Why do people quote Darwin as saying that there are gaps in the fossil record…?
They quote fossils because they are somewhere between 50 and 200 years behind the science and they can’t understand even the basics of molecular biology (which is nasty hard chemistry) or genetics. The young-Earth creationist lie factories have put a lot of effort into misquoting Darwin, paleontologists and lying about fossil finds. They know that the original papers describing the Burgess shale, Australopithecus afarensis (eg Lucy) etc are old and not easy to get hold of, so they know they can lie with near impunity. The faithful will then repeat the lies believing them to be factual. See Jonathan’s answer for the lie about “Java man” and the distortion of the facts in the Nebraska tooth case. In addition, the interpretation of fragmentary fossils is difficult and they can usually find someone to disagree with the mainstream interpretation of particular fossils.This is then touted as being a scientific controversy over the fact of evolution when it is nothing of the kind. The best exa
