| As we have
stated before, the theory of evolution proposes that some
imaginary creatures that came out of the sea turned into reptiles,
and that birds evolved from reptiles. According to the same
scenario, reptiles are the ancestors not only of birds, but
also of mammals. However, there are great differences between
these two classes. Mammals are warm-blooded animals (this
means they can generate their own heat and maintain it at
a steady level), they give live birth, they suckle their young,
and their bodies are covered in fur or hair. Reptiles, on
the other hand, are cold-blooded (i.e., they cannot generate
heat, and their body temperature changes according to the
external temperature), they lay eggs, they do not suckle their
young, and their bodies are covered in scales.
Given all these differences, then, how did a
reptile start to regulate its body temperature and come by
a perspiratory mechanism to allow it to maintain its body
temperature? Is it possible that it replaced its scales with
fur or hair and started to secrete milk? In order for the
theory of evolution to explain the origin of mammals, it must
first provide scientific answers to these questions.
Yet, when we look at evolutionist sources, we
either find completely imaginary and unscientific scenarios,
or else a profound silence. One of these scenarios is as follows:
Some of the reptiles
in the colder regions began to develop a method of keeping
their bodies warm. Their heat output increased when it was
cold and their heat loss was cut down when scales became
smaller and more pointed, and evolved into fur. Sweating
was also an adaptation to regulate the body temperature,
a device to cool the body when necessary by evaporation
of water. But incidentally the young of these reptiles began
to lick the sweat of the mother for nourishment. Certain
sweat glands began to secrete a richer and richer secretion,
which eventually became milk. Thus the young of these early
mammals had a better start in life.147
The above quotation is nothing more than a figment
of the imagination. Not only is such a fantastic scenario
unsupported by the evidence, it is clearly impossible. It
is quite irrational to claim that a living creature produces
a highly complex nutrient such as milk by licking its mother's
body sweat.
There is no difference between
fossil mammals dozens of millions of years old in natural
history museums and those living today. Furthermore,
these fossils emerge suddenly, with no connection to
species that had gone before. |
The reason why such scenarios
are put forward is the fact that there are huge differences
between reptiles and mammals. One example of the structural
barriers between reptiles and mammals is their jaw structure.
Mammal jaws consist of only one mandibular bone containing
the teeth. In reptiles, there are three little bones on both
sides of the mandible. Another basic difference is that all
mammals have three bones in their middle ear (hammer, anvil,
and stirrup). Reptiles have but a single bone in the middle
ear. Evolutionists claim that the reptile jaw and middle ear
gradually evolved into the mammal jaw and ear. The question
of how an ear with a single bone evolved into one with three
bones, and how the sense of hearing kept on functioning in
the meantime can never be explained. Not surprisingly, not
one single fossil linking reptiles and mammals has been found.
This is why the renowned evolutionist science writer Roger
Lewin was forced to say, "The transition to the first mammal,
...is still an enigma."148
George Gaylord Simpson, one of the most important
evolutionary authorities and a founder of the neo-Darwinist
theory, makes the following comment regarding this perplexing
difficulty for evolutionists:
The most puzzling event
in the history of life on earth is the change from the Mesozoic,
the Age of Reptiles, to the Age of Mammals. It is as if
the curtain were rung down suddenly on the stage where all
the leading roles were taken by reptiles, especially dinosaurs,
in great numbers and bewildering variety, and rose again
immediately to reveal the same setting but an entirely new
cast, a cast in which the dinosaurs do not appear at all,
other reptiles are supernumeraries, and all the leading
parts are played by mammals of sorts barely hinted at in
the preceding acts.149
Furthermore, when mammals suddenly made their
appearance, they were already very different from each other.
Such dissimilar animals as bats, horses, mice, and whales
are all mammals, and they all emerged during the same geological
period. Establishing an evolutionary relationship among them
is impossible even by the broadest stretch of the imagination.
The evolutionist zoologist R. Eric Lombard makes this point
in an article that appeared in the leading journal Evolution:
Those searching for
specific information useful in constructing phylogenies
of mammalian taxa will be disappointed.150
In short, the origin of mammals, like that of
other groups, fails to conform to the theory of evolution
in any way. George Gaylord Simpson admitted that fact many
years ago:
This is true of all
thirty-two orders of mammals ... The earliest and most primitive
known members of every order [of mammals] already have the
basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately
continuous sequence 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
... This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined
to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has
long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost
all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate...it
is true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and
it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants.151
  
147 George
Gamow, Martynas Ycas, Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself, The Viking
Press, New York, 1967, p. 149.
148 Roger Lewin, "Bones of Mammals, Ancestors
Fleshed Out," Science, vol. 212, June 26, 1981, p.
1492. (emphasis added)
149 George Gaylord Simpson, Life Before
Man, Time-Life Books, New York, 1972, p. 42. (emphasis
added)
150 R. Eric Lombard, "Review of Evolutionary
Principles of the Mammalian Middle Ear, Gerald Fleischer,"
Evolution, vol. 33, December 1979, p. 1230.
151 George G., Simpson, Tempo and Mode
in Evolution, Columbia University Press, New York, 1944,
pp. 105, 107. |