ACCORDING to Dr Ron Clarke, discoverer of the latest Sterkfontein "ape-man" fossil find, it has been a "staggering achievement" to find "the world's first ever entire ape-man skull - and its skeleton", which "will answer many questions concerning human evolution that continues to mystify scientists" (The Citizen, December 10). Without begrudging Dr Clarke his moment of glory, may we put this find into context? In his Origin of species (1859), Darwin wrote: "the numbers of intermediate varieties which have existed...(must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation ... full of such intermediate links: He blamed "the extreme imperfection of the geological record".
In 1979 Prof David Raup, Curator of Geology, the Field Museum, Chicago, wrote: "Darwin was embarrassed by the fossil record : We are now about 120 years after Darwin and ... have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much. We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time." (Field Museum journal Vol 50, 1979).
Three years go keen evolutionist Prof Steve Jones, London University, wrote: "The evidence for human evolution is ... still extraordinarily weak ...There are no more fossils than would cover decent-sized table..." (Daily Telegraph, September 13, 1995). I have no doubt there will still be room on that table for "Little Foot"!
The "staggering" news is that, after 140 years of determined searching by armies of geologists, paleontologist, etc to find the hard evidence for evolution, which has yielded billions of fossils, with over 100 million in the world's museums, the world's very first complete ape-man fossil has been discovered! Perhaps Dr Clarke can tell us what, if evolution be the true explanation for origins, has happened to all the other ape-men transitional fossils - the number of which should, according to Darwin, be "truly enormous"
Why, with such wealth of other fossil evidence, have they not been found? Eminent evolutionary scientist, Prof SJ Gould, Harvard University, tells us that intermediate fossils between all other living "kinds" are also missing. The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees ...have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference ...not the evidence of fossils." (Natural History, Vo186,1977).
Faced with these hard facts any reasonable, honest person not previously prejudiced by evolutionary ideology from education or the media would, surely, conclude that the complete absence of an overwhelming preponderance of fossils intermediate between known "kinds" (except for minuscule "tableful" of hotly disputed oddities) shows that the really crucial, hard evidence for evolution by blind, mindless, purposeless, unaided "chance" is simply not there! It is human pride and disinclination to accept that there is a higher authority to whom we might be accountable which causes many to shy away from the only other possible explanation for origins, viz: intelligent design and creation of separate "kinds" by asupremely intelligent designer-Creator God?
Instead of this obsession with the dry bones of Sterkfontein, if we opened our eyes and minds to the overwhelming evidence in living things all around us of stunningly sophisticated, staggeringly and irreducibly complex, ultra-miniaturised, incredibly ingenious, brilliantly successful designs, it would not be hard to accept the second alternative indeed extremely hard not to!
Bernard A Reeves