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Creation 16(3):51, June 1994

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Editor’s note: As Creation magazine has been continuously published since 1978, we are publishing some of the articles from the archives for historical interest, such as this. For teaching and sharing purposes, readers are advised to supplement these historic articles with more up-to-date ones available by searching creation.com.

Ghostly shrimp challenges evolution!

986-Triops-cancriformis
(Fig. 1) A rare example of fossil Triops cancriformis in rocks which evolutionists insist are more than 200 million years old—yet the same species pops up in remarkable ways after rainstorms, alive and unchanged today.

If one could trust the experts on evolution, the little tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis was already in existence about 250 million years ago, long before the first dinosaur appeared on earth. And it was still around when the last dinosaur departed from the scene, allegedly some 65 million years ago.

The remarkable thing (for evolutionists) is that this same creature, the very same species, is still in existence today, completely ‘unevolved’, in spite of the huge stretches of time which evolutionists insist must have elapsed between its appearance in early Triassic rock and today.

Even many qualified evolutionists are unfamiliar with this particular ‘living fossil’. One reason is that its fossils are extremely rare. About 300 specimens came from a quarry in the Steigerwald (Frankonia) district of Germany. Inquiries from the University of Würzburg in 1984 revealed they had only one specimen left—and that without its tail.

It was therefore extremely fortunate to be able to obtain the photo in Fig. 1 of a new (unpublished at the time of writing) fossil Triops find. This is from the collection of K.P. Kelber, of Burggrumbach near Würzburg.

In spite of its extremely wide distribution in the world today, many people are unaware of the living tadpole shrimp (Figs 2 and 3), probably because of its extremely sporadic appearances.

Its eggs, which can be wind-blown, are extremely resistant to drying. The shrimp appears as if by magic and only for a brief time in ditches or water-filled wheel ruts, for example. Good photos of this excellent evidence for creation are therefore not easy to come by.

A missionary from Alice Springs, Australia, told us of seeing these creatures, although he did not know what they were, in puddles left by rain on top of Ayers Rock (Uluru)—the world’s largest monolith, in the hot, dry, central Australian desert.

986-Triops

(Fig. 2) Triops (this one from Hungary) can appear as if from nowhere after a rainstorm, even when it has not been seen in that locality for years. Its eggs can survive years of dry conditions.
986-Lepidurus-apus

(Fig. 3) The closely related Lepidurus apus. This genus has been found in ‘Triassic’ rocks allegedly more than 200 million years old—but these two lived in northern Sweden only a short while ago.

Further reading

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 16, pp. 846–849, also Vol. 11, p. 490, 1992.