Page 40 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

THE FOSSIL RECORD

VERIFIES CREATION:

Stasis in the Fossil Record

aleontologists conducting research in ancient strata en-
counter very important fossils that are millions of years
P old, yet the duplicates of living spiders, flies, frogs, turtles
and fish. According to the theory of evolution, these life forms
should have exhibited changes over the course of millions
of years. They lived in the most ancient periods in the most

complex forms, and have come down unchanged to the
present day. In other words, they never evolved. There is a
stasis or stability in the fossil record, which—according to
evolutionists—should not be there at all.

Darwin foresaw that life forms that had remained the
same for untold millions of years would represent a major
difficulty for his theory, and he frequently referred to this.
These special species were even given the name of "living
fossils" by Darwin himself!
The evolutionist paleontologist Peter Douglas Ward

emphasizes this problem of Darwin's:

Still, Darwin's central tenet was that most organisms
have changed through time. But did they all change at
the same rate, or did the rate of change vary? Darwin
was sure that it varied, for he could point to a host of
creatures that were quite similar to fossils he had seen,
some from very old strata indeed. Darwin confronted

this problem several times. Although he seems satisfied
with the explanation he gives in The Origin of Species,
the very fact that he repeatedly brings these "living fossils"
to the attention of his readers suggests that he was not en-

tirely comfortable with the phenomenon. He writes, for
example: "In some cases . . . lowly organised forms appear
to have been preserved to the present day, from inhabiting
confined or peculiar stations, where they have been sub-
jected to less severe competition, and where their scanty
numbers have retarded the chance of favorable variations

arising." Nevertheless, the existence of living fossils, a
term that he coined, continued to puzzle him, and pro-
vided a weapon for his numerous critics to wield against
him. 12

38 Atlas of Creation Vol. 2