LIFE-FORMS IN A RUT

What the fossil record does show, according to paleontologists, is that most species don’t change but rather remain virtually the same for millions of years. They call this phenomenon stasis, which basically means you should not expect to grow a second head or third arm anytime in the foreseeable future.

Kemp forcefully summarizes the findings from the fossil record: “It is now indisputable that stasis … occurs in … probably a majority of cases of fossil species. … Equally it seems beyond dispute that speciation [macroevolution] usually occurs so rapidly … that the process is below the resolution of the fossil record.”¹⁴

In other words evolution rarely occurs, and when it does, it occurs so rapidly it leaves no fossil trail. Eldredge remarks, “No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen.”¹⁵ But wait. Didn’t Darwin theorize that all of life gradually evolved? How do Darwinists respond to this embarrassing lack of evidence?

According to Gould, with silence: “It’s not evolution so you don’t talk about it.”¹⁶ Gould, one of Darwin’s strongest advocates, also admits, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and notes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.”¹⁷

Paleontologist Whitey Hagadorn has intensely studied fossils of the early marine animal communities, looking for evidence of transitions. He remarks, “Paleontologists have the best eyes in the world. If we can’t find the fossils, sometimes you have to think that they just weren’t there.”¹⁸

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