Posts Tagged ‘fossil record’

This year, 2010, has not been a good year for the “out of Africa” evolutionary theory of human origins. The following is why.

In October 2009, Time Magazine recognized Ardipithecus ramidus, now known as “Ardi,” the number one of “Top 10 Scientific Discoveries” of 2009. The journal Science declared Ardi the “breakthrough of the year.”

Ardi, an nearly complete fossilized female skeleton, was discovered by Timothy Douglas White, an American Paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in the arid badlands near the Awash River in Ethiopia in 1994.

Examination and description of Ardi took nearly 15 years before releasing publication. Although it is not known whether Ardi’s offspring actually developed into Homo sapiens, the discovery was expected to be of great significance since Ardi is the oldest known hominid fossil. Ardi had been theorized to be an ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis, more commonly known as Lucy.

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Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.  Charles Darwin

Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that evolution develops through the processes of natural laws, changing the simple into the complex, in ways analogous to the laws of gravity -

[W]hilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The chromosome is the organizational structure of DNA and proteins in cells. DNA contains the nucleotide sequences that form the genes. During the twentieth century, determining the number of chromosomes in species has been in the investigative forefront.

Since Darwin envisioned that “natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favourable variations; it can produce no great or sudden modifications”, according to the theory, chromosomes were expected to demonstrate evolution from the simple into the more complex via “slight, successive” changes.  

While the simplest known organism, Mycoplasma hominis, does have only one chromosome, Darwin’s simple to complex theory quickly breaks down. Unless the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Cow, Guinea Pig, and Goldfish evolved from Humans, the simple to complex theory of evolution is simply incompatible with the scientific evidence.

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The American Museum of Natural History, in the New York presentation of the Darwin exhibit organized by curator Niles Eldredge, declares

A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.

The exhibit explains – “Natural selection is a simple mechanism that causes populations of living things to change over time.”

“Simple”, according the Answers.com means 1) having or composed of only one thing, element, or part, and 2) not involved or complicated, easy, a simple task. A common antonym of simple is difficult.

Perhaps, the zeal over evolution caused Eldredge to overlook what Charles Darwin actually wrote in The Origin of Species: the term simple was only used 56 times, while difficult was used 213 times. Darwin even entitled Chapter VI – “Difficulties of the Theory.” Chapter VI became an add-on chapter after the 1^st edition. There is no “simple” chapter.

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“This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals; with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said Sir David Attenborough who narrated the BBC documentary in May 2009. “The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo.”

“It tells a part of our evolution that’s been hidden so far. It’s been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there’s nothing almost to study”, said Dr Jørn Hurum, the paleontologist from Oslo University’s Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team. The fossil findings were released to the world at a press conference in New York, simultaneously with online publication of the paper in Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE) on May 19, 2009.

At the opening press conference, the fossil was described as the “missing link” in human evolution. “This fossil rewrites our understanding of the evolution of primates… It will probably be pictured in all the textbooks for the next 100 years”, claimed the Ida investigative team. Ida was interpreted as our “human ancestor”—the first and only one known.

The fossil had even been formally named Darwinius masillae in honour of Darwin’s 200th birthday year during 2009.  

The widely publicized Darwinius paper was released along with a book entitled The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor, a DVD entitled The Link, This Changes Everything,  a History Channel documentary, and an exhibit in the American Museum of Natural History. At a news conference attended by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the authors unveiled the nearly complete Darwinius masillae fossil found in Germany. The New York Daily News noted,

“The unveiling of the fossil came as part of an orchestrated publicity campaign unusual for scientific discoveries.”

As the Darwinian celebrations were sinking into the sand by the end of 2009, however, so was the “missing link” status of Ida as scientists continued to analysis the fossil. By October 2009, the BBC retracted their position running ran an article entitled “Primate Fossil ‘Not an Ancestor’”, stating,

“The exceptionally well-preserved fossil primate known as “Ida” is not a missing link as some have claimed.”

The sand-sinking fossil fiasco was finalized following the March 2010 article in the Journal of Human Evolution by paleontologists Blythe Williams, Richard Kay, Christopher Kirk, and Callum Ross confirming initial suspicions that the original description of Darwinius which appeared in the journal PLoS One was fatality flawed.

The updated analysis by Williams and team members painted a damning picture of the original Darwinius study. The team reports that the features of bones in the skull teeth, and limbs clearly demonstrate that Ida is not even a primate—certainly not a human ancestor.

In March 2010 news editor for the NewScientist, Rowan Hooper, published the article entitled Confirmed: Fossil Ida is Not a Human Ancestor stating – “About a year ago we were stunned in the New Scientist offices to learn of a beautiful, 47-million-year-old primate fossil which was being hyped as the ancestor to all humans. Nicknamed ‘Ida’, The Guardian newspaper hailed it as “the eighth wonder of the world… Now an independent team has examined the fossil in detail. In a paper in the Journal of Human Evolution they strongly argue that Darwinius is not one of our ancestors.”

The Ida fossil announcement in PLoS ONE followed the same pattern as the Archaeoraptor fossil disaster announcement in National Geographic magazine in 1999. This pattern follows a strict evolutionary paradigm approach where ideology drives the interpretation. Ida serves yet another example how the evolution paradigm distorts and stifles scientific investigation and undermines the credibility of the modern scientific establishment.

Ida and Archaeoraptor join a long line of fossil fiascos, including Archaeopteryx, Java Man, and the Piltdown man. Fossil fraud and deception by the evolution industry continues to pervade the history of evolutionary, perhaps because the fossil record evidence continues to contradict the Darwinian theory of evolution.

“No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long”, pines Niles Eldredge, evolutionary paleontologist, “It seems never to [have] happen[ed].”

Douglas Futuyma, president of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the American Society of Naturalists, editor of Evolution, abandoned Darwinism stating,

“The supposition that evolution proceeds very slowly and gradually, and so should leave thousands of fossil intermediates of any species in its wake, has not been part of evolutionary theory for more than thirty years.”

Ida fossil highlights again the reasons why evolution remains a theory in crisis—the fossil record evidence continues to contradict the Darwinian theory of evolution.  

The concept of man evolving from some ape or chimpanzee ancestor is central to the evolutionary theory of man. On October 1, 2009, paleontologists announced the discovery of a relatively complete Ardipithecus ramidus fossil skeleton. The fossil is the remains of a small-brained 50 kg (110 lb) female, nicknamed “Ardi”, and includes most of the skull and teeth, as well as the pelvis, hands, and feet. It was discovered in Ethiopia’s harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region.

From the pelvis and limbs and the presence opposable toes (abductable hallux), researchers have concluded that while Ardi could walk on two feet (bipedal) and climb trees using four limbs (quadrupedal), the walking ability was more primitive than Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) and could not walk or run for long distances.

Evolutionary paleontologists have estimated that Ardi predated Lucy the iconic early human ancestor which was discovered in 1974 just 74 km (46 mi) away from Ardi’s discovery site.

Not to be forgotten is the dubious history of the Lucy to human link . In 1982, Paleontologist Herbert Wray published an article in Science News, explained: “Lucy’s limb proportions indicate that she had not yet developed an efficient upright gait.”

After conducting a quantitative study of Lucy, paleontologist Charles E. Oxnard concluded in his 1984 book entitled The Order of Man noted that, it “is now being recognized widely that the australopithecines [Australopithecus afarensis] are not structurally… similar to humans.”

In the journal publication Natural History, Stephen Gould, in 1986, took the same stand against the human ancestry of A. afarensis: “In short, he [Oxnard] sees Australopithecines [Lucy] as uniquely different from apes and humans, not as imperfect people on the way up.”

While Ardi is stirring controversy among evolutionists as to exactly where it fits into the evolutionary Tree of Life, it does little to answer the questions:  how did apes become human? Given the limited measurements of the fossilized bones without any corresponding molecular or genetic transitional link data, Ardi is very likely to find itself relegated to the same branch as the infamous Lucy—simply a fossilized ape.

In the eighth essay in Science’s series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Carl Zimmer describes one of the most critical transitions in the history of life: the origin of cells with a nucleus, which proportedly gave rise to every multicellular form of life.

The question is—what is the mechansim that leading to the inclusion of a nucleus in some types of cells while other cells have continued without a nucleus? Cells without a nucleus are known as prokaryotic cells containing a nucleus are known as eukaryotic cells.  

A eukaryote is an organism whose contain complex structures enclosed within membranes. Almost all species of large organisms are eukaryotes, including animals, plants and fungi, although most species of eukaryotic protists are microorganisms. The defining membrane-bound structure that sets eukaryotic cells apart from cells is the nucleus. The presence of a nucleus gives eukaryotes their name, which comes from the Greek ευ (eu, “good”, “noble” & “true”) and κάρυον (karyon, “nut” & “kernal”).

While the mechanism how a prokaryotic cell ever evolved into a eukaryotic cell remains a mystery, Carl Zimmer is quick to point out that –

“The fossil record doesn’t tell us much: The earliest fossils that have been proposed to be eukaryotes are only about 2 billion years old, and paleontologists have not yet discovered any transitional forms.”

Darwin had noted the same problem in The Origin of Species –

“Although geological research has undoubtedly revealed the former existence of many links, bringing numerous forms of life much closer together, it does not yield the infinitely many fine gradations between past and present species required on the theory, and this is the most obvious of the many objections which may be urged against it.”

Without physical evidence, the mechanism for this critical evolutionary step remains unresolved and spectulative after 150 years.

While reflecting on man’s relentless pursuit to have a ‘reason for everything,’ James Le Lanu in his book, ‘Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves’ quotes from the report in the journal Science on the evolution conference in 1980 held at the Field Museum of Natural History –

 “The central question was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomenon of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the position of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given a clear, no.”

 Le Lanu highlights how evidence for evolution from the fossil record has been encountering inevitable turbulent waters since the early 1980s. As fellow alumni with Charles Darwin from Cambridge University, Le Lanu is a practicing physician, contributor the Daily Telegraph, published articles and reviews in the The New Statesman, Spectator, GQ, The British Medical Journal, and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Le Lanu has written several books including ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ that won the Los Angeles Prize Book Award in 2001 and ‘Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves’ that was published in Britain and the United States in February 2009. ‘Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves’ is a critical analysis of Darwinian evolution.

 The fossil record does not reveal the ‘reason for everything.’ Le Lanu notes –

 “The main reason for paleontologist’s loss of faith in the orthodox evolutionary doctrine was the realization that the most notable features of the fossil record is that most of the time nothing happens.”

 Le Lanu quotes from the immanent paleontologist, Niles Eldredge, curator of the American Museum of Natural History –

 “When do we see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organism did not evolve elsewhere.”

 From the evidence for evolution from the fossil record, Le Lanu cannot avoid the obvious conclusion –

 “This ‘stasis’ clearly contradicts Darwin’s supposition if a continuous process of gradualistic transformation”

 Le Lanu recounts how evolution’s once neat and concise theoretical Central Dogma has unraveled late in the twenty-century. As Mark Twain explains –

 “For every problem there is a solution: neat, plausible and wrong.”

 After 150 years of investigation following the publication of The Origin of Species, there still is no scientific ‘reason for everything.’

According to the February 27^th edition of Nature, more doubts now cloud the claim that dinosaur protein has been sequenced. Now a long-time critic has called for an independent review of the 2007 studies of ancient protein from a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex after fresh analysis revealed traces of ostrich haemoglobin in the original samples.

In the contentious papers, researchers identified seven fragments from a protein called collagen, found in connective tissue, and said their sequences most closely matched the chicken version of the protein. The samples came from the fossilized femur of a T. Rex. As well as further strengthening the evidence for the link between dinosaurs and birds, the findings would make the protein the oldest ever to be sequenced. The work, published in Science, garnered headlines worldwide and met with considerable scepticism at the time, for good reason—fraud.

The hunt for Darwin’s “inconceivably great” missing links continues.

The anticipation around Charles Darwin’s 200^th birthday celebration passed nearly unnoticed. Few media venues ventured to highlight the day. Perhaps, the struggling economy naturally selected the sullenness.

While researchers in Germany, announced completion of the first draft of the Neanderthal genome, to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, the hoped for links to human evolution are still missing.

 The genome team led by geneticist Svante Paabo after isolating 3.7 billion base pairs could only conclude:  ”We’re currently analyzing if we see evidence in the Neanderthal genome of contribution from human ancestors,” Paabo said. “That question I think is still totally open.”

Again, this big golden nugget of evolution, like the fossil record, continues as the emperor without clothes. In the Guardian, palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris writes:

 “[P]erhaps now is the time to rejoice not in what Darwin got right, and in demonstrating the reality of evolution… “Isn’t it curious how evolution is regarded by some as a total, universe-embracing explanation, although those who treat it as a religion might protest and sometimes not gently. Don’t worry, the science of evolution is certainly incomplete.”

Even the New York Times writer, Carl Safina, in an essay for the science section entitled “Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live” concludes, “So let us now kill Darwin.”

 After 150 years, since the natural mechanism of evolution that Darwin was looking for is still missing, in this post-modern evolution era the birthday party fizzled.