Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: archeopteryx: THE PILTDOWN CHICKEN Message-ID: <420@imsvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 8-Oct-85 19:52:34 EDT Article-I.D.: imsvax.420 Posted: Tue Oct 8 19:52:34 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Oct-85 03:08:00 EDT Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD Lines: 68 At least one writer on net.origins has asked about the state of the archeopteryx these days. An article by a Mr. Wm. Rusher appeared in the Washington (D.C.) Times last Friday, on this subject, which I feel readers on net.origins will get a kick out of. Without further ado, here it is: .......................................................................... The decision of the California Board of Education to reject all textbooks submitted for use in seventh and eighth grade science classes on the grounds that they water-down official guidelines mandating the teaching of evolution may concievably be justified on the narrow issue. But it is bound to reinforce the widespread impression that the advocates of evolutionary theory are less interested in reasonable discussion than in shoving their beliefs down other peoples throats. As anybody who presumes to write critically of a scientific dogma rapidly discovers, such lese majeste triggers a flurry of correspondence whose tone is anything but clinical. With an arrogance and certitude reminiscent of the Spanish inquisition, the miscreant is peremptorily ordered to abandon his ignorant doubts, and get back in line. The vigor and sheer nastiness of the assault gives rise to the suspicion that one is in the presence of a hidden agenda - most likely that of secular humanism (a polite term for atheism). But this is, as the saying goes, a free country, and evidence keeps popping up that the scientific know-it-alls don't, in fact, know it all. Take the recent quite serious doubts that have arisen concerning the celebrated archeopteryx. One of the persisting problems of evolutionary theory is the remarkable scarcity of "intermediate forms". It seems plausible that existing species developed from pre-existing forms of life, but if so, the fossil record ought to be rich in intermediate forms, demonstrating such evolutionary development. In fact, however, such forms are so rare, that certain innovative scientific thinkers have begun advocating a concept called "punctuated evolution" - the theory being that new species evolve in such rapid bursts that they elude recording in fossil strata. (Holden's note: for an idea of how rapid, see "Earth in Upheavel" by Immanuel Velikovsky, who invented punctuated evolution in 1950) However, there are a few intermediate forms on which paleontologists have been able to hang their hats. One of the best known of these is the archeopteryx. Scientists believe that birds evolved from reptiles during the mezozoic era. This was the geological age during which reptile life dominated the earth, and before it ended, there indisputably were true birds flying around. Also, there were a number of forms of flying reptiles, from the early pterodactly, which wasonly the size of a sparrow, to the great pteranodons near the era's close, which had a wingspread of 25 feet. But where were the intermediate forms between theflying reptiles and the birds? Happily, in the 1860s, a Bavarian doctor named Karl Haberlein found, in some limestone deposits dating from the middle of the mezazoic, two distinctly reptilian fossil skeletons about the size of a crow, each sporting clear imprints of what the Enclycopedia Brittanica calls "essentially modern feathers". Behold: the intermediate form! But now a group of modern investigators, including the very eminent cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle, have denounced archeopteryx as a fraud, presumably committed by the late Dr. Haberlein. Studying the Haberlein specimen in the British Museum of Natural History, they claim to have discovered microscopic evidences of hanky-panky, and charge that the famous early bird is simply a reptilian fossil decorated with imprints of chicken feathers. Harking back to the famous Piltdown Man, which fascinated paleontologists for 40 years before it was shown in 1953 to be an artfully stained combination of a human cranium and an orangutan jaw, Mr. Hoyle teasingly describes archeopteryx as a "PILTDOWN CHICKEN". It is only fair to add that paleontologists seem to be sticking by archeopteryx,and are asking what a cosmologist is doing barging into their very different scientific specialty. But the point is not who is right or wrong in this controversy, but what it tells us about the state of evolutionary science. One wonders what the all-wise California Board of Education will order that young Californians must be taught about the archeopteryx. It must take a fast and flexible textbook publisher to sell his science textbooks in California these days.