Why can't we find enough evidence to conclusively prove the theory of evolution?

Question

We have found myriads of dinsouar bones that are millions of years old, put them together, conclusively showing what they were, but when it comes to finding old human remains that they say are 50,00 years old, it's only a skull and a leg. Shouldn't the evidence for evolution be overwhelming and easy to find?

Answer 1

We already have found massive amounts of evidence and proof, for those willing to consider it. DNA evidence clearly links us to the ape family.

Answer 2

It is, but evolution theory will never be "proven", because that's not how science works. In science, a theory is a way of explaining available data.

For instance, in physics, you have Newton's gravitational theory. You know there's gravity. You can watch a ball fall towards the Earth, and you can measure the speed. Gravity exists, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The theory says, "Every single point mass attracts every other point mass by a force heading along the line combining the two. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses". I totally stole that from Wikipedia's Newton's law of universal gravitation page.

That equation is the theory. It explains how gravity works. You can test it by rolling endless carts down endless low-friction planes in any well-stocked high school science lab. It's not a fact, though, because it was extrapolated from the data. No matter how well it fits available data, scientists are committed to being open to something that better fits it, which is what happened with Newton. You go to that lab and do those tests, and that equation will work great for you every time. You try to use it to explain Mercury's orbit, and you run into problems. Lucky for all of us, Einstein came along. His theory of gravitation better fits all available data, including Mercury. Newton's is still good enough for school science lab level stuff, so we still use it, but for true accuracy, you'll go with Einstein.

And that's how science works. If your theory works great for 300 years, it can still be thrown out by some guy who can better explain Mercury, or whatever your version of Mercury is. This is good- this is how you keep it from becoming dogma. Science wants to expand human knowledge, and dogma would keep us stagnant.

We have plenty of human skeletal remains, and we have less dinosaur bones than you seem to think. Dinosaurs dominated for over 160 million years, which is why we seem to have so many. If we really did have even a small percentage of dino bones that existed, we'd be knee deep in them. In actuality, only a very few skeletons were under the right conditions for their bones to fossilize and survive to the present day. Our closest relatives split off from the chimp line only about 3-5 million years ago, so it makes sense that we'd have a lot fewer bones to play with. In fact, considering how rare it is for organic matter to fossilize or survive that long, it's a wonder we've found anything.

Evolution, as a theory, is as solid and dependable as you could want. Yeah, there may be something else that better explains what's going on, but evolution really doesn't have a Mercury. The debates in the academic circles about evolution are more about the details- does it work in starts and stops, or is it a very slow process? Evolution is biology's Unified Field Theory- that which explains everything in that field. The other sciences are green with envy.

Answer 3

Evolution is a given. They've found way too many pre-man remains and the facts that people are always changing. Do you have wisdom teeth? I don't and I never will get them (a step into the future of man). Have you noticed how more and more people are going bald? Another step into the future of man.

They keep looking for "the missing link" but there wouldn't be one if the changes took many many hundreds of years to take effect.
These things are not easily found cause bones tend to decay when left in the humid areas where life first sprang up. It's only the dry places that have the dried remains like Egypt.

Answer 4

The difference between scientific "theory" and the common use of the word "theory" in our language is very different. Evolution is already accepted as "fact" among scientists, it is only the mechanism that is still under investigation and therefore leads to the use of the word "theory" of evolution. A good analogy would be the theory of gravity. We all know gravity exists, it is the many details and applications of the mechanisms behind gravity that are still being researched and studied, so it is still called the theory of gravity. The evidence for evolution is certainly overwhelming and present, that itself is not under debate in the scientific community. Hope this explanation helped a bit.

Answer 5

I don't know where you have been, but the evidence has been found- and we are of the ape family-- so say hello to the Flinstones- it wasn't as sci-fi as everyone thought it was........besides, who cares, I still am a firm believer we are an experiment under process from the aliens that built the pyramids that aligned soooo perfectly during the solstice to have the ray of the moonbeams to shine into these tiny little windows into the pyramids----think about this---- we could barely be evolved enough for that to happen in this day and age, what with the bickering about the cost analysis for it and Congress would never agree to give the appropriations committee the money to fund it and don't forget, it would probably run at least 2 billion over budget- but .............................

Answer 6

We have found far more than enough evidence to conclusively 'prove' evolution to the extent that anything can be 'proved' in science. The evidence for evolution IS overwhelming and easy to find - hundreds of thousands of fossil species, massive biological evidence... I'm not going to even get in to it again.

As to the fossils - there were countless species of dinosaurs which dominated terrestrial environments for over 150 million years. Our ancestors were but a few species, living mostly in a small area, mostly with very small populations - insignificant in the scheme of things until recently, and for a very brief time - 10's to 100's of thousands of years for each species.

Further, forest and plain environments are rarely preserved in the geological record - they are rarely areas were sediment is deposited and preserved. Most sedimentary rocks accumulate in rivers, lakes, deltas, seas, etc. Dinosaurs can wander in but...
And that goes double for forests due to the acidic soils which rapidly destroy bones. And triple given that, for hominds, we are talking about Africa, which has been hot and geological stable for a long time, hence there are few deposition centres, and very strong chemical weathering of most recent sediments.

Finally, there are very very very few people actually looking for hominid fossils in Africa. In contrast, there are countless, well resourced, dinosaur paleontologists and amateurs. The western-interior of the USA happens, for example, to be full of millions-of-years-old sedimentary rocks.

Answer 7

There is already plenty of evidence, as the other posters have pointed out. I think that it truly should also not be forgotten that we really haven't been looking for that long. To say we should have found more by now is like saying that we should also have found a cure to the common cold by now. These things just aren't so simple. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Answer 8

Finding fossil remains is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

If it were possible to somehow excavate every square inch of the earth, then it would be possible to collect all of the evidence.

So no, the evidence is not that easy to find and only time will tell if the enough of the evidence will ever surface to close the case conclusively either for or against evolution.

Answer 9

No, evolution is an extremely complicated subject. Many are taught evolution, but the education they receive is the tip of the iceberg. In order to prove evolution exists, you would have to watch it happen, which is impossible given time constraints, you would never live long enough to see it.

I think it will always remain a theory that is extremely plausible and very likely, but yet never be proven (like the Big Bang Theory).

Answer 10

It is. There are lots of fossils of our early ancestry. They've found nearly complete remains. So it is very easy to find, and has been. But, unfortunately, in this day and age, it is also very easy to spread misinformation about evolution.