Does the fossil record support the idea of biological change over time (biological evolution)?

Answer 1

Absolutely..... the geologic time scale supports this. It is what has helped to allow geologists to develop this time scale in that over the different time periods, there is the evidence of this evolution occurring.

Answer 2

Yes, but it is not just the bones themselves. The biggest clues to the age of fossils comes from the science of geology.

The fossils are often buried under layers of earth that were deposited by flooding. A new mountain, like Everest, will have sharp, jagged peaks, and separated from it's neighbors by steep walled canyons.

Old mountains, like the Appalachians, are lower, well rounded, and the canyons separating them are filled with the sediment that was once their craggy peaks.

In the case of the Grand Canyon, sediments were deposited over millions of years, then over millions of years that followed, the Colorado river eroded a canyon that exposed those layers.

My background is in the physical Sciences, not the life sciences, but I have seen, understood, and come to accept the evidence that the universe is about fifteen billion years old, and tha the earth is about four billion years old.

Answer 3

There is circumstantial evidence in the geologic record that indicates that organisms have changed from those found in the past to those seen living today. But to accredit this only to biological evolution prevents the scientist from seeing the whole picture. Just because there are organisms in the fossil record that are not seen today does not necessarily indicate that they have evolved into these forms. It could simply indicate that there were organisms in the past that became extinct. Extinction has nothing to do with creating evolution. Darwin made this mistake, he came to the conclusion that Natural Selection created evolution. That it was the engine that moved the evolutionary vehicle. However, he overlooked the fact that in order for evolution to work it requires the building blocks, new genetic information to create new living forms. Natural Selection Mass extinction events simply open up ecological niches where existing organisms can thrive and fill the vacuum left by the extinct organism. It does not create anything new, it only selects already existing forms. We want to know what creates these new forms.

That was when evolutionists discovered a solution: mutations. They create new biological forms. So science went from Darwinism to Neo-Darwinism. But this too had a defect. Mutations only cause defects and lose of information, to fill the gap recessive genes replace the damaged ones creating a new species. But this was not what evolutionists needed. This was Micro-evolution (Limited horizontal change within a kind of organism) not Macro-evolution (Unlimited vertical change into an entirely different organism). This also did not create the new information to create new forms and only resulted in other forms of the same organism and would not even eventually create a leap to a new Family of organisms. It produced only defective forms which would be eliminated by Natural Selection. Like the imaginary small theropod dinosaur flopping around stumbling over its arms moving to the front of it's body as they gradually changed scales into complex aerodynamic flight feathers. If you can imagine this, then we will have to stop till you can get a grip on yourself from laughing, so we can go one to the fruit fly experiments. The fruit fly experiments were an example of this. It produced albinos, wingless flies, crumpled wing flies, eyeless flies, etc and to top things off they were still the same species and subspecies. No evolution here.

That is when new speculation discovered the new theory of evolution called punctuated equilibrium. Stephen J. Gould wrote a book on it, A Wonderful Life. However, it suffered from the same defect. He came to the conclusion that there was a huge explosion of life in the Cambrian (The first fossil strata containing fossils). They called it the Cambrian Explosion. But he concluded that suddenly life appeared with no ancestors to evolve from, then throughout the following fossil record there was only speciation of already existing forms of life, with nothing new. When I heard him say this at a conference at UCLA in about 1996, I said, "This is the same thing creationists have been saying all along. Except for the stretched time frame, creationists agree." Everything appeared suddenly then adaptation kicked in whenever the environment changed in order for the organisms to survive. But this is not evolution. There is no new information.
The fossil record only shows that there were living things that became extinct. The missing links - including all links none have been found, and there are thousands of them - is the missing evidence that would prove things developed over geologic time; assuming the record in the rocks is a record of geologic history. Geologic evidence shows that the rock strata is a record of sudden catastrophic events in the past. Evolution needs a movie, not single photographic snapshots called punctuated equilibrium or mass extinction events i.e. cataclysms.

With this evidence in mind, I must conclude that science shows that the circumstantial evidence in the fossil record could be interpreted to support the idea of biological evolution, but the preponderance of the evidence more strongly supports the idea that living organisms were created by an unknown method in the past and have only speciated since then. And in order to draw a correct conclusion all relevant scientific observations must be included in order to make a decision. Selection of only part of the evidence leads to wrong conclusions. With this in mind; I must conclude that the fossil record does not support biological evolution.

Answer 4

One of the reasons that Darwin developed the idea is that it was the best way to explain the fossil record, which was becoming extremely confusing at the time as more fossils were being discovered.

Answer 5

Photosynthesis, mitosis, abiogenesis. None of those look organic to me. those techniques act greater like assembly lines and factories different than some thing nature got here up with randomly. Evolution isn't a theory, that's a shown actuality. organic determination is the theory that explains how evolution works. Any theist who tries to disprove evolution is a fool. even with the undeniable fact that evolution doesnt disprove god.

Answer 6

Fossil record only show changes or evolution in skeleton parts.

But DNA analysis can reveal much more than that.
.

Answer 7

Yes..evolution.

Answer 8

Yes.

Answer 9

Yes it does.

Answer 10

Yes it does. You should read a good textbook on it if you're interested.