Evolution or Creation?
The Fossil Record
A transitional fossil is the fossil remains of a creature that exhibits primitive traits in comparison with the more derived life-forms it is related to. According to evolutionary theory, a transitional form represents an evolutionary stage.[74]
But the fossil record has been against the Darwinian theory from the very beginning. It's true that different kinds of organisms lived on the earth at different times. But what is not seen in the fossil record is the steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different. Instead, if something new shows up in the rocks, it shows up all at once and fully formed, and then it stays the same.[4]
If evolution means the steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different, then the fossil record contradicts evolution.[4]
Given the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, evolutionists quietly acknowledge this is still a "research issue".[34]
There is virtually nothing in the fossil record that can be used as evidence of a transitional life form When apparent examples of useful mutations are examined thoroughly, it becomes clear that no transitional creatures exist anywhere in the fossil record.[34]
John Bonner, a biologist at Princeton, writes that traditional textbook discussions of ancestral descent are "a festering mass of unsupported assertions." In recent years, paleontologists have retreated from simple connect-the-dot scenarios linking earlier and later species. Instead of ladders, they now talk of bushes. What we see in the fossils, according to this view, are only the twigs, the final end-products of evolution, while the key transitional forms which would give a clue about the origin of major animal groups remain completely hidden.[2]
The blank spots on evolutionary "tree" charts occur at just the points where, according to Darwin's theory, the crucial changes had to take place. The direct ancestors of all the major orders: primates, carnivores, and so forth are completely missing. There is no fossil evidence for a "grandparent" of the monkey, for example. "Modern gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere," writes paleontologist Donald Johansen. "They are here today; they have no yesterday." The same is true of giraffes, elephants, wolves, and all species; they all simply burst upon the scene de novo [anew], as it were.[2]
So many questions arise in the study of fossils (paleontology) that even many evolutionary paleontologists put little stock in the fossil record. Basing one's belief in evolution on the shaky ground of paleontology can scarcely be considered scientific.[40]
"We are about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have 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 a result of more detailed information .... " - D. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50 (1), p. 24, 25[57]
The fossil record is often so sparse that . . . there are numerous cases where groups survived for tens of millions of years [ET*] without leaving a single fossil.[64]
A criticism of the evolutionary idea was, and is, the lack of the hypothesized intermediates between one species and another. If land animals truly came from sea creatures, one would expect to find plenty of evidence of this, such as fossils of fish with their fins turning into legs. Darwin wrote in his Origin of Species that "innumerable transitional forms must have existed." The predicted large numbers of fossil intermediate forms were never found.[11]
* Evolutionary time scale.