32 EVOLUTION AND GENETICS 



The Evidence from Paleontology 



The direct evidence furnished by fossil remains 

 is by all odds the strongest evidence that we have in 

 favor of organic evolution. Paleontology holds the 

 incomparable position of being able to point directly 

 to fossil remains showing that the animals and 

 plants living in past times are connected with those 

 living at the present time, often through an un- 

 broken series of stages {jig. 16). Paleontology has 

 triumphed over the weakness of the evidence, which 

 Darwin admitted was serious, by filling in many of 

 the missing links. 



Paleontology has been criticised on the ground 

 that it cannot pretend to show the actual ancestors 

 of living forms, because, if in the past genera and 

 species were as abundant and as diverse as we find 

 them at present, it is very improbable that the bones 

 of any individual that happened to be ]3reserved are 

 the bones of just that species that took part in the 

 evolution. Paleontolooists freelv admit that in manv 

 cases this is probably true, but even then the evi- 

 dence is still, I think, just as valuable and in exactly 

 the same sense as is the evidence from comparative 

 anatomy. It suffices that there lived in the past a 

 particular "group" of animals that had many points 

 in common with those that preceded them and with 

 those that came later. Whether these are the actual 

 ancestors, or not, does not so much matter ; for, the 

 view that, from such a group of species, the later 



