Re: mesonychids to Whales

GRMorton@aol.com
Wed, 28 Jun 1995 23:24:12 -0400

Stephen Jones wrote:
>Darwin and Neo-Darwinists believed the fossil record was extremely
imperfect. Gould came along as an angry young man trying to make a
name for himself (and declare the evolutionary equivalent of the
American War of Independence from the Brits <g>) and said it wasn't as
imperfect as all that - the fossil record was a "faithful" record of
jerkiness. But OTOH it can't be too perfect, because that would also
tend to invalidate Gould's evolutionary theory. This shows that there
isn't much hard data. It is all theory-driven.<

No there is lots of data, Twenhofel and Shrock wrote in 1935,
"About 150 species of living cephalopods are known, and fully 10,000 fossil
species have been described." William H. Twenhofel and R. R. Shrock,
"Invertebrate Paleontology, p. 394.

There are now known to be about 650 living species. I can not find the modern
count of extinct species, but in any event, the dead outnumber the living.
There is plenty of hard data and it is not all theory driven.

But this does raise a question for the PC guys. Why did God create so many
animals doomed to extinction? Why wouldn't He create the modern forms?

glenn