Page 95 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Errors on the Subject of the Fossil Record

of certain anatomical features of the extinct creatures in question with

other species. Yet these comparisons are weak and superficial.
Furthermore, the great differences between these so-called transi-
tional forms and their so-called closest evolutionary relatives (be-
tween Archaeopteryx and theropod dinosaurs, for instance, or
Ambulocetus and ancient whales, or Australopithecus and Homo erectus)
show that these are not transitional forms representing the gradual
changes expected by Darwin. The more the fossil record grows, the

more these huge gaps can be seen to be real and permanent.
2. The second area of conflict between the theory of evolution
and the fossil record is that of stasis. It can be seen from the fossil
record that there is no gradual change towards different physical
forms, but rather a stability or lack of change.
3. The order of geological succession is also against the theory's
expectations. The theory of evolution maintains that small evolution-
ary changes gradually accumulated. If this were true, we would ex-
pect that more primitive classes first experienced variation within

themselves, which gradually led to different and more complex body
plans. In other words, according to the theory of evolution, variation
must come before differentiation. However, geological succession—
that is, the fossils' positions in the geological strata—shows just the
opposite: differentiation comes before variation. In the Cambrian
Period, very different basic body plans appear all of a sudden, with
no evolutionary ancestors lower down. Variations then follow these

previously existing forms. The natural history of life is systematically
from the top down, not from the bottom up, as Darwinist theory
would have it.
Let us briefly examine this conflict between the theory of evolu-
tion and the fossil record.

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