In the Beginning, Lesson 4: After His Kind: What the Fossils Really Show

Welcome to Authorized Sword Ministries. This is Lesson Four of our course In the Beginning: The Truth About Creation. Today's lesson is called After His Kind: What the Fossils Really Show.

We're glad you're back.

In Lesson One we stood on Genesis as true history. In Lesson Two we looked up at the heavens. In Lesson Three we looked inside the cell and saw a written code. Today we look down, into the rocks, at the fossils. The world says those fossils prove that one kind of creature slowly turned into another over millions of years. The Bible says something very different. Let's see what God said, what the fossils actually show, and how to talk about it honestly.

Our Key Verse

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
— Genesis 1:25 (KJV)

"After his kind." Those three words are one of the most important phrases in the first chapter of the Bible. God repeats them again and again.

Part One: After His Kind

God Drew the Lines

On day three, the plants were made to bring forth seed after their kind:

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
— Genesis 1:11 (KJV)

"And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
— Genesis 1:12 (KJV)

On day five, the same words cover the creatures of the water and the air:

"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
— Genesis 1:21 (KJV)

On day six, God said it again about the living creatures of the earth, in the verse just before our key verse:

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so."
— Genesis 1:24 (KJV)

Then He made them, "after his kind," and saw that it was good.

Paul later said the same thing in different words:

"All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds."
— 1 Corinthians 15:39 (KJV)

God made living things with real variety, and He also drew real lines. A dog is not a cat. A bird is not a fish. A man is not a beast.

Variety Inside the Kind Is Expected

Now, we need to be careful here, because some Christians have said things that are not true. Creation Ministries International warns us not to say, "No new species have been produced." New species have been observed to form. That is part of the creation model, not a problem for it. What we do not see is one created kind turning into a different kind. A new kind of finch is still a finch. A new kind of dog is still a dog.

Think of dogs, wolves, and coyotes. They can vary a great deal in size and shape. Breeders have produced remarkable variety. But they are still in the same family of creatures. The finches Charles Darwin collected in the Galapagos, which we talked about in Lesson One, show different beaks. That is variety within a kind. It is not a bird turning into a new kind of animal.

So when someone points to change in living things and says, "See, evolution is true," we can kindly say: we believe in change too. God built living things with the ability to vary and to fill the earth. What Genesis does not teach, and what we have not observed, is microbes-to-man evolution, where new information is added until a fish becomes a philosopher.

As Creation Ministries International puts it, the real issue is information. Sorting and losing information can produce a new species within a kind. Turning one kind into another would require the adding of a great deal of new genetic information. That is a very different claim.

Part Two: What Darwin Expected, and What the Rocks Show

Darwin's Own Objection

In 1859, in the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin dedicated a whole chapter to a problem he could not hide. He said that if his theory were true, the number of in-between varieties that once lived on the earth "must be truly enormous." Then he asked a hard question, and he answered it honestly:

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."

That is Darwin, in his own book, in the chapter called "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record." He believed the record was simply incomplete, and that the missing forms would turn up later.

We want to be fair. More than a hundred and sixty years have passed. Museums are full of fossils. Scientists have dug on every continent. And we should not say, "There are no transitional forms." Creation Ministries International warns against that wording, because there are a handful of disputed candidates, and using a blanket statement only invites a comeback. The honest way to say it is the way they recommend: while Darwin predicted that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even all these years later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples.

That is a long time to wait for a chain that was supposed to fill every layer of rock.

They Appear Suddenly, and Fully Formed

What the fossils do show, again and again, is living things appearing suddenly and looking like themselves. Darwin was already troubled by the sudden appearance of complex animals in the lowest fossil-rich rocks, in the layers now called Cambrian. He hoped that older, better-preserved rocks would eventually yield their ancestors.

Answers in Genesis notes that this "Cambrian explosion" is still a problem for the slow-and-gradual story. In those layers, a wide variety of complex animals appear, including creatures with eyes and other detailed parts, without a long line of clear ancestors leading up to them in the rocks below. New finds have added more kinds of Cambrian animals, not the missing family tree Darwin hoped for.

That is exactly what we would expect if God made living things complete and "after his kind," and if many of them were later buried rapidly. It is not what we would expect if one simple form slowly turned into all the others.

A Word We Will Not Use

We also will not use some old arguments that do not hold up. We will not say Archaeopteryx is a fraud. Creation Ministries International says it was a genuine bird, not a fake and not a "missing link." We will not use the Paluxy "man tracks" beside dinosaur tracks, or stories of giant human skeletons, which that same ministry lists as unsound or doubtful. There is so much good evidence that we do not need weak arguments. The truth can stand on its own.

Part Three: Soft Tissue in a T. rex Bone

Now we come to a finding that surprised a lot of people, and we want to handle it with special care.

In 2005, a scientist named Mary Schweitzer and her team published a paper in the journal Science. They had been studying a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125, often called B. rex, found in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. Mainstream geology dates those rocks at about 68 million years old. When they removed the mineral from pieces of the hindlimb bone with weak acid, they did not find only stone. They found transparent, flexible, hollow vessels, and small round structures that looked like cells. Some of the remaining material was fibrous, and it still had elasticity. That is not our wording. That is the wording of their abstract in Science.

The Smithsonian magazine later told the story of how her lab technician, Jennifer Wittmeyer, put a chip under the microscope, tried to flatten it with forceps, and felt the forceps sink in. The tissue curled back up. It was still soft.

Now, here is where we must be honest. Dr. Schweitzer describes herself as a Christian. She does not take her finding as proof that the earth is only thousands of years old. She accepts the 68-million-year date, and the Smithsonian article reports that she has been unhappy when young-earth creationists have used her work that way. We will not put words in her mouth, and we will not pretend she agrees with us about the age of the earth.

What we can say, fairly, is this. The usual textbook story is that soft tissues such as blood vessels decay and disappear, while bone may slowly turn to stone. Many scientists did not expect flexible vessels and cell-like structures to be waiting inside a dinosaur bone dated at tens of millions of years. Dr. Schweitzer's work showed that the old assumptions about decay were too simple. Some later suggested that the structures might be bacterial slime, called biofilm. In 2016 her team published a study testing that idea, and they reported that the data did not support biofilm as the source.

So we are left with an open and honest question, not a cheap slogan. If these structures are what they appear to be, how did soft, flexible tissue last as long as the standard timeline requires? We do not have to settle every scientific debate in one lesson. We also do not have to be intimidated when someone says, "Science has settled that Genesis cannot be true." The rocks keep bringing surprises. God's Word has not changed.

What This Means for Us

The living world, the heavens, and the fossils are all telling the same story, if we will listen. God made living things by His Word, complete, after their kind. The psalmist saw the wisdom in all of it:

"O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches."
— Psalm 104:24 (KJV)

And Paul said that what God has made is clear enough that no one has an excuse:

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:"
— Romans 1:20 (KJV)

The same Lord who made every kind of living thing also made you. He formed the first man from the dust and breathed into him the breath of life. And when we sinned, that same Creator came in the flesh, died for our sins, and rose again.

"All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."
— John 1:3 (KJV)

"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist."
— Colossians 1:16-17 (KJV)

The One who made every kind, and who holds all things together, can make you new.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
— Romans 10:9 (KJV)

A Simple Step for This Week

• Read Genesis chapter 1 again, and pause every time you see the words "after his kind."
• If someone says the fossils prove that one kind turned into another, ask kindly, "Where is the long chain of in-between forms Darwin said should fill the rocks?"
• Thank God for the variety He built into living things, and for the lines He drew as well.

A Prayer

Lord, thank You that You made every living thing after its kind, and that You saw that it was good. Thank You for the wisdom in all Your works. Keep us honest in the way we handle evidence, and keep us steadfast in Your Word. Help us to trust Jesus Christ, our Creator and our Saviour. In Jesus' name, amen.

In our next lesson, we will look at the worldwide Flood, "the world that then was," and what it left behind in the rocks.

This is Authorized Sword Ministries. God bless you.

Sources

All sources were opened and checked on November 10, 2026.

1. Wording we avoid, and the recommended substitutes: "No new species have been produced" is untrue (new species have been observed; rapid speciation within the kind is part of the creation model). Prefer not to say "there are no transitional forms"; better: "While Darwin predicted that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even 150 years later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples." Also do not use "Archaeopteryx is a fraud," Paluxy man tracks, or giant human skeletons. Jonathan Sarfati, "Arguments we think creationists should NOT use," Creation Ministries International, 7 February 2006 (and later updates on the same page). https://creation.com/arguments-we-think-creationists-should-not-use
2. The key issue is information (sorting and loss versus adding new genetic information), not a denial of all change: same CMI article, section on "Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution."
3. Darwin's admission, first edition (1859), Chapter IX, "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record": "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." Public-domain text: Wikisource, On the Origin of Species (1859)/Chapter IX. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species_(1859)/Chapter_IX (Later editions move this chapter to Chapter X and change "gravest" to "serious." This lesson quotes the 1859 wording.)
4. Darwin was troubled by the sudden appearance of complex animals in the lowest fossiliferous rocks; he hoped older rocks would yield their ancestors. The Cambrian layers still show a wide variety of complex animals appearing suddenly, without the long ancestral series he expected. Answers in Genesis, "Researchers Devise Alternate Theory For Cambrian Explosion." https://answersingenesis.org/fossils/fossil-record/researchers-devise-alternate-theory-cambrian-explosion/ ; Answers in Genesis, "Doubt on Complex Species Evolving Slowly" (new Cambrian finds, including soft parts such as eyes, add more kinds rather than the missing ancestors). https://answersingenesis.org/fossils/fossil-record/doubt-on-complex-species/
5. Mary H. Schweitzer, Jennifer L. Wittmeyer, John R. Horner, and Jan K. Toporski, "Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex," Science 307, no. 5717 (25 March 2005): 1952–1955. Abstract: soft tissues preserved within hindlimb elements of T. rex (Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125); removal of the mineral phase reveals transparent, flexible, hollow blood vessels containing small round microstructures; some demineralized bone matrix is highly fibrous and possesses elasticity and resilience. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1108397
6. Helen Fields, "Dinosaur Shocker," Smithsonian, May 2006. Reports the 68-million-year date for the Montana T. rex; Wittmeyer finding tissue that gave under forceps and curled back; the usual textbook expectation that soft tissues decay and disappear; Schweitzer describes herself as "a complete and total Christian" and objects to young-earth use of her data. We report her finding and her disagreement, and we do not claim her endorsement. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/
7. M. H. Schweitzer, T. P. Cleland, E. R. Schroeter, et al. related follow-up: "Testing the Hypothesis of Biofilm as a Source for Soft Tissue and Cell-Like Structures Preserved in Dinosaur Bone," PLOS ONE, 2016. The authors report that the data do not support biofilm-forming microorganisms as the source of the soft-tissue structures. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150238