Morphological Discontinuities Trouble Evolutionists

One of the Most Important Questions in Evolutionary Biology

NeoDarwinism expected a fine gradation of form from one species to the next but the distribution of morphologies is clumpy at virtually all scales. Appeals to gaps in the fossil record don’t solve the problem and now evolutionists are considering more complex explanations for how evolution could have produced such morphological discontinuities. They are also suggesting that the expectation of fine gradations between species may have been driven by Charles Lyell’s promotion of uniformitarianism in geology and by the desire to be physics-like. Darwin’s friend Thomas Huxley warned Darwin about his narrow focus on gradualism. As Douglas Erwin explains:

Lyell, however, deeply influenced Darwin, and just as Lyell invoked uniformitarianism as part of his efforts to make geology a science, I believe Darwin followed suit in his development of evolutionary thought. Huxley famously wrote to Darwin immediately before publication of The Origin, suggesting that Darwin had adopted a gradual view of evolution too unreservedly.

But what if Darwin had not cast his evolution as a gradual, law-like process? If he had allowed for saltations to explain the discontinuities, rather than gaps left by an imperfect fossil record, then his theory would have been less compelling. Now, 150 years later, we have yet another false prediction and evolutionists struggling to patch the theory. And if something as fundamental as this remains in question, then certainly evolution is not a scientific fact.

The Wasp Evolution Forgot

New research on an old, misidentified, fossil specimen reveals that the fig wasp has remained virtually unchanged for over 34 million years. In spite of dramatic climate shifts, and who knows what else, this millimeter long fig tree pollinator, and its fig tree companion, somehow managed to persist. While primitive primates somehow developed the human brain and consciousness in a geologically brief time window, the fig wasp managed to avoid evolutionary change over a much longer time period. It is yet another example of stasis in the biological world.

Fig wasps are so named because they have a complex and highly specific relationship with fig trees. There are about 800 species of fig trees, and each is pollinated by just one or two species of fig wasp which otherwise ignore the other fig trees species. That’s quite a feat that evolution pulled off—800 or so variations on a theme.

At one fig tree a wasp collects pollen and stores it in pockets on the underside of its body before flying to another fig tree (of the same species of course) where it pulls out the collected pollen and spreads it on the flower. It’s amazing what unguided mutations will do (no, natural selection doesn’t magically design intricate systems like this, it merely kills off the loser mutations).

And what’s also amazing is how, after implementing such dramatic and nuanced changes, evolution then comes to a screeching halt. It created species, and relationships between them, that fortuitously would not only survive climate shifts and tens of millions of years, but wouldn’t even call for any more change. That’s a good design.