An illustration of the evolutionary concept of descent from a common ancestor (from Morris, John D., The Young Earth, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1997). This type of illustration appears in all evolutionary text books. The thing of significance to note in these diagrams is that there is actual existing or fossil data only at the leaf nodes, or tips of the branches! If anything is shown at a branching point, it is typically a hypothetical plant or animal. The actual scientific-fossil data reflects not the pattern of a large single tree as shown above, but rather a “forest of smaller individual trees” representing the originally created kinds that have diversified to the extent that their genetic potential allows. It is admitted to even by evolutionists that the predominate mode of the fossil record is one of “sudden appearance” followed by “stasis” (no change).