Geology Questions & Answers
1. Where did the idea of millions of years come from?
In the early days of geology, it was accepted that most of the geologic record had been created as a result of the Creation Week and Noah's Flood. However, this changed in the late 1700's when a Scottish farmer named James Hutton proposed that the belief that "the present is the key to the past" should be used to interpret geologic features. Since geologic processes, like erosion of rock and the deposition of sediments, occur very slowly today, it was assumed that they always operated this way. Thus, the time required for things like deep and wide canyons, or thick rock layers, to form was assumed to be very great; millions of years. This idea, called uniformitarianism, was further promoted by Charles Lyell in the 1800's, and eventually became the foundational assumption underlying all of secular geology. However, this belief either ignores or minimizes the effects of catastrophes like floods, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis, which do lots of geologic work. Many modern geologists accept a modified version of this idea, called "neo-catastrophism", which says that catastrophic events are responsible for much of the geologic record, but they were separated by vast spans of geologic time (millions of years). This philosophy denies the reality of the Global Flood recorded in Scripture.
2. Was Noah's Flood local?
To accommodate uniformitarianism, many theologians abandoned the traditional view of the Global Flood in favor of a Flood of local extent (i.e. the Mesopotamian Valley). However, this idea contradicts many of the clear statements about the Flood in Genesis 6-9. First, the reason for the Flood was, according to Genesis 6:13, “...the earth is filled with violence through them [all flesh]; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth." God's description of the Flood in verse 17 was, "And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die." Such universal language, with the use of the words "all" and "every", is common throughout these chapters, and make an irrefutable case for the global extent of the Genesis Flood. Also, the height ("the mountains were covered") and duration of the Flood (371 days total) slam the door on a limited interpretation. In addition to this, the purpose of the Ark was to, "to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth," which would have been unnecessary if the Flood was local. Lastly, if the Flood was local, God's promise to never send another Flood like it would have been broken an uncountable number of times. Scripture is clear; the Flood was worldwide. [Emphasis in Scripture passages added].
3. Could Noah's Flood really form the rock record?
No and yes. No, because a majority of the rock record (the Precambrian rocks) consists of crystalline or metamorphic "basement rocks" which were formed and uplifted during Creation Week. Yes, because the Flood was a great tectonic event, beginning with the cleaving open of the "fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11), which likely refer to mid-ocean ridges like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Scientists, creationist and secularist, agree that tectonic processes like those unleashed during the Flood were responsible for the formation of the rock record. The Bible repeatedly records that the waters "prevailed" and "greatly increased" on the face of the earth, which would have certainly caused erosion and deposition of sediments on a worldwide scale, forming a majority of the world's fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers. Meanwhile, the tectonic activity would have resulted in massive volcanism, with the eruption of huge quantities of ash, pumice, lava, and other volcanic materials. Tectonic forces would also uplift, stretch out, and compress earth's crust, forming mountains, basins, and metamorphic rocks, respectively. The recession of the Floodwaters would have literally planed the surface of the earth. Residual activity from the Flood and the resulting Ice Age would have formed the Tertiary and Quaternary rock formations.
4. Is the Geologic Column real?
Yes, absolutely. There is a definite progression in the rock layers of the earth, from the shallow marine invertebrates in lower layers, to swamp creatures in the middle-lower column, to the shore/lowland creatures in the middle-high column, to the highland creatures in the uppermost layers. This order can be observed in places like the Grand Staircase of Arizona and Utah, where nearly the entire column is preserved from the Cambrian sandstone walls of Grand Canyon to the Tertiary formations in the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. However, instead of being an evolutionary progression of simple to complex life-forms, this order reflects the burial order of various ecosystems during the year-long Global Flood and its aftermath.
5. Do fossils take millions of years to form?
Not at all. In fact, it is well-known by geologists that rapid burial is needed for fossilization. In today's environments, fossils do not generally form, because dead animals are quickly scavenged or left to decay. To prevent this, the creature's body must be quickly buried in sediment, and the hard parts must be quickly replaced by minerals. Rapid burial is especially needed for the countless examples of soft-bodied organisms and soft-tissues which have been turned into rock. The worldwide Flood of Noah's day provides the perfect conditions for fossil formation: rapid burial and mineral-rich water.
6. Don't rock layers need millions of years to form?
No. Rock layers were assumed to require millions of years to form because of uniformitarian beliefs, not by any actual scientific observation and testing. The formation of rock layers like what we see in the geologic record, which span entire continents and possess thicknesses of thousands of feet, has never been observed. However, we have observed smaller sedimentary rock layers form quickly today. For example, during the various eruptions of Mt. Saint Helens in the early 1980's, a succession of mudflows and pyroclastic flows produced an observable progression of layers in time spans of minutes and hours. Some of these layers even display alternating layers of fine and coarse material, called laminations. These same laminations, in places like the Green River Formation in the Northwestern U.S., are assumed to have required millions of summer/winter cycles to form. Hurricanes can also lay down sedimentary layers quickly, as well as underwater landslides. However, such events pale in comparison to the extent and intensity of the Genesis Flood, which could have easily laid down the thick and widespread sedimentary layers found on all of the world's continents.
7. Do we find human fossils in Flood layers?
At this time, human fossils have only been found in post-Flood sedimentary or volcanic rock layers. The reason for this is simple; 95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates, a figure which readily confirms the biblical Flood account. Most of the remaining 5% are plant fossils, leaving less than 1% for all vertebrate fossils. Even then, most of these are fish. It is important to remember that complete skeletons are incredibly rare, and that many of the most important fossil finds (including many of evolution's "missing links"; see question #12) are only fragmental. The odds of finding any vertebrate fossil are slim on a statistical level, much less the odds of finding human fossils. However, there are other reasons why we don't find them. Mammals, including humans, are generally fragile, and would be the most likely to decompose completely or be completely obliterated by the action of the Flood waters. Another factor against finding human fossils is the fact humans would have attempted to escape the Flood, whether by seeking higher ground or riding on boats/rafts. They were likely the last to die in the Flood. Even if human remains ever were discovered in Flood-layers, it is probable that the secular scientific establishment would try to prevent the public from hearing about such discoveries, or simply re-interpret the evidence to fit evolutionary theory.
8. What are the strongest evidences for the Flood in geology?
Geology is replete with evidences for Noah's Flood. My three personal favorites are; #1. Continent-wide megasequences, which are rock "packages" made up of coarse-to-fine layers, from conglomerate (rounded pebbles in a finer material matrix) to sandstone to shale to limestone. These megasequences are interpreted by secular geologists as evidence for rising and falling sea levels over expanses of geologic time. However, this same evidence can be interpreted as the result of the rising and falling global sea level over the course of the Genesis Flood. These megasequences can be traced across North America, and are clear evidence for a world-covering Global Flood. Evidence #2.: Rapidly buried fossils, which exhibit unmistakable signs of catastrophic death. For example, fossil fish have been found with other fish in their mouths or stomachs, indicating that these fish were catastrophically killed and buried in sediment instantly. Also, dinosaur fossils have been found in their death pose, with their neck thrown back and tail extended outward from the body. These dinosaurs were drowned! Evidence #3.: Sedimentary structures, like cross-beds, found in rock layers. Cross-beds are features in rocks like sandstone, where the angle of the layers are tilted, and "cross" over each other. Secular geologists interpret these as the result of long periods of deposition on the backs of desert sand dunes, however, it is known that these can form underwater as a result of deep, fast-moving water. The widespread nature and thickness of these layers requires that they were formed as a result of the catastrophic Flood.
9. Don't formations like the Grand Canyon need millions of years to form?
It is scientifically impossible to show that canyons need millions of years to form, since you would have to both observe and test such a claim. This is only an assumption based on a belief in uniformitarianism. Current rates of erosion by rivers and streams are clocked backwards to come up with the ages of canyons at millions of years old. However, it is (and has been) scientifically possible to show that canyons can form rapidly. For example, the rock layers that formed as a result of the eruptions of Mt. Saint Helens were later cut by mudflows, forming a canyon 100 feet deep, about 1/40th the scale of the Grand Canyon. Not only did it erode the volcanic debris, but it also cut through the bedrock at one locale. Canyon cutting does not take millions of years; it could have easily happened within the biblical timescale of thousands of years as a result of a lot of water over a little bit of time; the Global Flood.
10. Doesn't radioisotope dating prove that the earth is billions of years old?
The way secular scientists assign ages to rock layers is radioisotope dating. Radioisotope dating uses radioactive elements, elements which turn into other elements (decay) over time, to estimate the ages of rocks. Here is how it works: first, the scientist tests the rock to discover the parent-daughter element ratio. This is the number of parent elements (the original radioactive element) to daughter elements, which are what the parent element turns into through radioactive decay. Once this is known, the scientist estimates how long it took for the daughter elements to decay from the parent elements, based on an established rate of decay called the half-life. A half-life is the time it takes for half of the remaining parent elements to turn into daughter elements. In short, the radioactive "clock" is reversed to the time when the rock supposedly formed, and an age is obtained. However, this method requires 3 main assumptions that can't be accepted with any kind of certainty. First, it is assumed that there were no daughter elements in the original rock. Second, it is assumed that no parent or daughter material was added or removed from the rock over the course of time. Third, it is assumed that the rate of decay is constant, meaning that decay never happened faster or slower in the past. Since none of these can be known for sure, we shouldn't be so quick to accept the conclusions of radioisotope dating, especially since the dates obtained often conflict with the more-certain testimony about the age of the earth found in Scripture. This is further evidenced by the fact that many times, radioisotope dating yields ages for rocks much older than their known age. For example, rocks formed during the 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens were tested using potassium-argon dating, which gave dates between 0.2-2.8 million years old! In addition to this, different radioisotope dating methods often give contradictory dates for the same sample.
11. Are there any evidences for a young-earth in geology?
Yes; there are many. One is the fact that helium is often found in amounts that would be expected in rocks that are only thousands of years old. Helium is a by-product of radioactive decay, and since it is a gas, it escapes over time. Geologists have tested the age estimates of certain rocks based on their helium content and have shown that they conflict with the billions of years age assignment given them by secular geologists. It appears that at one time in the past, the rate of radioactivity was sped up, producing more helium in a shorter period of time. Another line of evidence comes from soft-tissue fossils. Over the last couple decades, more and more reports of soft original tissue and proteins like collagen and keratin in unfossilized portions of various fossils have been published in scientific literature. It is known from the decay rates of these various materials that they cannot be more than hundreds of thousands of years (or in the case of collagen, one million years) old. These dates have upset the secular scientific community by posing established science against their most held-to theories about the origins and history of the earth. Unfortunately, they have overwhelmingly chosen to question the basic principles of soft-tissue decay rather than their uniformitarian assumptions. Along these same lines, carbon-14, a radioactive version of carbon which decays beyond detection in 100,000 years, has been found in detectable amounts in dinosaur fossils, coal, and even diamonds, all of which are assigned ages of millions of years. Other evidences for a young earth can be found in the resources on our recommended resources page.
12. What about evolutionary "missing links"?
Many fossils have been proposed as the "missing links" needed to verify Darwin's theory. While it is impossible to refute all of them in a limited format like this, I will briefly discuss three examples to provide a basic framework through which to interpret all of these "links". The first is Tiktaalik, the famous "walking fish" found on Ellsemere Island in northern Canada. This fossil posses a long, fish-like body, bony fins, and an amphibian-looking flat head, with its eyes on the top of its head. This combination of traits is interpreted by evolution-propentents as transitional between a fish and an amphibian. It is claimed to be the "first walker". However, Tiktaalik's features are not transitional; it has a complete and perfectly designed body plan for the environment it was created to be in, which creation geologists believe was a large, pre-Flood floating forest. There is no clear "progression" between fish and amphibians in Tiktaalik. Worse yet, fossil tetrapod (4-legged creature) tracks have been found in rock layers dated as millions of years older than this fossil. Tiktaalik was a fully formed creature, not a missing link. Another fossil once-claimed to be transitional is the famous "Piltdown Man." Piltdown Man was interpreted (mistakenly) to be the remains of an ape-man. Many decades later, when scientists re-examined the original bones, it was found to be an intentional fraud. Someone had taken a human skull and put it with an orangutang jaw that had been tampered with to make it look more "human". Lastly, evolutionary scientists often create hypothetical models for how they imagine that one animal turned into a fundamentally different one. An example of this are the charts used to show how intricate feathers could have evolved from the scaly hide of reptiles. However, this is just a figment of the imagination, not real science. All supposed "missing links" fit into one of these three categories; fully formed, fraud, or figment.
In the early days of geology, it was accepted that most of the geologic record had been created as a result of the Creation Week and Noah's Flood. However, this changed in the late 1700's when a Scottish farmer named James Hutton proposed that the belief that "the present is the key to the past" should be used to interpret geologic features. Since geologic processes, like erosion of rock and the deposition of sediments, occur very slowly today, it was assumed that they always operated this way. Thus, the time required for things like deep and wide canyons, or thick rock layers, to form was assumed to be very great; millions of years. This idea, called uniformitarianism, was further promoted by Charles Lyell in the 1800's, and eventually became the foundational assumption underlying all of secular geology. However, this belief either ignores or minimizes the effects of catastrophes like floods, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis, which do lots of geologic work. Many modern geologists accept a modified version of this idea, called "neo-catastrophism", which says that catastrophic events are responsible for much of the geologic record, but they were separated by vast spans of geologic time (millions of years). This philosophy denies the reality of the Global Flood recorded in Scripture.
2. Was Noah's Flood local?
To accommodate uniformitarianism, many theologians abandoned the traditional view of the Global Flood in favor of a Flood of local extent (i.e. the Mesopotamian Valley). However, this idea contradicts many of the clear statements about the Flood in Genesis 6-9. First, the reason for the Flood was, according to Genesis 6:13, “...the earth is filled with violence through them [all flesh]; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth." God's description of the Flood in verse 17 was, "And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die." Such universal language, with the use of the words "all" and "every", is common throughout these chapters, and make an irrefutable case for the global extent of the Genesis Flood. Also, the height ("the mountains were covered") and duration of the Flood (371 days total) slam the door on a limited interpretation. In addition to this, the purpose of the Ark was to, "to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth," which would have been unnecessary if the Flood was local. Lastly, if the Flood was local, God's promise to never send another Flood like it would have been broken an uncountable number of times. Scripture is clear; the Flood was worldwide. [Emphasis in Scripture passages added].
3. Could Noah's Flood really form the rock record?
No and yes. No, because a majority of the rock record (the Precambrian rocks) consists of crystalline or metamorphic "basement rocks" which were formed and uplifted during Creation Week. Yes, because the Flood was a great tectonic event, beginning with the cleaving open of the "fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11), which likely refer to mid-ocean ridges like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Scientists, creationist and secularist, agree that tectonic processes like those unleashed during the Flood were responsible for the formation of the rock record. The Bible repeatedly records that the waters "prevailed" and "greatly increased" on the face of the earth, which would have certainly caused erosion and deposition of sediments on a worldwide scale, forming a majority of the world's fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers. Meanwhile, the tectonic activity would have resulted in massive volcanism, with the eruption of huge quantities of ash, pumice, lava, and other volcanic materials. Tectonic forces would also uplift, stretch out, and compress earth's crust, forming mountains, basins, and metamorphic rocks, respectively. The recession of the Floodwaters would have literally planed the surface of the earth. Residual activity from the Flood and the resulting Ice Age would have formed the Tertiary and Quaternary rock formations.
4. Is the Geologic Column real?
Yes, absolutely. There is a definite progression in the rock layers of the earth, from the shallow marine invertebrates in lower layers, to swamp creatures in the middle-lower column, to the shore/lowland creatures in the middle-high column, to the highland creatures in the uppermost layers. This order can be observed in places like the Grand Staircase of Arizona and Utah, where nearly the entire column is preserved from the Cambrian sandstone walls of Grand Canyon to the Tertiary formations in the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. However, instead of being an evolutionary progression of simple to complex life-forms, this order reflects the burial order of various ecosystems during the year-long Global Flood and its aftermath.
5. Do fossils take millions of years to form?
Not at all. In fact, it is well-known by geologists that rapid burial is needed for fossilization. In today's environments, fossils do not generally form, because dead animals are quickly scavenged or left to decay. To prevent this, the creature's body must be quickly buried in sediment, and the hard parts must be quickly replaced by minerals. Rapid burial is especially needed for the countless examples of soft-bodied organisms and soft-tissues which have been turned into rock. The worldwide Flood of Noah's day provides the perfect conditions for fossil formation: rapid burial and mineral-rich water.
6. Don't rock layers need millions of years to form?
No. Rock layers were assumed to require millions of years to form because of uniformitarian beliefs, not by any actual scientific observation and testing. The formation of rock layers like what we see in the geologic record, which span entire continents and possess thicknesses of thousands of feet, has never been observed. However, we have observed smaller sedimentary rock layers form quickly today. For example, during the various eruptions of Mt. Saint Helens in the early 1980's, a succession of mudflows and pyroclastic flows produced an observable progression of layers in time spans of minutes and hours. Some of these layers even display alternating layers of fine and coarse material, called laminations. These same laminations, in places like the Green River Formation in the Northwestern U.S., are assumed to have required millions of summer/winter cycles to form. Hurricanes can also lay down sedimentary layers quickly, as well as underwater landslides. However, such events pale in comparison to the extent and intensity of the Genesis Flood, which could have easily laid down the thick and widespread sedimentary layers found on all of the world's continents.
7. Do we find human fossils in Flood layers?
At this time, human fossils have only been found in post-Flood sedimentary or volcanic rock layers. The reason for this is simple; 95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates, a figure which readily confirms the biblical Flood account. Most of the remaining 5% are plant fossils, leaving less than 1% for all vertebrate fossils. Even then, most of these are fish. It is important to remember that complete skeletons are incredibly rare, and that many of the most important fossil finds (including many of evolution's "missing links"; see question #12) are only fragmental. The odds of finding any vertebrate fossil are slim on a statistical level, much less the odds of finding human fossils. However, there are other reasons why we don't find them. Mammals, including humans, are generally fragile, and would be the most likely to decompose completely or be completely obliterated by the action of the Flood waters. Another factor against finding human fossils is the fact humans would have attempted to escape the Flood, whether by seeking higher ground or riding on boats/rafts. They were likely the last to die in the Flood. Even if human remains ever were discovered in Flood-layers, it is probable that the secular scientific establishment would try to prevent the public from hearing about such discoveries, or simply re-interpret the evidence to fit evolutionary theory.
8. What are the strongest evidences for the Flood in geology?
Geology is replete with evidences for Noah's Flood. My three personal favorites are; #1. Continent-wide megasequences, which are rock "packages" made up of coarse-to-fine layers, from conglomerate (rounded pebbles in a finer material matrix) to sandstone to shale to limestone. These megasequences are interpreted by secular geologists as evidence for rising and falling sea levels over expanses of geologic time. However, this same evidence can be interpreted as the result of the rising and falling global sea level over the course of the Genesis Flood. These megasequences can be traced across North America, and are clear evidence for a world-covering Global Flood. Evidence #2.: Rapidly buried fossils, which exhibit unmistakable signs of catastrophic death. For example, fossil fish have been found with other fish in their mouths or stomachs, indicating that these fish were catastrophically killed and buried in sediment instantly. Also, dinosaur fossils have been found in their death pose, with their neck thrown back and tail extended outward from the body. These dinosaurs were drowned! Evidence #3.: Sedimentary structures, like cross-beds, found in rock layers. Cross-beds are features in rocks like sandstone, where the angle of the layers are tilted, and "cross" over each other. Secular geologists interpret these as the result of long periods of deposition on the backs of desert sand dunes, however, it is known that these can form underwater as a result of deep, fast-moving water. The widespread nature and thickness of these layers requires that they were formed as a result of the catastrophic Flood.
9. Don't formations like the Grand Canyon need millions of years to form?
It is scientifically impossible to show that canyons need millions of years to form, since you would have to both observe and test such a claim. This is only an assumption based on a belief in uniformitarianism. Current rates of erosion by rivers and streams are clocked backwards to come up with the ages of canyons at millions of years old. However, it is (and has been) scientifically possible to show that canyons can form rapidly. For example, the rock layers that formed as a result of the eruptions of Mt. Saint Helens were later cut by mudflows, forming a canyon 100 feet deep, about 1/40th the scale of the Grand Canyon. Not only did it erode the volcanic debris, but it also cut through the bedrock at one locale. Canyon cutting does not take millions of years; it could have easily happened within the biblical timescale of thousands of years as a result of a lot of water over a little bit of time; the Global Flood.
10. Doesn't radioisotope dating prove that the earth is billions of years old?
The way secular scientists assign ages to rock layers is radioisotope dating. Radioisotope dating uses radioactive elements, elements which turn into other elements (decay) over time, to estimate the ages of rocks. Here is how it works: first, the scientist tests the rock to discover the parent-daughter element ratio. This is the number of parent elements (the original radioactive element) to daughter elements, which are what the parent element turns into through radioactive decay. Once this is known, the scientist estimates how long it took for the daughter elements to decay from the parent elements, based on an established rate of decay called the half-life. A half-life is the time it takes for half of the remaining parent elements to turn into daughter elements. In short, the radioactive "clock" is reversed to the time when the rock supposedly formed, and an age is obtained. However, this method requires 3 main assumptions that can't be accepted with any kind of certainty. First, it is assumed that there were no daughter elements in the original rock. Second, it is assumed that no parent or daughter material was added or removed from the rock over the course of time. Third, it is assumed that the rate of decay is constant, meaning that decay never happened faster or slower in the past. Since none of these can be known for sure, we shouldn't be so quick to accept the conclusions of radioisotope dating, especially since the dates obtained often conflict with the more-certain testimony about the age of the earth found in Scripture. This is further evidenced by the fact that many times, radioisotope dating yields ages for rocks much older than their known age. For example, rocks formed during the 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens were tested using potassium-argon dating, which gave dates between 0.2-2.8 million years old! In addition to this, different radioisotope dating methods often give contradictory dates for the same sample.
11. Are there any evidences for a young-earth in geology?
Yes; there are many. One is the fact that helium is often found in amounts that would be expected in rocks that are only thousands of years old. Helium is a by-product of radioactive decay, and since it is a gas, it escapes over time. Geologists have tested the age estimates of certain rocks based on their helium content and have shown that they conflict with the billions of years age assignment given them by secular geologists. It appears that at one time in the past, the rate of radioactivity was sped up, producing more helium in a shorter period of time. Another line of evidence comes from soft-tissue fossils. Over the last couple decades, more and more reports of soft original tissue and proteins like collagen and keratin in unfossilized portions of various fossils have been published in scientific literature. It is known from the decay rates of these various materials that they cannot be more than hundreds of thousands of years (or in the case of collagen, one million years) old. These dates have upset the secular scientific community by posing established science against their most held-to theories about the origins and history of the earth. Unfortunately, they have overwhelmingly chosen to question the basic principles of soft-tissue decay rather than their uniformitarian assumptions. Along these same lines, carbon-14, a radioactive version of carbon which decays beyond detection in 100,000 years, has been found in detectable amounts in dinosaur fossils, coal, and even diamonds, all of which are assigned ages of millions of years. Other evidences for a young earth can be found in the resources on our recommended resources page.
12. What about evolutionary "missing links"?
Many fossils have been proposed as the "missing links" needed to verify Darwin's theory. While it is impossible to refute all of them in a limited format like this, I will briefly discuss three examples to provide a basic framework through which to interpret all of these "links". The first is Tiktaalik, the famous "walking fish" found on Ellsemere Island in northern Canada. This fossil posses a long, fish-like body, bony fins, and an amphibian-looking flat head, with its eyes on the top of its head. This combination of traits is interpreted by evolution-propentents as transitional between a fish and an amphibian. It is claimed to be the "first walker". However, Tiktaalik's features are not transitional; it has a complete and perfectly designed body plan for the environment it was created to be in, which creation geologists believe was a large, pre-Flood floating forest. There is no clear "progression" between fish and amphibians in Tiktaalik. Worse yet, fossil tetrapod (4-legged creature) tracks have been found in rock layers dated as millions of years older than this fossil. Tiktaalik was a fully formed creature, not a missing link. Another fossil once-claimed to be transitional is the famous "Piltdown Man." Piltdown Man was interpreted (mistakenly) to be the remains of an ape-man. Many decades later, when scientists re-examined the original bones, it was found to be an intentional fraud. Someone had taken a human skull and put it with an orangutang jaw that had been tampered with to make it look more "human". Lastly, evolutionary scientists often create hypothetical models for how they imagine that one animal turned into a fundamentally different one. An example of this are the charts used to show how intricate feathers could have evolved from the scaly hide of reptiles. However, this is just a figment of the imagination, not real science. All supposed "missing links" fit into one of these three categories; fully formed, fraud, or figment.
