Need I point out that Komodo dragons are still alive? No fossils required. Are zoologists less well trained than paleontologists or anthropologists? No. They’re products of the same process. Something about theories you like so much you stop questioning them. It’s just easier to prove zoologists wrong. The deader your subject of study is, the easier it is to go on being wrong for a long long time without getting caught. Think about it. One illustrious archaeologist single-handedly prevented the decipherment of Mayan writing for three decades because he declared that Mayan writing didn’t actually mean anything and there was no one credentialed enough to oppose him. Now one can read the history of its decipherment without encountering a mention of his name. Science has its own secrets. Which usually involve covering up mistakes and stupidity.

So I won’t venture an opinion about the merit or lack of it of the new fossil. I’m patient enough to wait for more analysis without accepting any slam-dunk assertions about “proof” of Darwin. I remain skeptical not about the fact that new species emerge but about how they emerge and what drives that emergence. Heresy, I know. Every time I even mention that intelligence might be part of the natural process, I get inundated by an army of screaming scientific inquisitors anxious to burn me at the stake. Even though I’m not arguing for Genesis but for the entirely natural hypothesis that a process which can produce intelligence might actually involve intelligence. To me it seems less arrogant somehow. Scientists are intelligent, and nothing else in nature is? Not even the people who are slightly less degreed than scientists?