Evolutionists can you explain these things, part 3...............?

Question

The Encyclopedia Britannica contains an interesting article on turtles which claims "the evolution of the turtle is one of the most remarkable in the history of the vertebrates" However, in the next sentence it states, "Unfortunately the origin of the turtle is obscured by the lack of early fossils, although turtles leave more and better fossil remains than do other vertebrates. The article affirms that "intermediates between turtles and cotylosaurs the primitive reptiles from which turtles probable sprang ARE ENTIRELY LACKING. If turtles leave "more and better fossils remains than do other vertebrates" but transitional forms are "entirely lacking" what can this say for intermediates between all other vertebrates?

Stay tuned to my next question continuing this discussion.

Answer 1

Aren't these science questions? The fact that you are asking this here means that you don't give a hoot about real science.

Answer 2

YES!!!!

A GOOD EVOLUTION X CREATION QUESTION!.

Not only that! a scientific one also!!

Oh I'm crying!!!

congratulations

It is true. Turtles are completely different from the tetrapod basic plan, still the earliest turtle fossils we have today is exactly the same as a regular modern day turtle. There are no transitional fossils

Still, keep in mind that fossils are very rare, and its very difficult for organic material to fossilize. Its a wonder we know as much as we know about life based on fossils. So you see, the absence of turtles fossils, while a little disappointing does not represent a hole in evolution

Paz de Cristo

(some people will automatically say that your question is criticizing evolution and therefore is stupid, don't pay attention to them, if anyone thinks this question was stupid they know nothing about evolution, again, great question)

Answer 3

I'd have to ask you when that piece in the Encyclopedia Britannica was written and what sources it was quoting. As strange as it seems, Encyclopedia Britannica writers are not always qualified scientist nor are they always subject matter experts, not to mention that they may not be aware of the more recent developments.

In your terminology this is like me using a "Chick" tract to build a case against Christianity - like the one that predicted the USSR taking over USA with the hippies help.

Because we have not yet found transitional fossils for one species does not invalidate all the other transitional fossils that have been found, or the fact that the world has been evolving over the last 4 billion years.

Answer 4

If you read more actual texts discussing evolution from a scientific perspective and fewer texts that derive from fundamentalist websites you would have the answer to your question. The fact is that not all species HAVE intermediary forms. They are not necessary. Given a large enough mutation, the current form of the species might in fact BE the form that followed the primitive, prehistoric version.

Evolutionary changes in species vary in the degree of rapidity of biological differentiation. What might take millions of years and a multitude of transitional forms for ONE species, could easily take just a few thousand years and zero recognizable transitional forms in another. This would explain why no fossilized remains of an earlier form have been found, assuming that you actually wanted to KNOW and hadn't instead already made up your mind...

Answer 5

To this I say big deal.

It is kind of like looking at a blue house; if you just can't happen to find buckets of empty blue paint and paintbrushes in the owners' garbage, this does not mean God therefore painted the house. It simply means that the owners painted the house in a time you were not around to witness, and for which they didn't happen to keep the paint buckets.

There are plenty of other houses where the owners do have paint buckets in the garbage. Take birds - a remarkable, remarkable class of animals with features even more strongly adaptive than the protective shells of the turtles... I mean, active flight, an amazing thing!

But you know what? We do have transitional fossils... we have many signposts along the bird journey - Archaeopteryx, enantiornithines, even a primitive parrot from the Cretaceous! All along the route of the bird journey from dinosaurs, we find evidence, from giant dinosaurs that happened to sprout feathers, to the modern Hoatzin, a bird whose young retains clawed wings like primitive extinct birds.

Yes - we don't have them for turtles. But just as we cannot say of the blue house that God painted it, so we cannot say of turtles that God couldn't get evolution to work just this once, and so had to wave a wand in their case!

Answer 6

A transitional form is missing. One. And it was from before they became turtles. So the fact that turtles have "more and better fossils remains than do other vertebrates" is a moot point.

Answer 7

It's really not too surprising to find that not all potential fossils are there for the finding. It merely suggests that these intermdediate fossils did not survive till the present or that they have not been found yet.

I'll even admit that it's possible God stepped in with a special creation of turtles. But I'd need something better than my speculation to make me think it really is so.

Answer 8

What website are you getting this stuff from? I'd really like to know. Are you going systematically through the pages?

As for intermediates between all other vertebrates, the example of a turtle does not cover them all. There are plenty of fossils and turtles do not represent the species with the best fossil record.

Answer 9

I've noticed a lot of copy and paste and flat out plagiarism on here.

At any rate, turtle fossils don't just jump out of deeply buried strata to reveal themselves. Paleoanthropologists and archaeologist have to dig them up. Searching for fossils is a tedious and systematic science being carried out by very few people at one given time in limited areas. What is your explanation for the fossils that have been found?

Answer 10

Leaving fossils that can later be found is a cr-pshoot. *shrug* Yes, our fossil record is woefully incomplete. Still, evolution does appear to be a better explanation for what we observe than "Intelligent Design."

There is no direct evidence of Intelligent Designers, hence "Intelligent Design" is speculation, not scientific theory.

Thanks for asking.

Answer 11

Fossils are very rare, and you wouldn't expect to find evolutionary sequences "just like that", I'm sure there are mechanisms that are undiscovered in evolution.
Anyway God put all the fossils there to confuse us...or was it a flood thing?