Against “All the Missing Links are Still Missing”

This post is written against this page under the Chemistry tab on evolutionthelie.com

This piece of evidence uses writings of Charles Darwin to support the claim that the fossil record is imperfect and incomplete. This is further evidenced by the lack of unbroken lines of species that demonstrate that evolution occurred. What this post argues is that, essentially, a precise picture that shows evolution must exist in order for evolution to be irrefutably believed. Because, over a hundred years since Darwin, there are still immense gaps in the fossil record, this post suggests that those gaps cannot be filled and thus we must assume that evolution is an incorrect hypothesis.

Let me begin by saying there is a reason it is called the “Theory of Evolution,” because it is not an irrefutable truth. If we did have an unbroken lineage within the fossil record, posts such as this would be even more blasphemous than they already are. However, this source does not acknowledge those bits of the fossil record that demonstrate selection and evolution, even if they do not encompass all of human evolution.

Examination of the following skulls is an example of the kind of evidence that this post is blatantly disregarding.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-erectus-our-ancient-ancestor.html, skulls of modern human ancestors. From left to right: Homo erectusHomo heidelbergensisHomo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.

Looking at the skulls, the left being the most ancient and the right being the skull of a modern human, it is obvious that there have been consistent trends over time that would suggest certain selection patterns. Though someone moving against evolution could argue that there is no proof that this lineage is “unbroken,” these trends remain consistent over time based on these fossils that we have. It would seem that over time brow ridges became less pronounced, faces became flatter, muscle attachment sites became less obvious, and craniums became rounder. All of these things can be explained by the change in diet, need for increased brain size, and optimization of the body for bipedalism. Because these traits were selected for in their preceding species, i.e. the Neanderthals with the rounder skulls reproduced more effectively, these traits continued to become more prominent and more obvious over time. Originally based in mutations, random variations in traits from genomic roots, each species was different from the last in the same ways that the species after it continued to be different. These trends seem undeniable and clear, even if we do not have a “missing link” that this post claims we must have.