Hi BD,
Fossils can tell you that RM and NS took place? Talk about a canard.
Not on their own, no. But then we already know, from real-time observations, that both RM and NS do take place, so we hardly need fossils to prove any such thing.
What the fossil record does do is provide evidence for evolution. If evolution were true, we would expect to see that organisms preserved in the fossil record change over geological time. That would be in accordance with the ToE. And that is exactly what we do find.
Also, if the ToE were true, we would expect not to find anachronistic fossils, like say, Cambrian rabbits or Triassic birds. And guess what; that is something that we never find, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of fossils are known. This too constitutes clear evidence in favour of the ToE.
This thread is easily the most foolish and absurd on the whole forum. You know perfectly well that there are multiple lines of evidence for the ToE. Genetics, population dynamics, geology, biogeography, etc. are all frequently cited as evidence for the ToE. You know this. You may not agree that such evidence is valid and no-one is saying that you have to, but to pretend that it does not exist is childish and fatuous.
Mutate and Survive
"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod