Yet The Fossil Findings Were Incompatible With Darwin's Theory!

Cambrian fossils discovered in Wales dealt a severe blow to the classification with which Darwin set out his theory. The Cambrian Period (from 542 to 488 million years ago), the oldest in the history of multi-cellular organisms, represented the sudden emergence of a great many phyla and classes of animals, all in their fully formed states, in an environment where only single-celled organisms had existed before. To put it another way, biology operated in the exact opposite manner of what Darwin predicted: Phyla emerged along with individual species, not afterward.

No doubt, this was a matter of concern for any evolutionist! Darwin himself was well aware of the results already emerging from the fossil discoveries of his own day, and he described this as one of the gravest difficulties that could threaten his theory:

Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian* [Cambrian] stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer.4

When Darwin learned that some of the most fundamental classes of the animal world appeared suddenly in the oldest known rock strata, he described this as a "serious" problem, and said, "The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained."5

In Darwin's day, it was not known that the DNA within a cell contains enough information to fill an encyclopedia consisting of many volumes. The living cell was thought to be merely a water-filled sac. Fossil discoveries in Darwin's day were also limited. Thanks to advances in science and new fossil excavations, the subsequent 150 years showed that living things never underwent evolution. A century and a half after Darwin, Darwinism is in an evident state of collapse.

However, in Darwin's view, this problem was only an ostensible one, because he believed that the difficulty would be resolved in the future. For that reason, he claimed as a sort of alibi that, the history of the Earth was not preserved well in the fossil record.

According to Darwin, complex organic entities had indeed appeared long before the formation of Cambrian strata, and their fossil remains must have been left behind somewhere in the oldest-and so far, unknown-sedimentary rocks laid down in the history of the Earth.6 He assumed that pre-Cambrian fossil beds had been altered due to heat and pressure-much as sedimentary limestone is transformed into metamorphic marble-for which reason all traces of fossils in those rocks might well have been eradicated.

He therefore maintained that all the major animal groups had erroneously been ascribed as appearing during the Cambrian Period. One day, according to Darwin, detailed fossil researches and excavations would inevitably reveal those missing specimens.7