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The Fossil Record
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The Fossil Record
The Only Direct Evidence.
CARL DUNBAR, Yale, "Although the comparative study of living animals and
plants may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide
the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from
simpler to more and more complex forms." HISTORICAL GEOLOGY, p. 47
S. M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins, "It is doubtful whether, in the absence of
fossils, the idea of evolution would represent anything more than an
outrageous hypothesis. ...The fossil record and only the fossil record
provides direct evidence of major sequential changes in the Earth's biota."
NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, p.72, 1981
HISTORICAL - NOT EMPIRICAL, JOHN H. HORNER "...paleontology is a historical
science, a science based on circumstantial evidence, after the fact. We can
never reach hard and fast conclusions in our study of ancient plants and
animals... These days it's easy to go through school for a good many years,
sometimes even through college, without ever hearing that some sciences are
historical or by nature inconclusive." Dinosaur Lives, 1997, p.19
In Their "Beginning": Sudden; Complex; Diverse; Every Animal Phylum;
Assumed History Missing
STEPHEN J. GOULD, HARVARD, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred in a geological
moment, and we have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may
have made their evolutionary appearance at that time. ...not only the
phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major divisions, arose within the
Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's
expectation that new data would reveal gradualistic continuity with slow
and steady expansion, all major discoveries of the past century have only
heightened the massiveness and geological abruptness of this formative
event..." Nature, Vol.377, 26 10/95, p.682
Preston Cloud & Martin F. Glaessner, "Ever since Darwin, the geologically
abrupt appearance and rapid diversification of early animal life have
fascinated biologist and students of Earth history alike....This interval,
plus Early Cambrian, was the time during which metazoan life diversified
into nearly all of the major phyla and most of the invertebrate classes and
orders subsequently known." Science, Aug.27, 1982
RICHARD Monastersky, Earth Science Ed., Science News, "The remarkably
complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared. ...This moment,
right at the start of the Earth's Cambrian Period...marks the evolutionary
explosion that filled the seas with the earth's first complex creatures.
...'This is Genesis material,' gushed one researcher. ...demonstrates that
the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian
and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today...a
menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other
invertevrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver."
Discover, p.40, 4/93
Richard Dawkins, Cambridge, "And we find many of them already in an
advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as
though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.
Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted
creationists. ...the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance
of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation...",
The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p229-230
TREES & FISH IN CAMBRIAN, John Repetski, U.S.Geol. Survey, "The oldest land
plants now known are from the Early Cambrian... Approximately 60 Cambrian
spore-genera are now on record...represent 6 different groups of vascular
plants..." Evolution, V.13, 6/'59, p.264. Daniel I. Axelrod, UCLA, "This
report of fish material from Upper Cambrian rocks further extends the
record of the vertebrates by approximately 40 million years." [WY, OK, WA,
NV, ID, AR] Science, Vol.200, 5 May, 1978, p.529
PATCH FAILED, "Over the decades, evolutionary theorists beginning with
Charles Darwin have tried to argue that the appearance of multicelled
animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact had been
preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record
was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an
otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory. Since
1987, discoveries of major fossil beds in Greenland, in China, in Siberia,
and now in Namibia have shown that the period of biological innovation
occurred at virtually the same instant in geologic time all around the
world. ...just as the peculiar behavior of light forced physicists to
conclude that Newton's laws were incomplete, so the Cambrian explosion has
caused experts to wonder if the twin Darwinian imperatives of genetic
variation and natural selection provide an adequate framework for
understanding evolution..." Time, 12/4, 1995, p.67, 74
BLIND FAITH, Douglas Futuyma, "It is considered likely that all the animal
phyla became distinct before or during the Cambrian, for they all appear
fully formed, without intermediates connecting one form to another."
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, 1985, p.325
"Trees" Contradicted By Fossils, From Some Similarities, Ignoring Others
SEPARATE LIVING KINDS" Stephen J. Gould, Harvard, "Our modern phyla
represent designs of great distinctness, yet our diverse world contains
nothing in between sponges, corals, insects, snails, sea urchins, and
fishes (to choose standard representatives of the most prominent phyla).",
Natural History, p.15, Oct. 1990
SEPRATE FOSSIL KINDS" Valentine (U. CA) & Erwin (MI St.), "If we were to
expect to find ancestors to or intermediates between higher taxa, it would
be the rocks of the late Precambrian to Ordivician times, when the bulk of
the world's higher animal taxa evolved. Yet traditional alliances are
unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing then.",
Development As An Evolutionary Process, p.84, 1987.
"TREES" NOT FROM FOSSILS, Steven J. Gould, Harvard, "The evolutionary trees
that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their
branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of
the fossils.", Nat.His., V.86, p.13
STORY TIME, COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Nat.
History, "You say I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which
each type or organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line--there is not
one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." "It is
easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another.... But
such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them
to the test. .... I don't think we shall ever have any access to any form
of tree which we can call factual." HARPER'S, Feb.1984, p.56
ARBITRARY ARRANGEMENT, R.H.Dott, U.of Wis. & R.L.Batten, Columbia, AMNH,
"We have arranged the groups in a traditional way with the 'simplest' forms
first, and progressively more complex groups following. This particular
arrangement is arbitrary and depends on what definition of 'complexity' you
wish to choose. ...things are alike because they are related, and the less
they look alike, the further removed they are from their common ancestor."
EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH, p.602
Unrelated Look-Alikes, J.Z.Young, Prof. of Anatomy, Oxford, "...similar
features repeatedly appear in distinct lines. ...Parallel evolution is so
common that it is almost a rule that detailed study of any group produces a
confused taxonomy. Investigators are unable to distinguish populations that
are parallel new developments from those truly descended from each other."
LIFE OF THE VERTEBRATES, p.779
similarity IS NoT genetic, Sir Gavin Debeer, Prof. Embry., U.London,
Director BMNH, "It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed
that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor
explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed
to identity of genes. The attempt to find homologous genes has been given
up as hopeless." Oxford Biology Reader, p.16, Homology an Unsolved Problem
Embryonic Recapitulation?
R. H. DOTT, Univ. of WI, R. L BATTEN, Columbia Univ., A.M.N.H., "Much
research has been done in embryology since Haeckel's day, and we now know
that there are all too many exceptions to this analogy, and that ontogeny
does not reflect accurately the course of evolution." EVOLUTION OF THE
EARTH, p.86
SIMPSON & BECK, "Haeckel misstated the evolutionary principle involved. It
is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny."Intro.To
Biology, 1965,p.273
KEITH S. THOMPSON, Academy of Natural Sciences, "Surely the biogenetic law
is as dead as a doornail. It was finally exorcised from biology textbooks
in the fifties. As a topic of serious theoretical inquiry, it was extinct
in the twenties." American Scientist, 5/6, 1988, p.273 "Ontogeny and
Phylogeny Recapitulated"
Ashley Montagu, "The theory of recapitulation was destroyed in 1921 by
Professor Walter Garstang in a famous paper. Since then no respectable
biologist has ever used the theory of recapitulation, because it was
utterly unsound, created by a Nazi-like preacher named Haeckel."
Montagu-Gish Prinston Debate, 4/12/1980
"EMBRYONIC FRAUD LIVES ON," "Although Hacckel confessed...and was convicted
of fraud at the University of Jena, the drawings persist." New Scientist,
p.23, 9/6/97
Significant Change Is Not Observed
BOTHERSOM distresS, STEPHEN J. Gould, Harvard , "Every paleontologist knows
that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible
distress. ....They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the
same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And
yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they
don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it." Lecture at
Hobart & William Smith College, 14/2/1980.
"DESIGNS," S.J.Gould, Harvard, "We can tell tales of improvement for some
groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex
life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs
than a saga of accumulating excellence. ...I regard the failure to find a
clear 'vector of progress' in life's history as the most puzzling fact of
the fossil record. ...we have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to
find on a world that does not really display it." Natural History, 2/82,
p.2
Required Transitional Forms Missing
DARWIN'S BIGGEST PROBLEM, "...innumerable transitional forms must have
existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the
crust of the earth? ...why is not every geological formation and every
stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal
any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest
objection which can be urged against my theory". Origin of the Species.
MORE EMBARRASSING, David M. Raup, U. Chicago; Ch. F. Mus. of N. H., "The
evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with
darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was
completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because
it didn't look the way he predicted it would.... Well, we are now about 120
years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly
expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the
situation hasn't changed much. ....ironically, we have even fewer examples
of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean
that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record,
such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be
discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information."
F.M.O.N.H.B., Vol.50, p.35
PREDICTION FAILED, Niles Eldridge, Amer. Mus. N. H., "He [Darwin]
prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these
gaps by diligent search.... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological
research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will
not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a
miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction
was wrong." The Myths of Human Evolution, p.45-46
Proposed Links "Debunked"
TEXTBOOK DECEIT, GEORGE G. SIMPSON, "The uniform, continuous transformation
of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of
textbook writers never happened in nature." LIFE OF THE PAST, p.119
THE HORSE "STORY", Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist British Museum of
Natural History, "There have been an awful lot of stories, some more
imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life]
really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the
exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been
presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that
that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of
stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that
stuff." Harper's, p. 60, 1984.
TEXTBOOK HORSES, Bruce MacFadden, FL Museum of Natural History & U. of FL
"...over the years fossil horses have been cited as a prime example of
orthogenesis ["straight-line evolution"] ...it can no longer be considered
a valid theory...we find that once a notion becomes part of accepted
scientific knowledge, it is very difficult to modify or reject it" FOSSIL
HORSES, 1994, p.27
STORY TIME OVER, Derek Ager, U.at Swansea, Wales, "It must be significant
that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student....have now
been 'debunked.' Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years
looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved
them equally elusive.", PROC. GEOL. ASSO., Vol.87, p.132
"FOSSIL BIRD SHAKES EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESES, "Fossil remains claimed to be
of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been
found....a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who found the fossils,
says they have advanced avian features. ...tends to confirm what many
paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the
direct line to modern birds." Nature, Vol.322, 1986 p.677
REPTILE TO BIRD W.E. SWINTON, "The origin of birds is largely a matter of
deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the
remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved." BIOLOGY & COMPARATIVE
PHYSIOLOGY OF BIRDS, Vol.1, p.1.
Systematic Gaps
orders, classes, & phyla, George Gaylord Simpson, Harvard, "Gaps among
known species are sporatic and often small. Gaps among known orders,
classes, and phyla are systematic and almost always large.", EVOLUTION OF
LIFE, p.149
GENUINE KNOWLEDGE, D.B. Kitts, U.of OK, "Despite the bright promise that
paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some
nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the
presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate
forms between species and paleontology does not provide them... The 'fact
that discontinuities are almost always and systematically present at the
origin of really big categories' is an item of genuinely historical
knowledge.", Evolution, Vol.28, p. 467
NOT ONE! D.S. Woodroff, U.of CA, San Diego, "But fossil species remain
unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain
a single example of a significant transition." Science, Vol.208, 1980,
p.716 STEPHEN M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins U., "In fact, the fossil record
does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to
another." THE NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981, p.95
EVIDENCE-A MATTER OF FAITH, A.C. Seward, Cambridge, "The theoretically
primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the
type fails to materialize." Plant Life Through the Ages, p.561
"WE KNEW BETTER", Niles Eldredge, Columbia U., American Museum Of Natural
History, "And it has been the paleontologist- my own breed-who have been
most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: .... We paleontologist
have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual
adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.", TIME FRAMES,
1986, p.144
Punctuated Equilibrium
Unobserved imagined scenario to explain missing evidence,based on fossils
not found, mechanisms not observed
GOULD & ELDREDGE, "In fact, most published commentary on punctuated
equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several
paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion
that had previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and
I haven't found any evolution'. (R.A. REYMENT Quoted) "The occurrences of
long sequences within species are common in boreholes and it is possible to
exploit the statistical properties of such sequences in detailed
biostratigraphy. It is noteworthy that gradual, directed transitions from
one species to another do not seem to exist in borehole samples of
microorganisms." (H.J. MACGILLAVRY Quoted) "During my work as an oil
paleontologist I had the opportunity to study sections meeting these rigid
requirements. As an ardent student of evolution, moreover, I was
continually on the watch for evidence of evolutionary change. ...The great
majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at
all." Paleobiology, Vol.3, p.136
S. M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins "The record now reveals that species typically
survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more,
without evolving very much. We seem forced to conclude that most evolution
takes place rapidly...a punctuational model of evolution...operated by a
natural mechanism whose major effects are wrought exactly where we are
least able to study them - in small, localized, transitory
populations...The point here is that if the transition was typically rapid
and the population small and localized, fossil evidence of the event would
never be found." p.77, 110, New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981
Colin Patterson, B.M.N.H. "Well, it seems to me that they have accepted
that the fossil record doesn't give them the support they would value so
they searched around to find another model and found one. ...When you
haven't got the evidence, you make up a story that will fit the lack of
evidence." Darwin's EnigmA, p.100
Implication Of The Fossils
PALEONTOLOGY DOES NOT PROVE EVOLUTION, D.B. Kitts, U.of OK, "The claim is
made that paleontology provides a direct way to get at the major events of
organic history and that, furthermore, it provides a means of testing
evolutionary theories. ...the paleontologist can provide knowledge that
cannot be provided by biological principles alone. But he cannot provide us
with evolution.", Evolution, Vol.28, p.466
DON'T USE THE FOSSILS, Mark Ridley, Oxford, "...a lot of people just do not
know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the
main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the
fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or
punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory
of evolution as opposed to special creation." New Scientist, June, 1981,
p.831
FOSSILS INDICATE CREATION! E.J.H. Cornor, Cambridge "Much evidence can be
adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and
Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record
of plants is in favor of special creation." CONTEMPORARY BOTANICAL THOUGHT,
p.61
Fossils Do Not Support Evolution. Fossils Are Positive Evidence For
Creation!
Valentine (U. CA) & Erwin (MI St.), "We conclude that...neither of the
contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic
gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem applicable to the origin of new
body plans." Development As An Evolutionary Process, p.96, 1987.
THE NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981
NO VERTICAL CHANGE, NILES ELDRIDGE, Curator, American Museum Of Natural
History, "The classic cases of 'living fossils' reveal a more pervasive
conservatism: there seems to have been almost no change in any part we can
compare between the living organism and its fossilized progenitors of the
remote geological past. Living fossils embody the theme of evolutionary
stability to an extreme degree. ...Against them we might pit the
mutability, the evolutionary changeability, of disease-causing and
antibiotic-resistant staphylo-coccus bacteria, malaria pathogens, or the
dreaded retroviruses (that cause AIDS and other horrid afflictions): in the
short term, at least, evolutionary change in these microbes is extremely
rapid. And so we ask: what underlies this great disparity of evolutionary
rates?" FOSSILS, 1991, p.100
PERCY E. RAYMOND, Prof. of Paleontology, Harvard , "It is evidence that the
oldest Cambrian fauna is diversified and not so simple, perhaps, as the
evolutionists would hope to find it. Instead of being composed chiefly of
protozoans, it contains no representatives of that phylum but numerous
members of seven higher groups are present, a fact which shows that the
greater part of the major differentiation of animals had already taken
place in those ancient times.", PREHISTORIC LIFE, 1967 p.23
H.S. Ladd, UCLA, "Most paleontologists today give little thought to
fossiliferous rocks older than the Cambrian, thus ignoring the most
important missing link of all. Indeed the missing Pre-Cambrian record
cannot properly be described as a link for it is in reality, about
nine-tenths of the chain of life: the first nine-tenths.", Geo. So. of Am.
Mem. 1967, Vol.II, p.7
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