Creationist Critique #3: There is a lack of transitional fossils

Folks who oppose evolution on scientific grounds often point out that Darwin himself said we should expect to find countless fossils between species.  They further point out that we haven’t.

There are serveral reasons why Darwin’s predictions were incorrect… In short, we should not expect to find an evenly distrubuted range of fossils showing gradual and steady movement toward an adaption.  More significantly, we shouldn’t expect to see a huge number of fossils which skirt the divide between two species.

There is some wiggle room between what differentiates two different species.  Whether or not two animals count as being part of the same species or not is partially a human construct.

The distinctions between species are constructed to quite intentionally not leave anything out.  If for example, two closely related primate species were defined in terms of skull size, we’d call group A any organism which has a skull radius of say 20-30 cm… The related species might have a skull radius of 30.1 cm – 40 cm.

The fact that all organisms either count as one species or the other doesn’t, therefore, imply unity within the species.  It’s a function of how these man-made labels are applied.

Additionally, much development of new species happens because new pressures are exerted… either the population moves somewhere new (goats climbing up a mountain) or new things happen (an ice age, a new predator, etc)

either way the rate of development speeds up… More unfit organisms die at a faster rate.  The process of fossilization is a random event.   All organisms have a roughly equal rate of fosillization.  If a change is happening quickly we should expect to see fewer instances of these transitions within the fossil record.  As the population becomes increasingly adapted to it’s new environment the rate of change slows, and we see more fossils.