Introduction

A fossil is the remains or traces of a plant or animal that have been preserved in the Earth's crust down to the present day. Fossils collected from all over the world are our most important source of information about the species that have existed on Earth since life began.

The skeletons of living things whose contact with the air was suddenly interrupted have come down, often perfectly preserved, to the present day. Research into these fossils permits us to learn increasingly detailed information about extinct animals or plants. Most basically, this information also tells us about which living things existed during which period.

Below left: a Caddis fly in amber, between 50 and 45 million years old. To its right: a tropical stingless bee in 24-million-year-old Dominican amber. At top right: termites trapped in an amber, 25 million years old.

For evolutionists, fossil specimens, often hundreds of millions of years old, are all tools they can use in line with their own theories. Evolutionists take a fossil, link it arbitrarily to some present-day species, and then claim that the fossil is the ancestor of the living organism in question. Upon this premise, they then construct dramatic and detailed scenarios. If the fossil in question is a fish, for example, they claim on the basis of a few bones that it possesses primitive features, newly developing organs and limbs in the process of undergoing a transition to a "higher" life form. They write books about the creature, hold conferences, and exhibit it as the intermediate form or "missing link" they have been seeking for so long.

That is, until they find themselves looking at a living specimen of this supposedly extinct creature!

When a living thing emerges in the same form it was known to have existed in millions of years ago, it of course demolishes all the evolutionist fables told about it. Its simple presence demonstrates that a living organism that—according to Darwinists' claims—should have undergone considerable evolution after the course of millions of years, somehow remained immune to the process. Moreover, it proves that at a time when, again according to evolution, only primitive forms of life were in existence, fully developed life forms with complex features and their own unique structures were already thriving. The creature that evolutionists imagine to be "primitive" is in fact nothing of the sort. In other words, the deceptive nature of invalid claims regarding "transition from a single-celled organism," "an intermediate form" and "a primitive life-form" is soon realized. Eventually, important evidence proves that the "process of gradual evolution" is nothing but a myth.

All these specimens manifest one single truth: Living things did not come into being through the fictitious processes of the theory of evolution, but were created in a single moment. Today's living things, with all their perfect features as manifestations of God's superior artistry, possess exactly the same splendor and perfection as their counterparts that existed millions of years ago. Once all evolutionist speculation and claims are eliminated, the fact of creation is revealed for all to see—albeit in a manner totally unexpected by evolutionists.

"Living fossils" are proofs that all the living things on Earth, past and present, were created from nothing; and that each one, possessing complex and superior attributes, is a miracle of God. This means that in fact, the supposed developmental process that evolutionists claim took place over millions of years never happened at all. Fictitious intermediate forms disappear along with fictitious scenarios.

The Origin of Species According to the Fossil Record: CREATION

The theory of evolution claims that all the living species on Earth descended, by means of a series of minute changes, from a common ancestor. To state the theory another way, living species are not separated from one another by absolute differences, but exhibit an inner continuity. However, actual observations in nature have indicated that there is no such continuity as claimed. What we see in the living world are different categories of organisms, separated by vast and distinct differences. Robert Carroll, an expert on vertebrate paleontology, admits this in his book Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution:

Although an almost incomprehensible number of species inhabit Earth today, they do not form a continuous spectrum of barely distinguishable intermediates. Instead, nearly all species can be recognized as belonging to a relatively limited number of clearly distinct major groups... 1

Evolution is a process alleged to have taken place in the past, and fossil discoveries are the only scientific source that can tell us about the history of life. Pierre Grassé says this on the subject:

Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. ... Only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms. 2

In order for the fossil record to shed light on this subject, we need to compare what the theory of evolution predicts against the actual fossil discoveries.

Despite their lacking any scientific evidence, evolutionists maintain that birds evolved from reptiles. It is of course impossible for any such transition to have taken place. They are unable to provide any rational scientific explanation for how intricately created bird feathers might have emerged from dinosaur scales.

According to the theory, all living things have descended from various "ancestral" forms. A living species that existed before gradually turned into another species, and every present species emerged in this way. According to the theory, this transition took place slowly over hundreds of millions of years and progressed in stages. That being the case, countless numbers of "intermediate forms" must have emerged and lived over the long process of transition in question. And a few of them must certainly have been fossilized.

For example, half-fish, half-amphibian creatures that still bore fish-like characteristics but which had also acquired certain amphibious features must have existed. And reptile-birds with both reptilian and avian features must have emerged. Since these creatures were in a process of transition, they must have been deformed, deficient and flawed. These theoretical creatures claimed to have existed in the distant past are known as "intermediate forms."

If any such living species really did exist, then they should number, in the millions, or even billions. Abundant traces of them should be found in the fossil record, because the number of intermediate forms should be even greater than the number of animal species known today. The geologic strata should be full of the remains of fossilized intermediate forms. Darwin himself admitted this. As he wrote in his book, The Origin of Species:

If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed... Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains. 3

Yet Darwin was aware that no intermediate forms had yet been found, and regarded this as a major dilemma facing his theory. In the chapter "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. 4

In the face of this difficulty, the only explanation Darwin could offer was that the fossil records of his time were insufficient. He claimed that later, when the fossil records had been examined in detail, the missing intermediate forms would definitely be found.

The Sufficiency of the Fossil Record

All living things on Earth came into existence suddenly with all their complex and superior features. In other words, they were created. Absolutely no scientific evidence suggests that living things are descended from one another, as evolutionists maintain.

In the face of the lack of intermediate forms, Darwin claimed, 140 years ago, that they were not available then but new research would definitely unearth them. But has it? To put the question another way, after looking at the results of all the fossil research carried out to date, should we accept that intermediate forms never actually existed—or should we await the results of still further excavations?

The answer to that question of course depends on the wealth of the fossil record we already have available. Looking at the paleontological data, we see that the fossil records are extraordinarily rich, with literally billions of fossil specimens obtained from different regions of the world.5 From examining these fossils, experts have identified some 250,000 different species, many of which bear an extraordinarily close resemblance to the 1.5 million species living today.6 (Of the 1.5 million species alive today, fully 1 million are insects.) Yet among these countless fossil specimens, no supposed intermediate form has ever been found. It seems impossible for the intermediate forms, that have not been discovered despite the rich fossil records, to be unearthed in new excavations.

T. Neville George, the Glasgow University professor of paleontology, admitted as much many years ago:

There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is outpacing integration … The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps.7

Niles Eldredge, a well-known paleontologist and director of the American Museum of Natural History, states that Darwin's claim to the effect that "the fossil record is deficient, which is why we cannot find any intermediate forms" is invalid:

The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: The gaps we see [in the fossil record] reflect real events in life's history – not the artifact of a poor fossil record. 8

In his 1991 book, Beyond Natural Selection, Robert Wesson says that the gaps in the fossil record are real and phenomenal:

The gaps in the record are real, however. The absence of any record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, ... genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt.9

The argument put forward 140 years ago that "no intermediate forms have been found yet, but they will be in the future" is no longer tenable today. The fossil record is sufficiently rich to account for the origin of life, and it reveals a concrete picture: Different species all emerged independently of one another, suddenly, and with all their different structures. No imaginary evolutionary "intermediate forms" existed among them.

A bony fossil fish dating back some 210 million years.	A fossil frog, approximately 53-33.7 million years old.
A fossil crab approximately 55 to 35 million years old.	An echinoderm (starfish) fossil dating back some 135 million years.
A fossil spider, some 355 to 295 million years old.	A trionyx (tortoise) fossil, approximately 300 million years old.

Facts Revealed by the Fossil Record

What is the origin of the "evolution-paleontology" relationship that has been installed in society's subconscious? Why is it that when the fossil record is mentioned, most people assume that there's a definite, positive link between this record and Darwin's theory? The answers are set out in an article in the magazine Science:

A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.10

N. Eldredge and Ian Tattershall make the following important comment on that matter:

That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ...  prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way. 11

The American paleontologist S. M. Stanley describes how this fact, revealed by the fossil record, is ignored by the Darwinist dogma that dominates the scientific world, and how others are also encouraged to ignore it:

The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured.  ... "The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin's stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation." ... their story has been suppressed. 12

Let us now examine this truth revealed by the fossil record, which has so far been "suppressed," in rather more detail.

A cicada nymph, 50 to 45 million years old. A 24-million-year-old caterpillar fossil embedded in amber is proof that caterpillars have always existed in exactly the same form—and never underwent evolution.

Footnotes

1. Robert L. Carroll, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1997, s. 9

2. Pierre Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms. New York, Academic Press, 1977, s. 82

3. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1 b., s.179

4. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1 b., s.172

5. Duane T.Gish, Evolution: Fossils Still Say No, CA, 1995, s.41.

6. David Day, Vanished Species, Gallery Books, New York, 1989.

7. T. N. George, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective", Science Progress, vol. 48, January 1960, s.1

8. N. Eldredge and I. Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, Columbia University Press, 1982, s.59

9. R. Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991, s. 45

10. Science, July 17, 1981, s. 289

11. N. Eldredge ve I. Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, Columbia University Press, 1982, s. 45-46

12. S. M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, Basic Books Inc. Publishers, N.Y., 1981, s.71

Stasis in the Fossil Record

When we investigate natural history, we find not living things "evolving into different anatomical structures," but ones that have remained unchanged, even over the course of hundreds of millions of years. This lack of change is referred to by scientists as "stasis." Living fossils and organisms that have not survived down to the present day, but which have left their fossils behind in various strata of the Earth's history are concrete proof of stasis in the fossil record. And this stasis shows that no gradual process of evolution ever occurred. In an article in the magazine Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould describes this inconsistency between the fossil record and the theory of evolution:

A thornback ray fossil dating back to the Mesozoic era (245-65 million years ago) has exactly the same characteristics as those living in the sea today. This particular creature, about 250 million years old, clearly demonstrates that the evolutionary process is entirely fictitious.

The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:

1. Stasis.Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.

2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.' 13

If a living thing survives in a flawless form down to the present day with all the features it displayed millions of years ago and having undergone no change whatsoever, then this evidence is powerful enough to entirely dismiss the gradual evolution model anticipated by Darwin. Moreover, far from there being just one example to demonstrate this, there are in fact millions. Countless organisms exhibit no differences from their original states, which first appeared millions or even hundreds of millions of years ago. As openly stated by Niles Eldredge, this state of affairs is causing paleontologists to avoid the idea of evolution, which is still supported today:

No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history.14

The stasis in the fossil record really does represent the greatest problem facing the proponents of evolution. That's because evolutionists look in the fossil record for the evidence they need to prove their fictitious process of evolution. However, fossils provide none of the intermediate forms they seek, but furthermore, reveal that living things alleged to have undergone a process of change over time never underwent any evolution at all, even after hundreds of millions of years. Living forms are identical to how they appeared originally, and never underwent the gradual change predicted by Darwin. Niles Eldredge describes how the stasis for long neglected by evolutionist paleontologists undermines Darwin's claim of gradual evolution:

But stasis was conveniently dropped as a feature of life's history to be reckoned with in evolutionary biology. And stasis had continued to be ignored until Gould and I showed that such stability is a real aspect of life's history which must be confronted—and that, in fact, it posed no fundamental threat to the basic notion of evolution itself. For that was Darwin's problem: to establish the plausibility of the very idea of evolution, Darwin felt that he had to undermine the older ... doctrine of species fixity. Stasis, to Darwin, was an ugly inconvenience. 15

Seeing the invalidity of Darwin's claim of gradual evolution, Eldredge advanced forward the idea of "punctuated equilibrium" together with Stephen J. Gould, and his words above were an accurate expression of the difficulty that stasis posed for Darwin. Yet the point that Eldredge ignores and neglects is that the stasis that is so manifest in the fossil record also represents a major dilemma for punctuated equilibrium.

Stasis in the Fossil Record
If evolution had really taken place then living organisms should have developed by gradual incremental changes and continued to change over time. But the fossil record shows the exact opposite. Different groups of organisms appeared suddenly with no similar ancestors behind them, and remained in their original state for millions of years, undergoing no changes at all.
Ammonites emerged some 350 million years ago, then became extinct 65 million years ago. But during the intervening 300 million years, the structure seen in the fossils never changed.	A starfish dating back some 100 million years.	Horseshoe crab fossil from the Ordovician period. This 450-million-year-old fossil is no different from specimens living today.

Oyster fossils from the Ordovician period, no different from their modern counterparts.	35-million-year-old fossil flies, exhibiting the same bodily structure as flies today.

This 170-million-year-old fossil shrimp from the Jurassic period is no different from living shrimps.	This 140-million-year-old dragonfly fossil found in Bavaria, Germany is identical to living dragonflies.

	Left: The oldest known fossil scorpion, found in East Kirkton in Scotland. This species, known as Pulmonoscorpis kirktoniensis, is 320 million years old, yet no different from today's scorpions.
	Right: An insect fossil in amber, some 170 million years old but no different from its counterparts of today, found on the coast of the Baltic Sea.

The paleontologists who proposed the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution admitted that the stasis in the fossil record presented a "problem." But since they considered it impossible to abandon the idea of evolution, they suggested that living things came into being not through small changes, but by sudden and very large ones. According to this claim, evolutionary changes took place in very small intervals of time, and in very narrow populations. Until this sudden jump, the population had exhibited little or no change and remained in a kind of equilibrium. Since the hypothetical population concerned was a narrow one, so-called large mutations would very quickly be favored by natural selection, and thus—somehow—the emergence of a new species would be established.

Punctuated equilibrium suggests that the formation of a new species took place within communities containing very small numbers of plants or animals. But this model of evolution has now been refuted, with a great deal of proof, by the sciences of microbiology and genetics. (For detailed information, see Harun Yahya's Darwinism Refuted.) Nor is there any scientific basis for punctuated equilibrium's claim regarding "narrow populations," put forward in order to account for the stasis in the fossil record and therefore, the absence of intermediate forms. Punctuated equilibrium was dealt a severe blow when it was revealed that in genetic terms, a restricted population presents no advantage for the theory of evolution, but rather a disadvantage! Far from developing in such a robust way as to give rise to a new species, narrow populations actually cause genetic defects. The reason is because the individuals in small isolated groups constantly reproduce within a narrow genetic pool. Therefore, normally "heterozygote" individuals—those enjoying a wide gene pool—become "homozygote" or more restricted in their genetic variations. The result is that normally recessive defective genes become dominant, thus producing ever-greater defects and genetic diseases in the population.

There is no evolutionary process in the origin of frogs. The oldest known frogs are completely different from fish, first appeared with their own unique structures, and possessed exactly the same characteristics as modern frogs. There is no difference between this approximately 25-million-year-old fossil frog in Dominican amber and living specimens.

Therefore, the lack of intermediate forms in the fossil record cannot be a result of evolution taking place in narrow populations. In addition to all these scientific impossibilities, the adherents of punctuated equilibrium can't explain why traces of changes in such small populations are never found in the fossil record.

This clearly demonstrates that both the gradual model of evolution that Darwin proposed, and the punctuated equilibrium model put forward to cover up its deficiencies, are not able to account for the stasis in the fossil record, the sudden appearance of living forms, and the lack of transitional ones. Whatever theory may be proposed, all claims that living organisms underwent evolution will end in failure and are scientifically condemned to collapse, because living things did not evolve. God has created all living things in their perfect states, from nothing. Therefore, all claims that living things evolved are doomed to disappear.

Stephen J. Gould, one of the intellectual fathers of the "punctuated equilibrium" theory, admitted this in all clarity at a conference he gave at Hobart & William Smith College:

Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome ... brings terrible distress. ... They may get a little bigger or bumpier. But they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, it's not evolution so you don't talk about it. 16

The "Ineffectiveness" of the Environment

The shark, one of the most dangerous creatures in the sea, and a 400-million-year-old fossil show that sharks have never undergone any evolution.

Living fossils hold a mirror to the lack of difference between present-day specimens and fossil remains from the past, and offer evidence that therefore, species underwent no evolution over millions of years. In that way, they deal a severe blow to the theory of evolution, which, as is well-known, claims that only those organisms able to adapt to changing environmental conditions survive, and that these evolve into other living things under the effect of imaginary random changes. But living fossils show that the idea of species gradually "reacting" to environmental conditions is actually groundless. Examples of very old living fossils include the shark, which reveals no trace of change despite being around 400 million years old. The Cœlacanth, which evolutionists portrayed as an intermediate form between fish and ambiphians until living specimens were found off Madagascar, constitutes a striking refutation of the theory of evolution's scenario of change.

Despite its evolutionist slant, Focus magazine referred to living things that had remained unchanged for millions of years in its April 2003 issue, which dealt with the Cœlacanth:

The discovery that a creature as large as the Cœlacanth had lived for so many years outside the knowledge of the scientific world led to its attracting a great deal of interest. Yet there are a very large number of organisms which, like the Cœlacanth, are identical to fossils remaining from millions of years ago. For example, the Neopilina, a species of crustacean, has remained unchanged for 500 million years, the scorpion for 430 million years, the Limulus, a marine creature with armour and a sword-like tail, for 225 million years, and the Tuatara, a species of reptile living in New Zealand, for 230 million years. Many arthropods, crocodiles, turtles and many species of plant are other components of this growing list. 17

A 50-million-year-old fossil scorpion in amber.	A tuatara fossil and a tuatara living today.	A fossil horseshoe crab and a presentday specimen.

A fossil maple leaf dating back millions of years, and modern maple leaves.	A salamander fossil, 160 million years old.

A 2-million-year-old fossil ant preserved in amber. Above: an ant living today. These creatures are still the same as they were millions of years ago.	A fossil crocodile, 190 million years old, and a crocodile of today.

A fossil feather, 120 million years old.	Above Right: a fossil flower. Above Left: today's primrose.

Snake fossils dating back millions of years show that snakes have never changed at all.	A woodpecker feather, which is identical to present-day woodpecker feathers.

Focus cited the examples of cockroaches and archaeobacteria, and openly admitted these species deal a blow to the theory of evolution:

Looked at from the evolutionary perspective, the probability of organisms such as these undergoing mutation is much higher than that of others. Because every new generation means the copying of DNA. Bearing in mind the number of times the copying process takes place over millions of years, a very interesting picture emerges. In theory, various elements of pressure such as changing environmental conditions, hostile species and competition between species should lead to natural selection, the selection of species advantaged by mutation, and for these species to undergo greater change over such a long period of time. YET THE FACTS ARE OTHERWISE. Let us consider cockroaches, for example. These reproduce very quickly and have short life spans, yet they have remained the same for approximately 250 million years. Archaeobacteria are an even more striking example. These emerged 3.5 billion years ago, when the Earth was still very hot, and are still alive today in the boiling waters in Yellowstone National Park.18

The theory of evolution is a fictitious story written about the natural history of species, and is actually refuted by the scientific findings its adherents obtain! Living fossils show that the effect of the environment on living things is not evolution but rather "non-evolution." Species have not come by their present-day structures by undergoing a process of random change. They have all been flawlessly brought into being by Almighty God and have persisted in the form they were first created throughout their time on Earth.

Footnotes

13. http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/fsslrc02.html

14. http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/fsslrc02.html

15. http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/fsslrc02.html

16. http://www.bible.ca/tracks/fossil-record.htm

17. Evrimin Çıkmaz Sokakları: Yaşayan Fosiller, Focus, Nisan 2003

18. Evrimin Çıkmaz Sokakları: Yaşayan Fosiller, Focus, Nisan 2003

Examples of Living Fossils

Living fossil is the nickname given to organisms whose traces appear in the fossil layers from early geological periods, of which living specimens are still found today. These living things exhibit no differences from their counterparts from millions of years ago, and represent living examples of those long-dead fossil forms.

Without doubt, the most important of these is the forementioned Cœlacanth. For many years, evolutionists portrayed it as the most significant supposed intermediate form, on which they wasted a great deal of speculation until the first surprise appeared in 1938.

The Cœlacanth: An Example of a False Intermediate Form

The evolutionist paleontologist J. L. B. Smith and the living Cœlacanth found in the Comoro Islands. This first specimen showed that the Cœlacanth was a fully-fledged fish, not an intermediate form as claimed by evolutionists. Another 200 specimens discovered since have confirmed this significant fact. A 410-million-year-old Cœlacanth fossil.

Off the coast of southern Africa, in the winter of 1938, a fishing boat called The Nerine dragged from the Indian Ocean near the Chalumna River a fish thought to be extinct for 70 million years. The fish was a cœlacanth, an animal that thrived concurrently with dinosaurs...18

These words, by the evolutionist Keith S. Thompson, chairman of the Oxford University Academy of Natural Sciences, are a clear expression of how quickly an evolutionary myth faded into nothing. The catching of a live specimen of Cœlacanth did away with one of the greatest fake foundations of the theory of evolution.

The Cœlacanth, which according to the fossil record, dates back some 410 million years to the Devonian period, was regarded by evolutionists as a powerful intermediate form between fish and reptile. It had been mysteriously erased from the fossil record 70 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, and was believed to have become extinct at that time.19 Based on these fossils, evolutionist biologists suggested that this creature had a non-functioning, "primitive" as evolutionists put it, lung. Speculation regarding the Cœlacanth became so widespread that the fish was cited in many scientific publications as the most significant evidence for evolution. Paintings and drawings of it leaving the water for the land quickly began appearing in books and magazines. Of course, all these assumptions, images and claims, were based on the idea that the creature was extinct.

The truth was very different, however. Since 1938, more than 200 present-day Cœlacanths have been caught, after that first one off South Africa. The second came from the Comoro Islands off north-west Madagascar in 1952, and a third in Indonesian Sulawesi in 1998. The evolutionist paleontologist J. L. B. Smith was unable to conceal his amazement at the capture of the first Cœlacanth, saying, "If I'd met a dinosaur in the street I wouldn't have been more astonished."20

Later, photographs of a pair of Cœlacanths cavorting was even published in National Geographic magazine! The capture of living Cœlacanths revealed that the claims regarding it were nothing more than deceptions. The structure that evolutionist researchers suggested was a primitive lung turned out to be nothing but a fat-filled swimbladder. In addition, evolutionists had always depicted the fish as living in shallow waters, as a potential reptile preparing to crawl onto the land where it would continue to "evolve." Yet the Cœlacanth was now found to be living in the deepest ocean waters—a bottom-dwelling fish almost never rising above 180 meters below the surface.21

The tail of the living Cœlacanth and that of a 140-million-year-old fossil specimen are identical to one another.

In 1987, the German naturalist Hans Fricke confirmed these research findings when he observed and photographed Cœlacanths off the Grand Comoro Island. He observed that the fish swam backwards, forwards and even tilted head down, but never once "walked, crawled, or otherwise moved on the bottom with their lobed fins."22

Cœlacanth being a living fossil eliminated the so-called evidence that evolutionists had exhibited so proudly to support their imaginary scenario of the fish's transition from water to land. When this creature was encountered in 1938, it immediately revealed the fraudulent nature of the transition from water to land. Evolutionists cast no aspersions on the fact of this living fossil and did not seek to convince anyone that this discovery was in error. They came up with no new conjectures regarding the Cœlacanth and the story of how it emerged from the sea onto dry land. The stasis in the fossil record had demolished the story of this fish's evolution by tearing down one of its basic premises.

Professor of political science Robert G. Wesson set this fact out in these terms:

The bony-finned Cœlacanth, thought to be long extinct but rediscovered in 1938, has been approximately static some 450 million years (Avers 1989, 317). ... The nearly timeless species are not exempt from the changes of proteins that go on in all living beings, and they could surely vary in many ways without loss of adaptiveness, but their patterns have become somehow frozen. ... From the point of view of conventional evolutionary theory long-term stasis is hard to explain. Rapid evolution ... is incongruous that species remain unchanged through changing conditions over many million years.23

Another living Cœlacanth specimen.

The Horseshoe Crab

The first fossil records of the horseshoe crab go back 425 million years, yet this living fossil still lives along present-day shores. Its tail, which allows it to walk with ease across the sand and which is used for steering, its two eyes with their exceedingly complex structures, and all its other unique features have remained unchanged over the last 425 million years.

Horseshoe crab. A 450-million-year-old horseshoe crab is no different to specimens alive today. It has possessed the same complex features and equipment for the last half billion years or so. Clearly, at a time when—according to Darwinists—living things should have been evolving, no evolution actually took place.

The Cockroach

The cockroach, the oldest winged insect in the world, first appears in fossils some 350 million years old, from the Carboniferous period.24 This insect—with its various feelers and hairs that are extremely sensitive to the slightest movement, even to air currents, its perfect wings, and its resistant structure capable of withstanding even radiation—is identical now to how it was 350 million years ago.25

A 300-million-year-old cockroach, with exactly the same features as cockroaches today. This fossil, which lived 300 million years ago, definitively refutes Darwin's theory of evolution.

The Okapi

Another living fossil that invalidates one of the greatest faulty proofs of the theory of evolution—and which even revealed a fraud perpetrated in the name of evolution—is the okapi, shown in the illustration below.

The fossils belonging to this animal dated back to the Miocene epoch. The okapi had always been believed to be extinct—that is, right up until the first living specimen was captured in 1901. At that time, it was taken up as an example by evolutionists and presented as an intermediate form in the equine evolution scenario, which itself is totally false. However, with the capture of a living okapi, that scenario of equine evolution was also done away with.

The "evolution of the horse" was for a long while the evolutionists' Exhibit A in regard to the imaginary origin of mammals. Various living and extinct species were set out, one after the other according to size, totally ignoring the gross anatomical differences between them, and were presented as different stages in the evolution of the horse. This series, exhibited in natural history museums for many years, was described in textbooks as if it were a solid proof of evolution. Today, however, a great many evolutionists admit the invalidity of the equine evolution scenario and confess that it is an example of wishful thinking totally based on sleight-of-hand.

In November, 1980, the evolutionist Boyce Rensberger addressed a four-day symposium attended by 150 evolutionists at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which considered problems facing the theory of evolution. He described how the equine evolution scenario had no basis in the fossil record and how the horse never underwent a process of gradual evolution:

The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed fox-sized creatures living nearly 50 million years ago to today's much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown.26

Rensberger was quite right; no evidence exists that any such process as equine evolution ever took place. The equine "series" is totally speculative and is not based on the facts. Moreover, there are considerable anatomical and physical differences among these animals. What Rensberger ignores, however, is that not all the species in the series are extinct. The okapi, encountered in 1901, showed that a creature that evolutionists depicted as an intermediate form was in fact still alive today. This animal, which has no relation to the horse and which bears a far closer resemblance to the zebra, was living in the Miocene epoch (23-5.3 million years ago), displaying the same complex features it possesses today.

The living fossil of the okapi again demolished one of the main claims of the theory of evolution. The equine series scenario, full of inconsistencies in all possible regards to begin with, was finally eradicated, and another evolutionary disgrace was quietly placed on the shelf.

Dr. Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History said the following about this equine family-tree, which was still lingering in the museum basement:

There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff.27

Other Living Fossils

Newspapers frequently attract attention with such headlines as "20-Milion-Year-Old Spider Fossil Discovered" or "35-Million-Year-Old Lizard Fossil Unearthed." Each of these reports is actually further proof that nothing like the evolutionary process ever happened. There are many examples of living fossils and in addition, these examples go back hundreds of millions of years.

The crocodile is a reptile that was living 200 million years ago, as is confirmed by the fossil record.28 Yet it is of course alive today. Ginkgo trees were living 125 million years ago, but living specimens were found in China in our own time. Neopilina molluscs were living 500 million years ago, the tuatara lizard 200 million years ago, and archaeobacteria as long ago as 3.5 billion years ago.29 These are still alive today, with all their complex systems and perfect structures. The nautilus, another mollusc, was living in the seas 300 million years ago,30 and these creatures are living, feeding and reproducing in exactly the same form in today's seas.

The Australian and African lungfish is another example of a living fossil that was alive 400 million years ago and still thrives in the present. Charles Darwin was astonished by the survival of these fish down to the present day, and in his Origin of Species, he therefore referred to them as "anomalous forms" that "may almost be called living fossils."31

A 146 to 65-million-year-old nautilus (top), and identical modern specimens.	A fossil ginkgo tree leaf dating back 125 million years, and a present-day example.

This is by no means the end of the list of creatures that still survive today unchanged, in exactly the same form as they displayed millions of years ago. The sturgeon, mackerel, freshwater bass, herring, needlefish, lobster, crawfish and the Devonian-period shark are all examples of living fossils. Other examples include the jellyfish, sponges, frogs, bees, ants, butterflies and termites. The 230-million-year-old dragonfly, soldier ants dating back 100 million years, and the 150-million-year-old salamander are all still living today. The same applies to arachnids such as the spider and myriapods such as the millipede.32, 33

Finally, a spider fossilized in amber, and estimated as being 20 million years old, was one of the most important discoveries of the 2000s. A statement from Manchester University announced that this spider, 4 centimeters long and 2 centimeters wide, was identical to present-day specimens. It is hoped that a blood specimen from the spider can extract the arachnid's DNA.34 However, this fossil spider is certainly not the only specimen found. Other fossil spiders unearthed in excavations have been estimated to be hundreds of millions of years old, and are now on exhibit in museums in various countries of the world. The oldest known and most perfect sea spider fossil dates back 425 million years—important evidence that these creatures have remained unchanged for millions of years.35

The Earth contains countless other fossil specimens from millions of years ago of organisms still living today, such as this spider, and of other creatures now extinct. The fossils illustrated in this book are just a few of the millions of specimens kept in various museums.

An Australian lungfish from the Devonian period (408-360 million years ago). Evolutionists claim that lungfish are the ancestors of amphibians. Yet the pulmonary structure in these fish bears no resemblance to that in terrestrial animals.

Footnotes

19. http://www.nwcreation.net/fossilsliving.html

20. http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/living.htm

21. Jean-Jacques Hublin, The Hamlyn Encyclopædia of Prehistoric Animals, New York: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., 1984, s. 120

22. Bilim ve Teknik Dergisi, Kasım 1998, Sayı 372, s. 21; http://www.cnn.com/TECH/ Science /9809/23/living.fossil/index.html

23. http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/living.htm

24. http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/fsslrc02.html

25. http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/livingfossils/

26. http://www.insectia.com/beta/e/iv_c202015.html

27. Boyce Rensberger, Houston Chronicle, 5 Kasım 1980, Bölüm 4, s. 15

28. Colin Patterson, Harper's, Şubat 1984, s. 60

29. http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/livingfossils/

30. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i2/living_fossil.asp

31. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg16422094.900

32. http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/living.htm

33. http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/living.htm

34. http://www.nwcreation.net/fossilsliving.html

35. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4296398.stm

36. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7011/full/nature02928.html - Nature 431, 978-980 (21 October 2004)