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A lack of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design has been a persistent problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.

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DO THE FOSSILS PROVE EVOLUTION?

Darwin said in the 1850s
‘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 serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

Charles Darwin, ‘On the imperfection of the geological record’, Chapter X, The Origin of Species, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1971, pp. 292—293.

But 120 years later!
‘Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information — what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which doesshow change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. Also the major extinctions such as those of the dinosaurs and trilobites are still very puzzling.’

Dr. David M. Raup (Curator of Geology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago), ‘Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology’. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50(1), January 1979, p. 25.

‘Darwin’s theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true.’

Dr David M. Raup (Curator of Geology,FieldMuseum of Natural History, Chicago), ‘Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology’. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50(1), January 1979, p. 22

‘It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student, from Trueman’s Ostrea/Gryphaea to Carruthers’ Zaphrentis delanouei, have now been ‘debunked’. Similarly, my own experinece [sic] of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive.’

Dr Derek V. Ager (Department of Geology & Oceanography, University College, Swansea, UK), ‘The nature of the fossilrecord’. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, vol. 87(2), 1976, p. 132.

‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.’

Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), ‘Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?’ Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January l980,p.127.

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