Main conclusions

  1. The principal assumption on which this website is based is that published phylogenetic trees (equivalent to family trees), which display relationships between ancestor and descendant fossil organisms, are generally correct. To assume this is to say that the theory of evolution is at least partially correct.
  2. Any clear inconsistency between any tree and the fossil evidence would indicate that the tree is not correctly representing ancestor-descendant relationships.
  3. In the great majority of cases, there is no obvious inconsistency between the phylogenetic trees and the fossils on which the trees are based.
  4. As a result of the general coherence of the phylogenetic trees and the fossil record, it has been possible to assemble data from more than 1,500 transitional fossils.  (Data on all of these can be found in the Data page  under    the "Other Information" tab of the website.) 
  5. I therefore consider that the opinion, expressed by some of my fellow Christians, that transitional fossils do not exist is disproved by the data presented in this website.
  6. However, of the 115 vertebrate and vascular plant clades examined for this website, 32 (28%) provide no evidence that they contain stem-group (i.e. transitional) fossils. The transitions that lack fossils are commonly much shorter in duration than those that are represented by fossils. This might suggest an association between a lack of transitional fossils and unusually rapid evolution. 
  7. Of the roughly 30 animal phyla that are extant at the present day, 17 appeared during a period of 21 million years from the beginning of the Cambrian period. This corresponds to an average time of 1.2 million years per phylum, much shorter than the average duration of 123 million years for the stem-to-crown transitions of all the vertebrate clades analyzed, each of which represent a component within a single phylum, the chordates. This episode of apparently very rapid evolution represents the "Cambrian explosion".
  8. The appearance of entire phyla at such a rapid rate is consistent with the author's belief that divine creation was responsible for the Cambrian explosion. Such direct creation might also have caused the lack of transitional fossils in at least some stem lines, as described in point 6 above.
Photo credit
Charles Darwin in 1881: Public domain, Wikimedia Commons