Blue Collar Scientist

The Blue Collar Scientist and the Blue Collar Mom were at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural history today. This is my first trip to Washington, DC for pleasure - I was here about fifteen years ago on government work and got to see absolutely nothing in the way of attractions during the brief time I was here. This time, it’s all for fun.

The Museum is an old-style natural history museum - there were a few outdated dioramas (e.g., showing Tyrannosaurus standing upright and balancing on its tail, though the actual mount was done right), lots of stuffed specimens in the Hall of Mammals, most of the megafaunal mounts on display were of actual fossilized bone rather than casts (with accompanying heavy steel supports), some of the descriptions on the interpretive signs are out of date (and are corrected by supplementary signs), and the whole place has the musty, dusty vibe of a natural history museum of the late ’50’s.

It was so cool.

I went immediately to the hall of fossils and dinosaurs, because that’s my thing - I’m as enthusiastic about paleontology as I am for astronomy. Almost immediately, I noticed that there was something that looked roughly like this Devonian starfish labeled as an “asteroid” (Devonaster sp). Made me feel right at home.

I was pleased to see the Museum is unabashed about displaying their specimens with evolution in mind. They exhibit a cladogram for marginocephalian (fringe-headed) dinosaurs, for example, and also have on display an impressive cladogram for proboscidians (elephants, basically) built around miniature sculptures of each species. Cladograms are really cool - they are diagrams showing the ancestry of species, based on evidence from anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, and so forth. A cladogram shows which species gave rise to which others, and what species are in a modern species’ ancestry. The tool is so powerful that there is a movement within biology to classify living things cladistically, rather than with the modernized Linnean taxonomy that is currently widely used.

I had something on my mind during my visit, inspired by comments that people left (but were never published) on my post about the Atlas of Creation - you know, that book that advocates creationism that (presumably mistakenly) used photographs of fishing lures to represent actual insects. A number of creationists, apparently in an attempt to gloss over that widely respected creationist authorities don’t know the difference between insects and fishing lures, tried to post strident, tiresome rants about how there has never been a single transitional fossil found - not one, not even one! Of course this is wrong - tons of transitional fossils have been found, otherwise we wouldn’t have cladograms. But I was wondering about this claim during my visit, and I resolved to keep my eyes open for examples of transitional fossils on exhibit for everyone to see - not buried in some obscure museum archives, but out in the areas of a museum open to the public.

And I was not disappointed:

• Ten transitional horse fossils.
• Six transitional fossils of genus Homo.
• Thirty-four transitional fossils of fishes from primitive ray-finned fishes, to teleosts.
• Over a dozen transitional fossils from fishes to amphibians.

etc. All right out there for everyone to see. And I remember that a bit over a week ago at the Orlando Science Center I noticed two transitional fossils of birds on exhibit.

How could anyone miss all these?

The answer of course is that the creationists lie. It is as simple as that - the people who say this are either lying, or have been lied to by people that they trust and are willing to repeat. Under the traditional definition, transitional fossils are fossils that have some characteristics of older organisms, but have some new features as well. There is no mistaking a transitional fossil. You can’t look at a fossilized toothed bird skull and fail to notice that some characteristics look like dinosaurs (the teeth, for example), and other characteristics look like modern birds (the beak, for example). This kind of thing is incredibly obvious and a mistake in this arena simply cannot be made in good faith.¹

Of course, we recognize today that every single fossil (and every living organism) is by definition transitional - but even under the traditional definition, finding transitional fossils is apparently pretty easy - the hard work is done, and I found over fifty of them in my first hour in a natural history museum that was new to me.

So, people - don’t let them get away with this kind of thing. When you hear a creationist point out that there are no transitional fossils anywhere, please let them know that the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has over 50 on exhibit that they can find in less than half an hour. If necessary, let them know that they can get to the Smithsonian on the Blue or Orange lines of the DC Metro and see for themselves.

Remember, be nice. You won’t convince them. But you might convince the people around you who are listening in on the conversation.

1. I grant that some of the more obscure characteristics of fossils may be legitimately missed by people who aren’t specialists and argued over by those who are. What I’m saying here is that any ordinary person in possession of a basic sense of honesty will not fail to notice such obvious characteristics as the presence or absence of teeth. [↩]