A Phys.org science article begins with what could be read as a religious story that occurred a long, long time ago.

Life on Earth started in the oceans. Beginning around 390 million years ago, however, the ancestors of modern land animals rose out of the waters, trading their fins for limbs and gills for lungs. This was a crucial transition in the evolution of all creatures—including humans—that walk the planet today.¹

The unresolved paleontological problem in evolutionary theory is how chance, time, and random mutations on fish fins resulted in efficient pelvic and pectoral structures (legs) for land. The fossil record does not document such a peculiar transition.

Evolutionists insist that our pelvic girdle (composed of the pubis, ilium, and ischium) evolved from a fish-like ancestor “millions of years ago.” But that’s just one of the many unscientific “just so” stories of evolutionism. How did a lobe-finned fish—with no pelvis whatsoever— manage to evolve into an amphibian with a complete pelvic girdle? The more evolutionists investigate this strange scenario, the more puzzling it seems and the less likely it occurred.²

In regard to the pectoral structures, vertebrate paleontologist Michael Benton stated what he believes must have happened so long ago:

In evolving the ability to walk, the tetrapod limb had to alter considerably both in structure and in orientation, when compared with the tristichopterid fin. New bones appeared, and the elbow and wrist joints became more clearly defined. The humerus lengthened...The elbow joint became more of a right angle.³ (emphasis added)

Non-creationist Michael Denton stated, “the tetrapod limb did not arise through a long series of transitional forms subject to cumulative selection. Nearly thirty years on, the situation is exactly the same.”⁴

Years later, evolutionists still do not have a picture of this critical evolutionary transition. Dr. Michael Ishida of Cambridge’s department of engineering said, “Since fossil evidence is limited, we have an incomplete picture of how ancient life made the transition to land.”¹

What to do? Evolutionists must show how this evolutionary transition occurred, so they have turned to...robotics, “Writing in the journal Science Robotics, [a] research team, led by the University of Cambridge, outline how ‘paleo-inspired robotics’ could provide a valuable experimental approach to studying how the pectoral and pelvic fins of ancient fish evolved to support weight on land.”¹

So, where paleontology fails, paleo-robots avail. Evolutionists think robots could possibly fill gaps in their “research, particularly when studying major shifts in how vertebrates moved.”¹

This may remind one of what evolutionists unashamedly call “ghost lineages” to fill in those pesky gaps in the fossil record. Since they know evolution occurred in the past (but there is no fossil record of these changes) they simply infer or presuppose the intermediate forms, ergo “ghost lineages.”

Commenting on the issue of ghost lineages, creation writer David Coppedge said, “In other words, [evolutionists] see phantoms in their evolutionary mind’s eye. They see mythical entities that must have existed, simply because their belief system requires them. And you thought science required evidence.”⁵

This has been taken a step further (so to speak) with the application of biorobotics. Evolutionists assume, contrary to the physical (fossil) evidence, that fish learned to walk,⁶ so they’re seeing if “robotic platforms can fill gaps in existing research using the exemplars of notable transitions in vertebrate locomotion.”⁷

However, the fossil record continues to show stasis and extinction, not gradual or punctuated change.⁸ Appealing to paleo-inspired robots will not change the facts.

References

1. University of Cambridge. ‘Paleo-Robots’ Provide an Experimental Approach for Understanding How Fish Started to Walk on Land. Phys.org. Posted on phys.org October 23, 2024.
2. Sherwin, F. 2013. Paleontology’s Pelvic Puzzle. Acts & Facts. 42 (5): 16.
3. Benton, M. 2015. Vertebrate Paleontology. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 86.
4. Denton, M. 2016. Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 159.
5. Sherwin, F. 2010. The Strange Metaphysical World of Evolution. Acts & Facts. 39 (12): 16.
6. Sherwin, F. 2017. Did Fish Learn to Walk? Acts & Facts. 46 (8): 20.
7. Ishida, M. et al. 2024. Paleoinspired Robotics as an Experimental Approach to the History of Life. Science Robotics. 9 (95).
8. Morris, J. and F. Sherwin. 2010. The Fossil Record. Dallas, TX: The Institute for Creation Research, 129–178.

* Dr. Sherwin is a news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.