Claim CC216.2:
The fossil record does not show a gradual development from a small animal
to the large modern horse. The horse family tree is not simple and
direct; some scientists say Eohippus was not an ancestor of the modern
horse; and the different types of fossils show stability, not gradual
change.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here?
Brooklyn, NY, pp. 66-67.
Response:
- The fossil record does not show a gradual, linear progression from
Hyracotherium (Eohippus) to Equus. Nor is there any
reason to
think it should. The fossil record of equids shows that various
lineages split into several branches. Evolution was not smooth and
gradual; traits evolved at different rates and occasionally reversed.
Some species arose gradually, others suddenly. All of this is in
accord with the messiness we expect from evolution and from biology in
general.
- Some creationists consider all the species in the horse family to be
the same "kind." They accept "microevolution" from Hyracotherium at
the time of the Flood, to modern horses and donkeys first recorded less
than four hundred years later (Wood and Cavanaugh 2003). This rate of
change is far greater than biologists accept.
Links:
FLMNH, n.d. Fossil horses in hyperspace.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/fhc.htm
Hunt, Kathleen, 1995. Horse evolution.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html
References:
Further Reading:
Gould, Stephen J., 1991. Life's little joke. In: Bully for
Brontosaurus, New York: W.W. Norton, pp. 168-181.
created 2003-7-3, modified 2004-5-17
