The Origin Of Species According To The Fossil Record

When Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, he set out his own ideas on their origin and claimed that this was based on various mechanisms of the imaginary evolutionary process.

According to his thinking, evolution led to minute changes in species through these mechanisms; and these differences then increased, until every new living species developed from some previous one, as a result of very small changes. Again according to the theory, living species are not distinguished from one another by major anatomical differences, but begin diverging from one another through minuscule variations.

This implies that all living things are related to one another. One living species experienced random and gradual changes over a period of time lasting for millions of years, at the end of which its descendents have developed into another species entirely. In that case, evidence of the long transformation period-fossils of at least some of the various intermediate forms-should exist in the Earth's fossil record. Since they lived in a kind of transitional period, many of these transitional forms had yet to complete the development of their more sophisticated organs, and must have been deformed, crippled and deficient in some way.

Since this supposed process of evolutionary change lasted for millions of years, these alleged intermediate forms must have existed on Earth for almost the entire intervening time-and should have left a great many surviving traces in the fossil record.

That is exactly what Darwin believed. He expected that later fossil researchers would unearth the intermediate forms in question that would thus confirm his claim. He formulated his theory in the light of this hope-which was devoid of any scientific basis.

Darwin's theory required that countless intermediate forms must once have lived-and as he himself stated:

... that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great.1

He expressed the same idea in other parts of his book:

If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed… Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains.2

However, Darwin was also aware that no such intermediate-form fossils had yet been found-and admitted that this fact was a major dilemma that threatened his theory. That is why, in the chapter titled "Difficulties on Theory," he wrote:

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined? . . . But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? . . . Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.3

According to Darwin, all living things are descended from one another. Therefore, various intermediate species must have existed during this imaginary process of transition. And many of them must have been deficient and deformed. Yet Darwin was wrong: The fossil record constantly produces examples of flawless, perfect organisms. The Cambrian is one of the clearest manifestations of the fact that all living things are created by Allah.

According to Darwin, species, differentiating themselves by way of minuscule changes, must first have formed families, then orders, then classes and finally phyla-the largest division in the living world that separates living things in terms of their basic anatomical structures.