Missing Linke Skeptical: Fill & Download for Free

I once attended a creationist lecture (sorry, but I cannot remember who was the lecturer; this was a couple of decades ago at least). I doubt there was a single non-Christian there. I was a Christian but a skeptic of creationist explanations. They never added up for me. Creationism demanded that I consider alternate theories that set science aside.At one point the lecturer stated quite emphatically that if anyone at any time could show just one transitional fossil, one “missing link” immortalized in stone as it were, then creationism is false.Around that same time I read a piece showing that the Cetacea (whales) had all their evolutionary history mapped out in fossils recorded and studied. And that was just one species of animals, but as the lecturer had said, just one was needed.Of course what was really going on was a “begging the question” by that lecturer. He was going to define “transitional links” as whatever suited his purpose, and he would then deny they existed. But evolutionary scientists have discovered too many of these links to be ignored.The science of evolutionary history is set in stone, fossilized stone to be exact.

It is an outdated concept from approx 150 years ago in an attempt to discredit Darwin and his followers. The fossil record was spotty at best in those days and skeptics wanted to see the intermediate form(s) between apes and modern humans. Since then, of course, hundreds of such “missing links” have indeed been found and described. Hence the concept has, or should have, died a natural death.

As others have pointed out, there is no such thing as the missing link. And, evolution is a gradual process over time, not a singular event, which inconveniently leaves little behind and is hard to find. And, humans being humans, we have changed our minds over time about the fossil evidence. The shortest answer I can give about hominins is that there are groups of immediate ancestors called Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus, and we and our human ancestors and extinct closely related kinds came from the Homo genus. Since science is self testing and scientific thought evolves over time, this template is open to disagreement and future modification. Here’s a site with a nice little family tree though you can find a great many sites about human evolution: Human Family TreeNow, as to why there is no such thing as the missing link. I do not want to attribute to you ulterior motives but people who argue religious dogma denying evolution like to use this term to “prove” there is no intermediate missing link between an ape—they like to use chimps though our lineages separated long before chimps evolved—and a modern human, thus “proving” the fallacy of evolution. There are some fossil records that are far more complete, such as whales, and others not nearly so much—which makes things difficult.But let’s take the modern day hyrax for example.San Diego Zoo AnimalsBefore DNA sequencing scientists relied on detailed morphological examination to find closest living relatives of animals and speculated about their common ancestry. When studying the hyrax, which lives in mid to high elevations in rocky outcrops in Africa, they concluded that this plump little animal’s closest living relative was…Elephant Pictures - National GeographicThis little guy.People in the 1800’s thought that was a pretty strange conclusion to draw from just a bunch of bones of a little animal they never heard of that looked like a fat guinea pig.When DNA sequencing came along the possibilities seemed endless, including the opportunity to settle the skepticism on the part of the general public about the common ancestry between the hyrax and the elephant. DNA sequencing showed a common ancestry between the two, just as scientists had asserted over a hundred years ago.Now, what do you think are the chances of the singular missing link perfectly between these two animals ever being discovered? There’s just no such thing as the missing link. Hope this helps.