For the first time in human history how we view our planet's past has direct consequences for how we face our future. Luckily for us the past has left various records of itself - in the rocks, in our bodies, and in our DNA. And although we can't experience the past directly, we can explore it, just as a detective  gathers varied evidence to reconstruct past events. Scientists have been investigating the past in this way for well over 200 years, with many major discoveries made before Darwin's time and used by him in support of evolution. But, ever the honest scholar, Darwin not only pointed out how the fossil record supported his theory, but also examined way in which it apparently clashed with his ideas. How have his discussions of the fossil record held up in the light of 150 years of intense research since publication of the "Origin"? The answer is  dramatic vindication of his idea of descent with modification. What is the story that the fossils are trying to tell us? It is a dramatic tale of the unfolding of organic diversity via an ongoing dance between periods of crisis and boredom. It is also a story of small winners and big losers. And it is a story whose consequences we can ignore only at our own peril, for we live on a knife edge balance between the generation of new species and their loss through extinction.

Dr. Nigel Hughes is a professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Riverside.