A brochure published in 1999 by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in the United States says: “A particularly compelling example of speciation [the evolution of new species] involves the 13 species of finches studied by Darwin on the Galápagos Islands, now known as Darwin’s finches.”

In the 1970’s, a research group led by Peter and Rosemary Grant began studying these finches and discovered that after a year of drought, finches that had slightly bigger beaks survived more readily than those with smaller beaks. Since the size and shape of the beaks is one of the primary ways of determining the 13 species of finches, these findings were assumed to be significant. “The Grants have estimated,” continues the brochure, “that if droughts occur about once every 10 years on the islands, a new species of finch might arise in only about 200 years.”

However, the NAS brochure neglects to mention some significant but awkward facts. In the years following the drought, finches with smaller beaks again dominated the population. Thus, Peter Grant and graduate student Lisle Gibbs wrote in the science journal Nature in 1987 that they had seen “a reversal in the direction of selection.” In 1991, Grant wrote that “the population, subjected to natural selection, is oscillating back and forth” each time the climate changes. The researchers also noticed that some of the different “species” of finches were interbreeding and producing offspring that survived better than the parents. Peter and Rosemary Grant concluded that if the interbreeding continued, it could result in the fusion of two “species” into just one within 200 years.

Indeed, Darwin’s finches are not becoming “anything new.” They are still finches. And the fact that they are interbreeding casts doubt on the methods some evolutionists use to define a species.