Because there must be some way they got to the New World:
Darwin knew that the fossil record did not support his theory of gradual increase in complexity through time but hoped that new fossil discoveries would fill in the narrative. 170 years of collecting has not helped. The Cambrian explosion is perhaps the best-known mismatch, but there are others. Adding to the difficulty, different dating methods often conflict with each other.
Monkeying with the Data
It would have been convenient for evolutionists if Africa and South America had split after monkeys had evolved, but they didn’t. This left them with klutzy explanations of how Old World monkeys evolved in Africa after the split, and then got to South America to become New World monkeys. The common story now is that they rafted over on vegetation across the Atlantic — a curious speculation, considering that sea captains these days never witness monkey families rafting out in the mid-Atlantic without fresh water or food.
In PNAS, Campbell et al. manage to pull widely different dates for two sites in eastern Peru closer together. They had to struggle, though, with disagreements between different dating methods for nearby sites. In any case, their work did not help get the monkeys across the ocean. Peru is very far inland from Brazil where a raft might have washed ashore, so time for migration must be factored in. Watching the evolutionists monkeying with the data and hiding their difficulties with euphemisms (“trans-Atlantic dispersal”) is entertaining if not pitiful.
Evolution News, “Fossil Follies from Around the Science Literature” at Evolution News and Science Today (November 3, 2021)
Reading this stuff helps us sympathize with King Kong. When he finally does get to New York…
Note: We got an Access Denied message when trying to scout out the Campbell et al. paper so it doesn’t sound like it’s open access.