Transitional fossils and creationist lies.

One claim often made by creationists and supporters of "intelligent design" is that there are very few transitional fossils.

In a way they are right, there are fewer transitional fossils than we might expect, but the reason for this is not that transitional forms do not exist. It has more to do with the methods used by scientists to name newly discovered fossils. The methods of naming were formed before the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.

This is explained excellently by Richard Dawkins in his book Climbing Mount Improbable.

"There are 55 million people in Britain but not a single one of them is intermediate between non-voter and voter. Just as, for legal purposes, a juvenile changes into a voter as midnight strikes on the eighteenth birthday, so zoologists always insist on classifying a specimen as in one species or another. If a specimen is intermediate in actual form (as many are) zoologists' legalistic conventions still force them to jump one way or another when naming it."

So one specimen of a homo habilis, may have features which make it more similar to homo erectus than another homo habilis specimen, but both will still be called homo habilis. If we look at the actual features of the specimens we can see a gradual slope of changes but creationists either through lack of understanding, or deliberate misrepresentation, look simply at the naming of the specimens and claim there are gaps, where none exist.

Of course there are some gaps in the fossil record, it would be surprising if there were not. Less than 0.01% of living creatures will ever become fossils and less than 0.01% of fossilised remains have been uncovered and studied. What we do have is a good selection of fossils showing how life on earth has gradually changed over millions of years.

New fossils are regularly being discovered which fit perfectly in a gap between two previously known species and invariably the creationists claim that there are then two gaps instead of one.