The Record Of The Rocks

The Record Of The Rocks

By Richard Thompson - Sadaputa das

Scientists look to the fossil record for the truth about the past, but what story does it really tell?

The fact of evolution is supposedly inscribed for all to see in the pages of the "record of the rocks," the layers of which contain fossils deposited throughout the ages. Yet a close examination of this geological history reveals the equivalent of missing pages, garbled transcriptions, and transposed passages. In the end, it's not so clear that the record supports evolution at all.

Charles Darwin himself outlined the central dilemma facing the evolutionists, who would expect to find support for the idea of gradual modification of species in the record of the rocks. In The Origin of Species Darwin wrote, "The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, must be truly enormous. 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."1

A century later, after decades of excavations and research, the same criticism still holds true. There is a striking absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. Professor N. Heribert-Nilsson of Lund University in Sweden writes, "It is not even possible to make a caricature of evolution out of paleobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that the lack of transitional series cannot be explained by the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."2

The plant and animal kingdoms are divided into broad divisions known as phyla. Yet each phylum appears with no clue to its origin in the fossil record. Noted French evolutionary zoologist Pierre-P. Grasse states, "From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjectures as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct."3

George Gaylord Simpson, professor of vertebrate paleontology at Columbia University, noted that all 32 orders of mammals appear fully developed in the fossil record. "This regular absence of transitional forms," he states, "is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists.4

The problem is so difficult to overcome that one school of evolutionists, headed by Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, felt compelled to come up with a new evolutionary theory to account for the gaps. They propose "punctuated equilibrium" as an explanation.

The punctuated equilibirium theory makes evolution invisible in the fossil record. A supposed change from species A to species B would take place in a small population in an isolated geographic location within a geological microsecond--a period too short to allow for fossils of intermediate forms to be deposited. Then the new species B would move from its isolated place of origin and expand throughout the entire range of the old species A. On a scale of millions of years the fossils of B would suddenly replace the fossils of A, giving the impression that B had emerged without intermediate forms. According to punctuated equilibrium advocates, this lack of transitional fossils is exactly what would be expected, and therefore they can claim that any given species has in fact evolved from an ancestral form without offering any proof from the fossil record. But a theory that allows no proving or disproving on the basis of physical evidence hardly qualifies as an adequate scientific explanation.

A major difficulty for those seeking support for evolution in the rock record is that the record is extremely incomplete. Only a fraction of the species thought to have ever existed are represented. David M. Raup, curator of Chicago's Field Museum, and Steven Stanley, a paleontologist at Johns Hopkins University, number about 130,000 fossil species in the collections of the world's museums, compared to an estimated 1.5 million living species. They calculate that 1 billion species have lived since the Cambrian, and of these more than 99.9% did not leave fossils.5 It is thus difficult to see how evolutionists can dare speak with such certainty about the supposed relationships of descent among species over billions of years.

One reason for evolutionists to be cautious is that because of erosion and other factors large parts of the sedimentary rock layers in which the record is embedded are themselves missing. Geologist Tjeerd H. van Andel studied early Cretaceous sandstones in Wyoming that span 6 million years. When he compared the amount of rock that was actually there to the amount that should have been deposited according to accepted rates of sedimentation, he came up with an astounding figure--the amount was only 2% of what it should have been. Instead of 6 million years worth of stone, there was only 100,000 years worth. That means a lot of sediment that should be there (fully 98%) is gone.

Van Andel discovered that the same study can be repeated almost anywhere with the same result.6 What happens is this--over the course of millions of years there is a process of continual erosion of old layers and deposition of new layers, with the end result being that only a small fragment of the total is left over in the so-called record of the rocks. At least 90-99% of the sedimentary layers are gone forever.

Even more remarkable than the fact that the greater part of the rock record is missing is the fact that we have barely scratched the surface of what's there. The estimated volume of sedmimentary rock deposits on the continental surfaces of the earth is about 134 million cubic miles. If, for example, 100,000 paleontologists were to divide up the task of examining just 1 cubic mile of rock, each would have to go through 1,472,000 cubic feet. If they all worked 8-hour days, 365 days a year, at a rate of 1 cubic foot every 10 minutes, it would take them 84 years just to investigate 1 cubic mile out of 134 million.

Some evolutionists might claim that all this explains why there is not enough fossil evidence to prove their theory, but this kind of reasoning cannot be accepted. It is ludicrous to say that because the evidence is not there and will probably never be found, the theory is right. Indeed there are undoubtedly many missing fossils, but there is no reason to suppose in advance that they would support the theory of evolution.

Anomalous Evidence

Even among the fossils already discovered are a great many anomalies that contradict the currently held theory of evolution. And how scientists have treated this anomalous evidence leads to the conclusion that perhaps they are not being quite as objective and impartial in the search for the truth as they would like us to believe.

For example, some researchers have reported finding pollen of higher plants in strata shown by standard dating methods to be extremely old. These findings call into question the whole conventional account of the evolution of plants. In one instance, parties of scientists in Venezuela reported finding pollen of flowering plants in Precambrian rock formations judged to be 1.7-2.0 billion years old.7 This posed a serious problem, because according to current theory the flowering plants evolved fairly recently, only 100 million years ago.

To resolve the difficulty, one group of scientists decided that although the dates of the rock were correct the pollen must have been a recent intrusion, even though entry of the pollen into those layers defies simple explanation. The second group held that the pollen had been there since the rock had formed, but concluded that the dating was wrong and the rock was of recent origin. The two groups thus contradicted each other in their interpretations of the evidence. The real significance of this treatment is that both groups felt compelled to look for ways to avoid contradicting the standard story of evolution, to which they were strongly committed.

This is not the only case in which fossil pollen of higher plants has been found in strata belonging to an age in which such plants, according to current evolutionary theory, could not yet have evolved. For example, paleontologist S. Le Clercq of the University of Liege, Belgium, has written a review article citing a number of cases of evidence of this kind.8

How do scientists deal with this evidence? It is of course possible for them to revise their theory of evolution so as to accommodate this material, but that would be somewhat embarrassing and time-consuming, since every textbook would have to be rewritten. It also would be possible for them to simply present their accepted theory and honestly and objectively point out the existence of contradictory evidence and interpretations. One can find accounts of such evidence and interpretation in widely scattered technical articles, but in standard textbooks and popular presentations this contrary evidence is simply not mentioned at all. Thus a person reading these accounts would not have the faintest idea that such evidence ever existed.

Anomalous evidence concerning human remains raises major questions about evolutionary theory. According to the conventional view, hominids, or manlike creatures, began to evolve from apelike ancestors in Africa about 4 million years ago. The early hominids from this period (4-2 million years ago) are known as australopithecenes, beings with manlike bodies and apelike heads. There is a further development of australopithecus to homo habilis, which appeared about 2 million years ago. Homo erectus evolved from homo habilis about 1. 5 million years ago and migrated to Europe and Asia.

About 200,000--300,000 years ago, the very first representatives of homo sapiens appear, but these are not quite like modern human beings. From this species, about 100,000 years ago, Neanderthal man develops and spreads throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. About 40,000 years ago fully modern man is thought to have evolved in the Near East or Asia. Called homo sapiens sapiens, the new species then enters Europe and replaces Neanderthal man, who disappears from the scene. The rudiments of modern civilization begin 10,000 years ago. According to the standard accounts, this whole development took place in the Old World. The only humans ever to have existed in the New World are fully modern men who migrated there from Asia no earlier than 30,000 years ago.

This is the standard scenario, yet much evidence has turned up that challenges it. We shall now review some of this evidence and examine how scientists have responded to it, beginning with that calling for the least amount of change in current views.

At Border Cave in South Africa paleontologists have made fossil discoveries that push back the date and change the locale for the origin of modern man. They concluded that "anatomically modern homo sapiens [homo sapiens sapiens] originated at some as yet uncertain time prior to about 110 thousand years before the present." This differs substantially from the standard version, with its date of 40,000 years ago for the origin of modern man in Asia or the Near East.

Moving to the New World, we come to the archaeological site at Valsequillo in southern Mexico. There, in 1962, archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams excavated stone artifacts, including spearpoints, representative of a technology usually associated with fully modern (Cro-Magnon) man in Europe. In 1972 and 1973 a team of dating experts, including geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey, using several independent dating techniques, found that the layers in which the artifacts were found were about 250,000 years old.

The Valsequillo artifacts thus present far greater challenge to the accepted view of human evolution than the Border Cave finds. The date is twice as old and it places anomalously ancient men on the wrong continent.

At the very least the find would mean some drastic rethinking of the history of man in the New World. The authors of the dating study said in their report that they were "painfully aware that so great an age poses an archaeological dilemma."10 The authors knew what they meant when they used the word painfully, for they had met with an extremely hostile reception from archaeologists nationwide, one of whom accused the team of ruining Dr. IrwinWilliams' career.11 There is indeed a dilemma here, because man is generally thought to have arrived in the New World no earlier than 12,000 years ago, although some extend the date to 30,000 years. The mainstream scientists' resolution of this dilemma is typical--the Valsequillo find is simply not mentioned in standard textbooks and popular accounts of human evolution. There are numerous other controversial finds of ancient man in the New World that are conspicuous by their absence from the standard accounts. Recent examples include the Calico Hills, California, early man site (500,000 years old), the Flagstaff, Arizona find (100,000170,000 years old), and the Mission Valley find in San Diego, California (100,000 years old).12

The kind of suppression of evidence that one can encounter in promoting unorthodox archaeological views is illustrated by the excavations at Sheguiandah. At this site near Lake Huron in Canada, Dr. Thomas Lee, the director of the National Museum of Canada, uncovered stone tools that geologists dated at 150,000 years old. On the advice of an expert, Dr. Ernst Antevs of Arizona, Lee reported a lesser date of 30,000 years. But even this was too much for the traditionalists, who adhered strongly to their own date of 12,000 years as the maximum limit for human presence in North America. Lee wrote in the Anthropological Journal of Canada, "The site's discoverer was hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several prominent authors among the Brahmins [scientific establishment]; the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for refusing to fire the discoverer, the Director of the National Museum (Lee), who had proposed having a monograph on the site published, was himself fired and driven into exile. .. Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would have forced the rewriting of almost every book in the business. It had to be killed. It was killed."13

Ancient Men in America?

In the New World, not only is there evidence indicating the presence of fully modern man at dates unacceptable by the standard archaeological views, but there is also evidence of primitive man of the homo erectus category. For example, Canadian anthropologist Alan Lyle Bryan, editor of the book Early Man in America, discovered in Lagoa Santa, Brazil, a skullcap with a low, receding forehead, thick walls, and exceptionally massive browridges. These features make it practically indistinguishable from skulls of the homo erectus type. Shown photographs of the Lagoa Santa skull, several American physical anthropologists found it impossible to believe it could have come from America. Nonetheless, Bryan supported his claim by citing other published works containing descripltions of similar fossil finds in the same area of Brazil. Challenging accepted opinion, he argued that anatomically primitive forms of man spread all over the world in very ancient times, evolving independently on different continents into anatomically modern man. The skull was placed in a Brazilian museum but later mysteriously disappeared.14

The anomalies we have been discussing thus far tend to indicate first of all that modern man is both more ancient and more widespread in ancient times than current archaelogical opinion would allow. Second, various races of primitive man appear to have been much more widespread than is generally accepted. Now we will cite some evidence that indicates the presence of fully modern humans at far earlier dates and the presence of anatomically primitive humans at much later dates.