ENST: Evolution vs The Fossil Record

Darwinians have to mangle,
manipulate and coerce fossils
into their evolutionary narrative

This article published May 25 at Evolution News gives examples from recent scientific papers of games Darwinians play with fossils. Intelligently-designed animals, extinct or not, do not fit Darwin’s picture of a gradually-unfolding tree of life, even if one assumes the assigned dates in the geologic timeline with its millions of years. CEH editor David Coppedge shows how evolutionists force the bones into the evolutionary scheme in spite of the evidence, even when there are major upsets against previous claims they made.

The Great Darwini performs evolutionary magic! Watch and share this Short Reel about this article. Click to view.

One of the notable upsets mentioned in the article concerns tracks of modern-looking reptiles that appear 40 million years before Tiktaalik, the fish-a-pod that made evolutionist Neil Shubin famous! (See 2008 April 12) In spite of this falsification, the evolutionary narrative continues with its triumphal affirmation of Darwinism. Read also about dinosaurs, frogs, mammoths—a list of uncooperative fossils from the “earliest” multicellular organisms to the present. Why, you ask, is there no outcry in the Big Science Media? Why no retractions or apologies from Big Science Media?

In a word, censorship.

Fossils as Magical Darwin Relics
by David Coppedge
Evolution News & Science Today, May 25, 2025

This article will survey recently reported fossil discoveries that evolutionists use to support their tree of life icon. The fossils range from the Cambrian to the Neogene. My aim here is not to question their dates or placement in the standard geologic column, but to examine how fossils are used in the Darwinian narrative. We can compare the behavior of evolutionary paleontologists to overeager churchmen holding a piece of wood said to be a fragment of the true cross. They encase it in a shrine. But then a monk argues that the piece of wood came from the wrong place and time, too early for the cross. Then it becomes reinterpreted as a fragment of the harp that David played for King Saul. Analogously, fossils are only observable in the present, but the evolutionary narrative drives the interpretation of their positions in the story of life’s evolution.

Ediacaran and Cambrian Fossils

Ediacaran fossils of the genus Charnia … discussed in the Journal of the Geological Society by D. McIlroy, occur in many parts of the world. No skeletal or muscular systems are observed in these frondose specimens that consist mostly of 2D impressions on rock. McIlroy’s interpretation uses the word “might” 15 times, as in: “the Charnia morphotype produced might be functionally plausible as example of an extinct metazoan clade.” (Emphasis added.) Darwinians would sure like to have a transitional form there! It would help bridge the gap between the mysterious Ediacaran fauna and the Cambrian explosion.

Another frondose Ediacaran specimen named Fractofusus is described in Nature Communications by Dunn, Donoghue, and Liu. It looks nothing like a Cambrian animal, but they need it to fit the Darwinian narrative. Interpretation: the fossil provides “a framework for explaining evolutionary transitions between the bodyplans of these members of the eumetazoan stem-group.” A framework is like a plot for a story…

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For more of David’s articles at the Discovery Institute, see this partial list.