Page 486 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

A Metaldetes The observation that species are amazingly conservative and
fossil resem- static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qual-
bling pre- ities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but pre-
sent-day
sponges ferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant

record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pat-
tern, simply looked the other way. 22
In a book written jointly in 1988 entitled Integrated

Principles of Biology, three evolutionist biologists devel-
oped the same point:

Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years,
then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different . . .

form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly
in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discov-
ered that form a transition from their parent group. 23

New discoveries have not changed the situation in
favor of Darwinism; on the contrary, they've made it

worse. In 1999 Tom Kemp, curator of the zoological collec-
A fossil Wiwaxia,
frequently en- tions of the Oxford University, wrote a book entitled,
countered in Fossils and Evolution in which he described the situation:
strata from the
Cambrian In virtually all cases, a new taxon appears for the first time in the
period
fossil record with most definitive features already present, and
practically no known stem-group forms. 24

So, the fossil record which was once thought to corrobo-
rate Darwin's theory has become evidence against it. David
Berlinsky, a mathematician from the Princeton University
and an opponent of evolution, sums up the situation:

There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be
Mobergella:
A shelled fossil intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead.
from the No paleontologist writing in English, French or German denies that
Cambrian period
this is so. It is simply a fact. Darwin's theory and the fossil record are in
conflict. 25

One of the most striking examples of this contradiction is the
Fossils from the Cambrian period (543 to collapse of Darwin's "tree of life."
490 million years ago) show that living
things appear in geological strata with all
their complex characteristics, without hav-
ing first undergone a process of evolu- Once, There was Thought to be an
tion—in other words that they were created.
"Evolution Tree"

The most punishing blow that the fossil record dealt Darwinism was the scenario revealed by the fossils
from the Cambrian period. Darwin imagined that the history of life on Earth could be represented as a tree
starting from one trunk and slowly, gradually separating into various branches. A diagram in The Origin of
the Species reflected this view. With the aid of this chart, the concept of the evolutionary "tree" was planted
in people's minds, to finally become one of Darwinism's most important myths. Various versions of the

evolutionary tree were published in textbooks, scientific treatises, magazines and newspapers. These dia-
grams etched in people's minds the idea that living things evolved by small chance changes from one com-
mon root of the evolutionary tree.

The truth was quite different, however. This was most clearly dramatized with the discovery of the

484 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3