51.   The problem, researchers say, is that molecular studies keep coming up with ages that are inexplicably older compared with the fossil record.

52.   The Red Planet may harbor a fossil record of how life arose and evolved in its most primitive forms.

53.   The result of such sketchy information is that occasionally discoveries that fill in a gap in the fossil record compel scientists to completely revise their views.

54.   The searing temperatures of the sun would overwhelm a man-made spacecraft if it attempted to swoop close to gather a sample of the fossil record.

55.   The study of insect evolution is hampered by a gigantic gap in the fossil record.

56.   Their superficial differences with modern humans would then have largely disappeared over a few generations, leaving Neanderthals indistinguishable from modern humans in the fossil record.

57.   Thirty years later, scientists are still arguing over how often the fossil record shows a punctuated pattern and how such a pattern might arise.

58.   This in itself would be a significant find because the early fossil record of chimpanzees, the nearest relatives to humans, is barren.

59.   This was the beginning of the discovery of a kind of conifer well known in the fossil record from the dinosaur age but long thought to be extinct.

60.   Thousands of species simply vanished from the fossil record.