Technically you'll always start with Durant, but that's aside the point...
But, Meaty, taking your idea, that's 8-11 deck spaces (3 Plume fossil, 3-2 line, and 0-3 Research Records). That's about a fifth of your deck just to get a card that you need like on your first few turns. Yes, Durant does have a lot of space for extra cards like this, but I'd much rather use those 10 extra spaces for cards like Juniper, Collector, Eviolite, Crushing Hammer, etc. On top of that, if the ruling is true, then Rare Candy plays around Archeops. In the next format, Donphan is gonna have a very low showing. Eviolite and Kyurem can wreck Donphan. So, the only real evolutions next format are Vileplume, Reuniclus, Gothitelle, Typhlosion, and Emboar (for Candy-ables) and Yanmega and Zoroark for non-Candy-ables (and they both already have a hard Durant matchup.)