Here are some examples of what a number of Scientific publications have had to say about....What the Fossil Evidence Says On the Origin of Life: “For at least three-quarters of the book of ages engraved in the earth’s crust the pages are blank.”—The World We Live Inc “The initial steps . . . are not known; . . . no trace of them remains.”—Red Giants and White Dwarfsd On Many-Celled Life: “How many-celled animals originated and whether this step occurred one or more times and in one or more ways remain difficult and ever-debated questions that are . . . ‘in the last analysis, quite unanswerable.’”—Sciencee “The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms.”—Red Giants and White Dwarfsf On Plant Life: “Most botanists look to the fossil record as the source of enlightenment. But . . . no such help has been discovered. . . . There is no evidence of the ancestry.”—The Natural History of Palms On Insects: “The fossil record does not give any information on the origin of insects.”—Encyclopædia Britannicah “There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral insects looked like.”—The Insectsi On Animals With Backbones: “Fossil remains, however, give no information on the origin of the vertebrates.”—Encyclopædia Britannicaj On Fish: “To our knowledge, no ‘link’ connected this new beast to any previous form of life. The fish just appeared.”—Marvels & Mysteries of Our Animal Worldk On Fish Becoming Amphibians: “Just how or why they did this we will probably never know.”—The Fishesl On Amphibians Becoming Reptiles: “One of the frustrating features of the fossil record of vertebrate history is that it shows so little about the evolution of reptiles during their earliest days, when the shelled egg was developing.”—The Reptilesm On Reptiles Becoming Mammals: “There is no missing link [that connects] mammals and reptiles.”—The Reptilesn “Fossils, unfortunately, reveal very little about the creatures which we consider the first true mammals.”—The Mammalso On Reptiles Becoming Birds: “The transition from reptiles to birds is more poorly documented.”—Processes of Organic Evolutionp “No fossil of any such birdlike reptile has yet been found.”—The World Book Encyclopediaq On Apes: “Unfortunately, the fossil record which would enable us to trace the emergence of the apes is still hopelessly incomplete.”—The Primatesr “Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record.”—Science Digests From Ape to Man: “No fossil or other physical evidence directly connects man to ape.”—Science Digestt “The human family does not consist of a solitary line of descent leading from an apelike form to our species.”—The New Evolutionary Timetableu Perhaps, like me, you will find these quotes interesting.

Actually, there are fossils of the giraffe's ancestors, Samotherium, Shansitherium, Honanotherium, Gyarffokeryx, Mitilanotherium and others, all with different neck and leg lenghts. Giraffe evolution is well documented by fossils. Fossiliziation is a rare process, and only very few animals do fossilize, so we can consider ourself lucky to even find as much as we do. Even if there was not a single fossil by the way, evolution would still be a proven fact. The strongest evidence for evolution nowadays comes from molecular biology.

There is good fossil evidence for the evolution of the giraffes neck, with many intermediate fossils. What there is discussion about, which is why you may have heard of dissension on the subject, is why it occurred. The traditional story is that it allowed giraffes to reach higher into trees. But this was an assumption, and more recently people have postulated that it was a form of sexual selection, because giraffes express dominance by "necking". Another is that it was a side effect of long legs, good both for fighting and running - the head still has to reach the ground to drink. Whichever if these *reasons* is true, the *fact* is well documented. Also well documented in the fossil record are the development of the horse from a small, scurrying creature similar to small deer, and the development of whales from bear-like land animals that fished along shores. Most people do not realize that for every fossil on display in a museum, there are tens of thousands behind the scenes. Museums tend to celebrate the diversity of life, and put on display the most different fossils. The do not display the hundreds of boring, almost-identical, fossils they have in their storerooms, But the storage and study of vast quantities of such fossils is what paleontology is all about.