This article is from
Creation 21(4):33, September 1999

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Golden oldie

by David Catchpoole

Joachim Scheven	Joachim Scheven
The leaf portion visible in the fossil at left is just like the pinnae (leaflet) of compound leaves of living Koelreuteria paniculata today—the Panicled Golden Raintree. This ‘living fossil’ is indeed a ‘golden oldie’.

The fossilised Koelreuteria leaf in the photograph was found in ‘Pliocene’ deposits at Willershausen, Germany. Fossil seedpods of this genus are also found in the USA in deposits allegedly 50 million years old. Today, this plant lives in its natural state only in China, Japan and Korea.^1,2 Keen gardeners might recognise the plant in the companion photograph as Koelreuteria paniculata, the Panicled Golden Raintree (so named because of its golden flower blooms), which is promoted in plant nursery catalogues as virtually the only tree to flower in mid-Summer (July) in northern latitudes.³

Evolutionists believe that millions of years separate the two specimens shown here (courtesy of Dr Joachim Scheven, of the German creationist museum LEBENDIGE VORWELT). However, Dr Scheven points out that the more reliable conclusion from God’s Word (the Bible) is that the leaf was buried and fossilized in the aftermath of Noah’s Flood (thousands, not millions of years ago), more precisely at a time when a warm-temperate vegetation had re-established itself in what is now Germany.⁴ In addition to burying masses of plant and animal life, it is likely that the biblical Flood also resulted in enormous changes in climatic zoning and geography compared to the pre-Flood world. It is therefore not surprising that the natural distribution of many plants today is limited to certain areas suited to those particular species, and often not anywhere near where fossils of those plants have been found.

To evolutionists, examples such as the Golden Raintree remain a mystery, whereas for those who abide in God’s Word, there is no mystery: the ‘Golden Oldie’ fossil and the modern ‘Golden Raintree’ garden plant are one and the same, after their kind—no evolution has taken place.