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 The Fossil Record

Does the fossil record present a problem to what God says in His word concerning the origin of man? Anthropologists, constantly uncovering human bones, tell us exactly how long ago they think these people lived, what they were, where they live, and the importance of their place in man’s ancestry. How do they obtain all this information and how trustworthy is it?

We begin with the Cambrian strata, supposed to be the oldest rock strata containing fossils. Note first a major mystery in the fossil record: the outburst of life in the so-called Cambrian period, though there should be billions of years of evolution represented before this. Tremendous amounts of sedimentary rock were laid down before the Cambrian yet they contain no fossils. The great index fossil of the Cambrian rocks is the trilobite, presumed to be one of the earliest forms of life. (An index fossil is a particular type of fossil presumed to identify rock formations or strata.) Trilobites are really very complex little animals with a nervous system and cilia, or hairs, protruding from their sides to propel them alone. With compound eyes and antennae, they are certainly not primitive animals. Evolutionists claim that once life evolved to the one-celled animal, we were more than halfway to man. A trilobite is much farther up that scale, yet we have no record of evolutionary development before it. Trilobites and most other invertebrates are found represented in the Cambrian strata.

My files include a photograph of a particular fossil acquisition in the Cambrian strata. About twenty little trilobites are imbedded in rock in what appears to be a sandal print. This presents a slight problem. The sandal print had to be formed while the trilobites were still living; no other logical explanation can be conceived. However, after scanning this photo carefully one paleontologist at the University of Utah stated that the whole print must be a new type of trilobite that we have never seen before. He is talking about trilobite fossils in what would appear to be a ten-inch sandal print which has deeper impressions in the heel mark area than in the toe.

The uncovering of other fossils in Texas tend to make man contemporary with dinosaurs if the findings are accepted at face value. For instance, human prints were located in the same strata with dinosaur prints in the Paluxy river bed in Glen Rose, Texas. in locating the eight track in one series, we pumped out the water and scraped off the debris until we came to the rock sheet on the bottom where we found the print in limestone. This human track crossed a three-toed dinosaur track, and one could discern fainter prints going on out into the river. Recently a gentleman who is continuing work on this project has found four good sized tracks, approximately sixteen inches long and nine inches across, revealing toes. As more research is completed in the Glen Rose area, a number of questions concerning man will be answered.