The True.Origin Archive’s “Five Major Evolutionist Misconceptions about Evolution” by Timothy Wallace tells us the following in a section called “There are No Transitional Fossils”:
George Gaylord Simpson, another leading evolutionist, sees this characteristic in practically the whole range of taxonomic categories:
“…Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.” [George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360.]
It sounds devastating so what is wrong with it. Well ignoring that it was written a half-century ago and much work has been done since that time, Dr. Simpson was taken out-of-context in that True.Origin is not being honest with either what he said or with what he meant. Indeed, latter on in the paragraph that True.Origin quotes Simpson tells us point blank, “Now we do have many examples of transitional sequences.”
Now lets look at what Simpson really said. Green is what True.Origin quoted, olive will point to what it quoted wrong, and black is what it did not quote:
…Among the examples are many in which, beyond the slightest doubt, a species or genus has been gradually transformed into another. Such gradual transformation is also fairly well exemplified for subfamilies and occasionally for families, as the groups are commonly ranked. Splitting and subsequent gradual divergence of species is also exemplified, although not as richly as phyletic transformation of species (no doubt because spitting of species usually involves spatial separation and paleontological samples are rarely really adequate in spatial distribution). Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms. Complete examples for subfamilies and families also are known, but are less common.
In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences. When paleontological collection was still in its infancy and no clear examples of transitional origin had been found, most paleontologists were anti-evolutionists. Darwin (1859) recognized the fact that paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather for evolution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic categories in particular. Now we do have many examples of transitional sequences. Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely. Most of them find it logical, if not scientifically required, to assume that the sudden appearance of a new systematic group is not evidence for special creation or for saltation, but simply means that a full transitional sequence more or less like those that are known did occur and simply has not been found in this instance.
For more information on the claims made by the True.Origin article, please see John Hoppner’s rebuttal.
David Menton’s “What Do the Fossils Say?” also uses a misquote of this same section to support his claim that there are not transitional forms. John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris also use this Simpson passage to falsely support the idea of no transitional forms in their 1961 book The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and It Scientific Implications on page 449. Morris also uses this out-of-context quotation in his The Troubled Waters of Evolution on page 91.
Now lets look at another Simpson quote being taken out of context. This time it is by Answers in Genesis in a file titled “There are no transitional fossils” which is part of an article by Jonathan D. Sarfati attacking an essay published in the Washington Post:
The evidence is skimpy, usually based on a few bones and teeth. But the best this could show is the sorting of existing information. But the origin of the distinct types, requires the origin of new information (see discussion below), and this is not supported by the fossils. There are gaps between all 32 mammal orders, as the evolutionist paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson said:
‘The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.’
G.G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), pp. 105[sic]—6.
Now note that when Sarfati’s article was written, Simpson’s book was 53 years old and hardly up-to-date. Now remember that we have already shown that Simpson did accept the existence of transitional fossils so Sarfati’s use of this is dubious on that account alone. But again, the use of the quote is not fair. Dr. Simpson continued in the same paragraph Sarfati quoted:
Of course the orders all converge backward in time, to different degrees. The earliest known members are much more alike than the latest known members, and there is little doubt, for instance, but that all of the highly diverse ungulates did have a common ancestry; but the line making actual connection with such an ancestry is not known in even one instance.
As one goes back in time the fossil record shows that the orders of mammals looked more and more alike. That sounds like evolution to me. And latter on page 111, Simpson tells us that “The major gaps are systematic, but not absolute.” The gaps in the fossil record are often subdivided by transitional forms! One page 114, he tells us that “many examples are known in essentially continuous paleontological series.”
See my “‘Dawn Horse’ Is a Good ‘Ancestor’ For Rhinos Discredits Horse Evolution?” for another creationist distortion of Simpson’s views.