I’m not an expert on fossils, but here are some interesting quotes from people who are: -
Re Ape to Man fossils:
“All these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, that’s a load of nonsense.” Mary Leakey, archeologist and paleo-anthropologist.
Richard C. Lewontin, Prof. of Zoology, Harvard: “Look, I’m a person who says in this book [Human Diversity, 1982], that we don’t know anything about the ancestors of the human species. All the fossils that have been dug up and are claimed to be ancestors, we haven’t the faintest idea whether they are ancestors … All you’ve got is Homo sapiens there, you’ve got that fossil there, you’ve got another fossil there … and it’s up to you to draw the lines. Because there are no lines.”
Re Methodology:
Colin Patterson: “It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another … But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.”“I don’t think we shall ever have any access to any form of a tree (of life) that we can call factual.”
Pierre-P. Grasse: “Assuming that the Darwinian hypothesis … [paleontologists then] interpret fossil data according to it … The error in their method is obvious.”
Re Horse Fossils:
Niles Eldredge, “I admit that a lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some the stuff. But by the time it filters down to the textbooks, we’ve got science as truth and we’ve got a problem.”
George G. Simpson: “The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature.”
Bruce McFadden, FL Museum of Natural History and U. of FL: “… over the years the fossil horses have been cited as prime example of orthogenesis [“straight-line evolution”] … it can no longer be considered a valid theory … we find that once a notion becomes part of accepted scientific knowledge, it is very difficult to modify or reject it.”
Re Lack of Transitionals:
David M. Raup (Prof. of Geology, University of Chicago): “Also there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.”
Robert Barnes (in his book, Invertebrate Beginnings): “The fossil record tells us almost nothing about the evolutionary beginnings of phyla and classes. Intermediate forms are nonexistent, undiscovered and not recognized.”
Prof. E. J. H. Corner (Botany Department of Cambridge University): “… but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation.”
David M. Raup (Prof. of Geology, University of Chicago): “Also there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.”
