Is the theory of evolution by natural selection correct?

Evidence of evolution from the fossil record

Question: Is the theory of evolution by natural selection correct?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, the theory of evolution is correct
Argument1 of 6›: Evidence of evolution from the fossil record

Description

The argument

The fossil record is the theory of evolution written in stone. Fossils do not appear haphazardly through the Earth's strata: they occur in a consistent order, with simple single-celled organisms in the oldest rocks, followed over hundreds of millions of years by invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds. The biologist JBS Haldane was once asked what evidence would refute evolution and famously answered 'fossil rabbits in the Precambrian' — a creature out of sequence. No such fossil has ever been found, despite more than a century of intensive excavation on every continent. The record also preserves the transitional forms evolution predicts. Tiktaalik, a 375-million-year-old creature from the Canadian Arctic, has the fins of a fish and the neck, lungs and wrist bones of a land animal. Archaeopteryx combines the feathers and wishbone of a bird with the teeth, claws and bony tail of a dinosaur. The early whales — Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Basilosaurus — trace a land mammal's return to the sea step by step, losing hind limbs and migrating nostrils along the way. The hominin fossils document the same gradation between ancient apes and modern humans. Most tellingly, the theory makes successful predictions. The team that found Tiktaalik did not stumble on it; they reasoned that the fish-to-land transition should appear in Devonian rocks of a particular age and went looking in exposed strata of exactly that period. The fossil was where evolution said it would be. A theory that orders the deep past and correctly predicts what remains to be discovered has earned the status of established science.

Premises

[P1]Fossils appear in the geological record in a consistent order, from simple ancestral forms in older strata to more complex descendants in younger ones. [P2] Transitional series such as Tiktaalik, Archaeopteryx and the early whales document intermediate forms between major groups, exactly where the theory predicts them. [P3] Palaeontologists have used the theory to predict the age and location of undiscovered transitional fossils, and the predictions have been borne out. [C] Therefore, the fossil record shows the theory of evolution by natural selection is correct.

Counter-arguments

Sceptics of evolution contend the fossil record is too incomplete to bear this weight: fossilisation is rare, most organisms leave no trace, and the record shows gaps and the seemingly abrupt appearance of many body plans, as in the Cambrian explosion, rather than the smooth gradation the argument describes. They further object that fossils are dated by the strata they sit in and the strata dated by their fossils, which they allege is circular. Mainstream palaeontology answers these points with independent radiometric dating and a growing catalogue of transitional forms, but as posed the objection targets the completeness the argument assumes.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics argue the ordering is patchy and marked by sudden appearances (e.g. the Cambrian explosion) rather than a continuous sequence, and that dating fossils by strata risks circularity.

The argument

Premises

Counter-arguments

Rejecting the premises

Further reading