Lucy’s Out, Ida’s In, Here We Go Again!

The "eighth wonder of the world" or an “asteroid falling down to Earth" is how Philip Gingerich and his confraternity of palaeontologists today praised the skeletal remains of a lemur dubbed Ida. It afforded some an uneasy sense of déjà vu as they recalled Donald Johanson presenting his “bona fide” “crown jewel of pre-human fossils” Lucy to the world a quarter century earlier. Almost felt sorry for Johanson whose life and legacy is so inextricably mingled that of his creation, and how as lowly assistant and associate professor was able to so convincingly dupe a credulous world into accepting rarified artifacts of pseudo pre-human linage.

Interesting how these two “oracles” of origins make common claim: their “Lady” is a transitional species i.e., the “missing link.” Assuming for a moment that Darwin’s premise is true i.e., species experience structural aberration over evolutionary intervals of time. However, we are immediately confronted with a problem: why isn’t this evident in the fossil record? Not just Lucy or Ida, but other transitional forms. And not just other transitional forms, but all forms that lived to fossilize i.e., a continuum, an ad infinitum of aberration that would render either Lucy or Ida or any fossil indistinguishable from any other? Do not those professing to be “wise” have an answer?

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up….” (Romans 1:22-24).