Fossil record

Evolution is all about constant change, whether gradual or in leaps.  Consider a cloud in the sky: it is constantly changing shape due to natural forces.  It might look like, say, a rabbit now, and a few minutes later appear to be, say, a horse.  In between, the whole mass is shifting about.  In a few more minutes it may look like a bird.  The problem for evolution is that we never see the shifting between shapes in the fossil record.  All fossils are of complete animals and plants, not works in progress "under construction".  That is why we can give each distinct plant or animal a name.  If evolution's continuous morphing were really going on, every fossil would show change underway throughout the creature, with parts in various stages of completion.  For every successful change there should be many more that lead to nothing.  The whole process is random trial and error, without direction.  So every plant and animal, living or fossil, should be covered inside and out with useless growths and have parts under construction.  It is a grotesque image, and just what the theory of evolution really predicts.  Even Charles Darwin had a glimpse of the problem in his day.  He wrote in his book On the Origin of Species: "The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on 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."  The more fossils that are found, the better sense we have of what lived in the past.  Since Darwin's day, the number of fossils that have been collected has grown tremendously, so we now have a pretty accurate picture.  The gradual morphing of one type of creature to another that evolution predicts is nowhere to be found.  There should have been millions of transitional creatures if evolution was true.  In the "tree of life" that evolutionists have dreamed up, gaps in the fossil record are especially huge between single-cell creatures, complex invertebrates (such as snails, jellyfish, trilobites, clams, and sponges), and what evolutionists claim were the first vertebrates, fish.  In fact, there are no fossil ancestors at all for complex invertebrates or fish.  That alone is fatal to the theory of evolution.  The fossil record shows that evolution never happened.

This tiny fish (a little over an inch long, or 3 cm) is Haikouichthys.  Its fossils have been found in the Lower Cambrian, where the first complex creatures suddenly appear in the fossil record.  This "first fish" has a spine and spinal cord, eyes, gills, fins, scales, mouth, etc., though no jaw, like a lamprey.  About 500 were found buried together.32

This is Guiyu, a fossil fish that "represents the oldest near-complete gnathostome (jawed vertebrate)."38  It measures about 15 inches long, or 37 cm.  Clearly, the earliest fish were as much fish as today's fish.  Guiyu is "a representative of modern fishes" from the Silurian, before the so-called "age of fishes" (Devonian).9  In the evolutionist's mind, "a whole series of major branching events... must have taken place well before the end of the Silurian."  "A significant part of early vertebrate evolution is unknown."9

Coelacanth disappeared from the fossil record with the last of the dinosaurs.  That was supposedly 65 million years ago.  In the early 1900s, evolutionists touted it as the first walking fish, the transition between fish and tetrapods.  That is, until 1938 when one was found alive and unable to walk.  Evolution theory says that pressures from competition and the environment force changes over time.  In chapter 9 of his book, Darwin wrote of ancestor species in general: "If, moreover, they had been the progenitors of these orders, they would almost certainly have been long ago supplanted and exterminated by their numerous and improved descendants."  Here is a coelacanth today, alive and unchanged like many "living fossils".  Where is the evolution?

Fossil compound eyes from the Lower Cambrian, where the first complex creatures suddenly appear in the fossil record, have been found in the Emu Bay Shale of South Australia.  The fossils are supposedly about 515 million years old.  They may be corneas that were shed during moulting.  The lenses are packed tighter than Lower Cambrian trilobite eyes, "which are often assumed to be the most powerful visual organs of their time."  Notice that the lenses in the picture are different sizes.  It is the same in the fossils.  Each eye has "over 3,000 large ommatidial lenses".  "The arrangement and size-gradient of lenses creates a distinct [forward] 'bright zone'... where the visual field is sampled with higher light sensitivity (due to larger ommatidia) and possibly higher accuity".  This indicates "that these eyes belonged to an active predator that was capable of seeing in low light."  "The eyes are more complex than those known from contemporaneous trilobites and are as advanced as those of many living forms" today, such as the fly in this picture, "revealing that some of the earliest arthropods possessed highly advanced compound eyes".22  When the earliest form is the most complex, there is no evolution.

Evolutionists tell us this dragonfly has not shown up in the fossil record for 250-300 million years!  Dozens of the Ancient Greenling Damselfly live near Melbourne, Australia.  "The damselfly, part of the dragonfly group Odonata, is the only living representative of the family Hemiphlebiidae. Its ancient predecessors are found solely in 250-300 million-year-old fossil records from Brazil to Russia." --Smith, Bridie. January 5, 2010. Found: fossil-linked, listed damselfly. www.theage.com.au (newspaper website)

This is a drawing of a supposed predecessor, Protozygoptera.  With a wingspan of under 6 cm, it is the earliest damselfly-like insect ever found and "the origin of modern dragonflies".  Its fossil wing was found in rocks of the Upper Carboniferous which evolutionists think are about 300 million years old.  As with many creatures, dragonflies appear suddenly in the fossil record, fully formed.  Damselflies living today look like Protozygoptera; there are no transitional intermediates and there was no evolution. --Jarzembowski, E.A., A. Nel. 2002. The earliest damselfly-like insect and the origin of modern dragonflies (Insecta: Odonatoptera: Protozygoptera). Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Vol. 113, pp. 165-169.

Evolutionists always point to Archaeopteryx as the great example of a transitional creature, appearing to be part dinosaur and part bird.  However, it is a fully formed, complete animal with no half-finished components or useless growths.  Most people know "the stereotypical ideal of Archaeopteryx as a physiologically modern bird with a long tail and teeth".  Research now "shows incontrovertibly that these animals were very primitive".  "Archaeopteryx was simply a feathered and presumably volant [flying] dinosaur.  Theories regarding the subsequent steps that led to the modern avian condition need to be reevaluated." --Erickson, Gregory, et al. October 2009. Was Dinosaurian Physiology Inherited by Birds? Reconciling Slow Growth inArchaeopteryx. PLoS ONE, Vol. 4, Issue 10, e7390.

"Archaeopteryx has long been considered the iconic first bird."  "The first Archaeopteryx skeleton was found in Germany about the same time Darwin's Origin of Species was published.  This was a fortuituously-timed discovery: because the fossil combined bird-like (feathers and a wishbone) and reptilian (teeth, three fingers on hands, and a long bony tail) traits, it helped convince many about the veracity of evolutionary theory."  "Ten skeletons and an isolated feather have been found."  "Archaeopteryx is the poster child for evolution."  But "bird features like feathers and wishbones have recently been found in many non-avian dinosaurs".  "Microscopic imaging of bone structure... shows that this famously feathered fossil grew much slower than living birds and more like non-avian dinosaurs."  "Living birds mature very quickly and grow really, really fast", researchers say.  "Dinosaurs had a very different metabolism from today's birds.  It would take years for individuals to mature, and we found evidence for this same pattern in Archaeopteryx and its closest relatives".  "The team outlines a growth curve that indicates that Archaeopteryx reached adult size in about 970 days, that none of the known Archaeopteryx specimens are adults (confirming previous speculation), and that adult Archaeopteryx were probably the size of a raven, much larger than previously thought."  "We now know that the transition into true birds -- physiologically and metabolically -- happened well after Archaeopteryx." --October 2009. Archaeopteryx Lacked Rapid Bone Growth, the Hallmark of Birds. American Museum of Natural History, funded science online news release.

What evolutionists now know for sure is that their celebrity superstar was not a transitional creature after all.  Wow!  OMG.  They better find a new one fast...

How about the Platypus?  They could call it a transitional creature between ducks and mammals.  The furry platypus has a duck-like bill, swims with webbed feet, and lays eggs.

As for the birds in the evolutionary tree, evolutionists just placed living and extinct species next to each other to make the bird series.

The same is true for the famous horse series.  Looks great, doesn't it?  But each of the supposed ancestors is a complete animal.  They are not full of failed growths and there are no parts under construction.  There are many more differences between each type of animal than their size and the number of toes.  Every change in structure, function, and process would have had to develop through random trial-and-error if evolution was true, but no transitional forms have been found.  The fossils have not caught any changes in the midst of being created, even though they should have occurred over long periods of time.  In the late 1800's, evolutionists simply placed living and extinct species next to each other to make the horse series.  However, evolutionists no longer believe there was the direct ancestry (orthogenesis) shown in this chart...

Evolutionists now imagine it to be this branching bush.  Many of the supposed ancestors apparently lived at the same time, especially after Mesohippus.  It is doubtful that Hyracotherium (formerly Eohippus) has any connection to horses.  So the progression of toes is an illusion that was useful when the theory of evolution was first being sold to the public.  Several hundred species are extinct; only one genus, Equus, survives.

Rather than play the evolutionist's game and try to untangle varieties of one animal from another in the horse bush, let's be clear on what we are talking about. Biologists divide all living things into groups and subgroups. The basic framework is the Linnaean system of taxonomy, published in Linnaeus' expanded 10th edition of Systema Naturae in 1758. That was a century before Darwinism, and it was never intended to show that one creature morphed into another. It just grouped animals with similar characteristics. Once they seized control of the study of biology, evolutionists took over the Linnaean system and have tinkered with it ever since to fit their belief that animals transform over time. Birds are at the class level (Aves), which has 23 subgroups below it called orders and 142 subgroups below them called families. All the members of the evolutionist's horse bush, living and extinct, are in one family, (Equidae). To get up to the class level where birds are, you pass the order Perissodactyla (browsing and grazing mammals with an odd number of toes) to the class mammals (Mammalia). Other examples of families include cats (Felidae), dogs (Canidae), deer (Cervidae), bears (Ursidae), squirrels (Sciuridae), and cattle (Bovidae).

So the level of "evolution" in the horse bush is within a family, which is pretty low and has no relevance to the main issue, macroevolution.  But evolutionists have always used the varieties in the family Equidae to entice people to imagine that all animals morph from one kind to another.  Look at their tree of life for mammals, the class Mammalia.

Novacek, M.J. 1994. The Radiation of Placental Mammals, in Prothero, D.R. and Schoch, R.M. (editors) Major Features of Vertebrate Evolution. Paleontological Society Short Courses in Paleontology, No. 7, pp. 220-237.

That's right; they want us to believe that elephants and manatees, primates and tree shrews had common ancestors.  They show you three toes changing to one toe, browsing teeth changing to grazing teeth in the horse bush so that you will believe that reindeer and whales morphed from common ancestors.  That is why the horse series is an evolutionist icon.