Introduction

The idea of evolution, which materialists ever since Ancient Greece have employed to account for the origin of life, entered the world of science in the 19th century with Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species. Those who supported the materialist philosophy, which underwent an enormous rise during the 19th century, adopted the theory of evolution as an answer to the question of how life came into being, but did not question the theory’s scientific foundations.

Scientific discoveries from the second half of the 20th century began preparing the collapse of the theory of evolution.

Apart from making inferences from a number of biological observations, Darwin’s book did not offer any scientific proofs for his theory, leaving the question of evidence for later. In particular, he suggested that the fossils that he expected would support his theory would be discovered eventually.

The theory of evolution, fervently embraced despite its scientific weakness by those who denied the fact of Creation, shortly came to dominate the scientific world. From scientific magazines to school textbooks, the theory of evolution was portrayed as scientifically proven and the only valid explanation of the origin of life. Scientists who pointed out the errors and illogicalities of the theory were either silenced by threats to their academic careers or else accused of being dogmatic or anti-scientific. The proponents of materialist ideologies imposed the theory of evolution on entire systems of education and popular culture for 150 years, despite possessing no evidence for it, and employing only methods of propaganda.

From the second half of the 20th century onward, however, the privileged position that the theory of evolution had enjoyed among the scientific community became increasingly problematic. Observations and experiments in a wide range of scientific disciplines, from paleontology to biology and from anatomy to genetics, began to produce findings that argued against the theory. In the face of these new scientific findings, evolutionists suddenly found themselves and their theory on the defensive. By the beginning of the 21st century, the theory of evolution had become the subject of wide debates the world over. To a large extent, it had lost its former prestige and in many quarters was expected to collapse at any time soon. Between the lines, world-renowned scientific magazines such as Nature, New Scientist, Science and Scientific American began publishing frequent doubts about the theory of evolution.

What, then, were these findings which led to the sudden undermining of the theory of evolution? These can be grouped under three main categories:

1. Increasingly, biologists have discovered that living organisms consist of exceedingly complex structures. It has been shown that proteins, DNA and the cell, all possess irreducible complexity and cannot have come into being by chance, as the theory of evolution originally maintained. That impossibility has also been calculated mathematically.

2. It has now been accepted that natural selection and mutation, long proposed as the mechanisms of evolution, have no power to cause living species to evolve. Natural selection may weed out weak or sickly individuals, but brings no new genetic information to living organisms, and mutations merely damage existing genetic information.

3. The transitional forms that evolutionists expected to find in the fossil record— and which might be regarded as proof that species evolved from one another—have not been found. Fossils emerge suddenly and with all their particular features fully present, and the fossil record demonstrates that no species experienced any process of gradual change leading to its eventual disappearance.

This book deals with the third of these scientific developments which have undermined the theory of evolution—the fossil record.

Before moving forward, we need to stress that the absence of transitional forms from the fossil record is by itself sufficient to undermine the whole theory of evolution. Charles Darwin, the founder of the theory, actually admitted the truth of this! After inquiring into the absence of such forms, he wrote that “this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” 1

And today, one of the main objections to Darwin’s theory of evolution indeed, concerns the fossil record. Even among evolutionists, there is a serious dispute over how to interpret the fossil record. Fossils, one important source of scientific evidence regarding natural history, clearly refute the theory of evolution and show that life on Earth appeared suddenly, with no evolutionary process behind it—in other words that life forms were created.

NOTES

1 Charles Darwin (ed. J. W. Burrow), The Origin of Species, Penguin Books, Electronic Edition (2001), p. 292. 

Transitional Forms That Never Existed

If a process of evolution had really taken place on Earth, and had all living species actually descended from a single common ancestor, then some clear evidence of this would be discovered in the fossil record. The well-known French zoologist Pierre Grassé says this:

Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms... only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms.2

In order to see why this should be so, we need a brief look at the theory of evolution’s fundamental claim: that all living things are descended from one another. A living organism, which previously came into existence in a random manner, gradually turned into another, with all ensuing species coming into being—or evolving—that same way. According to this unscientific claim, all plants, animals, fungi and bacteria came into being in the same manner. The 100 or so different animal phyla (comprising such basic categories as mollusks, arthropods, worms and sponges) all descended from one single common ancestor. Again according to the theory, such invertebrates as these gradually, in the course of time and the pressure of natural selection, turned into fish, which turned into amphibians, which turned into reptiles. Some reptiles turned into birds, and others into mammals.

Charles Darwin

Evolutionary theory maintains that this transition took place gradually over hundreds of billions of years. That being the case, then countless numbers of transitional forms should have emerged and left some trace of their existence during the course of that immeasurably long period.

Half-fish, half-amphibian creatures, which still bore piscine characteristics despite having acquired four legs and lungs, should have lived in the past. Alternatively, reptile-birds that retained some reptilian features but had also acquired some avian ones must also have come into being. Since these species were part of a transitional process, they must also have been flawed, or even deformed. For instance, a transitional reptile’s front legs should have resembled bird’s wings a little more with every passing generation. But over the course of hundreds of generations, this creature will have neither completely functional front legs, nor completely functional wings—in other words it will exist in a flawed, handicapped form. These theoretical creatures which evolutionists believe to have lived in the past are known as transitional forms.

If creatures of that type really had existed in the distant past, then they must have been numbered in the millions, even in the billions, and their fossil remains should be excavated all over the world. Darwin accepted the logic of that, and himself stated why there should be a large number of transitional forms:

By the theory of natural selection all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the present day; and these parent-species, now generally extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient forms; and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of each great class. 3

What Darwin is referring to is that no matter how little difference there may be among living species today—between a pedigreed German shepherd dog and a wolf, for example—, the difference among the ancestors and the descendants which are claimed to have followed one another, needs to be equally small.

For that reason, had evolution really taken place as stated by Darwin, then it would progress in very minute, gradual changes. Effective change in a living thing subjected to mutation would have to be very small. Millions of minute tiny changes would need to combine over millions of years for legs to turn into functional wings, gills into lungs able to breathe air, or fins into feet able to run on land. Yet such a process would have to give rise to millions of transitional forms. Darwin drew the following conclusion in the wake of his statement:

So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great.4

Darwin also expressed the same point in other parts of his book:

If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed . . . Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains, which are preserved, as we shall in a future chapter attempt to show, in an extremely imperfect and intermittent record.5

However, Darwin was well aware that no fossils of such transitional links had ever been discovered. This he regarded as a major stumbling block for his theory. Therefore, in the chapter “Difficulties of the Theory” in On The Origin of Species, he wrote the following: :

But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such transitional forms? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.6

1. The fossils of perfect creatures 2. The fossils of transitional except in evolut forms, which never existed tionists’ dreams 3.The fossils of perfect creatures If the theory of evolution were correct, then there should be fossils of strange creatures, half-formed and with features belonging to two different species, in the fossil record, of the kind depicted here. Yet not one such creature has ever been found in the record.

In the face of this major dilemma, the only explanation Darwin put forward was the insufficiency of the fossil record of his time. He maintained that the missing transitional forms would inevitably appear once the fossil record was complete and was examined in detail.

However, fossil research of the last 150 years has revealed that the expectations of Darwin—and the evolutionists who followed him—were actually empty ones. Not a single fossil of any transitional form has ever been found. To date, there are around 100 million fossils, preserved in thousands of museums and collections. All of these are the remains of full-developed species with their own unique features, separated from all other species by definite, fixed characteristics. Fossils of half-fish, half-amphibians; half-dinosaur, half-birds, and half-ape, half-humans so confidently and definitely predicted by evolutionists, have never been encountered.

Despite being an evolutionist, Steven. M. Stanley of John Hopkins University admits as such:

Although a great many fossils of living things which existed billions of years ago, from bacteria to ants and from leaves to birds, are present in the fossil record, not a single fossil of an imaginary transitional form has ever been discovered.

The known fossil record is not, and never has been in accord with gradualism. . . Few modern paleontologist seem to have recognized that in the past century, as the biological historian William Coleman has recently written, 'The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.' In the next chapter, I will describe not only what the fossils have to say, but why their story has been suppressed.7

Curators in the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Ian Tattersall and Niles Eldredge describe how the fossil record contradicts the theory of evolution:

The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history—not the artifact of a poor fossil record.8

As these evolutionist scientists state, the true history of life can be seen in the fossil record, but there are no transitional forms within that history.

Other scientists also admit the absence of transitional forms. Rudolf A. Raff, Director of the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute, and Thomas C. Kaufmann, Researcher at Indiana University, write:

The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record.9

1: Right, a cowslip fossil. 2: Above, a present-day cowslip 3: Below, a 2-million-year-old ant embedded in amber and, top, a present-day ant 4: A fossil of a several millionyear-old maple leaf and present-day maple leaves 5:Bottom, the oldest flowering plant fossil so far discovered

There are even preserved fossils of bacteria that lived billions of years ago. Nevertheless, it is striking that not a single fossil of any imaginary transitional form has ever been found. Fossils exist of a great many species, from bacteria to ants and from birds to flower-bearing plants. Even fossils of extinct species have been preserved so well that we are able to appreciate the kinds of structures possessed by these once-abundant species, which we have never seen alive. The absence of even a single transitional form within such rich fossil sources demonstrates not the insufficiency of the fossil record, but the invalidity of the theory of evolution.

NOTES

2 Pierre P. Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms, New York: Academic Press, 1977, p. 4. 

3 Charles Darwin Op. cit., p. 281-283 

4 Ibid, Chapter IX, p. 293. 

5 Ibid, p. 211 (emphasis added). 

6 Ibid., pp. 291, 292. 

7 S. M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1981, p. 71. 

8 Niles Eldredge, Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 59. 

9 R. A. Raff, T. C. Kaufman, Embryos, Genes and Evolution: The Developmental Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 34. 

What Forms Should Transitional Species Take?

The following chapters will be examining those still-living species that, evolutionists claim, represent transitional links and demonstrating that these are not transitional links at all, but rather unique, perfect and flawless living things possessed of all the features of a distinct species. First, however, it will be useful to consider what any such transitional links should be like—according to the predictions of the theory of evolution.

Recall how, according to the theory, any transitional link comes into being. External factors such as radiation and chemical effects cause changes in the living thing’s DNA. The result is mutations that lead to various physical, anatomical changes in that living organism. According to the theory of evolution, when a species is repeatedly subjected to mutations over the course of many generations, it may transform itself into another species altogether. Again—according to the theory—natural selection selects the most useful of such mutations, combines them and thus gradually creates an entirely new biological structure. That is a brief summary of the theory of evolution’s claim regarding the origin of species.

According to the theory of evolution, species developed from one another by means of minute changes. If this claim by evolutionists were true, then transitional form creatures of the kind shown here should have been found. Yet there is not a trace of them.

In reality, however, mutations occur at random and generally have detrimental effects on the living organism in which they occur. When they are not actually destructive, they have no beneficial effect at all. Not a single situation in which mutations do any good has yet been identified. For that reason, it is impossible for mutations to benefit a living species and improve its chances of breeding and passing along its altered genes. In particular, it is impossible for mutations to transform a different living species with new features in incremental stages, starting from the very simplest, without damaging that living thing’s overall structure or the flawlessness of its functions, and without making its viability considerably more difficult.

5 1 2 3 4

One of the millions ofcomplete foot forms encountered (picture: 5) Defective transitional forms which should exist accordding to evolutionists,but which do not (Pictures: 1-4)

Since mutations are random and unintentional, they cannot construct in a series of moves a lung to help a fish move from the sea to the land. Neither can they, either immediately or in gradual stages, turn that creature’s fins into legs to bear its weight on land or let it walk comfortably without lurching. As a result of mutations, oddly shaped, deformed structures will emerge—somewhere between gills and lungs, fins and legs, scales and feathers, feet and wings, a four-legged posture and an upright one, crippled and with a great many abnormalities..

Top: Evolutionists Maintain That Living Things Assumed Their Present Forms in steges. Yet not a single axample of a transitional form has ever been found. (pictures: 1-5) a present-day dragonfly with its flawless structure (picture: 6) a dragonfly fossil,some 355-295 milion years old, is identical to present-day specimens. (picture: 7) Middle: Imaginary transitional forms which evolutionists claim must exist (pictures: 1-4) All of the living things found in the fossil record are flawless and complete. None of them are at transitional stages, as shown in this picture. This fact is an important proof that evolution never took place. a fossil of a complete bird (picture: 5) Bottom: Imaginary transitional forms, like those above, never existed.

Moreover, evolutionists hypothesize that this process will last for millions of years. Therefore, the number of such deformed transitional individuals will be much greater than the number of completed species, and such in-between fossils should be those most frequently encountered. According to evolutionists’ claims, every species we see today, and right down to the finest detail, every structure within those species, from eye sockets to ankles, from the tiny bones which constitute the fingers to the shape of the skull, from the shape of the rib cage to the number of vertebra—all came about gradually as the result of random mutations. This means that every organ, limb, and component of the species was also formed in stages until the final form of that species emerged at last.

Consider the skull, for example. All the creatures today and all those that once lived in the past possess flawless, smooth, symmetrical skulls with no deformations at all. According to the claims of evolutionists, however, skulls must have gone through a great many tentative stages until the first flawless one emerged. Skulls would have to assume a large number of asymmetrical forms before taking on a symmetrical appearance. Until they did assume a symmetrical appearance, billions of imperfect forms would have been preserved—for example, a preponderance toward the right, the jaw pointing more right or left, the nose being nearer the mouth, one ear being further back on the skull than the other, one eye socket being higher and more to the left etc. Alternatively, a number of useless and unnecessary bones should appear on such skulls, only to vanish a few generations later, since they serve no purpose. Yet no such skulls appear in the fossil record. They are all perfect and symmetrical, just like present-day skulls. The spaces between apertures for such organs as the eyes, ears and nose are also symmetrical and regular.

As can be seen in the illustrations, all known skulls are fully formed and regular, displaying no transitional characteristics. No matter which species they belong to, all have perfect structures, with no appearance of being half-formed or incomplete. These skulls did not come into existence by chance mutations or retain features of any transition from one species to another, just like those of present-day living things. If the theory of evolution were true, then there should be fossils with the kinds of lopsided, shapeless and deformed skulls shown on the preceding page. Yet there is no trace of such fossils in any strata, anywhere in the world. This definitively disproves the theory of evolution’s claims.

Like thosen in frame,all known human skulls are symmetrical,regular and complete. Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations,there is no trace in the fossil record of defective asymetrical skulls, like those without fraes and deliberately made.

For a clearer idea of how many odd structures and peculiar transitional forms the fossil record should contain, we need to focus on the evolutionist concept of coincidence. According to the theory, transitional forms come into existence quite unconsciously, entirely by chance. For instance, a random mutation affects the genetic structure of a creature, and a number of changes take place in its body structure. However, this mutation does not alter the living thing’s genetic structure entirely. For instance, while its hind legs are affected, its skull may remain the same. Whichever genes the mutation may impact on, there will be a change only in the structure or organs controlled by those particular genes. This is a piecemeal fantasy that can never actually come about.

1-An imaginary antelope transitional form which does no tappear in the fossil record 2-A regular antelope skull 3-An antelope with complete, symmetrical and flawless horns skull If living things really had come into being as the result of random mutations, as evolutionists would have us believe, then until, say, a rhinoceros’ or deer’s horns emerged, there would have been countless deformed and odd-looking horns. These would inevitably appear in the fossil record. Yet all the horns in that record are fully and perfectly formed.

As we know, all the features possessed by living things are concealed inside their DNA, which is analogous to an enclyclopedic data bank consisting of billions of units, or letters. Random mutations which affect those letters cannot make that information more useful because these mutations are devoid of conscious intent. For that reason, mutations will always corrupt data, not improve it.

If the theory of evolution were true, then we should freouently encounter in the fossil record defective and peculiar hand and arm structures,of the kind shown. Yet all the known hand and arm forms are exceptionally functional and regular...

Mutations that arise unconsciously cannot form a new, flawless structure. They always give rise to deformed, lopsided and deficient ones. Human hands, according to the theory of evolution, are the work of random mutations—which actually cannot give rise to hands that are aesthetically pleasing, functional, able to sculpt statues, grasp, and feel.

Until they reach the most ideal level (something which mutations can never actually do), they must construct a sequence of deformed hands, arms, feet and legs. For instance, every finger needs to go through millions of phases before attaining its present length. According to evolutionists’ claims, every generation will attempt a large number of trial sequences to produce fingers from wrists until they are finally arranged in the correct order.

If you randomly flung Scrabble tiles with letters on them onto the board, you cannot expect them to line up in a regular order and create meaningful words, much less sentences. Neither can you expect random mutations to form hands of fingers, arm or leg bones, in any regular, functional and aesthetic order.

Imaginry, defective foot bone structures not found anywere in the fossil record (pictures: 1-4) A regular human foot bone (picture: 5) The imaginary, defective foot structures in shown above (pictures: 1-4) are of such a kind as to prevent a human being walking, or even standing upright. Yet all the known foot-bone fossils possess an ideal design. No abnormalities of this sort are encountered.

For instance, the bones in your foot have been specially designed to let you walk in the most ideal, least tiring manner, and to keep to a minimum perception of your body’s weight. . The arch of your foot supports those bones against the weight of your body. For that reason, soles with “fallen arches” have difficulty in walking. If we accept the evolutionist claims as correct, foot bones would have to go through an infinite number of phases before reaching this ideal state. But in fact, fully formed and flawless feet always appear in the fossil record, and never mid-phase ones.

Imaginary, defective backbone forms (picture: 1-3) Actual Human Backbone (picture: 4) The real human backbone is exceedingly regular and possesses the ideal flexible design to keep the body upright. No trace is to be found of transitional-form backbones that evolutionists claim must have existed.

According to evolutionists’ claims, malformed phases of a backbone should also be encountered in the fossil record. The human backbone consists of 33 small, round bones known as vertebra, set one above the other, and is of vital importance to any vertebrate, not just human beings. The backbone bears all the weight of the upper part of the human body. The spine’s curved S shape permits equal load distribution. With every step you take while walking, a counter-force is set up from the ground because of your body’s weight. Thanks to the shock absorbers possessed by the backbone and its force-distributing curved shape, this force does no damage to your body. Were it not for these shock absorbers and S shape, then the force set up would be transferred directly to your skull, and the top of the backbone would wear away the base of the skull and enter the brain. All the vertebrae of the backbones of creatures portrayed as man’s alleged ancestors are exceedingly regular. The oldest known vertebrates, fish from the Cambrian Period, and all the fish and land vertebrates which appeared after them possess regular spinal structures, unique to their body’s shape. There are no transitional forms between any of them.

If the stage-by-stage development proposed by evolutionists had actually taken place, then there should have been vertebrates starting with two or five vertebrae, like those above. Yet there is no sign of such species in the fossil record. On the contrary, all the known backbones possess their perfect, present-day forms.

1- A 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx fossil 2- Archaeopteryx, shown on the left, is claimed by evolutionists to be a transitional form, but has actually been proved to be a fully flying bird. 3- A 410-million-year-old coelacanth fossil 4- The “living fossil” coelacanth, still alive today, is a fully formed fish. The living things that evolutionists maintain represent transitional forms are actually species with complete and flawless structures. They have no transitional characteristics whatsoever.

Again according to the theory of evolution, chance must have produced hundreds of thousands of transitional forms until arriving at these perfectly formed vertebrae. Until the curved S shape was reached in humans, for instance, there must have been a great many transitional forms, until the point was reached when the backbone would not impact the skull bone. The 33 components of the human backbone could not have come into being suddenly, but would be built stage by stage over thousands of generations. This incremental development, of course, would leave behind at least some traces in the fossil record, and very early fossils with two vertebrae, five vertebrae and twelve vertebrae would be found. However, what actually appears in the record is vertebrates with the most suitable structures and features for the body shape in question. In terms of form and structure, none is deformed, defective, or incomplete. On the contrary, they are perfect. No transitional backbones of the type seen in the pictures below have been encountered anywhere in the fossil record.

All species, living or extinct in the fossil record, are present fully formed and in the most perfect states. The species that evolutionists propose as transitional forms exhibit none of the features of such evolving anatomies. They have no missing or intermediate-stage organs or structures. There are no half-formed or missing features in their skulls, backbones, hands or feet. All living things exist in their most perfect states.

He created the heavens and the earth with truth.He is exalted above anything they associate with him.He created man from a drop of sperm and yet he is an open challengerl and he created livestock.There is warmth for you in them,and various uses and some you eat.And there is beauty in them [livestock]for you in the evening vhen you bring them home and in the morning when you drive them out to graze. (Surat an-Nahl:3-6)

There are no fossilized forerunners to dragonflies, owls, fish or squirrels, for instance, in the Earth’s strata. There are no strange fossils vaguely reminiscent of a dragonfly, slightly resembling an owl, or that also bear partial features belonging to other, later species. All these facts demonstrate that the theory of evolution’s claim of living things that developed in stages over millions of years is a complete fantasy. Despite all the studies and quests for proof by evolutionists over roughly the last century and a half, not a single piece of evidence to back up their claims has ever been found.

The Cambrian Explosion: A Paleontological Refutation of Darwinism

Darwin suggested that living things are descended from a single common ancestor and gradually became differentiated from one another. If that is really the case, then at the very beginning, very simple—and similar—living things should have emerged. Again according to the same claim, the way that species gradually grew apart and distinct from one another, and the increase in their complexity, should have taken place over a very long period of time.

In short, according to Darwinism, any chart of evolution should resemble a tree, springing from a single root but later dividing up into separate, increasingly distant branches. Indeed, that hypothesis is insistently emphasized in Darwinist sources, and the image of the tree of life is frequently employed. According to this tree of life metaphor, all phyla—the basic classificatory units that categorize living things according to their bodily plans—should also have emerged gradually.

According to Darwinism, smaller and simpler species should have appeared first and given rise to a phylum over the course of time. Other phyla should very gradually, by a process of minute changes, eventually emerge. According to this hypothesis, there must have been a gradual increase in the number of animal phyla.

However, the fossil record conclusively demonstrates that these assumptions are incorrect. Contrary to evolutionist claims, members of the animal kingdom have been very different from one another and very complex ever since they first appeared. All the phyla known today—and others, as well—appeared on Earth at the same time, during the geological era now known as the Cambrian Period.

A 545-million-year-old trilobite fossil

This period, when all presently known animal phyla emerged, is a geological era that lasted about 65 million years and took place between 570 and 505 million years ago. Yet the period in which just about all the known phyla appeared is a much smaller interval within the Cambrian Period itself, and is calculated to have lasted no more than 10 million years. In geological terms, that is a very brief time indeed!

The sudden emergence of life, in all its variety and with all its different bodily structures within such a short space of time, runs completely contrary to Darwinism’s expectations. The way that a number of the phyla that emerged during the Cambrian subsequently became extinct, along with the failure of any new phyla to emerge, reinforces this contradiction. Life did not increasingly broaden and assume greater variety, as evolutionists would have us believe. Rather, it began in many different forms and increasingly narrowed down.

One of the world’s most prominent critics of Darwinism, Professor Philip Johnson of University of California, describes these events as being in clear contradiction of Darwinism:

Darwinian theory predicts a “cone of increasing diversity,” as the first living organism, or first animal species, gradually and continually diversifies to create the various levels of the taxonomic order. The animal fossil record more resembles such a cone turned upside down, with the phyla present at the start and thereafter decreasing.10

The Burgess Shale fossil bed region in the Canadian province of British Columbia 1: A velvet caterpillar 2:A shrimp-like trilobite 3:A hyolithid 4:A hard-spined larva 5:A hairy larva 6:A batrak-like organism

As Johnson points out, far from phyla emerging in stages, all of them came into being suddenly, and some even became extinct during the periods which followed. In the earlier Precambrian Period, there were only three phyla, all consisting of single-celled and simple multi-celled life forms. In the Cambrian Period, on the other hand, 60 to 100 different animal phyla suddenly emerged. A number of these became extinct in the period which followed, with only a few of these phyla surviving down to the present day.

Science journalist Roger Lewin refers to this extraordinary situation, which completely cuts the ground from under the feet of all of Darwinism’s regarding the history of life:

Described recently as “the most important evolutionary event during the entire history of the Metazoa,” the Cambrian explosion established virtually all the major animal body forms—Bauplane or phyla—that would exist thereafter, including many that were “weeded out” and became extinct. Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100.11

Professor emeritus of integrative biology James W. Valentine, the paleontologists Stanley Awramik, Philip W. Signor, and Peter Sadler make this comment about the Cambrian explosion:

Taxa recognized as orders during the [Precambrian-Cambrian] transition chiefly appear without connection to an ancestral clade via a fossil intermediate. This situation is in fact true of most invertebrate orders during the remaining Phanerozoic as well. There are no chains of taxa leading gradually from an ancestral condition to the new ordinal body type.12

Darwin was aware of the rich variety of life that suddenly emerged in the Cambrian. Even if not so clearly as it is today, the extraordinary situation in the Cambrian Period was already realized, and Darwin recognized this as a major difficulty confronting his theory. As he wrote in On the Origin of Species:

There is another difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known [Cambrian-age] fossiliferous rocks.13

Darwin regarded the Precambrian Period as the only way of accounting—from the evolution point of view—for the living things that suddenly emerged immediately thereafter, during the Cambrian. If there had been a large number of very different and complex living groups in the Precambrian, then he would claim that these were the ancestors of the living species in the Cambrian. Darwin said,

Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures.14

In the face of the possibility that no trace of a living thing was found in the Precambrian, he proposed that the fossil record was insufficient, and that the extreme heat and pressure of the overlying strata had destroyed the oldest fossils.15

Relying on inadequate studies, Darwin set out excuses like this in his On the Origin of Species. In our time, however, the fossil record and geological strata have been sufficiently studied, and fossil beds older than the Cambrian have been found and examined. The present state of knowledge about the Precambrian is much more reliable than what was possessed by Darwin.

Paleontologists have discovered Cambrian rocks with rich, well-preserved fossil beds in Wales, Canada, Greenland and China. Rather than resolving Darwin’s dilemma, the relatively large quantities of Cambrian and Precambrian fossils have added entirely new ones. To such an extent, in fact, that the majority of paleontologists, even including prominent evolutionists, are convinced that the major animal groups emerged during the early part of the Cambrian Period, and evidently had no predecessors.

This phenomenon began to be referred to, even in evolutionist publications, as “The Cambrian Explosion” and “The Biological Big Bang.”

Attempts to Salvage Darwinism in the Face of the Cambrian Explosion

Despite Darwin’s knowledge that fossils of “new” species appeared suddenly during the Cambrian Period, the full importance and scope of the matter was not realized until 1980. However, when by the paleontologists Harry B. Whittington, Derek Briggs and Simon Conway Morris re-examined fossils found in the Burgess Shale in Canada’s British Columbia, the Cambrian explosion came to light. The 1980s also saw the discovery of two new fossil regions resembling the Burgess Shale: Sirius Passet in Northern Greenland and Chengjiang in Southern China. Fossils of utterly different living things that first emerged during the Cambrian period were found in both these regions. The Chengjiang fossils were the oldest and best-preserved of these, and also contain the first vertebrates.

In its February 1999 edition, the well-known scientific publication Trends in Genetics (TIG) discussed the Burgess Shale fossil discoveries and accepted that they could not possibly be explained in terms of the theory of evolution:

It might seem odd that fossils from one small locality, no matter how exciting, should lie at the center of a fierce debate about such broad issues in evolutionary biology. The reason is that animals burst into the fossil record in astonishing profusion during the Cambrian, seemingly from nowhere. Increasingly precise radiometric dating and new fossil discoveries have only sharpened the suddenness and scope of this biological revolution. The magnitude of this change in Earth’s biota demands an explanation. Although many hypotheses have been proposed, the general consensus is that none is wholly convincing.16

These ideas, none of which “is wholly convincing,” are those of evolutionist paleontologists, who offer forced explanations to defend the theory of evolution in the face of the Cambrian explosion. However, they are unable to have these alibis accepted, even by one another.

Evolutionist Justification That the Fossil Record is İnsufficient and Fragmentary

The first excuse for the Cambrian explosion that evolutionists put forward is the claim that the fossil record is insufficient. Because of their great age, most fossils of living things from the Precambrian have not survived, they suggest—for which reason the “surviving” remains give the impression that living things emerged suddenly.

The fact is, however, that the fossil record is not deficient, as evolutionists would have us believe. Today, many strata belonging to the later part of the Precambrian and the Cambrian have been unearthed. Paleontologists have become convinced that if the ancestors of Cambrian living things had existed during the Precambrian, we would have found them by now. According to paleontologists James W. Valentine of California Universty and Douglas Erwin, of the Smithsonian Institute, the fossil record from the Cambrian period is as complete as more recent fossil strata, which also display similar features and time gaps.

Despite that, however, Valentine and Erwin arrive at the following conclusion, stating that their ancestors or transitional forms are unknown.“Explosion is real; it is too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record.”17

In an article in February 2000, the British geologists M. J. Benton, M. A. Wills and R. Hitchin wrote that “the older fossil records are adequate to recount important events in the history of life,”18 thus announcing that there could be no question of using the insufficiency of the fossil record as an excuse.

Evolutionist Justification That Small and Soft-Bodied Creatures Left no Fossils Behind Them—

Another excuse evolutionists employ with regard to the Cambrian explosion—that small and soft-bodied creatures left no fossils behind them—is similarly invalid. According to this reasoning, the ancestors of animal phyla are not found in the Precambrian because they were very tiny and had no hard structures, and so left no fossils behind them. Yet this is not actually the case: There are numerous fossils of soft-bodied organisms. Nearly all of the fossils in the Ediacara Hills in Australia, for example, consist of soft-bodied creatures. In his 1998 book The Crucible of Creation, Simon Conway Morris writes that “First, in the Ediacaran organisms there is no evidence for any skeletal hard parts . . . Ediacaran fossils look as if they were effectively soft-bodied.”19 The same applies to some fossils from the Cambrian Period. For instance, there are a number of fossils of soft-bodied living things in Burgess Shale. According to Conway Morris, “these remarkable fossils reveal not only their outlines but sometimes even internal organs such as the intestine or muscles.”20

An arthropod (left) and a slug-like creature (right) found in the Burgess Shale.

To make it clear that fossilization is not that difficult a process, recall that fossil bacteria have even been found: Micro-fossils of bacteria have been discovered in sedimentary rock layers more than 3 billion years old!

In short, the evolutionary ancestors of the life forms that emerged in the Cambrian Explosion have not been found in the Precambrian Period, but not because those life forms were soft-bodied.

In conclusion, evolutionists are unable to find any excuse for the Cambrian Explosion. This sudden appearance of life on Earth proves that the theory of evolution is wrong.

The Cambrian Explosion Is a Proof of God’s Creation

The more one examines the Cambrian Explosion, the clearer becomes that grave dilemma that it represents for the theory of evolution. Recent discoveries show that almost all phyla, the basic categories of animal life, emerged suddenly during the Cambrian Period. One article, published in Science magazine in 2001, states, “The beginning of the Cambrian period, some 545 million years ago, saw the sudden appearance in the fossil record of almost all the main types of animals (phyla) that still dominate the biota today.”21

The same article also explains that for such complex and very different life forms to be explained in terms of the theory of evolution, fossil beds from earlier periods revealing a very rich and gradual development need to be found. But such a thing is out of the question: “This differential evolution and dispersal, too, must have required a previous history of the group for which there is no fossil record.”22

A trilobite: one of the complex living things found in Cambrian strata

The scenario revealed by Cambrian Period fossils refutes the assumptions of the theory of evolution on the one hand, while on the other, constituting important evidence that living things came into being by means of conscious Creation. The evolutionist biologist Douglas Futuyama expounds on this fact:

Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification. If they did appear in fully formed state, they must have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.23

As you have seen, the fossil record shows that living things did not follow a progression from the primitive to the more developed, as the theory of evolution would have us believe. Rather, living things emerged suddenly and in the most perfect state. This, in turn, constitutes proof that life came into being not by random natural processes, but by conscious Creation. Jeffrey S. Levinton, a professor of ecology and evolution from New York State University, accepts as much in an article he wrote for Scientific American magazine titled “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution.” As he says, “Therefore, something special and very mysterious—some highly creative ‘force’—existed then.”24

NOTES

10 Phillip E. Johnson, “Darwinism’s Rules of Reasoning,” http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/drr.htm 

11 Roger Lewin, Science, vol. 241, 15 July 1988, p. 291. 

12 James Valentine, Stanley Awramik, Philip W. Signor and Peter Sadler, “The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary,” Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 25, 1991, pp. 279, 281. 

13 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter X, London: John Murray, 1859. 

14 Charles Darwin, Op. cit., Chapter IX, p. 313. 

15 Ibid. 

16 Gregory A. Wray, “The Grand Scheme of Life,”,” review of The Crucible Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals by Simon Conway Morris, Trends in Genetics, February 1999, Vol. 15, no. 2. 

17 James W. Valentine et al., “The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary,” Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 25, 1991, p. 318. 

18 M. J. Benton, M. A. Wills and R. Hitchin, “Quality of the Fossil Record Through Time,” Nature, Vol. 403, 2000, pp. 534-536. 

19 Simon Conway Morris, The Crucible of Creation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 28. 

20 Ibid., p. 2. 

21 Richard Fortey, “The Cambrian Explosion Exploded?,” Science, Vol. 293, no. 5529, 20 July 2001, pp. 438-439. 

22 Ibid. 

23 Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial, New York: Pantheon Books, 1983, p. 197 (emphasis added). 

24 Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,” Scientific American, Vol.