Elo perdido? Qual elo perdido?…

Reports of the lack of “transitional” fossils - those with anatomical features intermediate between two major groups of organisms - have been greatly exaggerated, particularly by creationists who try to distort or ignore the evidence for evolution. Geologist Donald Prothero sketches 10 of the most important transitions, including how fish crawled onto the land, and how giraffes got their long necks: 

Evolution: What missing link? 

WHEN Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, there was relatively little evidence in the fossil record of evolutionary change. Darwin spent two chapters of his book apologising for the paucity of the fossil record, but predicted that it would eventually support his ideas.

What Darwin was bemoaning was the lack of “transitional” fossils - those with anatomical features intermediate between two major groups of organisms. At the time, such fossils were conceived as “missing links” in the “great chain of being” from lowly corals through higher organisms such as birds and mammals to humans (and ultimately to God). We now know this is a misconception.

Life does not progress up a hierarchical ladder from “low” to “high” but is a branching bush with numerous lineages splitting apart and coexisting simultaneously. For example, apes and humans split from a common ancestor 7 million years ago and both … 

In New Scientist, Donald Prothero 27/02/08 (a leitura integral do artigo exige inscrição na revista, mas é gratuito e vale a pena)