Origins: What Does the Fossil Evidence Reveal?

   In 1859 Charles Darwin published a book entitled The Origins of
Species by Means of Natural Selection.  This one book has spawned
hundreds more and raised controversy in religion, science, education,
and government.  People in all walks of life have been effected whether
a person is an atheist or a believer in a deity. Most of Darwin's
conclusions are based on what he observed in the fossil record.  This,
of course, would be the place to come to look for evidence to support
his theory of evolution.  Here in the fossil record the remains of
creatures that lived perhaps millions of years ago would be found. 
This is exactly the same place that creationists go for evidence to
support the theory of creation.  Just how well does the fossil record
support one theory or the other?

   In discussing the origins of life we are concerned with how the
world and the multitudes of living organisms all came into being. 
There are only two accepted models used when speaking of origins.  The
first and most widely accepted viewpoint is that of evolution.  The
evolution theory requires extremely long time spans; some scientists
believe that it took as long as three billion years for life to reach
the complexity that we see today (Volpe 144).  Long time periods are
needed because evolution works slowly with chance and natural selection
guiding structural change.  Another require- ment of evolution is that
life occured spontaneously by accident from non-life.  The origin of
life is a process which is innate in matter (Gish 17).  All life, as we
know it today, emerged from single celled organisms which evolved over
billions of years.  Evolution also mandates that geologic processes on
earth have been uniform. That is to say, there have been no sudden
changes in geography or the environment here on earth.  Man and apes
have a common ancestor; the universe and our solar system have all
ocurred through natural processes.

   In order for evolution to be true, the fossil evidence must support
the evolution model.  The slow and gradual change necessary to bring
about highly complex creatures should be clearly shown in preserved
animal remains.  During the billions of years that evolution has been
operating there must be millions and millions of transitional forms of
life.  These transitional forms would be in the process of changing
from one form to another.  The change may be from invertebrate to
vertebrate or from fish to amphibian. It is believed that lizards
evolved into birds.  To support this tremendous change in form and
function we can expect to find fossil evidence which is rich in
transitional forms.  This means that creatures will be found with
partially formed wings or fea- thers or front leg structures that have
partially changed to wings. The evidence of the transitional form is
critical to the evolution model.

   The creationist has an obviously divergent point of view. The earth
is relatively young.  Its age is on the order of tens of thousands of
years.  Earth's geology has been one of catastrophy rather than
uniformity.  All life occured through the willful act of a Designer. 
Each type of species was complete and highly complex at the moment of
creation.  Life has not become more complex with the passage of time. 
Any change in speciation has been small and limited to particular kind.
 These changes are controlled by the constraints of genetics.  Man and
apes are not related. Again we can say that the evidence in the fossil
record must support the theory.  The creationist would not expect to
find transitional forms, but rather, highly complex creatures should
appear in the sedimentary rock.  There should be no evidence of any
gradual change from one kind to another.

   Before going any further, it is important to establish one other
point.  Neither theory, creation or evolution, can be proven in the
laboratory.  Evolution requires tens of millions of years for any
observable changes to occur.  It is intuitively evident that it is not
possible to conduct an experiment over such a vast time period.
Creation has a problem of even greater magnitude. For creation to be
true, it must be proven that it occured through divine intervention.
This is a major obstacle for the theory. Again, it is impossible to
perform any such experiment in the lab- oratory.  We now have a dilemma
because neither of these two theories can be proven in a controlled
situation.  Here is where the fossil evidence will prove to be of such
great importance.  The fossils are a historical record of what
creatures existed in the past. This historic information can be used
with the two origin models we have established.  By comparing the
historical evidence with what can be expected on the basis of these two
origin models we should be able to see which model best fits the
evidence.

   The fossils which are found around the world give scien- tists an
accurate picture of species which existed in the past. Fossils are
generally found in sedimentary rocks.  Most scientists believe that
these rock deposits were formed over many millions of years.  A
classification system has been devised which dates rocks by the type of
fossils in them.  Specific fossil remains are used to classify and date
each layer of rock.  The less complex early forms of life would be
found in the oldest rocks.  Inverti- brates would be in rocks older
than those containing vertebrates. The fossils used for this dating
method are called index fossils. The resulting layers of rock and their
corresponding dates are called the Geologic Column.

   The Geologic Column is generally represented vertically with the
oldest rocks appearing at the bottom.  Each layer repres- ents a time
period in the earth's history.  Scientists generally feel that it has
taken hundreds of millions of years for these layers of fossils to have
accumulated.  It should be mentioned at this point that the Geologic
Column is not found in its entirety throughout the world.  In many
places there are large gaps and dis- continuities in the column.  At
other locations the oldest rock strata appear on the surface and the
younger layers are in an inverted order below the surface. 
(Morris-Parker 198)

   The oldest sedimentary rocks known to contain any preserved remains
are the Cambrian Rocks.  These rocks are considered to be as old as six
hundred million years.  These rocks contain life forms such as corals,
jellyfish, crustaceans, trilobites, and brachiopods. In fact,
scientists have found every one of the major invertibrate life forms in
the Cambrian Rocks.  Many of these fossils are highly complex. 
Researchers have also found trilobites with their eyes in excellent
fossilized condition (Levi-Setti 24).  Trilobites are remark- able
creatures which are now extinct.  They are marine invertebrates which
varied in size from several inches to over one foot.  Scien- tists have
used the electron microscope to study the remains of these prehistoric
animals.  The geometric precision of their eyes is starling (Levi-Setti
33).  Some authorities believe that the trilobite had vision which was
as good as we have today (Gish WFSI). What an amazingly intricate
organism to find in the Cambrian Rock layer!  Darwin believed that one
of the major obstacles to his theory was "organs of extreme perfection
and complication "(Darwin 223).  He marveled at the eye's ability to
focus and adjust for various levels of light, as well as its
corrections for sperical and chromatic aberration (Darwin 224).

   The discovery of the complexity of trilobites is remarkable when it
is considered that Cambrian Rocks are the oldest sediment- ary rocks
and should therefore have the simplest forms of life. Based on the
evolution model the oldest rocks will have fossils of primitive life
forms.  This does not appear to follow the evolu- tion model. 
Scientists are hard pressed to explain the appearance of such a complex
species in such extremely old rocks.  How does this discovery fit in
with the requirements of the creation model? The creationist believes
that highly intricate forms of life appeared abruptly.  This finding is
favorable to the position of the creationist.

   If the Cambrian Rocks contain the oldest known fossil remains, what
can we expect to find in Precambrian Rocks?  Before answering that
question, let's consider what might be possible based on our two model
approach to origins.  Evolution requires long time periods and slow
gradual change.  Therefore, based on the evolu- tion model we would
expect to find simple forms of life which lived prior to Cambrian
times.  The older rocks should contain evidence of the ancestors of
trilobites and brachiopods.  The continuity of slow and gradual change
should be maintained in the evidence found in the sedimentary rocks. 
On the other hand, the creation model would suggest a sudden appearance
of complicated forms of life. Considering the creation model further ,
the Precambrian Rocks might contain other complex life forms or
possibly no life forms at all.  In fact scientists have not found any
fossils in Precambian Rock (Gish 45).  This supports the creation model
and leaves evolution with a lack of data.

   Another look at the fossil record will reveal an interesting fact. 
The creationist theorizes that life appeared suddenly and in
complicated form with many varieties.  The evolutionist believes that
life became more complex through slow and gradual change.  If evolution
is to support its model then there should exist millions and millions
of fossils that are preserved in a state of change. That is to say, the
environment and natural selection forced species to go through a change
of structure.  The invertebrates slowly and gradually changed and gave
life to the vertebrates. In that case, the fossil record must be full
of creatures which are in a state of transition.  Some may have
one-half or one-quarter of a back bone while others may have a backbone
that is too large for their body structure.  The fossil record should
have myriad transitional forms.  In the same manner, the fossil
evidence should document the tremendous change from lizard to bird. 
The change from the scales of a lizard to the feathers of a bird should
be well represented in the fossil record.  This is a dramatic change
from a crawling animal to a flying animal.  Such a quantum leap in
structure and function should be supported by millions of years of
fossil evidence.  What in fact does the fossil record reveal with
regards to transitional forms?  There is a lack of trans- itional forms
in the fossil record (Morris 83).  Darwin attributed this deficiency of
evidence to the relatively short life of paleon- tology at the date his
book was published (1859).  However, in the more than one hundred years
that have transpired, the evidence of transitional forms has not
improved (Morris-Parker 96).  Since Darwin's time, paleontologists have
been baffled by the lack of transitional forms (Coffin 424).  Instead
of a history of change and transition the evidence shows stability of
species.  Each species has remained relatively fixed.  There is a
variability about a mean. The dog family can be used as a good example.
 The Great Dane is an ext- remely large dog weighing more than one
hundred pounds, while the Chihauhau is the smallest of dog species and
may weigh between one and six pounds.  There is tremendous variation in
size between these two, but they are both dogs.  This is exactly what
is seen in the geologic record.  There is a variability about a mean
within a particular kind of species but distinct separation between
types. Birds always remain in the bird family and lizards are always in
the lizard family.

   The fossil record also shows an amazing amount of stability for some
particular species.  The Horseshoe Crab has remained stable for
hundreds of millions of years and remains with us to this day. The
Ginkgo tree has also remained stable and shown no evidence of change
during millions of years and into the present (Coffin 339). This has
baffled evolutionary scientists because it is contrary to the
prediction of constant change and increasing complexity as time
progresses.  Some species have died out and become extinct, while
others have appeared suddenly only to disappear again.

   There are other branches of science which also support the creation
model.  The recent revelations on the extreme complexity of the DNA
molecule combined with the science of probability has shown that there
is no chance for life to have occured by accident (Morris-Parker
235-239). The age of the earth is also highly debated. Recent studies
of the decay of the earth's magnetic field, helium and radiocarbon in
the atmosphere have indicated that the earth may be tens of thousands
of years old rather than billions of years old (Coffin 330-340). 
Studies of the Mount St. Helens volanic errup- tion have shown
scientists that during a cataclysmic event geologic changes can occur
which were thought to have taken thousands of years (Austin).

   The fossil record documents what creatures lived in the past.  By
looking at the evidence, without the pre-bias of evolution, one can
come up with some startling conclusions.

   References Cited

   Austin, Steven A.  "Mount St. Helens and Catastrophism." Acts and
Facts. July 1986.

   Coffin, Harold.  Origin by Design. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald
Publishing Assoc. 1983.

   Darwin, Charles.  The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection. Akron. OH: The Werner Co. 1859.

   Gish, Duane T. "Fossil Evidence for Creation." Conference Echoes.
WFSI. Annapolis, MD: 9 March 1976.

   Gish. Evolution the Fossils Say No!  San Diego, CA: Master Books.
1973.

   Levi-Setti, Riccardo.  Trilobites. Chicago, IL: The University of
Chicago Press. 1975.

   Morris, Henry M.  Evolution in Turmoil. San Diego, CA.: Master
Books. 1982.

   Morris and Gary E.  Parker. What is Creation Science?  San Diego,
CA: Master Books. 1982.

   Volpe, Peter E.  Understanding Evolution. New Orleans, LA: William
C. Brown Co. 1972.