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.
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. |
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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. |
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 |
 |
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. |
 |
 |
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. (left)
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. |
|
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.

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. |
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.
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
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.

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. |
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
 |
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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
and an ant living today. These creatures are still
the same as they were millions of years ago.
A fossil maple leaf dating back millions of years,
and modern maple leaves. |
A fossil crocodile, 190
million years old, and a crocodile of today. |
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A fossil feather, 120 million
years old. |
A
fossil flower and today's primrose. |
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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
and the oldest known flowering plant fossil. |
|
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.
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.

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A 50-million-year-old fossil scorpion in amber. (left)
A tuatara fossil and a tuatara living today. (middle)
A fossil horseshoe crab and a present-day specimen. (right)
|
13. Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution's
Erratic Pace," Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5,
May 1977, p. 14 
14. Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate,
[1995], phoenix: London, 1996, p. 95
15. Niles Eldredge, Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and
the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1985,
pp. 188-189
16. Stephen Jay Gould, Lecture at Hobart & William Smith College, 14/2/1980 
17. "Evrimin Cikmaz Sokaklari: Yasayan Fosiller" (Cul de sac of evolution:
Living Fossils), Focus, April 2003 |