Page 58 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

THE STARTING POINT OF PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM

hose who came after Darwin made enormous efforts to detect in the fossil record examples of the
slow and gradual evolution that he foresaw. Darwin had ascribed their absence to the "insufficiency

T of the fossil record." The fossil record—which, in fact, provided a broad range of specimens even in
his own day and shows the existence of all complex life forms as early as the Cambrian Explosion—contin-
ued to be the subject of research by evolutionists hoping to discover a miracle. Their objective was to prove
Darwin correct, to demonstrate that the fossil record in his time truly was insufficient, and to find examples
of intermediate forms, evidence that living things did undergo evolution.

Yet the fossil record constantly produced results at variance with Darwin's expectations. Practically the
entire globe was scoured, and the new fossils excavated were no longer "insufficient." Darwin had been
wrong when he said that he believed that those who came after him would eventually find the intermediate
forms that he expected. The fossil record produced not one single intermediate-form specimen. Instead, it re-
vealed the fact that countless living things had undergone no evolution at all, had remained unchanged for
many millions of years, together with all their many complex structures. The fossil record refuted Darwin.

The lack of intermediate forms and the fact of stasis very definitely constituted no evidence for gradual evo-
lution.
Some evolutionists clearly saw and admitted that
Darwin's model of gradual evolution was untenable in

the face of the reality of stasis. They then proposed that
evolution "operated in a different way." In 1970, the
Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
and Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural
History developed an alternative theory, known as
"punctuated evolution," which they published in 1972.

Their sole aim was to account for the stasis phenome-
non.
In fact, this theory was an adaptation of the
"Hopeful Monster" theory put forward in the 1930s by
the European paleontologist Otto Schindewolf. He had

Niles Eldredge

A A f fi ic ct ti it ti io ou us s i il ll lu us st tr ra at ti io on n

56 Atlas of Creation Vol. 2