How does the fossil record support the idea that evolution has taken place on Earth?

Answer 1

In a word, plenty. The earliest fossils on earth are of stromatolites, marine bacterial mats. These date back more than three billion years. The earliest metazoans (multicellular organisms) are all marine creatures dating back some 700 million years. By 450 million years ago (the Ordovician) plants and insects began an earnest conquest of the land. Around three hundred million years ago we find the first fossils of amphibians, which all bear uncanny resemblance to sarcopterygian lungfish of that era. ALL terrestrial vertebrates bear the same familiar body plan. All of them are quadrupeds, even the cetaceans (marine mammals). Marine reptiles, marine birds, flying mammals (bats) are all laid out essentially the same. Their forms practically scream common ancestry.

Certain slithering reptiles have lost their limbs, but even snake skeletal anatomy reveals where completely atrophied limbs had once attached in ancient ancestral forms.

Paleontologists have never found a Homo sapien skull more than 200,000 years old, nor any hominid skull more than 7 million years old.

It should be noted that a theory is a hypothesis that is supported by evidence. Geology, DNA, comparative Biology, zoology, fossils and the ability for mutations to arise all provide plenty of evidence to support the theory of evolutionary biology.

Answer 2

Species have changed over time.