EvC Forum: Fossil Record as the Strongest or most compelling evidence of Macroevolution

quote:
How about I try to give a start on what the fossil record looks like. This is only a tiny little overview of it and maybe we will need a lot more as we go along. (I'm also doing this from memory as I don't think that a few 10's of Myrs one way or the other matters to the overall framework)
1) The oldest rocks on earth are just over 4 Gyrs old (4,000,000,000 years).
2) The earliest things that appear to be fossils of unicellular life are about 3.5+ Gyrs old. These are reasonably likely to be fossils of life but there can be some arguement.
3) Way before 1 Gyr there is good evidence of unicellular life.
4) From 4 Gyr to 1 Gyr no evidence has been found for multicellular life.
6) At about 600 Myr multicellular life becomes apparent.
7) At about 550 Myr mulitcelluar life with many basic body plans and some hard parts allowing for fossilization are found.
8) Todays basic phyla are present at the 550 Myr mark but are very simple. (e.g., worm like with no 'real' backbone to represent cordates (that is US) )
9) Somewhere around 350 Myr we have fish, insects, worms, etc. We have no reptiles, amphibians, mammals or birds found at all.
10) Amphibians appear next. There are no reptiles etc.
11) Around 250 to 300 Myrs ago we find reptiles.
12) Somewhere around 200+ Myrs ago we find a series of fossils that show a clear transition from reptile features to mammels. And mammels are found from then on.
13) This sort of pattern continues. There are clear points where new taxonomic forms appear for the first time. They then show ongoing diversification after that.
14) Another pattern that becomes more apparent in the last 100 Myrs is that the life forms become more and more like those alive to day.
15) There is no monotonic pattern from smaller to bigger.
16) There are sudden, dramatic losses of large numbers of species and genera.
17) After these large losses there is a diversification of the survivors to fill empty niches.
Ok, how is that for the fossil record? Do you need a lot more detail? If you do I think you might need to go to specialized sources. When you know what the fossil record actually is *then* you can comment on it's value in drawing conclusions. Until you do know you have nothing to comment about and would be well to say "I don't know."
The is but one theory that explains all of the above and a very, very, very large amount more. It may not be "proven" but it sure looks like a very good horse to bet on in this race.
Now back to the two meanings of the word evolution. One is the theory of how all this happened (the ToE) that is what is not
"proven". The other meaning is that life has, through some mechanism, changed and diversified on earth. That meaning is "proven", it is simply the facts as laid out above. You don't have any problem with that, do you?

Thank you Ned, that’s great and very helpful, actually I'll print that for future use and reference, but the dating methods that produce the millions of years are very inaccurate, I don't want to elaborate on that without starting a new topic though...

As I understand it so far the fossil record shows older to younger, less complex to more complex specimens, thus supporting the theory of evolution's EVOLVING concept. That is what I was trying to say, whether it came out clear or not.

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