Page 181 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

Like the ot hers, this horse se ri es in a mu se um con sists of a hap ha zard se qu en tial arrangement of li ving
things, that li ved at dif fe rent ti mes and in dif fe rent pla ces, eva lu ated from a one-si ded pers pec ti ve. The sce -
na rio of hor se evo lu ti on has no foun dations in the fos sil record.

tions and gave the public the impression that the creatures had
evolved from one another.
Marsh can be called the architect of the horse series, and there is
no doubt that he played a role on creating this impression. Almost a
century later, Marsh's "technique" was described by the evolutionist
Robert Milner, who said that "Marsh arranged his fossils to 'lead up' to
the one surviving species, blithely ignoring many inconsistencies and any

contradictory evidence." 126
In short, Marsh created a scenario of his own and later assem-
bled the fossils according to it as if arranging screwdrivers in his
toolbox according to their size. But contrary to expectations, the
new fossils upset Marsh's scenario. The ecologist Garret
Hardin says:
There was a time when the existing fossils of the horses
seemed to indicate a straight-line evolution from

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