These concepts cannot be debunked beyond mere conjecture.
The fundamentals are quite simple.
Imagine you are in a room with a chair. And you go to sit down. You sit in the chair and all is well.
But imagine you go to sit in a chair, and the chair is not present. You fall to the ground.
Now consider the earth's layers. Much like a cake, and much like a chair, the lower layers must be present in time prior to the upper layers, just as a chair must be present in time, before you sit on it. Else you would fall to the ground.
This is what we call the scientific law of superposition.
It really is somewhat of an axiom. It is utterly true, and it logically conforms with everything we know about physical reality.
Once we understand the temporal order of layers, oldest on the bottom and youngest on the top, we can observe the order of fossils in these rocks. Fossils in deeper rocks pre-existed fossils in shallower rocks.
Paleozoic rock consists or primitive species. Ediacaran biota, trilobites, sponges, corals, early cephalopods, gastropods, arthropods etc. Fish appear early on after annelids. Tetrapodomorps after fish, amphibians, frogamander, turtles with half shells. Eventually reptiles appear by the carboniferous. By the mesozoic you get dinosaurs, reptile/mammal hybrids and reptile/bird hybrids. And by the cenozoic you get diversification of mega fauna and cetaceans.
The key point of all of this however is the summation of phylogenetic trees amongst independent fields of study. Which is to say that phylogenetic trees of paleontology construction by observation of this order, is an identical match to phylogenetic trees construction with use of cladistics in other fields of study, such as in protein studies or genome related studies.
Which is to say that, literally, based on the genetic relatedness of modern day species, and protein studies, studies of cytochrome C or studies of anatomy of modern day living species, we can predict not only where, but when and how deep bones will be in the earth.
Indeed, in studies by Sarich and Wilson on proteins in primates, biologists actually predicted where fossils would be found with a higher precision than even paleontologists themselves, such is the case with the discovery of sahelanthropus.
Deniers of evolution will never have a response to this. Denial is their only option. But unfortunately for them, the truth is grounded so fundamentally and intimately with the real world, that they may as well be denying the fact that a chair must be present before they can sit.
To help explain in very simple terms, a fish is more genetically similar to an amphibian than it is to reptiles, and fish fossils are found closer to amphibians than to reptiles in the rock record and deep in the earth.
Mammals are genetically more similar to reptiles than to amphibians and are more genetically similar to amphibians than to fish.
And mammal fossils are closer to reptiles than amphibians and closer to amphibians than fish deep in the earth in the rock record.
And this is a broad explanation, but it actually is true, even at exceptionally high precision. For example, a cetacean like pakicetus is found closer in the rock record to whales than it is to fish, and ungulates of today are more genetically similar to whales than to fish. And yet whales clearly look more like fish than they do to elephants. Evolution easily explains this.
Think that this all ends with animals? Think again. Flowering plants are genetically more similar to seeding plants than they are to non vascular plants. Can you guess what plant fossils are closer to eachother in the rock record? That's right, seeded and flowering plants are closer to one another than either is to non vascular plants.
All of the above more specifically has to do with initial appearance of fossils. Which is very important to understand.
Anyway,
Our genetics are a 1 to 1 match with the depths of fossils deep in the earth.
And the only possible conclusion for this, is evolution. Well, or denial.
