Lies on the Evolution Deceit Website

On 8/11/01 I emailed the webmaster of the Evolution Deceit website informing him/her of the falsehoods appearing on their site. I also stated that I would check back periodically to see if the errors had been corrected.

UPDATE: On 1/11/02, I recieved an email from the EvolutionDeceit.com webmaster informing me that these errors have now been corrected in the internet edition, and will be changed in future printings of the book version.

From the Scenario of human evolution page.

Finally, in 1994, a team from Liverpool University in England launched an extensive research to reach a definite conclusion. Finally, they concluded that "the Australopithecines are quadripedal".(4) Briefly, Australopithecines have no link with humans and they are merely an extinct ape species.

Reference #4 is to:

Fred Spoor, Bernard Wood, Frans Zonneveld, "Implication of Early Hominid Labryntine Morphology for Evolution of Human Bipedal Locomotion", Nature, Vol 369, June 23, 1994, pp. 645-648.

This quote is an outright fabrication. The article is available online -- Click here [PDF file]. The actual conclusions set forth by Spoor et al. is that the australopiths possessed a locomotor repertoire combinging both facultative bipedalism and arboreal climbing. NOWHERE in the article do Spoor et al. state that "the Australopithecines are quadripedal".

ED states:

Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, has shown that these creatures were not bipedal and had the same sort of movement as today’s apes.

False. Oxnard position on the Australopiths is that "their locomotion may not have been like that of modern man, and may, though including a form or forms of bipedality, have been different enough to allow marked abilities for climbing" (Nature 1975 Dec 4;258[5534]:389-95).

In chapter 6, ED states:

There is not even a single fossil verifying that a half-fish/half-amphibian creature has ever existed. This fact is confirmed by a well-known evolutionist authority, Robert L. Carroll, who is the author of Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, though reluctantly as: "We have no intermediate fossils between rhipidistian fish (his favourite ‘ancestors’ of tetrapods) and early amphibians."(2)

That statement was true 13 years ago when Carroll wrote it in Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. It is emphatically not true today. More recently, Carroll wrote:

Within the past few years, several animals that are intermediate in time and morphology have been described. Panderichthys and Elpistostega from the upper middle Devonian and lower upper Devonian . . . and Eliginerpeton and Obruchevicthys from the middle upper Devonian. Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, 1997, p. 304

For a summary of the paleontological evidence, see Fish to amphibian transition documented, by Glenn Morton.

In chapter 7, ED states:

The most recent evidence refuting the evolutionist claims about Archaeopteryx came from a fossilized bird named Longisquama insignis. The fossil of this archaic bird was excavated in the late 1960s. . . The bird's anatomical features like feathers,hollow bone structure and wishbone are just like those of modern birds.

. . . This fact definitely invalidates the evolutionist myth arguing that Archaeopteryx is a "primitive" bird ancestral to all the birds ever lived.

Longisquama has been described as "a squat, mouse-sized reptile with at least six vanelike appendages up to 12 centimeters long sprouting from its spine." Longisquama is, unquestionably, NOT a bird! NO ONE in the paleontology community thinks Longisquama insignis is a "bird," including Feduccia. At best it is argued that it is a possible representative of a lineage that later gave rise to birds. The science article that ED cites states:

Longisquama insignis was an unusual archosaur from the Late Triassic of central Asia. . .

The exact relationship of Longisquama to birds is uncertain. . .

Both birds and Longisquama are archosaurians. Beyond this, the taxonomic status of Longisquama is poorly understood; thus, the relation between integumentary derivatives in birds and Longisquama remains unclear. . .

The authors argue that Longisquama is possibly an ancestor for birds, and that the elongate structures MIGHT be homologous with feathers. They do NOT say that Longisquama IS a bird or that is HAS feathers. These are very different claims.

ED states:

Stephan Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, two Harvard paleontologists and world-wide famous evolutionists, accept that Archaeopteryx is a "mosaic" living thing housing various features in its form, yet that it can never be regarded as a transitional form!

An interesting misrepresentation. Eldridge's latest book, The Triumph of Evolution, pp. 124-126, discusses Archie. Of the mosaic pattern which ED seems to think is problematic for evolutionary theory, Eldridge says:

The reason Archaeopteryx so delights paleontologists is that evolutionary theory expects that new characteristics . . . will not appear all at the same time in the evolutionary history of a lineage. Some new characters will appear before others. Indeed, the entire concept of an intermediate hinges on this expectation . . . intermediates worthy of the name would have a mosaic of primitive retentions of the ancestral condition, some in-between characters, and the fully evolved, advanced condition in yet other anatomical features. p. 125-6

Bluster as they might, creationists cannot wriggle away from Archaeopteryx.