Illogical Geology, the Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory

by George McCready Price

Now, if no one can deny this sudden change of climate over half the world or so at least, is it not extremely unscientific to deny that this same cause, whatever it may have been, was quite competent to bring about a good many other changes, and the extinction of numerous other species which we are so often reminded must imply the lapse of untold ages of time? The economizing of energy, or the famous law of parsimony as stated by Leibnitz, is quite appropriate in this case, and may be referred to again in the sequel. The principle upon which I must here insist is that the mere fact of certain species being extinct, and others being now alive, gives no clue whatever to the relative age of these remains, until we first ascertain why, how and when this extinction was brought about. And yet, though every one admits the fact of tremendous changes of climate, etc., having intervened between that ancient world and our own (the true extent and character of which, as I have said, ought to be the chief point of all geological investigation), no allowance seems ever to be made for this as a powerful cause of extermination of all forms of life. But in the utter absence of any such explanation as to how and when, and in the very teeth of these facts assuming a dead-level uniformitarianism, the presence of ten, fifty or a hundred per cent. of extinct forms in a set of beds is manifestly of no scientific value in determining age. It would be many degrees more reasonable and accurate to arrange all the Greek and Latin books of the world in chronological order according to the percentage of their words which have survived into the English language. Indeed, it would be much like a coroner, at the inquest following a railway disaster, attempting to arrange the exact order in which the various victims had perished by the proportionate number of surviving relatives which each had left behind him.

And the completely worthless character of such "evidence" of age becomes, if possible, more apparent when we consider that very many of these so-called "extinct" forms are not really distinct species from their living representatives of to-day. "It is notorious," says Darwin, "on what excessively slight differences many palaeontologists have founded their species." And even to-day, in spite of all that we have learned about variation, little or no allowance seems ever to be made for the effects of a certainly greatly changed environment. If the fossil forms among the mollusks and other shell fish for instance, are not precisely like the modern ones in every respect, they are always classed as separate species, the older forms thus being "extinct," in utter disregard of the striking anatomical differences between the huge Pleistocene mammals and their dwarfish descendants of to-day, which for a hundred years or so were declared positively to be distinct from one another, but are now acknowledged to be identical.

Of course no one denies that there are numerous extinct forms among the invertebrates, just as we know there are among the huge vertebrates of the Mesozoic and Tertiaries, none of which we moderns have ever seen alive. Other forms do not appear familiar to our modern eyes, because larger or of somewhat different form; but to say that they are really distinct species from their modern representatives, or to say that no human being ever saw them alive, are statements utterly incapable of proof. Up to about the year 1869 it was stoutly maintained that man had never seen any of these fossil forms in life. But no one now maintains this view, for human remains have now been found along with undisturbed fossils of the Pleistocene, or even middle Tertiaries, while the paintings on the cave walls of Southern France seem conclusive that they were copied from life when the mammoth and reindeer lived side by side with man in that latitude. Hence the only question now is, and it is the supreme question of all modern geology, WITH HOW MUCH OF THAT ANCIENT FOSSIL WORLD WERE THESE EQUALLY FOSSIL MEN ACQUAINTED? If Man lived in "Pliocene" or perhaps "Miocene times," when a luxuriant vegetation was spread out over all the Arctic regions, what possible evidence is there to show that his companions, the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, mammoth, etc., were not also living then and browsing off just such plants, when the Arctic frosts caught them in the grip of death and put their "mummies" in cold storage for our astonishment and scientific information? Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other; why should not the plants and animals, contemporary with the same creature (man), be just as truly contemporary with one another? If man was contemporary with the Miocene plants, and the Pleistocene mammals were contemporary with man, what is there to forbid the idea that the Pleistocene mammals and the middle Tertiary flora were contemporary with each other?

For nearly half a century geologists have never had the courage to face this problem fairly and squarely, with all preconceived prejudices about uniformity cast aside. Is it possible that all the plants and animals of the Tertiaries and the Pleistocene may have really lived together in the same world after all? But the trouble would then be that, with this much conceded, the whole "phylogenic series" would tumble with it, and become only the taxonomic or classification series of that ancient world with which these fossil men were acquainted. To appropriate the words of one who has done much to clear the ground for a common-sense study of geology, I know of nothing against such an idea save "the almost pathetic devotion of a large school of thinkers to the religion founded by Hutton, whose high priest was Lyell, and which in essence is based on a priori arguments like those which dominated Mediaeval scholasticism and made it so barren."[36]

Baron Cuvier's work in the line of comparative osteology has never been surpassed, perhaps never equalled since, and he is said to have been "the greatest naturalist and comparative anatomist of that, or perhaps of any time." (LeConte, "Evol. and Rel. Thought," pp. 33, 34); and yet he maintained till the last that all those which we now call the Pleistocene mammals were distinct species from the modern ones; and it is only of recent years and with extreme reluctance that many of them have been admitted to be identical with the ones now living. All of which tends to show how unreliable are those assertions commonly found in the text-books about all the species of the so-called "older" rocks being extinct. It is only with hesitation that such specific distinctions are surrendered even to-day, though during the last few decades a steady progress has been made in bringing the palaeontology of the higher vertebrates into line with our increased knowledge of zoology, thus breaking down many of the specific distinctions which have long been maintained between the fossil and the living forms. Even the mammoth has been found to have so many characters identical with the modern elephant of India, and such a complete gradation exists between the two types, that Flower and Lydekker acknowledge the transition from one to the other is "almost imperceptible," and express a doubt whether they "can be specifically distinguished" from one another.[37]

But the extreme reluctance with which anything like a confession of this fact leaks out in our modern literature can be readily understood when we try the hopeless task of splicing the environment of the modern form with that of the ancient on any basis of uniformity.

Zittel gives us a peep behind the scenes which helps us to appreciate the value of a percentage of extinct species as a test of the age of a rock deposit.

He pictures the uncritical work of the earlier writers on fossil botany, until August Schink (1868-91) made a great reform in this science; and Zittel declares that "now the author of a paper on any department" of fossil botany "is expected to have a sound knowledge" of the systematic botany of recent forms. But he adds: "It cannot be said that palaeozoology (the science of fossil animals) has yet arrived at this desirable standpoint."

But he justifies this charge of want of confidence by saying:

"Comparatively few individuals have such a thorough grasp of zoological and geological knowledge as to enable them to treat palaeontological researches worthily, and there has accumulated a dead weight of stratigraphical-palaeontological literature wherein the fossil remains of animals are named and pigeon-holed solely as an additional ticket of the age of a rock-deposit, with a willful disregard of the much more difficult problem of their relationships in the long chain of existence.