Here we go again; yet another missing link found

They just can't seem to help themselves; the folks at National Geographic are so convicted by evolution theory that they grab hold of any evolutionary straw floating by. On May 19th their website posted an article titled "'MISSING LINK'" FOUND: New Fossil Links Humans, Lemurs?" that tells of a recently-described, 47-million-year-old fossil species named Darwinius masillae and nicknamed Ida. At least they ended the title with a question mark and, to their credit, they linked to another article that threw a bucket or two of cold water over the lead article. The NG article hails Ida as a missing link "between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs". Mind you, the NG folk didn't make up the story themselves; it's based on serious scientific study by a number of renowned paleontologists.

Students of primate evolution - the group of animals that includes lemurs, lorisids, galagos, tarsiers, monkeys, apes and us, all "united" by certain common anatomical features - have consistently seen a large trench separating lemurs, on one side, from monkeys, apes and us, on the other. Although controversy has raged over the question of whether a couple of extinct groups (adapoids and omomyoids) served as ancestors of lemurs or of apes/monkeys, no extinct creature has been found that seems to bridge the chasm between the two major extant branches. Until Ida (Darwinius), that is. National Geographic has grabbed the coattails of a number of exuberant evolutionists who claim that Ida is just what they had been looking for. Of course, as one would expect of a theory wobbly and rotten at its very core, other proponents of evolution demur vehemently. Chris Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is described in the counterpart piece as "outraged" with the paper presenting Ida as the missing link and with the media hype surrounding it. In New Scientist, 30th May, he hides his outrage, pointing out calmly that,

The fact that Ida retains features found in all early primates indicates that she belongs somewhere closer to the base of the tree than living lemurs do. But this does not necessarily make Ida a close relative of the anthropoids - the group of primates that includes monkeys, apes, you and me. To be connected in this way, Ida would have to have anthropoid-like features that evolved after anthropoids split away from lemurs and other early primates. Here she fails miserably:

Ida is not a "missing link" in human evolution.

Ida doesn't help evolution's cause one whit. But let's forget her and think about the whole concept of "missing links", those hoped-for and dreamed-of extinct creatures that supposedly once lived and would, if only they could be discovered, help bridge the gorges separating very different groups from one another - mammals from birds (or, more accurately, mammalian ancestors from bird ancestors), trilobites from ammonites, starfish and their "rellies" from. well. whatever evolutionists reckon is their nearest of kin. The discovery of a few seeming pit stops on the imagined, snaking, tortuous morph pathways that are fancied as linking all living creatures together in no way provides proof that evolution occurred. At their very best they can be viewed as possible indicators of evolution's supposed pathway. Were evolution theory to be true, we can expect that the fossil record would yield a seamless garment of transitional forms. The fact is that, although discoveries of new creatures will undoubtedly continue indefinitely, huge gaps separate the major clades (groups) of plants and animals. Even when a new find does appear at first to provide hope of bridging a gap (see, for example, Fish or beast? and From T. rex to hummingbird) hopes are inevitably dashed by other considerations such as relative timing of appearance in the fossil record. The lack of intermediates led evolutionists like Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to propose that at certain moments in history evolution proceeded at such a rapid pace that geological processes of burial and mineralization could not keep pace. Yeh, sure.

Every new find should give believers in divine creation a real buzz. Something must be wrong with a person who can't get excited when paleontologists unearth the mineralized bones of a creature previously unknown.

Sure, every species that exists and every new find can be seen, by the eye of evolutionary faith, as transitional between two other creatures. You and I could easily be "proven" to stand between lemurs and monkeys by any comparative anatomist who put his mind to it. I don't think I would find it the least bit difficult to show how frogs can be seen as transitional between dinosaurs and mammals. All you need is a good imagination and you can make any morphing pathway sound plausible. Throw in new fossil discoveries of a frog with degenerate front legs, a dinosaur that hopped and a mammal with some dino-like vertebrae and who could doubt? Oh ye of little faith.