Adapted from Creation Answer Book by Hank Hanegraaff 

A few years after Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould ruled out Archaeopteryx a s a missing link, Yale’s John Ostrom proposed Pro-avis. Is Pro-avis a function of science or just science fiction?

First, unlike Archaeopteryx, no fossil evidence exists for Pro-avis. Eminent paleontologist Dr. John Ostrom, credited for revolutionizing modern understanding of dinosaurs, simply pictured a Pro-avis prototype in American Scientist, and Pro-avis sprang into existence. With due credit to creativity, this is hardly credible.

Furthermore, to hold Pro-avis as the missing link between reptiles and birds requires believing that air friction acting on genetic mutation frayed the outer edges of reptilian scales. Thus, over the course of millions of years, scales were transformed into fantastic flying feathers.

Finally, as science advances, even the most doctrinaire evolutionists are coming to the realization that pseudosaurs (false lizards) like Pro-avis simply don’t fly in an age of scientific enlightenment. In fairy tales, frayed scales turn into feathers and frogs into princes. In macroevolution* all one needs to do is add millions of years and little Pro-avises turn into fantastic flying fowl.

Newsweek aptly summarized the sentiment of leading evolutionists at a conference in Chicago: “Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school.”


For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, The FACE That Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001).