Billions of Trilobites Having an Orgy -- And the Deeper Meaning

We have found billions (and billions) of trilobite fossils, but have not found a single trilobite ancestor.  We have found 17,000 trilobite species, and we keep finding more trilobite species all the time, but not a single trilobite ancestor species.  Why has the fossil record been so generous with trilobites, but not its ancestors?  Why does the fossil record show a clear pattern of trilobite success for 270 million years, but show us none of the purported ancestors that must have led to such success if Darwinian evolution is to explain their origin?  It strains credulity to believe that a long line of ancestors lived but did not leave behind a single fossil.

Orgies of sometimes billions of trilobites have been discovered, ones captured in a torrent of mud right after these extinct creatures ditched their hard shells to get up close and personal.

. . .

Trilobites are extinct distant relatives of lobsters, spiders and insects that died off more than 250 million years ago, before the dinosaurs even came into existence. They prowled the seas for roughly 270 million years, longer than the Age of Dinosaurs, and new species of trilobites are unearthed every year, making them the single most diverse class of extinct life known.

. . .

"We find trilobite beds that we can trace across distances of 80 miles (130 kilometers), all the effect of a single event," Brett said. "The numbers of individuals caught in those must easily be in the billions. These were probably extraordinarily rare events in terms of human scales, but on the grand scale of geological time, you can have a number of these extraordinarily bad days that record these amazing glimpses into what the lives of ancient organisms were like."

"Ida" Is Not Even Close To Being a Human Ancestor

From a Washington Post AP story, Ida is not so amazing after all:

Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans.

. . .

In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.

. . .

The new analysis says Darwinius does not belong in the same primate category as monkeys, apes and humans. Instead, the analysis concluded, it falls into the other major grouping, which includes lemurs.

Experts agreed.

"This is a rigorous analysis based on many features," said Eric Sargis, an anthropology professor at Yale.

I'm ready for the media blitz that will correct the misinformation generated by the original media blitz. I won't hold my breath.

From a Guardian article:

The Ida fossil, which was found in the Messel Pit on the outskirts of Frankfurt, was revealed to the public in what amounted to the greatest publicity coup in modern science. The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, appeared alongside the fossil, wearing a T-shirt carrying the TV tie-in logo, "The link." A book about Ida was already coming off the presses.

Ida was an immediate media sensation. The fossil received blanket coverage around the world and newspapers hailed her as the "missing link" between humans and animals. The Guardian even gave away free wallcharts of "humanity's long lost ancestor."

My previous posts and commentary on the Ida hoopla (with analogy to Britney Spears) are here and here.

So it goes . . .

Ardi: "The Pelvis Looked Like an Irish Stew"

From the Time magazine article about the new "Ardi" fossil ("Ardipithecus ramidus"):

Deducing such details of social behavior is, admittedly, speculative — and several researchers are quick to note that some of the authors' other major conclusions need further discussion as well. One problem is that some portions of Ardi's skeleton were found crushed nearly to smithereens and needed extensive digital reconstruction. "Tim [White] showed me pictures of the pelvis in the ground, and it looked like an Irish stew," says [Alan] Walker. Indeed, looking at the evidence, different paleoanthropologists may have different interpretations of how Ardi moved or what she reveals about the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.

Casey Luskin is having some fun with the quality of the new fossil ("Ardipithecus ramidus") here and here:

So what do we have with “Ardi”? We have an extremely crushed “Irish stew” fossil that has undergone extensive reconstruction in order to become part of a PR campaign to make bold claims of ancestral status to the human line, even though at base its qualities are very similar to previously known fossils, and there's a lot of skepticism about the claims being made. In other words, we have the typical media circus that we find every time a new "missing link" is found.

I read the general media articles and I wonder: What ever happened to good ol' enlightenment skepticism? Casey Luskin is one of the few to hold on to some.

Challenges to Macroevolutionary Theory

At some point, I hope to write a summary of the criticisms of macroevolutionary theory. In the meantime, I thought I would begin to gather links to some of the best articles I have read. This is meant as a resource for those who are interested in evaluating the evidence for and against macroevolutionary theory for themselves.

Don't miss Phillip Johnson's piece from the August 16, 1999, Wall Street Journal entitled The Church of Darwin.

For a very brief article listing some of the main problems with Darwinian theory, there is this one by David Berlinski. Berlinski is an accomplished mathematician, with a PhD. from Princeton University, who happens to be Jewish. (I only say this because some Darwinian fundamentalists seem to dismiss out of hand any criticisms of Darwinian theory written by a Christian.)

Berlinski wrote a much longer discussion in Commentary, entitled The Deniable Darwin (also here). If you only have time to read one article from the web, this may be the best. He also happens to be fairly witty, which makes this an enjoyable read. Here is some of the flavor:

The facts in favor of evolution are often held to be incontrovertible; prominent biologists shake their heads at the obduracy of those who would dispute them. Those facts, however, have been rather less forthcoming than evolutionary biologists might have hoped. If life progressed by an accumulation of small changes, as they say it has, the fossil record should reflect its flow, the dead stacked up in barely separated strata. But for well over 150 years, the dead have been remarkably diffident about confirming Darwin's theory.

. . .

Most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged. Where there should be evolution, there is stasis instead - the term is used by the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in developing their theory of "punctuated equilibria" - with the fire alarms of change going off suddenly during a long night in which nothing happens.

Letters in response to Berlinski's Commentary article, including a few from some of the leading evolutionary scientists, can be found here. Berlinski's response to the letters follows at the bottom.

I strongly recommend Phillip Johnson's classic book, Darwin on Trial. This is widely viewed as the book that launched the current intelligent design movement. However, it does not promote intelligent design directly, but simply evaluates the evidence for and against Darwin's theory based on common principles of logic and proof. Johnson is a former law professor at the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

A great short summary of the peer-reviewed scientific literature dealing with the Cambrian Explosion can be found here.