136 Evolution and the Fossil Record
that because it has birdlike feathers, it is just a bird. Then they contradict themselves by
misquoting Gould and Eldredge to the effect that Archaeopteryx is a mosaic, and thus is not a
bird! The entire quotation is as follows:
At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs,
gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the “official” position
of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Baupläne are almost
impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence
for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count).
(Gould and Eldredge 1977:147)Creationist quote miners, in their effort to mislead and confuse people, only quote the last
sentence, and then claim that Gould and Eldredge (1977) do not think Archaeopteryx is a good
transitional form. As the complete quotation shows, they are only arguing that Archaeopteryx
is a mosaic, not a smooth transition between body plans where every feature is intermediate.
Lest there be any question that they have lied about Gould doubting that Archaeopteryx is an
intermediate form, his article “The Telltale Wishbone” (in Gould 1980:267–277) should lay
that issue to rest!
The Cladistic Revolution
When more evidence is garnered, whether through the analysis of additional charac-
ters, through the discovery of new specimens, or by pointing out errors and problems
with the original data sets, new trees can be calculated. If these new trees better explain
the data (taking fewer evolutionary transformations), they supplant the previous trees.
You might not always like what comes out, but you have to accept it. Any real systematist
(or scientist in general) has to be ready to heave all that he or she has believed in,
consider it crap, and move on, in the face of new evidence. That is how we differ from
clerics.
—Mark Norell, Unearthing the DragonTaxonomy and systematics may not seem like glamorous disciplines, but neither are they bor-
ing, uncontroversial fields. Taxonomists are famous for getting into heated arguments with
each other about how to define species, how to classify organisms, and how to draw their
family trees. There are rules of taxonomy (International Codes of Zoological, Botanical, and
Bacterial Nomenclature), but there is also a lot of room for interpretation as well. To a large
extent, taxonomists learn their trade through sheer experience: studying enough specimens
of their organisms and their close relatives, watching how other taxonomists practice their
trade and solve tough problems, and doing their research in a way that the scientific commu-
nity will approve and see fit to publish. For a century or more, there were some general rules
about how to go about this, but nothing in the way of a truly rigorous method of deciding
how to classify organisms, or how to draw their family trees. Many biologists (especially in
the 1950s) regarded this state of affairs as deplorable and railed against the prevailing subjec-
tivity of the “art of taxonomy.” In their minds, there must be a better way to make systematics
more objective and quantifiable and less arbitrary to the whims of the systematist.