Page 88 - Confessions of the Evolutionists

86 CONFESSIONS OF THE EVOLUTIONISTS

David M. Raup is a paleontologist at University of Chicago:

Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin,
and the knowledge of the fossil record has been
greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a
million fossil species, but the situation hasn't
changed much. The record of evolution is still
surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even
fewer examples of evolutionary transition than
we had in Darwin's time. 219
Prof. Nils Heribert-Nilsson is a Swedish ge-
neticist and Professor of Botany at the University
of Lund in Sweden: Da vid M. Ra up

My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an ex-
periment carried on for more than forty years have completely failed. The
fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct
new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as be-
ing due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will nev-
er be filled. 220
D. Dwight Davis of the Chicago Natural History Museum:

The sudden emergence of major adaptive types as seen in the abrupt ap-
pearance in the fossil record of families and orders, continues to give trou-
ble. The phenomenon lay in the genetical no-man's land beyond the lim-
its of experimentation. A few paleontologists even today cling to the idea
that these gaps will be closed by further collecting... but most regard the
observed discontinuities as real and have sought an explanation. 221

Prof. T. Neville George is a paleontologist at Glasgow University:
There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil
record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich and dis-
covery is outpacing integration... The fossil record nevertheless continues
to be composed mainly of gaps. 222