Truth in Science

The issue of New Scientist dated 27 February 2008 carried a major article on intermediate or transitional forms in nature which was entitled “What Missing Link?”. It was written by Donald Prothero who is Professor of Geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Thus far, we have considered the first three examples of his list of ten. These are (1) Velvet worms  - see the blog item “What Missing Link?”, (2) Lancelets – see the blog item “Sounds very Fishy to Me!”, and (3) Fishibians – see our article entitled “Tiktaalik - the Fishopod from the Canadian Artic”.

The fourth item in this series concerns the emergence of mammals in the fossil record. In his New Scientist review, Professor Prothero’s suggests:

Another excellent example of a transitional sequence is the evolution of mammals from their ancestors, the synapsids. These were once called "mammal-like reptiles", but that term is no longer used because synapsids are not reptiles - the two groups evolved in parallel from a common ancestor.