The Truth Revealed by the Fossil Record

But where does the "evolution-paleontology" relationship, which has taken subconscious root in society over many decades, actually stem from? Why do most people have the impression that there is a positive connection between Darwin's theory and the fossil record whenever the latter is mentioned? The answer to these questions is supplied in an article in the leading journal Science:

A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, andsome pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.

N. Eldredge and I. Tattersall also make an important comment:

That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ...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 is wrong.

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.54

Likewise, the American paleontologist Steven M. Stanley describes how the Darwinist dogma, which dominates the world of science, has ignored this reality demonstrated by the fossil record:

The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured. ... 'The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin's stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.' ... their story has been suppressed.55

Let us now examine the facts of the fossil record, which have been silenced for so long, in a bit more detail. In order to do this, we shall have to consider natural history from the most remote ages to the present, stage by stage.

54 N. Eldredge, and I. Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 45-46.(emphasis added)
55 S. M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, Basic Books Inc., N.Y., 1981, p. 71. (emphasis added)