One has to wonder why fossils would be so lucrative for Chinese farmers? If we look closely at the types of fossils that return a premium, it is the fossils that fall into the catagory of "missing link", such as the infamous "Archeorapter" that just less than a decade ago made front page headlines in National Geographic who reportedly paid 250,000 dollars for the fossil. It was exposed as a fake and a later retraction was published on page 47 (not the front page). Perhaps it is the vanishingly small evidence (one could even argue non-existant) of actual missing links. If there were real evidence for evolution, then there wouldn't be a bunch of fakes selling for lots of money.

Hank wrote: The assertion that random fossilization happened at every stage of evolution in a convenient location that has already been found is shockingly ignorant about science, biology, paleontology and grade-school chemistry.
I didn't assert anything. Unfortunately for evolutioinists, the locations of fossilization are very inconvenient, and are causing the story of evolution to change several times a year. Examples include skull 1370, penguin feather fossils, detailed squid fossils in the pre-Cambrian fossil layer (which are identical to todays squids, i.e. no sign of evolution for about 500,000,000 years), just to name a few. Random fossilization sounds a lot like a global catastrophic event don't you think? Chemistry debunks the idea of millions of years of evolution also. You might research Dr. Mary Schweitzers discovery of viable collagen and DNA in a 80 mya Hadrosaur fossil. Chemistry in the lab clearly shows that even in a frozen state DNA cannot possibly survive 100,000 years let alone 80 million. There are many more examples to cite also. Of course I suppose that exceeds grade school chemistry. I agree also that sometimes people fake things. Sometimes people buy faked things too. The people making these purchases are often times experts that should know better, but apparently excitement gets the best of them. You only have to think back to the very recent front page headlines of National Geographic, depicting the "Archeoraptor". That was reportedly purchased for 250,000 dollars by National Geographic expert Paleontologists who were very excited at the find. It fit perfectly into the spot they expected to find such a "missing link" since "everyone knows" that birds evolved from Therapod dinosaurs. Why would experts get so excited about a missing link if we already have so much evidence? The fact is there are no "water tight" missing links when there should be millions out of the billions of fossils we now have cataloged. There are only a handful of "missing link" catagory fossils and those are all very subjective.
Oliver: Morphological relationships between animals is hardly enough to prove evolution occurs. Octopi have similar eyes to us humans, but nobody has ever claimed we are directly related that I know of. Gradual change is not an indicator either. What we now know about this "gradual change" you speak of is that it is always a loss of information, and never a gain, i.e. mutation and natural selection. I am sure you have seen at some point in your life, a copy image that has been copied so many times that the image is no longer legible. That is what is happening to all of life on this planet, a slow motion extinction. Consider the giant salamanders of China, and how they can no longer survive without human intervention because these creatures can no longer regulate their internal temperature. For evolution to be true, there "HAS" to be a gain of information somewhere...think about it..from single cells to thinking human..you have to add info there. No information adding mechanism in the genome has been observed by humans to date. Evolution "ameoba to man" is just a story until a mechanism is shown to exist.
David: It may look good on someones' wall to have a fossil hanging there, but these aren't art collectors buying them. These are professional Paleontologists who know what they are looking at, but are desperate for a "real" missing link. I have thought this through very thoroughly. You should review all of the fakes and see how long it took experts to discover they were fakes, when it was obvious. It took Pildown man 50 years to be discovered. The "best" evidence we are told by prominent evolutionists is whale evolution (one of the areas you mentioned). If you look closely you will see that no proof of relationship has been shown at all. Pakacetus was placed in the "whale catagory because one of the bones in it's jaw resembles one of the bones in a whales ear. The original find of Pakacetus just a few pieces of skull fragments and a few forelimb. It was originally depicted as an aquatic animal complete with full color pictures of a swimming fish looking animal. Later other Pakacetus fossils where discovered that refuted the "known fact" that Pakacetus was aquatic, and the new story was told that Pakacetus was a land dwelling animal that was the precursor to whales. (Even though the fossil layers dramatically overlap, it is only based on 1 similar looking bone, there is not enough time "evolutionarily speaking"for all the radical developments to take place for a land dwelling animal to change into a full time aquatic animal, with deep diving capabilities, a radically altered heat radiating/conserving mechanism, fully functional sonar, and complete rearrangment of breathing apparatus)
If missing links were real, there would be far less of a market for the faked ones.