The record remains precisely the same as when, over a century ago, Darwin exclaimed: “As by this [evolution] theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”

He passed off the difficulty by stating that the fossil record was at fault.

Furthermore, Darwin said that if it could be shown that groups of living things “have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution.”