Spiffy Book Misleads on Evolution

By Abram Katz

Writing under the name Harun Yahya, Oktar has written a massive, beautifully illustrated and rather troubling book, “Atlas of Creation.” This is the kind of book, in size and shape, you might use to press flowers. It weighs about 10 pounds. It’s printed on heavy, glossy paper and must have cost a fortune to publish.

Setting aside that Oktar has blamed Jews and Freemasons for trying to contaminate Turkish culture, and has written off the Holocaust as an unfortunate typhus epidemic, the book is more than a little on the creepy side.

The size and sophistication of the volume suggests that Oktar must have a lot of money, and hence influence in some quarters.

Oktar’s thesis, such as it is, claims that Charles Darwin was wrong about evolution.

By extension, he also challenges virtually all modern biology. His argument is that Darwin predicted intermediate forms of life, as evolution proceeded from simple organisms to more complicated ones, and that no such fossils have been found.

We know such fossils indeed have been found, and that modern anatomical and genetic similarities between organisms support evolution.

But, Oktar will have none of that.

As proof of there being no evolution, Oktar presents hundreds of photographs purporting to show fossils of animals that he supposes are identical to their modern forms.

Typical of his approach is a suspicious photo of a hyena skull, allegedly from the Cretaceous period, 85 million years ago.

One major problem here is that hyenas, or more accurately the hyaenids, did not appear on Earth until about 17 to 18 million years ago. That would be Miocene, not Cretaceous.

And, contrary to Oktar, there are many fossils of earlier relatives of hyenas. Moreover, the fossil hyena skull that Oktar presents resembles a plaster recreation of a skull. There are a number of anatomically odd features, but even assuming the fossil is real, Oktar’s point is not.

Some pages later, Oktar shows a hyena skull from the Miocene period, 9.5 million years ago. The point, supposedly, is that hyenas have always existed in the same form — except that the possibly phony fossils in the book do not even look similar.

And so it goes, with an alleged fossil panda from 96 million years ago — long, long before there were any pandas. That would have been a world dominated by dinosaurs.

Pandas, in fact, are a strong argument for evolution. They have adaptations to be herbivores. Certain features of the skull, for example, differ from other bears. This reflects the need to grind up bamboo. And, there is the panda’s well known “thumb,” used for traveling from branch to branch.

Contrary to Oktar, there are many examples of “intermediate” organisms. Check out human evolution, for instance.

Oktar also seems to imply that evolution would require one species to morph into another. That’s not how evolution is required to work. The old population may continue to thrive along with the new.

After all, we’re related to apes, but apes did not “turn into” people.

No matter how many times Oktar states there is no evidence of evolution, there is. Plenty of it. Right in front of his nose, if he cared to see it, in birds, butterflies, flowers and even humans.

Abram Katz can be reached at akatz@nhregister.com or 789-5719.

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