Page 69 - Confessions of the Evolutionists

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) 67

Charles Darwin:

If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have real-
ly started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of de-
scent with slow modification through natural selection. 156
For instance, I cannot doubt that all the Silurian trilobites have descend-
ed from some one crustacean, which must have lived long before the
Silurian age, and which probably differed greatly from any known ani-
mal... Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the
lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as,
or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the
present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods o f
time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we
do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satis-
factory answer. 157
Niles Eldredge is a paleontologist at Harvard University:
Then there was something of an explosion. Beginning about six hundred
million years ago, and continuing for about ten to fifteen million years,
the earliest known representatives of the major kinds of animals still pop-
ulating today's seas made a rather abrupt appearance. This rather pro-
tracted 'event' shows up graphically in the rock record: all over the world,
at roughly the same time, thick sequences of rocks, barren of any easily
detected fossils, are overlain by sediments containing a gorgeous array of
shelly invertebrates: trilobites (extinct relatives of crabs and insects), bra-
chiopods, mollusks. Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied, well-pre-
served array of fossils, which geologists have used to mark the begin-
nings of the Cambrian Period (the oldest division of the Paleozoic Era)
does pose a fascinating intellectual challenge. 158
No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It nev-
er seemed to happen. ... When do we see the introduction of evolutionary
novelty, it usually shows up with a bang... Evolution cannot forever be go-
ing on somewhere else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a
forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution. 159

Daniel Axelrod is professor of geology and botany at the
University of California:
One of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the oc-
currence of diversified, multi-called marine invertebrates in the lower