The Fossil Record
Including Transitional Fossils

Fossils, Rocks and Time

A Tail of Long Ago (off site)

Punctuated Equilibria (off site)
Wesley Elsberry

The Division of Paleontology
at the American Museum of Natural History (off site)

A Tree of Life (off site)

Tree or Trellis (off site)
Carl Zimmer

The Therapsid-Mammal Transitional series (off site)
Lenny Flank

Prehistoric Reptiles From Russia Possessed The First Modern Ears (off site)
Science Daily
12 September 2007

Impedance-Matching Hearing in Paleozoic Reptiles: Evidence of Advanced Sensory Perception
at an Early Stage of Amniote Evolution (off site)
Johannes Müller, Linda A. Tsuji
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany

Eutheria: Placental Mammals  (off site)

Mammaliformes: Docodonta  (off site)

Ancient Kiwi 'mouse' fills fossil gap  (off site)
Marilyn Head
ABC Science Online
Tuesday, 12 December 2006

Bats Flew First, Developed Echolocation Later, Fossilized Missing Link Shows (off site)
The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved fossil representing the most primitive bat species known to date demonstrates that the animals evolved the ability to fly before they could echolocate."

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ (off site)
Kathleen Hunt

Smooth Change in the Fossil Record (off site)

Taxonomy, Transitional Forms,
and the Fossil Record  (off site)
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506

The vestigiality of the human vermiform appendix
A modern reappraisal  (off site)

Evidence of Evolutionary Transitions (off site)
Michael Benton, Ph.D.

Virtual fossils reveal how ancient creatures lived
Jo Marchant, 27 May 2009
"BEHIND the war of words over the significance of Ida, the 47-million-year-old-primate fossil  unveiled last week, a quiet revolution in palaeontolgy is unfolding. Thanks to a souped-up version of a technique better known for its use in medical diagnostics, we are gaining unprecedented insights into the way prehistoric creatures lived, breathed and grew."

Evolution IN Action: Native U.S. Lizards Are Adapting To Escape Attacks By Fire Ants (off site)
ScienceDaily, Jan. 24, 2009
"Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Tracy Langkilde has shown that native fence lizards in the southeastern United States are adapting to potentially fatal invasive fire-ant attacks by developing behaviors that enable them to escape from the ants, as well as by developing longer hind legs, which can increase the effectiveness of this behavior."

Vertebrata  (off site)
Animals with Backbones 

The Fossil Hominids - the Evidence for Human Evolution (off site)
Jim Foley

Humans split from chimps 'recently'  (off site)
"Chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor just 4 million years ago, much more recently
than current estimates of 5-7 million years ago, a new study shows."

Ancient ape forces rethink of family tree
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Science News
"Researchers working in Ethiopia have unearthed the fossils of a 10 million year old ape,
 a discovery they say suggests humans and African great apes may have split much earlier than thought."
Michael Kahn, Reuters, 23 August 2007

Walking upright started in trees   (off site)
From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News in Science
Will Dunham, 1 June 2007

The Evidence - Hominid Fossils (off site)

Fossil Hominids: Frequently Asked Questions  (off site)
Jim Foley

Human ancestors had big brained babies  (off Site)
ABC Science
"The fossilised Homo erectus pelvis found in Ethiopia suggests females swayed their hips as they walked and gave birth to relatively developed babies with big heads, say researchers."

Human hair linked to ancient claws  (off Site)
ABC Science
"A new study has identified a gene associated with hair production in present-day lizards and chickens, which may trace its origins back more than 300 million years ago."

Human Origins from Afar  (off site)
"Sands and sediments in one corner of Ethiopia provide a time machine to revisit whence we came. "
"The Scientist"
(Free registration is required)

Slow human evolution revealed by worm genome  (off site)
Humans have retained genomic characteristics of a very ancient ancestor that have been lost in simpler animals such as the fly, indicating that humans are one of the most slowly evolving species.

Hominid Succession
Helen Lawrence

D2700, Homo erectus (or Homo ergaster) (off site)

Early Human Phylogeny  (off site)

Evolution's Missing Link   (off site)
A Sedimentologist offers a new explanation for one of evolution's great mysteries.

Early Primate Provides Evolution Clues (off site)
Ned Potter, 19 May 2009
"'Most Complete Primate in the Fossil Record' Unveiled in New York"

Why Ida fossil is not the missing link (off site)
Chris Beard, NewScientist, 21 May 2009

"Unbridled hoopla attended the unveiling of a 47-million-year-old-fossil primate skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on 19 May. Found by private collectors in 1983 in Messel, Germany, the press immediately hailed the specimen as a 'missing link' and even the 'eighth wonder of the world'."

Fossils from the Messel site (off site)
"At the Messel pit near Darmstadt in Germany where Ida fossil was excavated, palaeontologists have found hundreds of well-preserved specimens."

PHOTOS: 7 Major "Missing Links" Since Darwin (off site)
National Geographic

"For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 2009), National Geographic News asked leading scientists for their picks of the most important fossils that show evolution in action—seven of which are presented here, starting with this 'fishapod.'"

Hominid fossils show their age  (off site)

The Call of the Black Cockatoo
A book by Helen Lawrence (Press release)

Making Friends with Fossils
A booklet by Helen Lawrence (Press release)

Fossil Hominids: Response to Walter Brown's In the Beginning (off site)
Jim Foley

Overview of Human Evolution  (off site)

On Creation Science and "Transitional Fossils" (off site)
Tim Thompson

Use and Abuse of the Fossil Record  (off site)
Penny Higgins

Hooke, Fossils and the Anti-Evolutionists  (off site)

The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation"? (off site)
Clifford A. Cuffey

Pentecostals vs. Paleoanthropologists  (off site)
"Famed Paleontologist Richard Leakey Is Taking on Church Leaders Who Are Pressing Kenya's National Museum to Hide Its World-Famous Fossil Collection"

Citing Scadding (1981) and Misunderstanding Vestigiality
Another Example of Poor Creationist Scholarship  (off site)

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution
The Scientific Case for Common Descent  (off site)
Douglas L. Theobald, Ph.D.

KNM-WT 15000, "Turkana Boy", Homo erectus (off site)
Jim Foley

The Missing Link  (off site)

The Fossil Record 2  (off site)

Prominent Hominid Fossils (off site)
Jim Foley

Fossil Hominids: Illustrations  (off site)

Homo floresiensis: the Hobbit  (off site)
"Homo floresiensis is a species of dwarf human discovered at the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003"

Hobbits Alive?  (off site)
Carl Zimmer

Anthropologist Confirms 'Hobbit' Indeed A Separate Species  (off site)
"After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003,
some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic -- a human with an abnormally small skull."

Out Of Africa - Bacteria, As Well: Homo Sapiens And H. Pylori Jointly Spread Across The Globe  (off site)
"When man made his way out of Africa some 60,000 years ago to populate the world, he was not alone:
He was accompanied by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which causes gastritis in many people today."

Putting a face and form to early humans is both science and art  (off site)

Primates  (off site)
Lemurs, Tarsiers, Monkeys, Apes and Humans

Primate Specialist Group (off site)
"The Primate Specialist Group is a network of scientists and conservationists who stand against the tide of extinction which threatens humanity's closest kin."

The Stone Age Institute (off site)
Technology, Adaptation and Evolution

Padian featured in SVP video  (off Site)
National Center for Science Education, 9 November 2008
"A video project from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology devotes a segment to discussing paleontology, evolution, and creationism."

We are SVP  (off Site)
"WE ARE SVP is a 33-minute video that tells the inside story of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology -- who we are, what we do, and why our work is important for science and society.  The video is introduced and narrated by Sam Waterston, the long-time star of 'LAW & ORDER.' "  

Bite makes way for brain  (off site)
"The Scientist"
(Free registration is required)

Prehistoric Lizard Called Historic Link  (off site)

Fish to Amphibian Transition (off site)
Glen Morton

Fossilized tissue found in ancient fish (off site)
"Australian scientists say fossilized muscle has been discovered in the remains of two fish that lived about 380 million years ago."

Fossil fish rewrites evolution of mammals  (off site)
"Australian scientists say the recent discovery of a fossil fish has rewritten the record of evolution of land mammals."

Panderichthys (Fish to Terrestrial Vertebrate) (off site)

Fossil helps document shift from sea to land  (off site)
"New fossils of an ancient, four-limbed creature help fill in the blanks of the evolutionary transition between fish and the first land-adapted vertebrates."
Sid Perkins, 25 June 2008

Marine Biology  (off site)

The Fossils of Riversleigh: preserving a record of evolution in Australia (off site)

Ancient Fish Fossil May Rewrite Story of Animal Evolution  (off site)
National Geographic News

A wandering eye (off site)
"Fossils show middle stage of the evolution of flatfish eyes to one side of their head"
Ashley Yeager, 9 July 2008

Origin Of Jawed Vertebrates: Prehistoric Fish Provides New Piece In Evolution's Jigsaw Puzzle (off site)
ScienceDaily, Jan. 19, 2009

"In an article in the journal Nature January 14, Uppsala researcher Martin Brazeau describes the skull and jaws of a fish that lived about 410 million years ago.
The study may give important clues to the origin of jawed vertebrates, and thus ultimately our own evolution."

A Fin is a Limb is a Wing  (off site)
Carl Zimmer

New Genetic Data Overturn Long-held Theory Of Limb Development  (off site)
University of Chicago Medical Center, May 24, 2007

Dolphin Evolution  (off site)

Whale Evolution

Hooking Leviathan By Its Past (off site)
Stephen Jay Gould

AiG and Whale Evolution
Michael Suttkus

Wolf Evolution Links

The most primitive foot to walk on land has been described by scientists (off site)

Titanis walleri: The elusive terror bird (off site)

Parrot Fossil 55 Million Years Old Discovered In Scandinavia (off site)
"It's a new species, officially named 'Mopsitta tanta'. However, already its nick-name is the 'Danish Blue Parrot', a term derived from a famous comedy sketch about a 'Norwegian Blue Parrot' in the 1970s BBC television programme 'Monty Python'".
From Science Daily

Fossil is missing link in elephant lineage  (off site)
"A U.S. paleontologist says the fossil of a pig-sized creature found in East Africa represents the missing
link between ancient and modern elephants."

More Evidence for Transitional Fossils
Warren Akers

The Fossil Fallacy (off site)
Michael Shermer
Creationists' demand for fossils that represent "missing links" reveals a deep misunderstanding of science

The proper reverence due those who have gone before (off site)
PZ Myers
A thoughtful essay about our distant ancestors

Build Me A Tapeworm  (off site)
"Darwin gave a lot of thought to the strangest creatures on this planet, wondering
how they had evolved from less strange ancestors."
Carl Zimmer

Oz fossils  (off site)
"The story of how life evolved on Earth is hidden in its fossils. In Australia scientists are exposing secrets that lie hidden in our ancient rock"

They Call Me Mister Zimmer (off site)
Carl Zimmer
"Readers of this blog will have to indulge me from time to time so that I can respond to personal attacks from creationists. I write about science, and I strive to do so accurately. I also point out misinformation about science and explain why it’s wrong. So when someone claims I can’t admit a mistake when I make one, or that I suffer from an overactive imagination, I have to respond."

Old fish, new fish, red fish, blue fish (off site)
Patrick Barry, Science News, Web edition: 1 October 2008
"Changes in sense organs could be splitting cichlids in an African lake into two species."