NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/origins/16759

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-25 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!morrow.stanford.edu!pangea.Stanford.EDU!salem
From: [e-mail] (Bruce Salem)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Duane T. Gish, Ph. D.
Date: 26 Jan 1993 04:23:37 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article [e-mail], [e-mail] (Lionel Tun) writes:
>>The fossil record for intermediates is sparse or non existent
>>per se. There is a good reason for this.
>
>Well, Lionel, I'll bite.  What is this reason?

I'll tease. It is because the fossil record has gaps because it has, er,
gaps. The holes in the record are there because the record is lossy, gets
easily destroyed, metamorphism, erosion, and becasue some of the life
that lived mostly never got preserved. There are alternatives to the
usual cant, from Bob Bales et. al. that the gaps are part of the process.

There are a few cases where the diversity of communities like those we
have today is preserved, but as much of this diversity in softpart
biota is only preserved in these few cases throughout the record, but not
in nearly all of the rest of it, we cannot conclude that the full diversity
was absent. One such case is the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, another is
the Misson Creek Ill deposit, another is the Solenhofen Limestone of Jurassic
age from which Archeopteryx comes. There are others.

Bruce Salem