Evolutionists asked Ronald J. Ervin,
a medical illustrator to create misleading
illustrations for their evolutionary textbooks

This article originally appeared in the March – May 1995 issue
of Creation ex nihilo magazine and is reprinted here with their permission

BEAUTY may be skin deep,  but if you want to see what’s under your skin, top-notch medical  illustrator Ron Ervin can show you.  His outstanding knowledge of anatomy enables him to peel back your outer layers to reveal your bones and muscles with amazing  detail. Ron has worked as senior  medical illustrator at the University  of Iowa, as medical art consultant at the University of Virginia, and has been called on to produce medical, scientific, and graphic illustrations for textbooks, journals, and courtroom use. In 1992 he was chosen to appear on a television show which featured his work among the talents and resources in America”s State of Virginia.

But with all his knowledge about the anatomy of humans and animals, Ron admits there is one area where medical artists have little to work from. When it comes to re-creating exactly what extinct creatures looked like, or what those allegedly “transitional” creatures between apes and humans supposedly looked like, science doesn’t know, so artists are expected to fill in the blank spots. “No one knows for sure what they looked like”, Ron said. “So the artist has the freedom to “create” with colours and forms.”

Ron was once commissioned with another artist, a medical doctor to produce a huge number of illustrations for a major college biology textbook – Raven and Johnson’s Biology. The drawings included one of “Lucy” (the creature which some evolutionists believe was a pre-human ancestor). “I was given the task of re-creating the anatomy and structures of so-called “prehistoric” animals, mammals and humans. I didn’t really know whether to make it this way or that way, because there was nothing concrete to go by”, Ron recalled.

In one chapter of that biology book, Ron’s drawings were used to supposedly picture the evolution of man and animals. “I  was told to make the illustrations either more or less human or modern – whatever the subject was. I was pleased as an artist to have the freedom to create a drawing no one could question, because they didn’t know for sure themselves what the creature looked like. But I was uncomfortable as a Christian to be told that they wanted more “ape-like” or more “human-like” qualities.” Ron said that with any illustration of ‘normal’ anatomy, he can turn it, twist it, and picture it in

any position while keeping it anatomically correct. But generating a drawing of a chimp-like Australopithecus fossil (like the famous “Lucy”), for instance, was different.

“With this Australopithecus I was told to re-create something that was a big “maybe”, and then make it look believable.” He originally drew thisAustralopithecus as too human-like for the book’s authors. “I was told to make he more ape-like, or more “transitional” in appearance”, he said. “I had been given a cast of a skull, and I was shown some drawings the artists had done of “Lucy”, and was asked to improve on these to make them look more transitional. I had to make some things up, while keeping the anatomical bones intact, like the temple bone and other features which are standard.

Ron points out that the soft parts of a body, such as lips, nose, skin colour, and hair, are impossible to re-create with certainty from bones. He was asked to alter his picture of “Lucy” to conform with the evolutionary transitional creature which the biology textbooks authors wanted. “I added more body hair, and did another sketch. “No”, they said, “she’s got to have more this and more that.” I just kept adding and subtracting until I got what they wanted.” Although Ron produced the drawing which the authors and publisher wanted, he did get his own subtle comment into it for f