Buddhism and Evolution

I heard an atheist ask this question from a christian and found myself lost in this question as well. Plainly and simply the question is this, > How does your religion fit into earth's history? His point was that although many religions talk about a very old human race, we are a new species. even if we deny all the archaeological evidence, we still can't answer how such a human civilization escaped the few annihilation earth faced, like the long ice age and the meteor that killed the dinosaurs etc. **Do we as Buddhists have an answer, considering we believe in an even older human race's existence?**