Homo sapiens are apes.
Not everything fossilizes. Fossilization is a rare event; very rare. In any given population, only a small small portion will fossilize. At the species level, not that many fossils are found, but at the genus level, there is an abundance. For example, in the Genus Australopithecus, several fossils of many different species in that genus have been found, but each individual species has only a few fossils. Sometimes this can lead to confusion, such as whether Paranthropus aethiopicus were descendants of Australopithecus afarensis or Australopithecus bahrelghazali. The "missing links" are species gaps which arise when such events happen. Science is forever developing though, and things like Endogenous Retroviral DNA futher add to our knowledge. Endogenous retroviruses are retroviruses derived from ancient viral infections of germ cells, instead of exploding in reproductive fury like most retroviruses, endogenous onces are defunct and are passed on to the next generation and now remain in the genome. The human genome project found several thousand ERVs classified into 24 families. Geneticists can use endogenous retroviral DNA as genetic markers. An example would be the Felidae family. The standard phylogenetic tree has small cats diverging later than large cats. The small cats share a specific retroviral gene insertion. In contrast, all other carnivores which have been tested lack this retrogene. You can basically play connect the dots to make your own phylogentic tree, like these guys did
CLick here for link
It just so happens to be that it matches the genetic, morphological and microbiological trees of life. Interesting how completely independent tests and fields in biology have the exact same results.
As for Noah, I gotta hand it to him. Not just any old man could bring two of ever 350 000 species of beetles onto a boat, with the food to feed them, AND keep their predators from eating them. Keeping fresh water fish alive after mixing all the salt with the fresh. Bringing the Koalas all the way over to Australia from Turkey.
Most kids in Grade 2 who hear the story of Noah and the ark are capable of understanding how absurd it is. This is a fantasy which rivals that of Toddler's. Sure its a nice story (except the part where god decides to kill everybody), but it isn't true. If the world did have a flood on the scale depicted in the bible, then why is there absolutely no geological evidence of it? When floods happen on a minor scale, they carry all the sedimentary layers with them, basically making a new big layer of dirt. If there was a global flood, than there should be a massive massive layer. Nothing like that is found. Matt being a geology major could go into more depth on it. Things like
global floods would leave an extraordinary amount of evidence behind.
Had to do it.