The TOE is supported by the Fossil Record

Early geologists, in the 1700s and 1800s, noticed how fossils seemed to occur in sequences: certain assemblages of fossils were always found below other assemblages.

From the 1830s onwards, geologists noted how fossils became more complex through time. The oldest rocks contained no fossils, then came simple sea creatures, then more complex ones like fishes, then came life on land, then reptiles, then mammals, and finally humans. Clearly, there was some kind of ”progress’ going on.

Since 1859, paleontologists, or fossil experts, have searched the world for fossils. In the past 150 years they have not found any fossils that Darwin would not have expected.

All these labors have not led to a single unexpected finding such as a human fossil from the time of the dinosaurs, or a Jurassic dinosaur in the same rocks as Silurian trilobites.

Creationists claim that there are no transitional forms. This claim is made over and over as if it were a mantra. The plain fact is that there are transitional sequences but they never discuss the details.

Today, many of the gaps in the paleontological record have been filled by the research of paleontologists. Hundreds of thousands of fossil organisms, found in well-dated rock sequences, represent successions of forms through time and manifest many evolutionary transitions.

The fossil record thus provides consistent evidence of systematic change through time--of descent with modification. From this huge body of evidence, it can be predicted that no reversals will be found in future paleontological studies. That is, amphibians will not appear before fishes, nor mammals before reptiles, and no complex life will occur in the geological record before the oldest eucaryotic cells. This prediction has been upheld by the evidence that has accumulated until now: no reversals have been found.

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

Dr Prothero said the creationists are ignoring a wealth of transitional fossils found since Darwin's era which provide proof of the evolutionary process.

We now have abundant evidence for how all the major groups of animals are related, much of it in the form of excellent transitional fossils.

The most scientifically rigorous method of confirming this prediction is to demonstrate a positive corellation between phylogeny and stratigraphy, i.e. a positive corellation between the order of taxa in a phylogenetic tree and the geological order in which those taxa first appear and last appear (whether for living or extinct intermediates). For instance, within the error inherent in the fossil record, prokaryotes should appear first, followed by simple multicellular animals like sponges and starfish, then lampreys, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, etc., as shown in Figure 1. Contrary to the erroneous (and unreferenced) opinions of some anti-evolutionists (e.g. Wise 1994, p. 225-226), studies from the past ten years addressing this very issue have confirmed that there is indeed a positive corellation between phylogeny and stratigraphy, with statistical significance (Benton 1998; Benton and Hitchin 1996; Benton and Hitchin 1997; Benton et al. 1999; Benton et al. 2000; Benton and Storrs 1994; Clyde and Fisher 1997; Hitchin and Benton 1997; Huelsenbeck 1994; Norell and Novacek 1992a; Norell and Novacek 1992b; Wills 1999).