>>14084486No, the types of creatures that were around 3 billion years ago were different from those that were around 300 million years, and from those 3 million years ago. Observe humans from 10,000 years ago and see that they had only stone implements. Then from 5000 years ago, when bronze was developed, and then ~3000 years ago, when Iron replaced bronze, and so on. You can recreate the "evolution" of human civilization through the archaelogical record, where "evolution" is used in its general sense. Observing the evolution of life over the past 3 billion years is similar to this.
(I'm not (yet) saying anything about natural selection, either. Just that life has evolved since it first appeared on Earth.)
>>14084493Okay, go find a billion year old cat fossil. There aren't any. The oldest feline fossil is like 40 million years old. But there are roughly billion-year old fossils of sponges. Thus, for hundreds of millions of years, there were sponges (and other invertebrates) but no cats. What happened in the intervening time to generate cats? Well, we see the emergence of vertebrates, then terrestrial vertebrates, then mammals. Thus, there is an evolution from invertebrate, to vertebrate, to cat.
