What does the fossil evidence r
Origins: What Does the Fossil Evidence Reveal? In 1859 Charles Darwin published a book entitled The Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This one book has spawned hundreds more and raised controversy in religion, science, education, and government. People in all walks of life have been effected whether a person is an atheist or a believer in a deity. Most of Darwin’s conclusions are based on what he observed in the fossil record. This, of course, would be the place to come to look for evidence to support his theory of evolution. Here in the fossil record the remains of creatures that lived perhaps millions of years ago would be found. This is exactly the same place that creationists go for evidence to support the theory of creation. Just how well does the fossil record support one theory or the other? In discussing the origins of life we are concerned with how the world and the multitudes of living organisms all came into being. There are only two accepted models used when speaking of origins. The first and most widely accepted viewpoint is that of evolution. The evolution theory requires extremely long time spans; some scientists believe that it took as long as three billion years for life to reach the complexity that we see today (Volpe 144). Long time periods are needed because evolution works slowly with chance and natural selection guiding structural change. Another require- ment of evolution is that life occured spontaneously by accident from non-life. The origin of life is a process which is innate in matter (Gish 17). All life, as we know it today, emerged from single celled organisms which evolved over billions of years. Evolution also mandates that geologic processes on earth have been uniform. That is to say, there have been no sudden changes in geography or the environment here on earth. Man and apes have a common ancestor; the universe and our solar system have all ocurred through natural processes. In order for evolution to be true, the fossil evidence must support the evolution model. The slow and gradual change necessary to bring about highly complex creatures should be clearly shown in preserved animal remains. During the billions of years that evolution has been operating there must be millions and millions of transitional forms of life. These transitional forms would be in the process of changing from one form to another. The change may be from invertebrate to vertebrate or from fish to amphibian. It is believed that lizards evolved into birds. To support this tremendous change in form and function we can expect to find fossil evidence which is rich in transitional forms. This means that creatures will be found with partially formed wings or fea- thers or front leg structures that have partially changed to wings. The evidence of the transitional form is critical to the evolution model. The creationist has an obviously divergent point of view. The earth is relatively young. Its age is on the order of tens of thousands of years. Earth’s geology has been one of catastrophy rather than uniformity. All life occured through the willful act of a Designer. Each type of species was complete and highly complex at the moment of creation. Life has not become more complex with the passage of time. Any change in speciation has been small and limited to particular kind. These changes are controlled by the constraints of genetics. Man and apes are not related. Again we can say that the evidence in the fossil record must support the theory. The creationist would not expect to find transitional forms, but rather, highly complex creatures should appear in the sedimentary rock. There should be no evidence of any gradual change from one kind to another. Before going any further, it is important to establish one other point. Neither theory, creation or evolution, can be proven in the laboratory. Evolution requires tens of millions of years for any observable changes to occur. It is intuitively evident that it is not possible to conduct an experiment over such a vast time period. Creation has a problem of even greater magnitude. For creation to be true, it must be proven that it occured through divine intervention. This is a major obstacle for the theory. Again, it is impossible to perform any such experiment in the lab- oratory. We now have a dilemma because neither of these two theories can be proven in a controlled situation. Here is where the fossil evidence will prove to be of such great importance. The fossils are a historical record of what creatures existed in the past. This historic information can be used with the two origin models we have established. By comparing the historical evidence with what can be expected on the basis of these two origin models we should be able to see which model best fits the evidence.