Transitional fossils, or the supposed lack thereof, has been used for many years by anti-evolutionists to argue against evolution. Here, I will explain what a transitional fossil is, and why it is not valid as an argument against evolution.
A transitional fossil shows the evolutionary development from one species to another. For example, if organism 1 existed 70 million years ago, and organism 2 shows up in the fossil record 5 million years later, then theoretically there should be intermediate species in this 5 million year gap, which shows gradual progression from one species to another. The lack of these “transitional” fossils is proof to young earth creationists that evolution is false.
Evolutionists have shown that indeed there are transitional fossils, and there are plenty of examples of them. For instance, see this article.1 Here is the key point…even if young earth creationists accept these examples of transitional fossils, they will still claim that there are no transitional fossils! These fossils will be called either unique species, or they will come up with some reason (disease, birth defect, etc) that accounts for the apparent...