10 October 2008

Sorcerer's apprentice syndrome

Poor Mickey Mouse found out that every time he chopped up one of his magic brooms, the problem doubled as each half sprouted new legs and continued its duties.

Palaeontologists everywhere can sympathise with Mickey's plight. When a seemingly large evolutionary gap is plugged with a remarkable new fossil, as happened just the other day with the discovery of a new primitive turtle from the Triassic, it just leaves two smaller gaps on either side. Now, instead of one gap in the fossil record there are two, and Creationists argue that the fossil record is, paradoxically, even worse than it was before the new discovery.
-- from $7.5 trillion for a 'transitional' fossil? by Colin Barras

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