Transitional fossils between man and ape are evolutionist's only hope to find evidence for a relationship

From EvoWiki

Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 External Links 6 Related claims 7 Acknowledgments

Claim

Transitional fossils between man and ape are evolutionists' only hope to find evidence for a relationship.

Source

• Anon. Life--How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or By Creation?. Brooklyn, NewYork (1985): Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. pp. 83-84.

Responses

1. Generally, creationists misunderstand the concept of "transitional fossil." Transitional fossils are notable not because we know for certain that they are direct ancestors of modern lines, but because their distinctive patterns of traits demonstrate the overall structures of the lineages.
2. Scientists concluded based on anatomical evidence that there was a relationship before any transitional fossils were found at all.
3. Other evidence includes parallel retrovirus insertions and having chimpanzee genes deactivated by transposons.
4. If this were true it still wouldn't be a problem. We have lots of transition fossils between humans and other apes. See Talk.Origins' Comparison of all skulls
5. This argument must have been invented before it was relativity trivial to map a whole genome. In light of that ability, this claim is obsolete because genetic comparisons point to the chimpanzee and bonobo as being our closest relatives.
6. The whole basis of this argument is incorrect because we never descended from apes but instead diverged from a common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans around 8 million years ago in the Miocene era.
7. Humans are, in fact, a species of apes.
8. add more responses

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Suppressed Evidence (of relationship between humans and chimpanzees)
• Equivocation (meaning of transitional fossil)
• Straw Man (inaccurate model of human/chimpanzee relationship)

External Links

• Hunt, Kathleen (March 17, 1997). Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ. Talk.Origins.
• Foley, Jim (June 31, 2007). Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution. Talk.Origins.
• Chimpanzee genome project. Wikipedia.
• Common descent. RationalWiki.
• Myers, PZ (September 1, 2005). The chimpanzee genome. Pharyngula.

Related claims

• Evolution hasn't been proved
• Evolution is only a theory
• Evolution is no strictly scientific theory
• Evolution doesn't make predictions
• Evolution can't be falsified
• Evolution can't be replicated
• Were you there?
• Interpreting evidence is not the same as observation
• Evolutionists interpret evidence based on their preconceptions
• Scientific findings are always changing
• Evolution is a religion
• Evolutionary theory has become sacrosanct
• Evolution requires as much faith as creationism
• Michael Ruse admitted that evolution is a religion
• Piltdown man was a hoax
• Piltdown man was the subject of 500 doctoral dissertations
• Nebraska man was a hoax
• Lucy's knee was found far from the rest of the skeleton
• Ten Peking Man skeletons were suppressed
• Peking Man was supposedly 500,000 years old, but all evidence has disappeared
• All human fossils would fit on a billiard table
• Anthropologists disagree
• Homo habilis is an invalid taxon
• French scientists called Peking Man monkey-like
• All hominid fossils are fully human or fully ape
• Theory of human evolution was based on wishful thinking from the beginning
• Neanderthals were fully human and were not a different species‎
• Evolutionists think that apes became ever fitter when climbing the evolutionary ladder
• Identity of human ancestors is lost in the past
• Neanderthal was based on a disfigured human
• Neanderthals were humans with rickets
• Neanderthal Man, found in France over 50 years ago, is an old man who suffered from arthritis
• Laetoli footprints were human
• KP 271 (a fossil humerus) was human
• Australopithecus was fully ape, closer to chimp
• Most experts now agree that Lucy was only an unusual chimpanzee
• Biologists think that Lucy is the oldest known ancestor of humans
• Heidelberg Man was built from a jaw bone that was conceded by many to be quite human
• We don't have any evidence of change since Homo sapiens first appeared as a fossil 50,000 years ago
• Pictures of apemen are based on imagination
• Human footprints have been found with dinosaur tracks at Paluxy
• Sandal footprints have been found associated with trilobites
• Moab man was found in Cretaceous sandstone
• Malachite man was found in Cretaceous sandstone
• Castenedolo, Olmo, and Calaveras skulls were found in Pliocene strata
• Baugh found a fossilized finger from the Cretaceous
• A petrified hammer was found in Cretaceous rocks
• Richard Leakey found a normal human skull under a layer of rock dated at 212 million years
• A 40,000 year-old skeleton found in China has raised questions about the "out of Africa" hypothesis on how early modern humans populated the planet.
• If we're descended from apes, why are there still apes around?
• One suggested ancestry line for humans is: Lucy, Heidelberg Man, Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Peking Man, Neanderthal Man, New Guinea Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man
• New Guinea Man dates way back to 1970 and has been found in the region just north to Australia
• The transition of Human skulls are sculptured creations which have been debunked
• Transitional fossils are lacking
• There should be billions of transitional fossils
• There should be transitionals among living creatures
• We should see a smooth continuum through the fossil record

Acknowledgments