Scientific Censure of the Fossil Record

The Trade Secret of Paleontology

On pg. 137 the 7^th  grade textbook Life Science says. “The most abundant evidence for evolution comes from fossils like those found on the shore of Lake Lavon in Texas” , However, they fail to inform the reader exactly what this abundant evidence consists of. After all, if evolution is true, museum shelves should be full of creatures with slowly forming wings, legs and partially formed eye sockets etc. There should be, according to Charles Darwin, millions of true transitionals between bird and mammals, reptile and birds, and all the other major kinds or classes of animals.

The textbook doesn’t mention any find of this type at all, instead they report on leaves, animal tracks and dead animals that are found buried in mud. While it’s true that animals have died in the past and been buried in mud, this isn’t evolution. Evolution is fish crawling out of the water and turning into reptiles, reptiles turning into mammals and birds, and eyes, lungs and arms forming where they previously failed to exist. But this is just the kind of fossil evidence the record doesn’t provide.

The reason the textbook doesn’t produce any real evidence for evolution is because of what is known among paleontologists as the “trade secret “of the fossil record.  Rather than giving evidence for evolution, the fossil record has long been a major source of embarrassment to the evolutionary community. And despite the fact we supposedly live in a culture of tolerance, it’s apparent the secular community has little tolerance for any science which contradicts it’s commitment to an atheistic, naturalistic view of origins.

As a matter of fact, the evidence is so lacking that a new theory of evolution called “punctuated equilibrium” was formulated for the express purpose of explaining the lack of transitions in the fossil record. The theory was put forth by paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History and enraged die-hard evolutionists like Richard Dawkins. The theory suggests that instead of the slow, gradual change that Darwin had suggested, evolution happened in quick bursts and so left no trace or evidence behind. Darwin said the fossil record failed to support evolution because they just hadn’t dug up sufficient fossils, but the new theory explains the lack of evidence quite differently.  Dawkins insisted (correctly) that it was biologically impossible for macro evolution to take place at such a fast rate, though he has publicly admitted (occasionally) that the fossil record favors the Creationists.

But either theory leaves us in the same place: the fossil record has little or no evidence of past evolutionary activity. As Gould said,

 “The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology“… “The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1.) stasis, they appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear. 2.) Sudden appearance, in any local area a species does not arise gradually… it appears all at once, fully formed.” Gould, (an evolutionists and Marxist) Natural History, 86:14, May 1977

   If we look around us today we see fish, birds, mammals and reptiles all coexisting and quietly reproducing after their own kind. If we look at the fossil record we see no evidence of any kind to suggest things were any different in the past. Yet the true nature of the fossil record remains an untold story to our students in the classroom.

 

The fossil record has not been supportive of evolution (only evolutionists quoted)

” The geological record is extremely Imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we don’t find the intermediates varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.” Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, pp.341- 342

” Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded… But the situation hasn’t changed much…We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition then we had in Darwin’s time.”   David Raup, paleontologist, Chicago Museum of Natural History, Bulletin 50 (1)’ ‘79

” Organisms either appeared on earth fully formed or not… if they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence” Futuyama, Science on Trial, 1983, p. 197 (Futuyama is an evolutionist)

Speaking of all the major groups of invertebrates in the fossil record, Dawkins said, ” It is though they were just planted there, without an evolutionary history. Needless to say , this …has delighted creationists” Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1987 p.229

” 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.” Futuyama. Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed. 1987, p.229

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists…as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species.” Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1858 ed.

“As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the fossil record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly.” Tom Kemp,  A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record,New Scientist, 108, Dec.5, 1985

 “Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine graduations, do we not every where see innumerable transitional forms, why is not  all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?” Darwin, Origin of Species, 1st ed. Penguin Library Edition, p.133

       Should not students be informed of the true nature of the fossil record?  As past evolutionary scientists have been honest enough to admit, it matches that which can be scientifically observed in nature today. Well defined groups of animals existing without any transitional forms and reproducing after their own kind, as the Book of Genesis so clearly predicted.