"Evolutionists have no evidence for their claims (in this case, it includes heliocentrism, plate tectonics, the Big Bang, deep time, abiogenesis and common descent)."
You are about to see a compilation of evidence for things which are denied by a few creationists (heliocentrism, plate tectonics), many of them (Big Bang, Deep Time) and pretty much all of them (abiogenesis, common descent).
Let's start with the evidence for things which is denied by only a tiny, yet noticeable minority of creationists:
"There is no evidence that Earth is spinning around the Sun."
1. Parallaxes:
Near stars have a slightly different position relative to the observer depending on when you look at them. A star may have a slightly different position than now when you look at it in 6 months at the same time. When you look at in in 12 months, it will come back to the "original" position.
This is best explained by the Earth being in motion and us looking from a different angle at the stars depending on where Earth is right now.
2. Gravity:
From our knowledge on nuclear physics, it follows that Earth could not be larger than the Sun because there is a certain threshold size when celestial bodies become "fireballs" which cannot cool down and solidify anymore. If the Sun is larger than the Earth, it follows from gravity (one of the most well-tested theories we have) that the common center of mass Earth and the Sun share must be closer to the Sun than to Earth.
3. Doppler effect:
As most know, light has certain wave properties. Among them, it has a spectrum of wavelengths. Also, it is well-known that waves can be influenced by relativistic motion. If a train moves closer to you, the sound waves in front of it are compressed, if it moves away from you, the sound waves get stretched. This is called the Doppler effect. When light gets stretched, it moves closer to the red spectrum (redshifting). When it gets compressed, it moves closer to the blue spectrum (blueshifting). There are months where the light of the closest stars gets slightly blueshifted and other months when it gets slightly redshifted.[1] This is best explained by Earth sometimes moving closer and sometimes further away from them. If Earth did not move, this would imply every star in the galaxy was moving in periodic variation that matched Earth's year.
4. Coriolis effect:
In 1851, the French physicist Léon Foucault constructed a pendulum with a 67-m-long wire and a 28-kg weight (suspended from the dome of the Panthéon in Paris). The plane of the pendulum's swing was not constant, but rotated clockwise, making a full circle turn after about 32 hours (you'd need to set up the pendulum on one of the poles to get a 24-long turn). This can only be explained by the rotation of Earth and the associated Coriolis force (this is a force which acts upon bodies moving relative to a rotating reference frame).
The Coriolis effect also affects ocean currents and wind patterns.
It's no strong force though. If you jump, you will land where you began to jump. It is nevertheless noticeable enough to be taken into account by meteorologists when predicting the weather.
5. The space projects:
The probes sent into space would not follow the desired trajectories if Sun were not the center of the solar system. Moreover, they confirm our estimates of the Sun's distance to Earth, indicating that it is pretty huge.
[1] Herrick, Samuel, Jr., 1935. Tables for the reduction of radial velocities to the Sun. Lick Observatory Bulletin 470: 85-90.
"There is no evidence for plate tectonics."
1. Object fitting like puzzle pieces:
There are geographical objects (like mountain ranges or sometimes entire coastlines) which suddenly end on a continent, but continue on another one and fit like puzzle pieces to each other. The most well-known example are the South American and African coast lines.
2. The "borders" of the plates:
Mountains are not distributed randomly, but form ranges which is best explained by them being on the borders between two plates and forming as a result of them moving closer to each other. A similar phenomenon is observed in the distribution of earthquake locations which is best explained by them occurring at the border of two plates where one is subducted by the other and causes the earthquakes. Sea trenches are also evidence of separate plates.
3. Paleobiogeography:
The fossil distribution is consistent with plate tectonics. A prediction of plate tectonics is that South America, Africa, India, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica once formed a super-continent called Gondwana. Fossils found on all these continents (most notably the fern Glossopteris) support the notion that they were once connected.
4. Hot spots:
There are many inactive volcanos which is explained by plate tectonics via hotspots (spots where the magma is close to Earth's surface) over which the volcanos formed, but then moved away together with their plate and got inactive because they were not over a hotspot anymore. Also, most volcanic islands occur in chains (e.g. the Hawaii archival), showing that they all formed from the same hotspot and then moved away, some moving away before others.
5. Sea-floor spreading:
The perhaps strongest piece of evidence.
Plates move due to a process called sea-floor spreading. There are locations like the mid-Atlantic ridge where magma comes to the surface and solidifies. New "land" gets created and moves the already existing land away. The older parts of the plate then usually get subducted (they move below another plate where they become magma again). Hence, under plate tectonics, we should expect the age of the rocks to increase the further away you move from the mid-Atlantic ridge.
Moreover, there is a process called geomagnetic reversal. The magnetic North pole we have is not fixed, but wanders in a cyclical fashion. As ingenious rocks (=products of magma) solidify, they record its position like compass needles and hence the current status of the Earth's magnetic field.
As you look at the rocks close to the mid-Atlantic ridge, they show the present geomagnetic fields, but the field shown by them changes gradually as you move closer to South America. The same effect is mirrored when you go from the mid-Atlantic ridge and move closer to Africa. This shows that the rocks closest to the ridge are the youngest and the ones furthest away from it are the oldest. The ones on the coast lines of Africa and South America are from the time when they were still connected. It should go without saying that radiometric dating also confirms this decrease of age as you move away from the mid-Atlantic ridge. This quite clearly shows that the continents East and West of the mid-Atlantic ridge were once connected and moved apart in a gradual manner.
Now we move to the stuff denied by many, but not all:
"There is no evidence for the Big Bang."
1. Redshift:
As explained above, redshift is basically stretched light.
There is a noticeable redshift among galaxies and it is proportional to their distance as expressed in Hubble's law (which basically says redshift/distance = Hubble's constant). The distance of galaxies can be calculated with their brightness (the fainter the further away) and the brightness gets calculated via little "candles" (this can be supernovae or cepheid variables). The relationship between brightness and distance gets determined via the already mentioned parallaxes.
Anyway, as for the distance and the redshift, relativistic motion cannot explain this because the redshift would not be uniformly related to distance then from any location. There have been various explanations like light tiring which have been discarded. The best explanation is that the space itself is expanding and stretches all within it with its inertia. This manifests itself by stretching light and moving the galaxies apart from each other (nothing happens to the stuff inside galaxies, due to the fact that gravitational interactions are keeping everything together).
If all is expanding, it makes sense that all was compressed once.
Moreover, Hubble's law can be used to calculate the distance of galaxies from their redshift and hence their position. The results show that the universe is at large scales homogenous, meaning it is the same no matter from where you look.[1] This is a requirement of the Big Bang theory and a mortal blow to alternative cosmologies with Earth at the center of the universe (*cough* Humphreys *cough*).
2. Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB):
In the 40's, cosmologists predicted that we should find some of the echo or energy left over by the Big Bang in the form of background radiation. They predicted that it should have a microwave spectrum (hence the name) and be isotropic (i.e. the same from all direction). It got detected in 1965.
3. Galactic morphology:
Light takes time to reach us. We don't see the Sun as it is now, we see it as it was about 8 minutes ago when it started sending us its light. Similarly, the further we look, the further we get into the past. We essentially have snapshots of the past.
The most distant galaxies (i.e. those with the highest redshift) are the smallest and least regular, while the closer ones are more complex, having an arm or barrel-shape, showing evidence of galactic evolution.[2]
4. Element distribution:
Simulations and calculations have shown that the Big Bang predicts that there was only hydrogen in helium with some residues of beryllium and lithium after the initial bang. Hydrogen should be the most common, outnumbering helium 12 to 1 (as measured by atom number) or 3 to 1 (as measured by mass). After the Big Bang, the hot gas cooled and clumped together, forming gravitational wells which should later become stars.
Interestingly, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe (a lot of it in the form of interstellar gas, floating around in the voids of space), followed by helium. Also, there is about ten times as much hydrogen in our solar system than helium as measured by the number of atoms (I'll explain the deviation from the 12/1 ratio soon).[3]
These numbers are based on spectroscopical investigations. Each element has its own signature wavelength. In spectroscopy, we look at the wavelengths of the Sun's light and use them to investigate its chemical composition.
Even more cool, we can measure what's going on inside a star that way and we can see that they get fueled by fusing four hydrogen nuclei into helium (explaining the deviation from the original ratio). While doing so, they produce the heavier elements until iron. As they die, supernovae trigger neutron capture reactions which can produce the heavier elements up to uranium. The interesting part is that these heavier elements are simply not found in the objects furthest away from us. They are only found in the "younger" galaxies, showing that they arose over time. In other words, the deeper you look back, the less common heavier elements become.
5. Dark matter:
Contrary to what creationists and alternative cosmologists claim, we have plenty of evidence for dark matter, it is not some ad hoc to save the Big Bang (though scientists are debating about its nature, whether it is composed of WHIMPs or MACHOs).
Along the lines of evidence are there are some anomalies in galactic motion and gravitational lensing which can be quite parsimoniously explained if there is some invisible extra-mass. Moreover, measurements of the fluctuations in the CMB can produce a "map" of the universe which shows a lot of clumping which is evidence of dark matter.
[1]
www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html#homogeneity[2]
www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html#galaxies[3] Anders, E. and Ebihara, M. (1982). Solar-System Abundances of the Elements
"There is no evidence for the claimed ages of the universe and the Earth."
1. Expansion:
The CMB shows us how fast the universe has been expanding. Using this knowledge, we can estimate the beginning of said expansion at 13.8 Ga.
2. Distant starlight:
As mentioned before, light takes some time to travel. The furthest galaxy away (GN-z11) is about 13.39 billion light years away, meaning its light took 13.39 billion years to reach us. This puts a lower limit on the age of the universe and is nicely consistent with the evidence from expansion.
3. Helioseismology:
The composition of the Sun changes as it ages. Using models of how its pressure waves change over time, an Italian team estimated its age at 4.57 ± 0.11 billion years.[1]
4. Radiometric dating:
Elements have different isotopes. Some of them are unstable and become stable by changing their nuclids and becoming stable isotopes in a process known as radioactive decay. While this process happens unpredictably in a single atom, the rate at which a given sample decays is constant. Temperature, pressure, chemical environment or electromagnetic fields don't influence the rate.[2] Extrapolating the decay back until the initial conditions (which can be inferred with methods like isochron dating which are a bit too complex to describe here) shows how much radioactive decay must have occurred to reach the composition the rock has now, showing when it formed. As for the age of the solar system/Earth, many measurements from the oldest meteorites (chondrites) consistently show an age of about 4.5 billion years, with five different methods being used![3] If five different clocks show the same time, you know the time.
Creationists often criticize radiometric dating by showing a case where it didn't work, however, it gives consistent results 95% of the time.[3] The remaining 5% can be the result of errors like unforeseen contamination and corrected for. Ignoring outliers is a common practice in any dataset from measurements.
5. Year rings:
There are several structures (corals, trees, ice layers) with annual layers which I will collectively refer to as year rings. The number of these rings shows their age and in many of these objects it is above 6k. While they don't directly prove that the Earth is billions of years old, they can at least be used to calibrate methods like radiometric dating.
[1] A. Bonanno, H. Schlatt, and L. Patern. The age of the Sun and the relativistic corrections in the EOS.
[2] Emery, G T (1972). Perturbation of Nuclear Decay Rates.
[3] Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1991. The Age of the Earth
Now, let's get to what they all deny:
"There is no evidence for abiogenesis."
It is true that our evidence for abiogenesis is weak, but some still deserves mention.
1. Experiments:
Several experiments (most notably the Miller-Urey experiment, though it was by no means the only one of its kind) have shown that nucleotides necessary for nucleic acids and amino acids necessary for proteins could have formed under conditions found on the prebiotic Earth or in comets.
2. Chemistry:
Life uses no elements which are not found in the abiotic world. If it did, it would falsify any hypothesis of abiogenesis.
3. RNA:
The specific structure of ribosomes is the same as that of mRNA which is seen as the "smoking gun" piece of evidence for the RNA world hypothesis which says that life originated from a self-replicating RNA biomolecule. As this RNA developed, parts of it later developed into mRNA and tRNA (ribosomes), as DNA replaced its function of "driving" the replication.
And finally:
"There is no evidence for evolution."
1. Direct observation:
It should be noted that creationists are no homogenous group. Some accept speciation, others don't. Some accept that mutations can be beneficial, others don't. Some believe evolution is driven by natural selection, others don't.
Let's address evidence for different aspects:
1.1 Evidence of natural selection in action:
For this, we have both evidence from experiments and from observation of nature. The "experimental" evidence of natural selection comes from artificial selection. It tells us a lot about how evolution works. It tells us that it is very gradual, it shows how while mutations may be random, the direction of evolution can be very much shaped by selection (please remember this before saying that evolution is random chance and nothing else) and it shows that gradual change can produce a lot of variation (just compare a Chihuahua to a Great Dane).
Some examples of "proper" natural selection (i.e. where selection occurs which is not desired by humans) would be antibiotic resistances where bacteria evolve better enzymes to destroy the antibiotics we try to use on them. Another example are the cane toads introduced to Australia who reproduced madly and are now conquering the continent. Some of them evolved longer legs and got favored by natural selection because they get along faster than those who don't. Plus, some snakes in Australia have evolved over only 20 generations longer bodies and shorter heads. They got favored by natural selection because both adaptations made them able to eat cane toads, giving them a new food source (the smaller body only allows them to eat small and non-toxic toads, the longer body helps to deal better with their poison).
1.2 Speciation:
Again, observed experimentally and in nature. A species is (among animals) defined as those who can produce fertile offspring. Dobzhansky and others were able to create new fruit fly mutants in the lab which could not interbreed with the others anymore.
Also, outside the lab we observed a population of Culex pipiens which lived in the London subway and were not able to interbreed with other Culex pipiens populations after some time, making them different species.
1.3 Change in chromosome numbers (why not?):
One of the most familiar examples of chromosome numbers changing is polyploidization where plants double, triple or even quadruple their chromosome numbers.
Even more impressively, we also observed an example of chromosome fusion in an isolated population of mice[1] (keep in mind that having one chromosome pair less is the main genetic difference between humans and other great apes!).
1.4 Change in "cellularity":
Unicellular organisms have been observed to "swallow" other unicellular organisms and to integrate them into themselves (dinoflagellates do this) and some organisms switch back-and-forth between unicellularity and multicellularity (choanoflagellates like to do this).
1.5 Evolution of new structures or new "information":
Again, known from the lab and nature.
The most famous example of something "completely new" evolving would be the Lenski experiment where a certain tribe of E. coli bacteria evolved the ability to eat citrate. That's a big deal because its inability to ingest citrate is one of the main traits that distinguishes E. coli from its cousin Salmonella. This trait only showed itself in one of the 12 tribes Lenski studied and it apparently depended on another mutation that did not arise prior to the 20,000 of the 50,000 generations studied. Only those bacteria which were frozen after generation 20,000 were able to become citrate mutants.
As for an example in the natural, a population of Italian wall lizards got introduced to an island in Croatia which lacks predators and has plenty of vegetation. After a couple of generations, they became larger with bigger heads and more herbivorous adaptations. The most striking one is a pocket in their guts called cecal valve which is a whole new anatomical feature.
2. Comparative anatomy:
2.1 Anatomical homologies:
Anatomical homologies are structures with the same position relative to the body, the same specific structure and the same embryonic development.
One familiar example is the fact that all vertebrates have homologous limb structures of humerus, ulna, radius and five digits (and when they don't it can be explained though fusion which takes place in the embryonic development). A reasonable non-evolutionary prediction would be that form follows function, but it doesn't. A horse, a bat, a human and a whale all have the same basic structure in their limbs.
Also, some creatures share more homologies with certain creatures than with others, forming distinct groups. Likewise, these groups can be grouped in super-groups, giving us a tree-like group within group within group classification scheme. The really cool and unique thing is that this pattern is not violated. All canids are carnivorans, all carnivorans are mammals, all mammals are vertebrates, all vertebrates are animals, all animals are eukaryotes and all animals are life forms. There are no homologies a whale shares with a fish which it doesn't share with for example a human. It shares some traits with them that are not homologous though, like fins. The back fin of whales has a different position relative to the skeletal than in fish. In fish, it moves laterally, in whales, it goes up and down. That's because whales have the vertebral column of land animals where the "up and down" movement is the most energy efficient (just observe some cheetahs running). In the water, it is however suboptimal. Getting back to the groups within groups thing, it is far from obvious. In crystals or minerals, you have some which have the same the same crystal faces (tracht), but a different relative sizes (habit) and likewise you have same with the same habit, but a different tracht. People tried to classify minerals hierarchically the same way life forms got classified, but they failed to classify them in any objective manner.
The best explanation is if this "tree of life" is a family tree. Common design does not explain why we have no such tree in minerals.
2.2 Vestiges:
A vestige is a structure which is homologous with structures who have a function it doesn't have. Examples are goosebumps (can't keep us warm like in animals with more fur) and cave salamanders with rudimentary eyes. Sometimes, vestiges have a function (like the wings of an ostrich), but the same such structures normally have (flying). As with other homologies, they do not violate the standard phylogenetic tree.
2.3 Atavisms:
Sometimes, organisms carry dormant genes (pseudogenes, which I will investigate later) in them which do not get expressed, but can be switched on by mutations. They are interpreted as traits which got lost at some time in the evolutionary history of the organism and hence should correspond to the standard phylogenetic tree. We sometimes find humans with tails, whales with legs, horses with more than one clearly visible toe or birds with teeth. All of that is consistent with their evolutionary history implied by the standard tree. We never find worms with bones, frogs with mammary glands, fish with fur or bugs with cellulose.
2.4 Embryology:
Sometimes, homologies only become obvious once you look at how they develop in an embryo. For example embryology shows that the airsick of fish are homologous with our lungs or that our ear bones are homologous with reptile jawbones. Likewise we have snake & whale embryos with legs, human embryos with tails and marsupial embryos with eggshells.[2]
3. Molecular biology:
3.1 Deep homologies:
As with real homologies, just on a molecular level. They can be identified by having the same location in the genome and an almost identical base pair sequence. An example is the cluster of genes responsible for the building of blood vessels in vertebrates which is homologous to the one a yeast uses for fixing cell walls.[3]
Molecular homologies are not just found in DNA. The biochemical uniformity of life also deserves mention. For example, all life on Earth only uses left handed amino acids, even though there is no functional difference between left and right handed amino acids. A creationist might argue that God gave all life left handed amino acids, so that we can eat everything. However, the creator could have equally given us enzymes which are able to deal with left and right handed amino acids equally well (won't that be a desirable ability?).
Molecular homologies cross-confirm the tree constructed based on anatomy. This is far from obvious, considering how most mutations are neutral, hence you can change the DNA without changing the traits. For example there are usually about four different triplets per amino acid (for example the triplets GCC, GCG, GCA and GCT all code for the amino acid arginine), meaning that it would be theoretically possible for organisms to share no genes, but the same traits. Not to mention that many parts of the DNA do not code at all (see below).
3.2 Pseudogenes:
These are basically vestiges on a molecular level. Two homologous genes where one simply doesn't code. Most likely switched off at some point in our evolutionary history. The most well-known example is the gene used to code for Vitamin C in mammals which humans have as well, but in an inactive form. Jerry Coyne put it that way:
“Why would a creator put a pathway for making vitamin C in all these species, and then inactivate it?”
Shared errors are a powerful argument for common descent. It is very well possible that two students sitting next to each other got the same stuff right, but if they share errors noone else has made, the teacher will most likely conclude that they copied from each other.
Now, there are three pseudogenes humans share with chimps and noone else, three with gorillas, chimps and noone else and six with chimps, gorillas, orang utans and noone else.[4] As usual, the standard tree gets confirmed. There are no pseudogenes which we share with dogs, but not with chimps.
3.3 ERVs:
Viruses inject their DNA in the one of a host and then force it to make copies of themselves. Sometimes, they leave their fingerprints in the DNA which are called endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). These ERVs get passed on. Since it is statistically fantastically improbable for two identical retroviruses to leave their fingerprints at the same location in different genomes, they are used to establish relationships.
Humans share most ERVs with chimps, second most with gorillas and third most with orang utans.
Again, independent confirmation of the same hierarchies as usual.
3.4 Chromosome fusion:
As noted above, the main thing distinguishing humans from other great apes is having one pair of chromosomes less (24 vs 23). This has long puzzled geneticists and they tried to explain that via some chromosome fusion in the past. It has later been discovered that the second human chromosome looks like two ape chromosomes and even has telomeres in its middle (things that usually only occur at the edges of chromosomes!).
4. Biogeography:
4.1 Continental biogeography:
A reasonable non-evolutionary prediction would be that the same habitats have the same species (this is in fact what we should expect if they had all dispersed from Mount Ararat after the Flood, the distribution of animals should be more or less the same everywhere, with perhaps biodiversity decreasing the further away you move from Mount Ararat; for plants, we also have no reason why their distribution should follow any other pattern than same habitat, same species). However, under evolution, the biogeography of a group should also depend on where their most recent common ancestor lived. If it for example lived on a continent which later got separated from the others via continental drift, its descendants should only live on the now-separated continent, since they won't have been able to get anywhere else. Indigenous cacti only occur in the deserts of the Americas because that's where their common ancestor lived. Not in Australia, where they would flourish (in fact, we introduced cacti there, they did well). Australia has eucalyptus trees which survive in a variety of habitats, yet are not found outside of Australia.
Alligators, some related species of giant salamander, and magnolias only occur in Eastern North America and East Asia (two region which used to be closely connected in the past by the Bering bridge).
4.2 Insular biogeography:
The animals in island chains generally most closely resemble those on neighboring islands. In Darwin's words:
"[O]ne might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends."
Examples of this include the Darwin finches on the galapagos islands or the Hawaiian honeycreepers on Hawaii. Please keep in mind that both of them form subfamilies, so if this counts as microevolution, then humans and chimps evolving from a common ancestor (same subfamily, after all!) should also count as microevolution!
Moreover, remote volcanic islands only have animals that could have made it there, no large mammals or amphibians!
4.3 Ring species:
There are certain species whose populations form a ring. An example are the greenish warblers around the Himalaya. Neighboring subspecies can interbreed with each other, however, the more separate they are, the more different they are. In fact, there is even a point where two of them cannot interbreed! Are these two or one species? This tells us a lot about how gradually speciation works. The neighboring populations which cannot interbreed are technically different species, but their "transitional forms" are still around. Another example of such ring species are the salamanders in California.
5. Paleontology:
5.1 Transitional forms:
Molecular evidence suggests that birds are most closely related to crocodiles.[5] Yet, they are morphologically extremely different from their reptilian cousins. Shouldn't there be some animals bridging the gap between birds and their more reptilian cousins? There are! Most reptile like left, most birdlike right:
Scleromochlus, Lagerpteron, Marasuchus, Eoraptor, Herrerasaurus, Ceratosaurus, Allosaurus, Compsognathus, Sinosauropteryx, Protarchaeopteryx, Caudipteryx, Velociraptor, Sinovenator, Beipiaosaurus, Sinornithosaurus, Microraptor, Archaeopteryx, Rahonavis, Confuciusornis, Sinornis, Patagopteryx, Hesperornis, Apsaravis, Ichthyornis, Columba
Note: This is not an ancestral series in the sense that the animal on the right descends from the one on the left. I'm not saying that birds descended from Velociraptor, just that they shared a common ancestor which looked more like a Velociraptor than a bird (but probably like neither). It is merely meant to demonstrate that there are no morphological "gaps" between birds and other reptiles with the exception of a gap between Marasuchus and Eoraptor, but the sequence is nevertheless quite impressive. What is also impressive is that no fossil suggests that birds were more closely related to mammals than to reptiles, so the fossils tell the same story as the other evidence.
We also have a nice sequence between fish and amphibians. Most fishlike left, most tetrapod-like right:
Osteolepis, Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys, Elginerpeton, Ventastega, Tiktaalik, Acanthostega, Ichthyostega, Hynerpeton, Tulerpeton, Pederpes, Eryops, Crassigyrinus
There are tetrapod footprints which precede Tiktaalik by about 20 million years. That's because tetrapods do not descend from Tiktaalik, they only share a common ancestor with it which looked more like a Tiktaalik than a tetrapod. Given that vertebrate families have an average lifespan of 70 million years in the fossil record,[7] it is even possible that one from Tiktaalik's family was our ancestor. This is thus a too small anomaly to be taken seriously. The point with this sequence is to show how paleontology confirms phylogeny (though chronology also strongly confirms evolution, see below). Any fossil suggesting a closer relationship between tetrapods and starfish than tetrapods and proper "fish" would be highly problematic.
This was the path from water to land. How about the path back to the water? Let's look at whales. Most terrestrial left, most marine right:
Indohyos, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Remingtonocetus, Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus
Finally, apes-humans. Most ape-like left, most human-like right:
Nakalipithecus, Ouranopithecus, Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens sapiens.
While perhaps a fancy example, fossils of a mermaid could destroy pretty much all we thought to know about human evolution.
5.2 Fossil chronology:
While small anomalies exist due to incompleteness and the longevity of families, the overall picture in the fossil chronology supports evolution.
We start with bacteria, then unicellular eukaryote, then multicellular creatures, then fish, then amphibians, then reptiles, then mammals and then humans.
Any incontrovertible human skull from the Precambrian could destroy evolution.
5.3 Fossil biogeography:
It would be highly problematic if creatures like Australopithecus were found in Siberia or North America. But they are found in Africa, along with the apes most closely related to humans (this was a prediction by Darwin himself).
Also, marsupials currently occur in Australia and in the Americas (there are plenty of fossil marsupials from South America). Given that Australia and South America used to be connected via Antarctica, scientists predicted to find marsupials in Antarctica. As it happens, we have marsupial fossils from Antarctica.[8]
[1] Britton-Davidian, J., J. Catalan, et al. (2000) "Rapid chromosomal evolution in island mice." Nature 403: 158.
[2]
www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny[3] Kriston L. McGary,
et al., (2010) "Systematic discovery of nonobvious human disease models through orthologous phenotypes",
[4]
biologos.org/blogs/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess/An-Evangelical-Geneticists-Critique-of-Reasons-to-Believes-Testable-Creation-Model-Pt-2[5] Hedges, S. Blair (1994) "Molecular evidence for the origin of birds"
[6] Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki
et al. (2010) "Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland."
[7]
www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#chronology[8] Woodburne, MO, Zinsmeister, WJ (1982) "Fossil land mammal from antarctica."
It is recommended to take a look at my blog entry as well which is basically the same, but with some images (I needed to have this twice, in case I delete one version accidentally):
1. There are anatomical homologies which (when used as a basis for classification) yield nested hierarchies with groups of organisms falling into bigger groups which fall into bigger groups themselves etc. consistent with an evolutionary tree.
2. The same patterns can also be found on a molecular level.
3. The fossil record shows fossils that match into the tree (i.e. fossils linking birds to other theropods) and none that contradict it (like fossils linking birds to crocodiles) and the chronology is also consistent.
4. The biogeographical patterns are consistent with evolution as well, with organisms that share a recent common ancestor being geographically close to each other.
5. And finally, we can observe the evolution of new species and new anatomical features directly.