OM 8: The Record of the Rocks

Scientists look to the fossil record for the truth about the past, but what story does it really tell?

The fact of evolution is supposedly inscribed for all to see in the pages of the "record of the rocks," the layers of which contain fossils deposited throughout the ages. Yet a close examination of this geological history reveals the equivalent of missing pages, garbled transcriptions, and transposed passages. In the end, it's not so clear that the record supports evolution at all.

Charles Darwin himself outlined the central dilemma facing the evolutionists, who would expect to find support for the idea of gradual modification of species in the record of the rocks. In The Origin of Species Darwin wrote, "The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, must be truly enormous. Why then 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 most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."1

A century later, after decades of excavations and research, the same criticism still holds true. There is a striking absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. Professor N. Heribert-Nilsson of Lund University in Sweden writes, "It is not even possible to make a caricature of evolution out of paleobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that the lack of transitional series cannot be explained by the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."2

The plant and animal kingdoms are divided into broad divisions known as phyla. Yet each phylum appears with no clue to its origin in the fossil record. Noted French evolutionary zoologist Pierre-P. Grasse states, "From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjectures as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct."3

George Gaylord Simpson, professor of vertebrate paleontology at Columbia University, noted that all 32 orders of mammals appear fully developed in the fossil record. "This regular absence of transitional forms," he states, "is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists.4

The problem is so difficult to overcome that one school of evolutionists, headed by Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, felt compelled to come up with a new evolutionary theory to account for the gaps. They propose "punctuated equilibrium" as an explanation.

The punctuated equilibrium theory makes evolution invisible in the fossil record. A supposed change from species A to species B would take place in a small population in an isolated geographic location within a geological microsecond-a period too short to allow for fossils of intermediate forms to be deposited. Then the new species B would move from its isolated place of origin and expand throughout the entire range of the old species A. On a scale of millions of years the fossils of B would suddenly replace the fossils of A, giving the impression that B had emerged without intermediate forms. According to punctuated equilibrium advocates, this lack of transitional fossils is exactly what would be expected, and therefore they can claim that any given species has in fact evolved from an ancestral form without offering any proof from the fossil record. But a theory that allows no proving or disproving on the basis of physical evidence hardly qualifies as an adequate scientific explanation.

A major difficulty for those seeking support for evolution in the rock record is that the record is extremely incomplete. Only a fraction of the species thought to have ever existed are represented. David M. Raup, curator of Chicago's Field Museum, and Steven Stanley, a paleontologist at Johns Hopkins University, number about 130,000 fossil species in the collections of the world's museums, compared to an estimated 1.5 million living species. They calculate that 1 billion species have lived since the Cambrian, and of these more than 99.9% did not leave fossils.5 It is thus difficult to see how evolutionists can dare speak with such certainty about the supposed relationships of descent among species over billions of years.

One reason for evolutionists to be cautious is that because of erosion and other factors large parts of the sedimentary rock layers in which the record is embedded are themselves missing. Geologist Tjeerd H. van Andel studied early Cretaceous sandstones in Wyoming that span 6 million years. When he compared the amount of rock that was actually there to the amount that should have been deposited according to accepted rates of sedimentation, he came up with an astounding figure-the amount was only 2% of what it should have been. Instead of 6 million years worth of stone, there was only 100,000 years worth. That means a lot of sediment that should be there (fully 98%) is gone.

Van Andel discovered that the same study can be repeated almost anywhere with the same result.6 What happens is this-over the course of millions of years there is a process of continual erosion of old layers and deposition of new layers, with the end result being that only a small fragment of the total is left over in the so-called record of the rocks. At least 90-99% of the sedimentary layers are gone forever.

Even more remarkable than the fact that the greater part of the rock record is missing is the fact that we have barely scratched the surface of what's there. The estimated volume of sedmimentary rock deposits on the continental surfaces of the earth is about 134 million cubic miles. If, for example, 100,000 paleontologists were to divide up the task of examining just 1 cubic mile of rock, each would have to go through 1,472,000 cubic feet. If they all worked 8-hour days, 365 days a year, at a rate of 1 cubic foot every 10 minutes, it would take them 84 years just to investigate 1 cubic mile out of 134 million.

Some evolutionists might claim that all this explains why there is not enough fossil evidence to prove their theory, but this kind of reasoning cannot be accepted. It is ludicrous to say that because the evidence is not there and will probably never be found, the theory is right. Indeed there are undoubtedly many missing fossils, but there is no reason to suppose in advance that they would support the theory of evolution.