my foot!

Here's a story from the BBC about the recent discovery of what is believed to be the oldest known human footprint. Based on the dating of the footprint--I won't go into all the guesswork, theorizing, and assumptions that went into that--it has been assigned to Homo erectus, one of our nearest ancestors. The astonishing thing is that it looks just like a "modern" human footprint. (So how do we know it isn't just a Homo sapiens footprint? That would be the dating. H. sapiens isn't supposed to have been around yet. Hmmm.)

So where does this leave the evolution of human feet? Well, if we accept all the orthodox dating as it now stands, there's a footprint from 3.8 million years ago of an Australopithicus something-or-other that looks pretty "apelike," and the next one we have is our new specimen, a 1.5-million-year-old footprint that looks pretty indistinguishable from a "modern" human print. In between? Nothing.

As the BBC puts it, "Exactly how that more ape-like foot developed into its modern version has remained unclear." Apparently that's because predators regard feet as a delicacy, so that they tend to be missing from the critters who managed to get themselves fossilized. And footprints are hard to find once they've been buried. So there's not much evidence to work with.

Thus the lack of any transitional feet- or footprint-forms is exactly what the theory of evolution would predict! Whereas if they ever happen to find a transitional form, that will be exactly what the theory would predict! What could possibly falsify this theory?

O me of little faith...