"We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make further progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology or biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters by jumping up and down shrilling, ‘Darwin is god and I, So-and-so, am his prophet.’ "—*Errol White, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London, 177:8 (1966).

"The part of geology that deals with the tracing of the geologic record of the past is called historic geology. Historic geology relies chiefly on paleontology, the study of fossil evolution, as preserved in the fossil record, to identify and correlate the lithic records of ancient time."—*O.D. von Engeln and *K.E. Caster, Geology (1952), p. 423.

"Although the comparative study of living animals and plants may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only historical documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more complex forms."—*Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology (1949), p. 52.

"Fortunately there is a science which is able to observe the progress of evolution through the history of our earth. Geology traces the rocky strata of our earth, deposited one upon another in the past geological epochs through hundreds of millions of years, and finds out their order and timing and reveals organisms which lived in all these periods. Paleontology, which studies the fossil remains, is thus enabled to present organic evolution as a visible fact."—*Richard B. Goldschmidt, "An Introduction to a Popularized Symposium on Evolution," in Scientific Monthly, Vol. 77, October 1953, p. 184.

"No biologist has actually seen the origin by evolution of a major group of organisms."—*G. Ledyard Stebbins, Process of Organic Evolution, p. 1. [Stebbins is a geneticist.]

"It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the [fossil] record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."—*George G. Simpson, The Major Features of Evolution, p. 360.

"The adequacy of the fossil record for conclusive evidence is supported by the observation that 79.1 percent of the living families of terrestrial vertebrates have been found as fossils (87.7 percent if birds are included)."—R.H. Brown, "The Great Twentieth-Century Myth," in Origins, January 1986, p. 40.

"Geology and paleontology held great expectations for Charles Darwin, although in 1859 [when he published his book, Origin of the Species] he admitted that they [already] presented the strongest single evidence against his theory. Fossils were a perplexing puzzlement to him because they did not reveal any evidence of a gradual and continuous evolution of life from a common ancestor, proof which he needed to support his theory. Although fossils were an enigma to Darwin, he ignored the problem and found comfort in the faith that future explorations would reverse the situation and ultimately prove his theory correct

."He stated in his book, The Origin of the Species, ‘The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find intermediate varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views, on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory’ [quoting from the sixth (1901) edition of Darwin’s book, pages 341-342].

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track."—Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma (1988), p. 9 [italics ours].

"There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and identified, in museums around the world."—*Porter Kier, quoted in New Scientist, January 15, 1981, p. 129.

"The reason for abrupt appearances and gaps can no longer be attributed to the imperfection of the fossil record as it was by Darwin when paleontology was a young science. With over 200,000,000 catalogued specimens of about 250,000 fossil species, many evolutionary paleontologists such as Stanley argue that the fossil record is sufficient."—W.R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited (1954), p. 48 [italics ours]."In part, the role of paleontology in evolutionary research has been defined narrowly because of a false belief, tracing back to Darwin and his early followers, that the fossil record is woefully incomplete. Actually, the record is of sufficiently high quality to allow us to undertake certain kinds of analysis meaningfully at the level of the species."—*S. Stanley, "Macroevolution," p. 1 (1979).

"Over ten thousand fossil species of insects have been identified, over thirty thousand species of spiders, and similar numbers for many sea-living creatures. Yet so far the evidence for step-by-step changes leading to major evolutionary transitions looks extremely thin. The supposed transition from wingless to winged insects still has to found, as has the transition between the two main types of winged insects, the paleoptera (mayflies, dragonflies) and the neoptera (ordinary flies, beetles, ants, bees)."—*Fred Hoyle, "The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution," 1983, p. 43.