Fossil turtles confound evolutionists
by Dr. Terry Mortenson, AiG–USA
April 18, 2005
Australian scientists announced in February the discovery of dozens of fossilized
sea turtles that they say have exciting implications for evolution.1
However, the exciting implications seem rather to be against evolution!
The fossils are “believed” to be 110 millions years old. But contrary
to evolutionary expectations, they look “basically the same as sea turtles
do today.”1
Evolutionists have no idea where the sea turtles came from or what they are related
to. They just appear in the fossil record (the oldest, a single specimen found in
Brazil in 1998, is “dated” at 115 million years), fully formed and fully
recognizable. They have since “remained virtually unchanged for over 100 million
years,” Discovery reports.
How do the evolutionists explain this? The Australian researchers are quoted as
saying that the “sea turtles have hit on the winning design … [and]
cracked the winning code.” Notice how the evolutionists describe the turtles—as
if they are highly intelligent, creative, forward-looking engineers, which they
are not, of course. Evolution is supposedly based on natural selection and mutations,
which are mindless, directionless, blind natural processes.
Not only are these turtle fossils contrary to the theory of perpetual and gradual
evolutionary change, they also simultaneously refute the notion of millions of years.
It is simply unbelievable that these turtles could remain unchanged for over 100
million years, given that information-degrading mutations are known to accumulate
in living things, generation after generation (a consequence of the Curse of
Genesis 3).
But these are not the only living fossils that refute evolution and millions of
years. Many examples could be cited. Regarding salamander fossils recently found
in China, we learn that “Despite its Bathonian age, the new cryptobranchid
[salamander] shows extraordinary morphological similarity to its living relatives.
This similarity underscores the stasis [no change] within salamander anatomical
evolution. Indeed, extant cryptobranchid salamanders can be regarded as living fossils
whose structures have remained little changed for over 160 million years.”.2
Scientists have found from microscopic examination of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria)
fossils, dated to be 3.5 billion years old, that they are essentially identical
to the blue-green algae that are still living today.3 Microscopic algae
didn’t change over 3.5 billion years of evolution? Who’s kidding whom?
All this evidence fits perfectly with the Bible’s teaching that these algae,
along with the rest of the creation, are only at most about 6,000 years old.
Once again we see evolutionists digging up the evidence that, when removed from
the restriction of having to be forced into an evolutionary framework, actually
refutes their theories and confirms the truth of the Bible. Thanks, Australian evolutionists—and
keep up the good work!
Further reading
References
- animal.discovery.com/news/afp/20050221/seaturtles.html.
- Ke-Qin Gao & Neil H. Shubin, Earliest known crown-group salamanders,
Nature 422:428, March 27, 2003.
- www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html. This is the
website of the Museum of Paleontology at the Univ. of Calif., Berkeley.
(Article available in Russian)
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