, and so on, commonly appear at approximately the same time, without known intermediates.
((James W. Valentine and Cathryn A. Campbell, "Genetic Regulation and the Fossil Record , " in American Scientist , Vol. 63 , November , , p. 673 ))
“One thing which has struck me very forcibly through they years is that most of the classic evolutionary lineages of my student days, such as Ostrea-Gryphaea and Zaphrentis delanouei, have long since lost their scientific respectability, and in spite of the plethora of palaeontological information we now have available, there seems to be very little to put in their place. In twenty years’ work on the Mesozoic Brachiopoda, I have found plenty of relationships, but few if any evolving lineages.”
(Ager, D., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record,, p. 20.)
"As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the fossil record."
Kemp, Tom (
"A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record"
New Scientist, Vol. 108, No. 1485, December 5, 1985) , p. 66
(Dr. Tom Kemp is Curator of Zoological Collections at the Oxford University Museum.)
“Niles Eldredge and I …argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record–geologically ‘sudden’ origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)–reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” in Montagu, Science and Creationism, , p. 123.)
“Stasis has become interesting as a central prediction of our theory.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Opus 200,” Natural History, 1991, p. 16.)
From (Gould, Stephen Jay, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 2002.):
“…the tale itself illustrates the central fact of the fossil record so well [the] geologically abrupt origin and subsequent extended stasis of most species…Anatomy may fluctuate through time, but the last remnants of a species look pretty much like the first representatives.” (p. 749.)
“…the greatest and most biologically astute paleontologist of the 20th century…acknowledged the literal appearance of stasis and geologically abrupt origin as the outstanding general fact of the fossil record and as a pattern which would ‘pose one of the most important theoretical problems in the whole history of life.’” (p. 755 quoting George Gaylord Simpson.)
“…the long term stasis following geologically abrupt origin of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists.” (p. 752.)
“The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section (first occurrence) without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants.” (p. 753.)
“…but stasis is data… 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’…” (p. 759.)
Gould debunks the: “exceedingly few cases that became textbook ‘classics’ of coiling of Gryphaea and the increasing body size of the horses etc.” (p. 760.).
“Indeed proclamations for the supposed ‘truth’ of gradualism – asserted against every working paleontologist’s knowledge of its rarity – emerged largely from such a restriction of attention to exceedingly rare cases under the false belief that they alone provided a record of evolution at all! The falsification of most ‘textbook classics’ upon restudy only accentuates the fallacy of the ‘case study’ method and its root in prior expectation rather than objective reading of the fossil record.” (p. 773.)
“Eldredge and Gould, by contrast, decided to take the record at face value. On this view, there is little evidence of modification within species, or of forms intermediate between species because neither generally occurred. A species forms and evolves almost instantaneously (on the geological timescale) and then remains virtually unchanged until it disappears, yielding its habitat to a new species.” (Smith, Peter J., “Evolution’s Most Worrisome Questions,” Review of Life Pulse by Niles Eldredge, New Scientist, volume 116, November, p. 59.)
“The principal problem is morphological stasis. A theory is only as good as its predictions, and conventional neo-Darwinism, which claims to be a comprehensive explanation of evolutionary process, has failed to predict the widespread long-term morphological stasis now recognized as one of the most striking aspects of the fossil record.” (Williamson, Peter G., “Morphological Stasis and Developmental Constraint: Real Problems for Neo-Darwinism,” Nature, Vol. 294, 19 November , p.214.)
“It is a simple ineluctable truth that virtually all members of a biota remain basically stable, with minor fluctuations, throughout their duration…” (Eldredge, Niles, The Pattern of Evolution, 1998, p. 157.)
“But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.” (Woodroff, D.S., Science, vol. 208, , p.716.)
“But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.” (Woodroff, D.S., Science, vol. 208,, p.716.)
“The record now reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much. We seem forced to conclude that most evolution takes place rapidly…a punctuational model of evolution…operated by a natural mechanism whose major effects are wrought exactly where we are least able to study them – in small, localized, transitory populations…The point here is that if the transition was typically rapid and the population small and localized, fossil evidence of the event would never be found.” (Stanley, S.M., New Evolutionary Timetable, , pp.77, 110.)
“…why after such rapid diversification did these microorganisms remain essentially unchanged for the next 3.465 billion years? Such stasis, common in biology, is puzzling…” (Corliss, William R., “Early Life Surprisingly Diverse,” Science Frontiers, 88:2, 1993, p.2.)
“Just as we have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chose to fob it off upon an imperfect fossil record, so too have we long recognized the rapid, if not sudden, turnover of faunas in episodes of mass extinction. We have based our geological alphabet, the time scale, upon these faunal replacements. Yet we have chosen to blunt or mitigate the rapidity and extent of extinctions with two habits of argument rooted in uniformitarian commitments.” (Gould, Stephen J., “The Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology,” Paleobiology, 1985, p. 7.)
“Paleontologists ever since Darwin have been searching (largely in vain) for the sequences of insensibly graded series of fossils that would stand as examples of the sort of wholesale transformation of species that Darwin envisioned as the natural product of the evolutionary process. Few saw any reason to demur – though it is a startling fact that …most species remain recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in geological sediments of various ages.” (Eldredge, Niles, “Progress in Evolution?” New Scientist, vol. 110, 1986, p. 55.)
“We expect life’s bushes…to tell some story of direction change. If they do not, we do not feature them in our studies – if we even manage to see them at all. …Paleontologists are now beginning to study this higher order stasis, or nondirectional history of entire bushes.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Cordelia’s Dilemma,” Natural History, 1993, p. 15.)
“In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be ‘wrong.’ A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? …As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly – the ‘punctuated equilibrium’ pattern of Eldredge and Gould.”
(Kemp, Tom S., “A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record,” New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, pp. 66-67.)
“When fossils are most common, evolution is most rarely observed. …Again, we note the paradox: nothing much happens for most of the time when evidence abounds; everything happens in largely unrecorded geological moments. We could attribute this pattern to either a devious or humorous God, out to confuse us or merely to chuckle at our frustration. But I choose to look upon this phenomenon in a positive light, for it is trying to tell us something important. There is a lesson, not merely frustration, in the message that change is concentrated in infrequent bursts and that stability is the usual nature of species and systems at any moment.”
(Gould, Stephen J., “Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness,” Natural History, 1988, p. 14.)
“The old Darwinian view of evolution as a ladder of more and more efficient forms leading up to the present is not borne out by the evidence. Most changes are random rather than systematic modifications, until species drop out. There is no sign of directed order here. Trends do occur in many lines, but they are not the rule.” (Newell, N. D., “Systematics and Evolution,” , p. 10.)
“For more than a century biologists have portrayed the evolution of life as a gradual unfolding…Today the fossil record…is forcing us to revise this conventional view.”
(Stanley, S. M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, , p.3.)
“Well-represented species are usually stable throughout their temporal range, or alter so little and in such superficial ways (usually in size alone), that an extrapolation of observed change into longer periods of geological time could not possibly yield the extensive modifications that mark general pathways of evolution in larger groups. Most of the time, when the evidence is best, nothing much happens to most species.”
(Gould Stephen J., “Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness,” Natural History, , p. 14.)
“And so it goes for most groups in most long segments of geological time – lots of evolutionary change, but no story of clear and persistent direction.
(Gould, Stephen J., “Cordelia’s Dilemma,”Natural History, 1993, p. 18.)
“Darwin’s prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservation.. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, , p. 48.)
“Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. …That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, …prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search …One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. …The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor’s new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin’s predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, , p. 45-46.)
“There is no recognizable trend toward increased complexity that is clear enough to use for dating purposes. …Increasing complexity through time is elusive at best. (This is one of the interesting aspects of evolution: the process is not clearly directional.)” (Raup, D.M., “Testing the Fossil Record for Evolutionary Progress,”, p. 154.)
“Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. …The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution).
(Gould, Stephen J., “Cordelia’s Dilemma,” Natural History, 1993, p. 15.)
“It is counterintuitive but revealing that the morphological motifs animals began with were carried over to the present, with few additions.”
(Newman, Stuart A., “Physico-Genetic Determinants in the Evolution of Development,” Science, Oct. 2012, Vol. 338 no. 6104 pp. 217-219.)
A “200 million year old” fossil Lobopodian reveals that “The morphology has not changed in any significant aspect.”
(Haug, et. al., “A Carboniferous Non-Onychophoran Lobopodian Reveals Long-term Survival of a Cambrian Morphotype,”
Current Biology 22, 2012, p. 1673-1675.)
The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change.
المصدر
Eldredge , N. and Tattersall , I. (1982
The Myths of Human Evolution
Columbia University Press , p. 163
The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;
2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'.
المصدر
Gould , S.J. (1977
"Evolution's Erratic Pace"
Natural History, vol. 86, May
"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation"
المصدر
Mark Ridley , 'Who doubts evolution? ', New Scientis t, vol. 90, 25 June 1981 , p. 831
.png){kind=link}