"Missing Link" Still Missing
Imaginations certainly took
flight over Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis, a birdlike
fossil with a meat-eater’s tail that was spirited
out of northeastern China, ‘discovered’
at a Tucson, Arizona, gem and mineral show last year,
and displayed at the National Geographic Society in
Washington, D.C. Some 110,000 visitors saw the exhibit,
which closed January 17; millions more read about the
find in November’s National Geographic. Now, paleontologists
are eating crow. Instead of ‘a true missing link’
connecting dinosaurs to birds, the specimen appears
to be a composite, its unusual appendage likely tacked
on by a Chinese farmer, not evolution.
"Archaeoraptor is hardly
the first ‘missing link’ to snap under scrutiny.
In 1912, fossil remains of an ancient hominid were found
in England’s Piltdown quarries and quickly dubbed
man’s apelike ancestor. It took decades to reveal
the hoax." U.S. News & World Report, February
14, 2000
"Darwin admitted that
millions of ‘missing links,’ transitional
life forms, would have to be discovered in the fossil
record to prove the accuracy of his theory that all
species had gradually evolved by chance mutation into
new species. Unfortunately for his theory, despite hundreds
of millions spent on searching for fossils worldwide
for more than a century, the scientists have failed
to locate a single missing link out of the millions
that must exist if their theory of evolution is to be
vindicated." Grant R. Jeffery, The Signature of
God
"There are gaps in
the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate
forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead.
No paleontologist . . . denies that this is so. It is
simply a fact. Darwin’s theory and the fossil
record are in conflict." David Berlinsky
"Scientists concede
that their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly
few fossil fragments and that huge gaps exist in the
fossil record." Time magazine, Nov. 7, 1977
"The evolutionists
seem to know everything about the missing link except
the fact that it is missing." G. K. Chesterton
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