Cmi - Fossils

KEY ARTICLES  A fossil is a fossil is a fossil. Right? ………………………………………………………………………………………..4  The links are missing………………………………………………………………………………………………...………5  The fossil record Becoming more random all the time……………………………………………..…………………….7  Living fossils: a powerful argument for creation………………………………………………………..………………...10 IS THERE ANY TYPE OF ORDER IN THE FOSSIL RECORD  Are there out-of-sequence fossils that are problematic for evolution?...................................................................11  Index fossils—really?..............................................................................................................................................14  Fossil flip-flop How objective are scientists?..........................................................................................................15  Further expansion of evolutionary fossil time ranges…………………………………………………….……………..16  Fossils—do they get more complex?......................................................................................................................17  How well do paleontologists know fossil distributions?...........................................................................................18  Oldest’ fossil shrimp?..............................................................................................................................................18  Slow fish in China…………………………………………………………………………………………………………....19  ‘Remarkable’ mammal hairs in amber?...................................................................................................................20 ARE THRE REALLY MISSING LINKS IS THIS A PROBLEM FOR EVOLUTION  Another major ‘link’ fails…………………………………………………………………………………………………….21  Cladistics, evolution and the fossils…………………………………………………………………………….…………23  That quote!—about the missing transitional fossils…………………………………………………………….………..28  Argument: The fossil record supports evolution………………………………………………………………….………30  Punctuated equilibrium: come of age?....................................................................................................................35  Another leggy snake?..............................................................................................................................................39  Evolution of multicellularity: what is required?.........................................................................................................40  Mammal-like reptiles: major trait reversals and discontinuities…………………………………………………...…….42  ‘Transitional form’ in mammal ear evolution—more cacophony…………………………………………………..……48  Darwinopterus v Dawkins…………………………………………………………………………………………..……….50 DO FOSSILIZED PLANTS AND ANIMALS REALLY LOOK ALL THAT DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS WE SEE TODAY  Alligator ancestor antics……………………………………………………………………………………….……………..53  Evolutionists can’t dodge ‘Living Fossils’…………………………………………………………………………………..53  Horsetails are ‘living fossils’!.....................................................................................................................................55  Living Fossils: the Shovelnose Ray …………………………………………………………………….…………….…….55  Death March Horseshoe Crab stopped dead in its tracks………………………………….……………………….……55  Fish that ‘fly’ ………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………56  Another ‘living fossil’ tree …………………………………………………………………………………………………….56  Salamanders are ‘living fossils’! ……………………………………………………………………………………………57  Correcting the headline: ‘Coelacanth’ yes; ‘Ancient’ no ……………………………………………………………..…..58  Living fossils and evolution, and does it matter if ‘junk DNA’ has functions? ……………………….…………………59  Does it matter if endogenous retroviruses have functions? ………………………………………………….…………60 DO FOSSILS GIVE EVIDENCES OF THEIR QUICK FORMATIONS SUCH AS GREAT CATASTROPHE AND GLOBAL FLOOD  A ‘165 million year’ surprise ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 60  Dead whales: telling tales? ………………………………………………………………………………………………..62  Deluge disaster ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………63  Fast fossils Billions of well-preserved fossil fish clash with popular belief. ……………………………………..………64  Fossil squid ink that still writes! ……………………………………………………………………………..………………65  Hundreds of jellyfish fossils! ……………………………………………………………………………….………………..66 FAST FOSSILS. WHAT OTHER EVIDENCES SHOWS THAT FOSSILS DON`T TAKE LONG PERIODS OF TIME TO FORM  The Amazing Stone Bears of Yorkshire ………………………………………………………………………….………..68  Tarawera's night of terror……………………………………………………………………………………………………..69  Petrified flour …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………70  Message in a bottle ……………………………………………………………………………………..……………………71  Whale explodes fossil theory ……………………………………………………………………………………………….72  Toy car rocks million-year belief ……………………………………………………………………...…………………….73 ARE THERE TRANSITIONAL FORMS BETWEEN FISH AND TETRAPODS  The fossil record of ‘early’ tetrapods: evidence of a major evolutionary transition?................................................. 74  Tiktaalik roseae—a fishy ‘missing link’ ……………………………………………………………………….……………78  Tiktaalik, the transitional star, faces an evolutionary dead-end ………………………………………………………..80  Livoniana—have they (finally!) found a missing link? …………………………………………………..………………..82  Gogonasus—a fish with human limbs? ……………………………………………………………………...…………….83  The oldest pregnant mum’—not! ……………………………………………………………………………………..……85  Ventastega—not a leg to stand on …………………………………………………………………………………………86

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A review of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body …………………….….87 Panderichthys—a fish with fingers? …………………………………………………………………………………...……90

DOES THE FOSSIL RECORD OF WHALES SHOW THAT THEY EVOLVED FROM LAND ANIMMALS  A handbook for students, parents, and teachers countering the latest arguments for evolution………………….. 91  A whale of a tale? ………………………………………………………………………………………………….……… 93  The strange tale of the leg on the whale …………………………………………………………………………...……. 96  The world of whales ……………………………………………………………………………………………..……….. 98  Walking whales, nested hierarchies, and chimeras: do they exist? …………………………………………….……. 99 DAILY ARTICLES  Tasmania’s fossil bluff ……………………………………………………………………………………………………...104  Fossil jellyfish from the Pilbara, Western Australia …………………………………………………………………….105  Giant compound eyes, half a billion years ago? ………………………………………………………………………....109  Modern birds found with dinosaurs .Are museums misleading the public? …………………………………………...109  Frozen in stone … in just decades ……………………………………………………………………………………...…110  Dinosaur fairy tales ………………………………………………………………………………………………………...111  Dinosaur disarray .Evidence for the Flood at Dinosaur National Monument, USA …………………………………..113  Hadrosaur skin found ………………………………………………………………………………………………….…. 115  Mummified trees millions of years old—not ……………………………………………………………………………...116  Claimed ‘oldest-ever’ amber fossil—millions-of-years mighty mites? ………………………………………………... 116  Twice as wrong—and more.Fossilized eukaryote cells and giant anomalocaridids force dramatic revisions of the evolutionary timeline. …………………………………………………………………………………..……………….…..117  Taxonomic manipulations likely common ………………………………………………………………………………..117  Oil not always a ‘fossil fuel’ …………………………………………………………………………………….. ……..….119  Ghosts in the rocks ………………………………………………………………………………………………………...119  Evolutionists have ‘allergic’ reaction to Precambrian pollen–South American fossils more than a billion years ‘out of date’ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..….. 121  Either way, it’s like a game with loaded dice—the ‘house’ (long-age belief) wins every time.Fast octopus fossils reveal no evolution ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..…. 122  Darwin fossil hyper-hype ……………………………………………………………………………………………….… 123  Evidence for turtle evolution ………………………………………………………………………………………………125  Tiktaalik—sticking its head out of water? ………………………………………………………………………………... 127  Dancing Dinosaurs? Stony footprints point to something more serious ………………………………………..…… 127  Dino dung overturns objection ………………………………………………………………………………………...…. 128  Ediacaran ‘explosion’ Another thumping headache for evolutionists ………………………………………………... 129  The slow rise of dinosaurs .New fossil finds cause evolutionists to revise dino evolution theories ………………..129  A lousy story…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..130  Old Bee, Young Creation ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 130  Killer Kangaroos and Demon Ducks? ……………………………………………………………………………….……131  A preliminary analysis by Ryan McClay …………………………………………………………………………………..133 EVIDENCES FROM THE FOSSILS THAT SHOW RAPID AND CATASTROPHIC BURIAL                 

Ichthyosaurs: evidence for a recent global flood ………………………………………………………………………. 133 Massive graveyard of parrot-beaked dinosaurs in Mongolia …………………………………………………………. 134 Swedish fossil fern preserves chromosome detail, pointing to catastrophic burial .A casualty of the global Flood ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 135 Precambrian rocks …………………………………………………………………...…………………………………….136 The meaning of porous dinosaur eggs laid on flat bedding planes ………………………………………………….. 139 Moulting arthropod fossilized in a flash! ……………………………………………………………………………….... 140 Tiny pterosaur’s untimely end …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 141 A stunning new book with family friendly, groundbreaking creationist research will excite many ………………….142 Gilding the (sea) lily ……………………………………………………………………………………………………...… 143 Dinosaur stumble preserved in trackways, Utah, USA ……………………………………………………………...… 145 Death throes ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 146 A world drowned ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….... 147 Dinosaur herd buried in the Global Flood in Inner Mongolia, China ……………………………………………….… 149 More evidence of the Global Flood, this time from Mongolia …………………………………………………………. 150 Watery catastrophe deduced from huge Ceratopsian dinosaur graveyard …………………………………………. 151 Can’t see the Flood for the sediment ……………………………………………………………………………………. 153 Terrible lizards trapped by terrible Flood ………………………………………………………………………………… 153

KEY ARTICLES A fossil is a fossil is a fossil. Right? Figure 1. MOR555 (AKA Wankel T-rex) on display at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana, USA. All bones are in excellent preservation but show little sign of petrification. They are pure bone thought to be 65 million years old.The recent findings of bio-molecules, softtissue blood vessels and blood cells in 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil bones1 have caused geologists to re-evaluate the process of the preservation of fossils. After all, everyone knows that a fossil is an impression, cast, outline, or track of any animal or plant that is preserved in rock after the original organic material is transformed or removed.2 So, how can blood vessels and bio-molecules be found in fossils that are rock? Answer: a fossil does not need to be turned to stone to be a fossil. Figure 2. The right foot of MOR555 on display at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana, USA. In the background is the display of the rest of Wankel T-rex.The definition of fossil by the American Geological Institute begins, ‘The remains or traces of animals or plants which have been preserved by natural causes in the Earth’s crust.’ 3 There is nothing in this definition that requires transformation into rock. All that is important is that the fossil has been preserved. And preservation is a qualitative term that does not describe how the fossil was preserved. This is illustrated by Schweitzer in describing the fossil specimen MOR 555 [AKA, ‘Wankel T-rex’]: ‘An exceptionally well preserved specimen of the tyrannosaurid dinosaurTyrannosaurus rex shows little evidence of permineralization or other diagenetic effects.’ She further states, ‘Most fossils show signs of sediment infilling or secondary mineral deposition, but certain specimens can show little evidence of diagenetic change.’4In other words, MOR 555 is a well preserved fossil with almost no mineral petrification, i.e. it is nearly pure bone (see figure 1)! This ‘65 million year old’ fossil is almost exactly the same today as it was when it was buried. So, if a fossil like MOR 555 can be a fossil without being turned to rock, then what makes a fossil a fossil?We need to read the rest of the definition of fossil by the American Geological Institute. ‘The remains or traces of animals or plants which have been preserved by natural causes in the Earth’s crust exclusive of organisms which have been buried since the beginning of historic time.’3 It is more clearly stated as, ‘A remnant or trace of an organism of a past geologic age, such as a skeleton or leaf imprint, embedded and preserved in the earth’s crust.’5So, according to this definition, a true fossil is something that has been preserved in some way or other from some ‘past geologic age before the beginning of historic time.’ It doesn’t matter if the material has or has not been turned to stone, i.e. petrified, but just that it was buried before the historic records of man! Has this added caveat of deep time always been a part of the definition of fossil? Let’s begin with a history of the use of the word fossil as paraphrased from Challinor’s A Dictionary of Geology: The term ‘fossil’ (L. fossilis, dug up) was, as the word suggests, originally given to anything extracted from the earth or the rocks. It included minerals, all kinds of stony objects, and pieces of the rock itself, as well as the remains of organisms. ‘Fossilia’ in the wide sense and not, in fact, including organic remains, was used by Agricola in 1546. Gesner’s illustrated work on fossils included organic remains (1565). In Britain organic fossils were called ‘petrified shells’ (1665), ‘formed stones’ (1677), ‘fossil-shells’ (1695), ‘figured stones’ (1699), ‘marine fossils’, ‘fossil fish teeth’ (1721), ‘native’ (minerals, &c.) and ‘extraneous’ (fossil shells, &c.) (1728). Owing, no doubt, to these various confusing usages, the term ‘fossil’ dropped out for a time, ‘petrification’ largely taking its place. The always appropriate ‘organic remains’ then became popular (1804/11), and was being used much later (1849 and following years). Meanwhile ‘fossil’ was again coming into use, but now for organic remains only, though usually with, or as, a qualifying adjective (1816, 1822). Already, however, the word by itself was beginning to be used. Parkinson (1804) remarks that ‘in the common language of those most conversant with these substances’ their nature ‘is conveyed by the substantive (“fossil”) alone’. Lamarck in France seems to have been the first definitely to restrict the term (1801, 1802). The substantive ‘fossil’, alone and exclusively for organic remains, became thoroughly established some twenty years later (1822).6 Figure 3. The femur of MOR1125 (AKA B-rex), the first dinosaur fossil from which soft tissue was extracted. B-rex is also the first fossil dinosaur to be identified as female. Up through 1948, fossils were defined as the remains of animals and plants or direct evidence of their presence preserved in the rocks of the earth. Yet, even then, the caveat of age is hinted at. While fossils were ‘evidences of animal or plant life in the rocks, such as petrified shells, skeletons, leaf and fern imprints, animals footprints and the like. It is chiefly by the aid of fossils that the age of the rock is determined.’7 Figure 4. Well preserved soft tissue that is still elastic within a recently discovered Tyrannosaurus rexskeleton. For an animal that is claimed to have died at least 65 million years ago, the existence of soft tissue in its remains is astounding.As is typical of much of the debate about evolution and creation, the definition of fossil is not just descriptive but also interpretive since it includes the

evolutionary interpretation of long ages. Therefore, in the evolutionists’ minds, every time creationists use the word fossil, they unwittingly concede the validity of the evolutionary paradigm. Furthermore, since creationists believe that most everything typically called a fossil was actually buried during a Global Flood, which occurred within historic time, then, from the creationists’ viewpoint, there is no such thing as a fossil, by that definition! So what are creationists to do with the word fossil? It seems there are two choices. Either creationists can redefine fossil to fit the creationary viewpoint every time we use it, or invent a new word. A redefinition of fossil could be as simple as using just the first part of the American Geological Institute’s definition: The remains or traces of animals or plants which have been preserved by natural causes in the earth’s crust. The inconvenient part would be the need to state that redefinition in each creationary paper where fossil is used. The Latin clades fossio, meaning ‘catastrophic buried fossil’, has been suggested8 as a possible replacement. But anything new that is not as simple as the original may not catch on. In any case, the important thing to remember is a fossil may or may not be petrified. But we do not accept the evolutionary definition that a fossil is a biological remnant of a past geologic age before the history of mankind. Blood and soft tissue in T. rex bone: 01 Dec 1993 Dinosaur bone blood cells found 01 Sep 1997 Sensational dinosaur blood report! 25 Mar 2002 Evolutionist questions CMI report—Have red blood cells really been found in T. rex fossils? 25 Mar 2005 Still soft and stretchy: Dinosaur soft tissue find—a stunning rebuttal of ‘millions of years’ 28 Mar 2005 “Ostrich-osaurus” discovery? 16 May 2005 Squirming at the Squishosaur 01 Sep 2005 Dino soft tissue find 01 Dec 2005 Answering objections to creationist ‘dinosaur soft tissue’ age arguments 19 Jul 2006 ‘Schweitzer’s Dangerous Discovery’ 16 Dec 2006 Why don’t they carbon-test dino fossils? 20 Apr 2007 Squishosaur scepticism squashed: Tests confirm proteins found in T. rex bones 02 Aug 2008 Doubting doubts about the Squishosaur 06 May 2009 Dinosaur soft tissue and protein—even more confirmation! 09 May 2009 Dino proteins and blood vessels: are they a big deal? 01 Dec 2009 More confirmation for dinosaur soft tissue and protein 11 Dec 2012 DNA and bone cells found in dinosaur bone 22 Jan 2013 Radiocarbon in dino bones Other examples of soft tissue preservation in fossils: 01 Jun 1992 Fresh dinosaur bones found 01 Aug 1998 Exceptional soft-tissue preservation in a fossilised dinosaur 01 Dec 1998 Dinosaur bones—just how old are they really? 30 May 2000 ‘Sue’ the T. rex: another ‘missionary lizard’ 01 Dec 2002 Feathered or furry dinosaurs? Soft tissue preservation 01 Apr 2004 Bone building: perfect protein (See paragraph six re osteocalcin in Iguanodon bones.) 01 Apr 2006 A fossil is a fossil is a fossil. Right? 07 Dec 2007 Hadrosaur hi-jinx: Will this find reveal more unfossilised soft tissues? 01 Jun 2008 The real ‘Jurassic Park’? 11 Nov 2009 Best ever find of soft tissue (muscle and blood) in a fossil 25 June 2013 Created or evolved? Refuting Evolution—Chapter 3 A handbook for students, parents, and teachers countering the latest arguments for evolution by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M. The links are missing First published in Refuting Evolution, Chapter 3 Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science discusses the fossil record in several places. Creationists and evolutionists, with their different assumptions, predict different things about the fossil record. If living things had really evolved from other kinds of creatures, then there would have been many intermediate or transitional forms, with halfway structures. However, if different kinds had been created separately, the fossil record should show creatures appearing abruptly and fully formed. The transitional fossils problem Charles Darwin was worried that the fossil record did not show what his theory predicted: Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.1Is it any different today? The late Dr Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote a book, Evolution. In reply to a questioner who asked why he had not included any pictures of transitional forms, he wrote:I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them … . I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.2The renowned evolutionist (and Marxist — see documentation) Stephen Jay Gould wrote:The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.3And:I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of progress’ in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record. 4As Sunderland points out:It of course would be no puzzle at all if he [Gould] had not decided before he examined the evidence that common-ancestry evolution was a fact, ‘like apples falling from a tree,’ and that we can only permit ourselves to discuss possible mechanisms to explain that assumed fact.5 The gaps are huge Palaeochiropteryx tupaiodon— one of the ‘oldest’ (by evolutionary reckoning) fossil bats. It was found in the Messel oil shale pit near Darmstadt, Germany, and is ‘dated’ between 48 and 54 million years old. It clearly had fully developed wings, and its inner ear had the same construction as those of modern bats, showing that it had full sonar equipment (see chapter 9 for more

details of this exquisitely designed system).Teaching about Evolution avoids discussing the vast gulf between non-living matter and the first living cell, single-celled and multicelled creatures, and invertebrates and vertebrates. The gaps between these groups should be enough to show that molecules-to-man evolution is without foundation.There are many other examples of different organisms appearing abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record. For example, the first bats, pterosaurs, and birds were fully fledged flyers. The photograph to the right shows that bats have always been bats. 6Turtles are a well designed and specialized group of reptiles, with a distinctive shell protecting the body’s vital organs. However, evolutionists admit ‘Intermediates between turtles and cotylosaurs, the primitive reptiles from which [evolutionists believe] turtles probably sprang, are entirely lacking.’ They can’t plead an incomplete fossil record because ‘turtles leave more and better fossil remains than do other vertebrates.’ 7 The ‘oldest known sea turtle’ was a fully formed turtle, not at all transitional. It had a fully developed system for excreting salt, without which a marine reptile would quickly dehydrate. This is shown by skull cavities which would have held large salt-excreting glands around the eyes.8 All 32 mammal orders appear abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record. The evolutionist paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in 1944: The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.10 There is little to overturn that today.11 Excuses Like most evolutionary propaganda, Teaching about Evolution makes assertions that there are many transitional forms, and gives a few ‘examples.’ A box on page 15 contains the gleeful article by the evolutionist (and atheist) E.O. Wilson, ‘Discovery of a Missing Link.’ He claimed to have studied ‘nearly exact intermediates between solitary wasps and the highly social modern ants.’ But another atheistic evolutionist, W.B. Provine, says that Wilson’s ‘assertions are explicitly denied by the text … . Wilson’s comments are misleading at best.’12Teaching about Evolution emphasizes Archaeopteryx and an alleged land mammal-to-whale transition series, so they are covered in chapters 4 and 5 of this book. Teaching about Evolution also makes the following excuse on page 57:Some changes in populations might occur too rapidly to leave many transitional fossils. Also, many organisms were very unlikely to leave fossils because of their habitats or because they had no body parts that could easily be fossilized.Darwin also excused the lack of transitional fossils by ‘the extreme imperfection of the fossil record.’ But as we have seen, even organisms that leave excellent fossils, like turtles, are lacking in intermediates. Michael Denton points out that 97.7 percent of living orders of land vertebrates are represented as fossils and 79.1 percent of living families of land vertebrates—87.8 percent if birds are excluded, as they are less likely to become fossilized. 13 Artist’s impression of a living horseshoe bat.9 It’s true that fossilization requires specific conditions. Normally, when a fish dies, it floats to the top and rots and is eaten by scavengers. Even if some parts reach the bottom, the scavengers take care of them. Scuba divers don’t find the sea floor covered with dead animals being slowly fossilized. The same applies to land animals. Millions of buffaloes (bison) were killed in North America last century, but there are very few fossils.In nature, a well-preserved fossil generally requires rapid burial (so scavengers don’t obliterate the carcass), and cementing agents to harden the fossil quickly. Teaching about Evolution has some good photos of a fossil fish with well-preserved features (p. 3) and a jellyfish (p. 36). Such fossils certainly could not have formed gradually—how long do dead jellyfish normally retain their features? If you wanted to form such fossils, the best way might be to dump a load of concrete on top of the creature! Only catastrophic conditions can explain most fossils—for example, a global flood and its aftermath of widespread regional catastrophism. Teaching about Evolution goes on to assert after the previous quote: However, in many cases, such as between primitive fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and mammals, and reptiles and birds, there are excellent transitional fossils.But Teaching about Evolution provides no evidence for this! We can briefly examine some of the usual evolutionary claims below (for reptile-to-bird, see the next chapter on birds): Fish to amphibian: Some evolutionists believe that amphibians evolved from a Rhipidistian fish, something like the coelacanth. It was believed that they used their fleshy, lobed fins for walking on the sea-floor before emerging on the land. This speculation seemed impossible to disprove, since according to evolutionary/long-age interpretations of the fossil record, the last coelacanth lived about 70 million years ago. But a living coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was discovered in 1938. And it was found that the fins were not used for walking but for deft maneuvering when swimming. Its soft parts were also totally fish-like, not transitional. It also has some unique features—it gives birth to live young after about a year’s gestation, it has a small second tail to help its swimming, and a gland that detects electrical signals. 14 The earliest amphibian, Ichthyostega (mentioned on p. 39 of Teaching about Evolution), is hardly transitional, but has fully formed legs and shoulder and pelvic girdles, while there is no trace of these in the Rhipidistians. Amphibian to reptile: Seymouria is a commonly touted intermediate between amphibians and reptiles. But this creature is dated (by evolutionary dating methods) at 280 million years ago, about 30 million years younger than the ‘earliest’ true reptiles Hylonomus andPaleothyris. That is, reptiles are allegedly millions of years older than their alleged ancestors! Also, there is no good reason for thinking it was not completely amphibian in its reproduction. The jump from amphibian to reptile eggs requires the development of a number of new structures and a change in biochemistry—see the section below on soft part changes. Reptile to mammal: The ‘mammal-like reptiles’ are commonly asserted to be transitional. But according to a specialist on these creatures: Each species of mammal-like reptile that has been found appears suddenly in the fossil record and is not preceded by the species that is directly ancestral to it. It disappears some time later, equally abruptly, without leaving a directly descended species.15Evolutionists believe that the earbones of mammals evolved from some jawbones of reptiles. But Patterson recognized that there was no clear-cut connection between the jawbones of ‘mammal-like reptiles’ and the earbones of mammals. In fact, evolutionists have argued about which bones relate to which. 16 The function of possible intermediates The inability to imagine functional intermediates is a real problem. If a bat or bird evolved from a land animal, the transitional forms would have forelimbs that were neither good legs nor good wings. So how would such things be selected? The fragile long limbs of hypothetical halfway stages of bats and pterosaurs would seem more like a hindrance than a help. Soft part changes

Of course, the soft parts of many creatures would also have needed to change drastically, and there is little chance of preserving them in the fossil record. For example, the development of the amniotic egg would have required many different innovations, including: The shell. The two new membranes—the amnion and allantois. Excretion of water-insoluble uric acid rather than urea (urea would poison the embryo). Albumen together with a special acid to yield its water. Yolk for food. A change in the genital system allowing the fertilization of the egg before the shell hardens.17 Another example is the mammals—they have many soft-part differences from reptiles, for example: Mammals have a different circulatory system, including red blood cells without nuclei, a heart with four chambers instead of three and one aorta instead of two, and a fundamentally different system of blood supply to the eye. Mammals produce milk, to feed their young. Mammalian skin has two extra layers, hair and sweat glands. Mammals have a diaphragm, a fibrous, muscular partition between the thorax and abdomen, which is vital for breathing. Reptiles breathe in a different way.Mammals keep their body temperature constant (warm-bloodedness), requiring a complex temperature control mechanism.The mammalian ear has the complex organ of Corti, absent from all reptile ears.18 Mammalian kidneys have a ‘very high ultrafiltration rate of the blood.’ This means the heart must be able to produce the required high blood pressure. Mammalian kidneys excrete urea instead of uric acid, which requires different chemistry. They are also finely regulated to maintain constant levels of substances in the blood, which requires a complex endocrine system.19 The fossil record Becoming more random all the time by John Woodmorappe Summary The reality of the geologic column is predicated on the belief that fossils have restricted ranges in rock strata. In actuality, as more and more fossils are found, the ranges of fossils keep increasing. I provide a few recent examples of this, and then show that stratigraphic-range extension is not the exception but the rule. The constant extension of ranges simultaneously reduces the credibility of the geologic column and organic evolution, and makes it easier for a Global Flood to explain an increasingly-random fossil record. Different kinds of fossils do not occur randomly. Instead, they tend to be found at specific horizons, and these horizons can be located in rocks all over the world. For example, the evolutionist asks us why a layer of rock containing trilobites is never found to contain dinosaurs, and why a layer with dinosaurs is always found above one with trilobites and never the reverse. Fossil succession can be viewed in terms of solitary fossils, commonly called index fossils. Otherwise, groups of fossils can be used. These are often called fossil assemblages or assemblage zones. The essence of fossil succession, however, remains the same whether individual fossils, of groups of them, are used.For approximately the last two hundred years, this succession of fossils in sedimentary rock has been used to argue that the earth has undergone successive events. For instance, trilobite-bearing beds are supposed to reflect a time when trilobites were the dominant life form on earth, and dinosaur-bearing beds are supposed to reflect a time when dinosaurs were dominant on the earth. However this view is weakened because the range of fossils from one supposed time period keeps extending and overlapping fossils ostensibly typical of another period of time in the past. In this article, I will examine some examples of increases of overlap of fossils that are assigned to different geologic periods of time. Implications of fossil succession At first, creationists tried to cope with this discovery of successively-different types of fossils by retreating from the single Creation and Flood and replacing them with a series of creations and global floods. That was Baron Cuvier’s compromise, and it did superficially seem to account for multiple and differing horizons of fossils. As is the eventual fate of all compromises, it was only a matter of time before any semblance to Scripture (in this case, the multiple creations and the multiple floods) had been dropped altogether. After Darwin, evolution was added to the picture, and thus the notion of transformation of one life-form to another replaced the earlier belief that each horizon of fossils represented a separate creation and world-destroying flood. Both considerations, of course, tacitly suppose that each type of horizon of fossils represents a distinctive period of time over which the particular organism lived.But what are the ramifications of fossils seeming to occur in multiple, different horizons in the earth’s rock strata? Is the succession of life-forms, over long periods of time, the only way to explain the succession of fossils in earth’s sedimentary rocks? Certainly not.Creationists, including myself,1 have provided a variety of alternative explanations for fossil succession. These include such mechanisms as the sorting of organisms during the Flood, differential escape of organisms during the same, ecological zonation of life-forms in the antediluvian world (such that different life-forms in different strata reflect the serial burial of ecological life-zones during the Flood), and TABs (Tectonically-Associated Biological Provinces—wherein different life forms occur in successive horizons of rock as a reflection of successive crustal downwarp of different life-bearing biogeographic communities).All of these mechanisms do away with the notion that horizons of fossils demand successive passages of time during which the organisms lived. In other words, they allow for there to have been only one set of mutually-contemporaneous living things on a young earth, instead of a repetitive replacement of living things over vast periods of time. Most of the earth’s sedimentary record is viewed as being deposited by the Noachian Deluge, and not over successive depositional events in analogues of modern sedimentary environments on an evolving earth.Unfortunately, some modern creationists have also bought into the belief that successive fossils represent horizons of time. These neo-Cuvierists have, as their original namesakes, relegated the Noachian Deluge to only a small fraction of the earth’s fossiliferous sedimentary rocks. This contradicts common sense . After all, if all kinds of life had been created by intelligent designer several thousand years ago, then all fossil and contemporary life-forms must have been contemporaneous, and it makes absolutely no sense to use succession of fossils to delineate time-stratigraphic horizons in sedimentary rock.For example, although trilobites and dinosaurs were contemporaries of each other, there is no basis for believing that trilobite-bearing and dinosaur-bearing rocks were necessarily deposited at the same time all over the world. During the Flood, trilobite-bearing beds at one point on earth were probably being deposited at the same time as dinosaur-bearing beds at another place on earth.Nor can it be said that, when dinosaur-bearing beds locally overlie trilobite-bearing beds, the former are significantly younger than the latter. This, of course, excepts the small amount of difference in time, within the Flood, that elapsed between the burial of the trilobites and the burial of the overlying dinosaurs. Just how real is fossil succession?

The irony of the position taken by Cuvierists, neo-Cuvierists, and standard evolutionary-uniformitarians is the fact that fossil succession is a reality only to a limited extent. As we shall see, the Flood-related mechanisms discussed above need not have been overly efficient to account for only the limited degree of fossil succession that does exist. Successive episodes of time, however conceived, also are completely unnecessary to explain the limited degree of fossil succession. When we consider the fact that fossil succession is limited in overall extent, it is another way of stating that there are many fossils which are found at many stratigraphic intervals. In fact, only a minority are confined to rocks attributed to only one geologic period.2Since the early days of the acceptance of the standard geologic column, fossils have been turning up in ‘wrong’ places as more and more fossils have been collected, and this process continues to this very day. 3,4,5 And even this does not include the numerous instances where fossils are supposed to be reworked from older strata, often with no independent supporting evidence.6Furthermore, extension of stratigraphic ranges occurs not only for individual fossils, but also for presumed grade of biologic complexity (that is, so-called stratomorphic intermediates). A stratomorphic intermediate is supposed to reflect a certain grade of complexity attained by all living things up to a certain point in the geologic time scale. An example would be the first appearance of vertebrate legs in the stratigraphic record. I will discuss stratomorphic intermediates shortly. Let us now consider some recent examples of stratigraphic range extension. Dasycladalean algae As a result of a recent find, a dramatic increase in the stratigraphic range of Dasycladalean algae has occurred. Dasycladales are members of the algal family Dasycladaceae. It consists of 175 live and extinct genera. The extension of this plant has been into presumably-older strata: ‘Uncatoella possesses a suite of features usually associated with late Mesozoic and Cenozoic Dasycladales, and our proposed relationships imply very large range extensions (200-350 Myr) to some groups.’ 7 This stratigraphic-range extension is dramatic, and equivalent to more than half of the entire Phanerozoic geologic column. Moreover, this discovery upends earlier notions of stratomorphic intermediates that were believed to be true of the evolutionary history of plant-reproductive traits: ‘Choristospore gametangiophores are usually associated with Mesozoic and Cenozoic Dasycladales, but the new data on Uncatoella show that this form of reproduction had already developed by the Early Devonian.’ 8Many evolutionists, and also unfortunately some professing creationists, have made much of the presumed significance of stratomorphic intermediates. But, as the above example proves vividly, it takes only one well-placed life-form to completely demolish existing notions of stratomorphic intermediates. A certain grade of complexity can be moved back considerably earlier in time with just one discovery of fossils! In the above example, a grade of morphological complexity, formerly believed to be of relatively recent origins (Mesozoic and Cenozoic) suddenly has become much more ancient (Devonian). Pipiscids The pipiscid group of metazoan animals represents another example of an extension of fossils into much older strata. Formerly thought to be restricted to the Upper Carboniferous, remains of possible pipiscids have now been discovered in Cambrian strata.9 If the identification is correct, this find suddenly ages the pipiscids by nearly five geologic periods. The foregoing instances may perhaps be belittled by the fact that both marine plants and soft-bodied fossils are said to have a poor fossil record, and hence stratigraphic-range extensions are perhaps not so surprising for that reason. But this consideration cannot possibly be applicable to the remaining examples in this report because their respective fossil records are good to excellent. Agnathan (jawless) fishes Many groups of fossils appear suddenly in the Early Cambrian. This is so much so that it is often called the ‘Cambrian explosion’. As more and more fossils experience a stratigraphic-range increase down to the Early Cambrian, the ‘Cambrian explosion’ becomes more and more pronounced. Apropos to this, vertebrates have just recently been found in the Early Cambrian of south China.10 These are agnathan fish, whose previous undisputed earliest appearance had been in the Lower Ordovician. The therapsid reptile Lystrosaurus Fossils of the mammal-like reptile, Lystrosaurus, are so common, notably in South Africa, that it is said that paleontologists don’t even bother to pick up specimens when they see them at their feet. Lystrosaurus is an important index fossil. Directly or indirectly, it is used to correlate Early Triassic continental beds throughout much of the southern hemisphere. Let us therefore consider the implications of the recent discovery of Lystrosaurus in the Permian of Zambia.11 Without question, it can no longer be straightforwardly believed, on uniformitarians’ own terms, to represent a horizon of time and to correlate strata accordingly: ‘… the widespread Lystrosaurus, hitherto regarded as characteristic of the Lower Triassic, cannot be used in isolation as a biostratigraphical zone fossil … The occurrence of Lystrosaurus in Late Permian rocks indicates that isolated specimens of the genus should no longer be used for biostratigraphical purposes … use of Lystrosaurus alone could be misleading. This is obviously unfortunate, since Lystrosaurus is the most common genus in many assemblages and so most likely to be encountered in the course of stratigraphical work.’ 11There are other implications of the fact that Lystrosaurus-bearing rocks can no longer automatically be assumed to be Early Triassic. The supposed chain of evolving mammal-like reptiles is placed in chronological sequence largely through the use of Lystrosaurus, or on spore-bearing beds which are correlated with beds containing Lystrosaurus. In fact, for decades at least, beds all over the southern hemisphere have been assigned to the lowermost Triassic solely because they contain Lystrosaurus.12 In view of the extension of this genus downward into the Permian, the chronological sequence of mammal-like reptiles needs to be re-examined. It is more than possible that some ‘more mammal-like’ therapsids will now be found to be contemporaneous with ‘less mammal-like’ therapsids. At worst, the entire chain of mammal-like reptiles and their presumed progression to mammals will come crashing down. A detailed analysis of the intercontinental correlation of the relevant strata should be undertaken to evaluate this possibility. The Permo-Triassic boundary is conventionally believed to have been one at which there had been a greater turnover of living things than at any other comparable interval throughout the Phanerozoic fossil record. It is therefore interesting to note that this discovery admittedly blurs the distinctiveness of the Permo-Triassic boundary, 13 as do a variety of other, transitional Permo-Triassic faunas and floras.14 The sponge Neoguadalupia — another Permo-Triassic boundary ‘violator’ Up to now, all of the examples discussed have been ones where specific fossils have unexpectedly been found in strata older than where they were ‘supposed’ to be found. The remaining examples in this work are fossils whose stratigraphic ranges have been extended into presumed younger rocks. To show that Lystrosaurus was no fluke in terms of the crossing

of the Permo-Triassic boundary, consider the sponge genusNeoguadalupia oregonensis. Formerly assumed to be found in strata no younger than Permian, it has been discovered in the Triassic (and Upper Triassic at that) in Oregon.15 The bivalve Camptochlamys Let us now turn our attention to the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary. Consider the implications of Camptochlamys found occurring in the K-T beds of the North Slope, Alaska: ‘The occurrence of Camptochlamys extends the chronostratigraphic and geographic range of this genus, previously unknown from any strata above the uppermost Jurassic (Tithonian) of Europe and unknown from any strata in North America.’16In this particular instance, we have more than a stratigraphic-range extension. We also have a contradiction between this particular fossil’s stratigraphic occurrence in European strata, and that of North America. So much for the myth that there is a consistent succession of fossils from one continent to another! Of course, this is not the only such instance. Whenever a fossil is listed as having a long stratigraphic range (say, Cambrian to Devonian), this range may conceal a contradictory stratigraphic occurrence of the fossil from one part of the world to another. Thus, the fossil in question may occur in only Cambrian rock on one continent, only in Ordovician rock on another continent, only in Silurian on another, and only in Devonian on still another continent.Let us now take a closer look at the K-T boundary. Second to the Permo-Triassic boundary, in terms of faunal turnover, is the K-T boundary. It is at this boundary that dinosaurs, ammonites, and other Mesozoic animals became extinct, according to standard evolutionary-uniformitarian interpretations. Yet more and more hitherto-believed Cretaceous life-forms are turning up in Tertiary rock. These include marine fossils, for which a poor fossil record cannot be used as an excuse for their appearance beyond the ‘proper’ stratigraphic intervals. And these do not include the many instances of late Cretaceous life forms found in earliest Tertiary rock, for which a reworking rationalisation is frequently invoked. The gastropod Parafusus The remaining example in this report is an erstwhile Cretaceous fossil that has turned up in Tertiary strata. Formerly restricted to Upper Cretaceous rocks, members of the gastropod Parafusus have been found in large numbers in the Palaeocene rocks of northeastern Mexico.17 The norm or the exception? Are the foregoing examples of stratigraphic-range extensions, and thus the corresponding randomisation of global fossil succession, the exception or the rule? To begin with, it must be stressed that the instances discussed in this brief report are hardly comprehensive. To the contrary, they are in fact only those instances which have inadvertently come to my attention while I was in the process of researching other topics.So how common are stratigraphic-range extensions? Two recent comprehensive databases of the stratigraphic occurrence of fossils give a clear answer to this question. Maxwell and Benton18 have compared the stratigraphic ranges of all of the fossil vertebrate families (excluding Aves, which have a spotty fossil record) as perceived in 1966–1967, and again in 1987. For 96 families, there was no change in stratigraphic range. Another 87 fossil families went through a decrease in their accepted stratigraphic range. Yet considerably more families (150) underwent an increase in the amount of strata which they overlap. This trend is even more evident in fossil marine families. In just ten years (1982–1992), Sepkoski 19 reports that 513 fossil families underwent a decline in their stratigraphic range. A decline in range may mean that the first and/or last occurrence had been misidentified. But whatever the cause, the number of fossil-range declines is dwarfed by the 1026 families that enjoyed an increase in either their first occurrence, or their last occurrence, or both.Clearly, then, extension of stratigraphic ranges is the rule and not the exception. This is even more remarkable when we remember that there is the ever-present evolutionary bias which tends to cause overemphasis of minute differences in fossils located in different horizons of strata, and hence the proliferation of questionable taxonomic names for essentially the same organism found at different stratigraphic horizons. The disappearing geological column Let us now examine the progressive randomisation of the fossil record in the light of the history of the geologic column. Modern researchers are not the first to notice the progressive extension of fossil stratigraphic ranges with increasing collection of fossil specimens from the world’s sedimentary strata. During the time that parts of the geologic column were still being worked out in the mid 19th century, the Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer commented on the illogicity of the geologic column in his appropriately-named essay, Illogical Geology.20 In doing this, Spencer could hardly be accused of creationist bias. After all, he was a hardened atheist who had been an enthusiastic supporter of both social Darwinism and ‘scientific’ Darwinism.One of the things Spencer challenged was the use of fossils for the correlation and dating of strata. Specifically, he took issue with the practice of using particular fossils as supposed time-markers for the global correlation of strata, and then not questioning the whole procedure when frequently finding such fossils in the ‘wrong’ strata with further collecting of fossil specimens.21 As we have seen, the finding of fossils in previously-unrecognised stratigraphic horizons has continued unabated to this very day, and dwarfs anything that Spencer could have been familiar with. What would Spencer think were he alive today?Let us take the aforementioned occurrence of Lystrosaurus to its logical conclusion. Since Lystrosaurus has always been used to correlate rocks into time-equivalent horizons, and to place them all into the Early Triassic, the Permian find of Lystrosaurus should now mean that Permian and Triassic are contemporaneous! An analogous line of reasoning should lead to the position that Cretaceous and Tertiary are now contemporaneous because the Upper Cretaceous genus Parafusus is now known from Early Tertiary rocks.Of course, the uniformitarians would never follow their own reasoning to its logical conclusion because it would lead to the very reductio ad absurdum discussed in the previous paragraph. At minimum, it would require the uniformitarians to acknowledge the fact that the Permian-Triassic and Cretaceous-Tertiary are now respectively contemporaneous. Such a conclusion, of course, destroys the very foundations of the geologic column, and is unthinkable to standard uniformitarian dogma. In order to paper over this fatal flaw in the geologic column, uniformitarians simply back-pedal, discard Lystrosaurus as well as other once-esteemed index fossils as time-stratigraphic indicators, choose other index fossils as presumed time-indicators, and otherwise act as if nothing has happened in terms of empirical evidence. This enables them to go right on believing in such things as the Permian, Triassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary periods. Heads I win, tails you lose. Clearly, the evolutionary-uniformitarian geologic column has become protected from falsification. To the uniformitarian, no possible fossil discovery would ever count as evidence that would invalidate the sacrosanct geologic column. It is thus clear that use of index fossils and assemblages of such fossils for correlation of strata is an exercise in special pleading. Some scientific creationist implications Clearly, now more then ever, creationist scientists should resist the temptation of buying into any sort of scheme which presumes that fossils can be used to delineate time-horizons in the earth’s sedimentary rocks. Even at the local level, fossil

succession is related to Flood-related processes instead of changes in fauna over time. This fact discounts neo-Cuvierism. And, for the mainstream diluvialist, the extension of stratigraphic ranges has implications in terms of Flood-related depositional processes. As the fossil record comes closer to randomness, proposed Flood-originated non-temporal mechanisms22 for fossil succession need to be less and less efficient in order to account for a fossil succession that is becoming more and more crude as more and more fossils are gathered23. Living fossils: a powerful argument for creation Don Batten interviews Dr Carl Werner, author of Living Fossils (Evolution: the Grand Experiment vol. 2) Dr Werner Dr Werner graduated from the University of Missouri with distinction in biology (summa cum laude). He received his doctoral degree in medicine at the age of 23 and practices emergency medicine in St Louis.Dr Werner explained what living fossils are and why he became so interested in them, collecting photographs of these fossils over the last 14 years: “Living fossils are fossilized animals and plants that look similar to modern organisms. I became interested in living fossils as a tool to test evolution.” “There are basically two models of how life came about: The evolution model suggests that chemicals coalesced and formed a living single-cell almost four billion years ago and then this changed over long periods of time into all other living things. Examples of evolutionary changes include a dinosaur into a bird, or a four-legged land mammal into a whale. The other model, creation, suggests that an external supernatural being created all of the various types of animals and plants at once, and these organisms have changed little over time, other than variations within a basic type.” For example, an animal can change, but only within its kind, such as a wolf into a dog—not radical change such as a four-legged mammal into a whale. 1Dr Werner continued, “Living fossils provided me a simple way to test evolution. If evolution did not occur (animals did not change significantly over time) and if all of the animals and plants were created at one time and lived together (humans, dinosaurs, oak trees, roses, cats, wolves, etc), then one should be able to find fossils of at leastsome modern animals and modern plants alongside dinosaurs in the rock layers. I set out to test this idea without any foreknowledge of any modern organisms in the rock layers. My results (as laid out in the book & video Living Fossils) showed that many modern animals and plants are found with dinosaurs—far more than I ever expected to find.”Dr Werner and his wife Debbie travelled over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) and took 60,000 photographs as they filmed the television series Evolution: The Grand Experiment. (Episode 2 of this series, Living Fossils, reveals exactly what they found.) They focused on fossils found in dinosaur rock layers, and compared these fossils to modern animals and plants.“We looked only at fossils found in the dinosaur dig sites so that scientists who support evolution could not suggest that the fossils we looked at were not ‘old’. All of the fossils we used for comparisons were found in dinosaur rock layers (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous).” Many modern animals in dinosaur rock! I asked Carl just how many modern types of animals he had found in the dinosaur rock layers. “We found fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum living today including: arthropods (insects, crustaceans etc.), shellfish, echinoderms (starfish, crinoids, brittle stars, etc.), corals, sponges, and segmented worms (earthworms, marine worms). “The vertebrates—animals with backbones such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals—show this same pattern.” Modern fish, amphibians and reptiles “Cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays), boney fish (such as sturgeon, paddlefish, salmon, herring, flounder and bowfin) and jawless fish (hagfish and lamprey) have been found in the dinosaur layers and they look the same as modern forms. “Modern-looking frogs and salamanders have been found in dinosaur dig sites. “All of today’s reptile groups have been found in the dinosaur layers and they look the same or similar to modern forms: Snakes (boa constrictor), lizards (ground lizards and gliding lizards), turtles (box turtles, soft-shelled turtles), and crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles and gavials).” Modern birds “Contrary to popular belief, modern types of birds have been found, including: parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc. When scientists who support evolution disclosed this information during our TV interviews it appears that they could hardly believe what they were saying on camera.” Dr William Clemens, UC Berkeley, on modern birds being found in Cretaceous rock. (Clip from Living Fossils DVD) Mammals Paleontologists have found 432 mammal species in the dinosaur layers; almost as many as the number of dinosaur species. … But where are these fossils? We visited 60 museums but did not see a single complete mammal skeleton from the dinosaur layers displayed at any of these museums. This is amazing. “At the dinosaur dig sites, scientists have found many unusual extinct mammal forms such as the multituberculates 2 but they have also found fossilized mammals that look like squirrels, possums, Tasmanian devils, hedgehogs, shrews, beavers, primates, and duck-billed platypus. I don’t know how close these mammals are to the modern forms because I was not able to see most of these, even after going to so many museums.” “Few are aware of the great number of mammal species found with dinosaurs. Paleontologists have found 432 mammal species in the dinosaur layers;3 almost as many as the number of dinosaur species. These include nearly 100 complete mammal skeletons. But where are these fossils? We visited 60 museums but did not see a single complete mammal skeleton from the dinosaur layers displayed at any of these museums. This is amazing. Also, we saw only a few dozen incomplete skeletons/single bones of the 432 mammal species found so far. Why don’t the museums display these mammal fossils and also the bird fossils?” Many modern plants in dinosaur rock! “In the dinosaur rock layers, we found fossils from every major plant division living today including: flowering plants, ginkgos, cone trees, moss, vascular mosses, cycads, and ferns. Again, if you look at these fossils and compare them to modern forms, you will quickly conclude that the plants have not changed. Fossil sequoias, magnolias, dogwoods, poplars and

redwoods, lily pads, cycads, ferns, horsetails etc. have been found at the dinosaur digs.” Were any modern organisms not found? “I did not find fossils of every organism living today in the dinosaur layers, rather I found representative examples from all of the major animal phyla living today and all of the major plant divisions living today. Taking it one step further, within these bigger groups, I frequently found representatives of all of the major groups or classes within a phylum. For example, for echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins, etc.) I found fossils of all of the major types living today. Same with the insects and the crocodilians, etc. I did not find any large mammals. The largest mammal discovered in a dinosaur layer so far (live size) is 30 pounds (13 kg). Nevertheless, with so many living fossils, both plants and animals, from all of the major phyla and all of the major plant divisions, it points to stasis (lack of change), not evolution. I should also note that if you look at the serious problems with the fossil layer system (the geological column as presented by geologists today), the absence of the bigger mammals can easily be accounted for, but I will save Fossil sea urchin this for a later day.” Evolutionary story telling ‘unsinkable’? I asked Dr Werner how evolutionary scientists deal with this evidence, given these remarkable findings. Dr Werner remarked, “If you whole-heartedly believe in a theory, you will always be able to sustain that belief—even in the face of contradictory evidence—by adding a rescue hypothesis to that theory. For example, if a scientist believes in evolution and sees fossils that look like modern organisms at the dinosaur digs, he/she might invent an hypothesis to ‘explain’ living fossils this way: ‘Yes I believe that animals have changed greatly over time (evolution), but some animals and plants were so well adapted to the environment that they did not need to change. So I am not bothered at all by living fossils.’ This added hypothesis says that some animals did not evolve. But if a theory can be so flexible, adding hypotheses that predict the opposite of your main theory, one could never disprove the theory. The theory then becomes unsinkable, and an unsinkable theory is not science.”

Modern sea urchin Different names for the same animal? Carl related how evolutionary scientists give fossils different genus and species names from the living forms, creating the illusion of evolution: “Let me give you an example. A scientist found a fossil sea urchin in Cretaceous rock that looks nearly identical to a modern Purple Heart sea urchin, but assigned it to a completely new genus (Holaster). If you saw that creature alive in the ocean you would recognize it as a Purple Heart sea urchin (genus Spatangus). The different name suggests that sea urchins have changed over time, but this is contrived ‘evidence’ for evolution. The fossil looks the same as the living one.” (See photos right). Evolution disproved? I asked Dr Werner if his study disproved evolution. “It is becoming more and more difficult for the evolutionary model to stand in the face of this great number of living fossils. Adding the many other problems with evolution (fossil record, origin of first life, geological layering problems, similarities of non-related animals, etc.), you can declare with confidence that yes, the theory is finished. If a few larger mammals were found in the dinosaur layers, it should be over even for the die-hard believers of evolution, but people tend to go to their grave with the theories they learned in college. A new generation might well look at all of this and ask, ‘What were they thinking?’ ” IS THERE ANY TYPE OF ORDER IN THE FOSSIL RECORD Are there out-of-sequence fossils that are problematic for evolution? by Gary Bates and Lita Cosner Published: 17 April 2014 (GMT+10) This jellyfish fossil, which ‘dates’ to over 500 million years, provides two counts against evolutionary predictions regarding the fossil record: that soft organisms would not be preserved and that such a huge period of evolution sees no change in this creature, which has the same features as ones swimming in the oceans today. Image from PLOS, ref. 1. In his debate with Ken Ham, Bill Nye (the ‘science guy’) dogmatically claimed, and asked Ham, to cite any out-oforder fossils in the geologic record, because if there were any, it would be problematic for the evolutionary model. Due to the seeming confidence of Nye’s assertion (and that it was not answered during the debate), many have contacted us for an answer on this single question. In addition, while out on ministry our speakers have mentioned how this question has often come up. At a recent event, Gary Bates encountered a Christian university student who said this question was being used as a club by lecturers and professors to ‘beat him with’. It appears that this seeming ‘knockout punch’ argument by Nye is being used as a ‘great’ falsification of the creation model.

A constantly changing story If the fossils themselves provide evidence that suggests rapid burial then it only makes sense to presume that the sediments that buried them had to also be deposited quickly. So how can we answer this challenge? Is this a problem for creationists? First, by definition evolutionists would say there are no out-ofsequence fossils. They would claim that the fragmentary nature of the fossil record means that we don’t have a good idea of the entire period a fossil belongs in. So if we find a fossil in a stratum that is supposed to be 100 million years older than the species (using evolutionary dating for the sake of the argument), it simply means that it evolved 100 million years earlier than we thought. The evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record is so flexible that it can incorporate virtually any new change, no matter how unexpected. In other words, if an out-of-order fossil is found (according to their standard view), then it is just incorporated as new evidence to provide a better understanding of evolution! In short, evolution is assumed and then used to explain the fossils. So, no matter what we find, by the very nature of the way they interpret the facts, nothing would falsify evolution anyway! Fossil octopus remarkably preserved in Lebanon reveals details of the eight arms, suckers, ink, gills, mouth, eye capsule and more. So a better way to counter this would be to ask whether evolution has made predictions about the fossil record that have been confirmed or otherwise by subsequent discoveries. And by this measure evolution falls dramatically short. For instance, Charles Darwin said that “no organism wholly soft can be preserved.” He was simply wrong, because we have many examples of this. For instance, hundreds of fossilized jellyfish and a fossilized squid, that look remarkably similar to the same creatures living today. Yet they were claimed to be 505 million years old (myo) and 150 myo respectively. The squid even contained an ink sac so fresh that the ink could be used to paint a picture. The ages assigned to these fossils comes from their position in the alleged geologic column and the dates assigned to the rock layers in which they were found. Remember that it is believed that the rock layers were supposed to have been slowly deposited over millions of years, and similarly, the process of burial and permineralization is supposed to have taken a very long time. But besides soft-bodied creatures, we have fossils like an ichthyosaur giving birth, and fish in the process of eating other fish, that capture moments in time. They must have been preserved quickly. Logically, if the fossils themselves provide evidence that suggests rapid burial then it only makes sense to presume that the sediments that buried them had to also be deposited quickly. Lots of inconvenient fossils In reality, there are a lot of fossils that don’t fit within the neatly-defined evolutionary order of things paraded in our geology and biology textbooks: Trilobites, which are allegedly 500 myo in the Cambrian strata, have eyes that are far too complex for their place in the fossil record. That is, they have no precursors to their appearance.Perhaps most astonishingly, pollen fossils— evidence of flowering plants—were found in the Precambrian strata. According to evolutionists, flowering plants first evolved 160 mya, but the Precambrian strata is older than 550 mya.Dinosaurs are supposed to have evolved into birds. But Confuciusornis was a true beaked bird that pre-dates the ‘feathered’ dinosaurs that it allegedly came from. It also has been found in the stomach of a dinosaur.Grass which has been found in fossilized dinosaur coprolites (fossilized dung). But grass is not supposed to have evolved until at least 10 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct.A dog-like mammal fossil was found with remains of dinosaurs in its stomach—but no mammals large enough to prey on dinosaurs were supposed to exist alongside them.A mammal hair was found in amber supposed 100 million years old. Once again, this is smack in the middle of the alleged ‘age of dinosaurs’ when no such mammals existed. CMI’s Calvin Smith wrote: “To the surprise of many, ducks,3 squirrels,4 platypus,5 beaver-like6 and badger-like7 creatures have all been found in ‘dinosaur-era’ rock layers along with bees, cockroaches, frogs and pine trees. Most people don’t picture a T. rex walking along with a duck flying overhead, but that’s what the so-called ‘dino-era’ fossils would prove!”

Tiktaalik! ‘You gotta be kidding’ © Ted Daeschler Tiktaalik fossil. Being the media entertainer he is, Nye waxed eloquently about the discovery of an alleged sea-to-land (fish to tetrapod) intermediate called Tiktaalik roseae. That he spent so long detailing the find of this ‘perfect missing link’, he obviously thought it was a ‘slam dunk’ for evolution. Indeed, Tiktaalik has appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, textbooks, and it even has its own theme song and website to promote evolution. Now, either Nye was ignorant of, or deliberately dishonest, when he conveniently failed to mention that fossil footprints that predated Tiktaalik have been in Poland predating Tiktaalik by some 18 million years. It can’t be the transition it is claimed to be if creatures that evolved ‘from it’ actually lived ‘before it’. That looks like a slam dunk for falsifying that evolutionary story, ‘wethinks’.

‘ Living fossils’ are out-of-place for evolutionists Piotr Szrek, Uppsala University Limestone slab from Poland with fossil footprints. Another indication that the evolutionary story is flawed is the huge number of living fossils. That is, creatures that have been found in the fossil record have been assigned ages of hundreds of millions of years, yet are identical to creatures alive today. Dr Carl Werner has documented museum displays showing how many modern animals are found in dinosaur-era layers. Dr Werner said: “I found representative examples from all of the major animal phyla living today and all of the major plant divisions living today. Taking it one step further, within these bigger groups, I frequently found representatives of all the major groups or classes within a phylum.” But if all these animals are found in dinosaur-era layers, what has evolution been doing for the last hundred million years? For example, if apes eventually became humans in just 6 million years, how, with ever-changing ecological pressures, can there be so many plants and animals that are basically unchanged from their forms supposedly millions of years ago? For instance, the Wollemi pine was supposed to have thrived around 150 million years ago and to have been long extinct, but in 1994, they were found growing in a forest in New South Wales, Australia. Even evolutionists claimed it was “like finding a live dinosaur”. And the coelacanth was supposed to have gone extinct around the same time as the dinosaurs, but we know that this deep-sea fish is still living because fishermen have caught them and National Geographic has filmed them swimming around! Fossil photo by Joachim Scheven, LEBENDIGE VORWELT Museum, Living coelacanth photo from Wikipedia.org The ‘Cambrian explosion’ is an out-of-order problem for evolutionists? Bill Nye actually did creationists a favour by inadvertently pointing out a major weak spot for evolution. In the Cambrian rocks (some of the alleged oldest complexfossil-bearing rocks on earth—c. 500 plus myo), ‘index’ fossils of just about every major phylum can be found. Because next to no ancestors of these organisms appears below them, that is, they appear suddenly and simultaneously in the fossil record; it has long been a massive problem for evolutionists. As there is no smooth and gradual sequence to the appearance of these fossils, one could argue that the millions of creatures that represent the Cambrian explosion are out-of-sequence fossils by the evolutionists ‘own measure’. There are many exceptions to the neatly portrayed order of the fossil record In fact, the more fossils we find, the more random the picture becomes. This does not fit the orderly progression of everevolving specimens that evolutionists would predict. But it does fit very well with the creationist narrative of plants and animals created “according to their kinds”, and buried in a worldwide catastrophe. Bill Nye actually did creationists a favour by inadvertently pointing out a major weak spot for evolution. In fact, the fossil record is evidence against Bill Nye’s position, and certainly evolutionists might want to think twice before drawing attention to such a vulnerable chink in their armor!

Index fossils—really? Index, noun; a pointer, indicator, a thing that points out. (Webster’s Dictionary) by Gordon Howard Evolutionary paleontologists use ‘index fossils’ to assign an age to a layer of sedimentary rock and its associated fossils. Evolutionary theory assumes that a particular creature evolved from its ancestors, lived successfully for a period, then became extinct as its descendants evolved better ways of surviving. In other words, that creature had a defined ‘evolutionary lifespan’. We may be told, “It thrived in the Devonian period”. For example, we all ‘know’ that the dinosaurs ‘evolved’ about 230 million years ago, and died out 65 million years ago, don’t we?Or do we? To ‘know’ that, people need to make two assumptions. Assumptions One is that fossils and rocks can be accurately assigned an ‘age’ directly, through various scientific techniques. However, no matter how accurate the measurements of chemicals in the rocks are, there is no way of calibrating a dating technique for supposedly pre-historic events.1 In spite of paleontologists trying to make sense of these scientific measures, the ‘dates’ they assign to rocks are actually constrained by the fossils found in them. But can we be sure that, if a creature does not appear in the fossil record of a particular age range of rocks, it did not exist then? No, we can’t. For example, if dinosaur fossils are found in a rock layer, the rocks are assumed to be at least 65 million years old. So if a radiometric dating result indicates an age of 40 million years, it is interpreted as representing, not the age of the rock, but a later geological process, such as disturbance, reworking or contamination. The fossils always trump the supposedly objective radiometric dating!2The second assumption has two complementary parts. First, in the strata above and below (“after and before”) the range where fossils of a particular creature are known, it is assumed it didn’t exist at that time. Evolutionists would say either that it hadn’t evolved yet, or that it had become extinct. Second and conversely, if a particular fossil is frequently found in rocks of a particular ‘age’ then we can say that that creature is an indicator fossil for rocks of that age—an ‘index fossil’. In other words, rocks that contain fossils of that creature must be of that ‘age’, and so must any associated fossils.Graptolites, fossils of colonial marine

creatures, are widely used as index fossils.But can we be sure that, if a creature does not appear in the fossil record of a particular age range of rocks, it did not exist then? No, we can’t. Consider the many so-called ‘living fossils’—creatures whose fossils are not found in any rocks younger than a certain age, but discovered alive today. One famous example is the

coelacanth, a fish regarded as becoming extinct supposedly 65 million years ago because it was missing from the fossil record since then. Yet, in 1938, it was discovered to be still alive. Similarly, the recent discoveries in the last two decades of dinosaur bones that contained tissue that was still flexible, as well as blood cells, challenges the idea that dinosaurs disappeared from the earth 65 million years ago.3 These examples show the futility of this assumption. The fact that an organism is not found in the fossil record does not mean it was not alive somewhere on the earth. For example, ‘ancient’ and ‘primitive’ organisms (crinoids, mosses, stromatolites, etc.) have flourished from very early in the fossil record and continue in our present world, but they don’t appear in all levels of the geologic column. Evolutionists themselves recognize this with their adage, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” But it’s certainly no evidence of presence! Left: Part of the dinosaur ‘evolutionary tree’ (the sauropods).8 Right: The ‘tree’ disappears when areas are removed for which there is no fossil evidence Ranges keep growing This should alert us to the fact that we cannot assume that the dates assigned to an ‘index fossil’ are real limits on its period of existence. ‘Out-of-place’ (or ‘offset’) fossils are not uncommon, 4 such as fossil fish being found in China millions of years older than previously thought.5 Such discoveries are not reported to be ‘out of place’ but are catered for by increasing the fossil range of the organism. Consequently, the ‘evolutionary life-span’ allotted by evolutionists for many index fossils has continually been increasing, as examples are found in rocks of different assigned ‘ages’. 6 Another factor that challenges the million-year ages produced by these dating methods is the absence of evolutionary change in many organisms over these vast periods, a phenomenon that is even given a name—stasis. How is it that crinoids and the coelacanth have not evolved in those millions of years? Change would show the passage of time. Lack of change throws doubt on the idea of millions of years and that evolution happens at all. Lack of change throws doubt on the idea of millions of years and that evolution happens at all. When they are interpreting the fossils, evolutionary geologists assume that animals evolved over millions of years, and that fossils buried together, (that is, in the same layer of rock) lived together at the same time. They assume that layers in different parts of the world containing the same fossils are the same age. This is the whole idea behind using index fossils to relate rocks around the world. But suppose there was a world-wide flood. Then the vast majority of fossils would all have been buried during that Flood year. Different layers would contain fossils transported from different ecosystems rather than different evolutionary time periods, completely destroying the idea that index fossils represent different evolutionary ‘ages’. With the global Flood we would expect particular fossils to sometimes be present and sometimes absent from layers of the same ‘age’ in different parts of the world, as well as ‘index fossils’ to be found in rocks of supposedly ‘wrong’ age. Ammonites, picture an octopus with a shell, are well known as index fossilsA typical diagram of an ‘evolutionary tree’ has the creature assigned to an ‘evolutionary life-span’ (see above). The vertical line shows the point at which it ‘appears’, and continues, either to the present, or to a point where it stops abruptly, indicating the point where evolutionists believe the creature became extinct. But, as we have seen, it may not be extinct but still alive somewhere on the earth today. It’s just missing from parts of the fossil record. More importantly, it’s possible that the creature existed before it first appeared as a fossil. In fact, its ‘kind’ was alive on the earth from creation up to its first ‘appearance’ as a fossil. It would then ‘appear’ in the fossil record fully formed, without ‘evolutionary ancestors’, just as the creationists predicts, and just as we actually find in the rocks. 7No such thingWhat can we deduce from all this? Basically, that index fossils are no such thing. They are not indicators of an evolutionary progression, and they cannot be relied on without question as indicators of the age of any particular rock layer. Fossil flip-flop How objective are scientists? by Tas Walker Specimens courtesy of Andrew SnellingFossil belemnites. Are scientists always objective? Do they always interpret the evidence with an open mind? Some time ago I experienced first-hand how a scientist’s beliefs affect the way he looks at the evidence.Whilst a geology student at university, I needed to identify a fossil. After consulting the Atlas of Invertebrate Macrofossils1 I had tentatively identified it as a belemnite2 of the genus Hibolites. However, paleontology was not my specialty so I sought advice from an expert.The research paleontologist at one of the major universities in our state was the obvious choice. I had always found him helpful even though he was unimpressed by my ‘young earth’ stand. For over 30 years he had written extensively on paleontology, and was now the only lecturer on the subject at that university. I wanted to be sure I was not making a wrong identification. I also wanted to be more specific in my classification.I showed him the belemnite and explained that it was found near Warwick, U.K. (In hindsight I must not have made it clear that it was from the U.K. There is also a town called Warwick in the state of Queensland, Australia.) He looked carefully at the specimen using his hand lens. ‘No, this is not a belemnite,’ he announced, ‘it is an iron concretion.’ I was amazed. It looked like a belemnite to me. But then, he was the expert. ‘Iron concretions can do funny things,’ he explained. ‘People who are not experienced in this field can be easily tricked by them.’Even careful observation of a hand specimen under a magnifying glass can be wrongly interpreted if it does not fit one’s preconceptions. Well, he was the authority, so I reluctantly accepted his assessment. We talked a bit more. I showed him the diagrams from the Atlas that looked like my specimen. I then mentioned afresh that I was talking about Warwick, U.K.‘U.K.!’ he exclaimed. ‘Let me have a look at that again.’ A second time he looked carefully at the specimen.

‘Yes, it is a belemnite. When you look carefully you can see the way it is formed on the edges here. I thought you were talking about Warwick, Queensland. It is actually a very nice specimen. Some of the markings on the guard are preserved.’ The confusion occurred because he knew the local geology of Warwick, Queensland. He did not think that belemnites could come from the area because the outcrops were the wrong ‘age.’ His geological knowledge was impeccable. But his wrong identification of the fossil illustrates how the geologic age system can be self-reinforcing. There may well have been fossils found in the ‘wrong place’ but even so, not necessarily recognized as such.We talked some more. I thanked him for his assistance. However, I don’t think he realized what an amazing demonstration he had provided of how his preconceptions affected his science. Even careful observation of a hand specimen under a magnifying glass can be wrongly interpreted if it does not fit one’s preconceptions. And preconceptions are so strongly linked with one’s worldview. That is why creationists must not be deterred when apparent conflicts arise. They simply signal that we need to ‘dig deeper.’ We should not rule out the possibility that the data itself was wrongly recorded as a result of pressure from evolutionary preconceptions. Further expansion of evolutionary fossil time ranges by Michael J. Oard We are commonly challenged to explain the fossil order worked out by evolutionary scientists. Fossils are, of course, crucial to the evolutionary story; their sequences and placement in the evolutionary time scale are fundamental to the evolutionists’ grand scheme. However, outcrops with fossils are usually widely scattered and further fossil collecting commonly brings surprises, such as the expansion of the ranges of fossils either up or down within the geological column. 1-3 Since I last reported on fossil range expansions in 2009, many new reports have been published. Supposed fish-amphibian transition pushed back 18 Ma Figure 1. Tracks discovered in a quarry have been dated 18 Ma earlier than the supposed transition from fish to tetrapod (from Niedzwiedzki11). One of the most sensational expansions is that of the supposed origin of tetrapods from fish by about 18 Ma earlier in the evolutionary timescale.4,5 This change is even more damaging to evolutionists since a few years before this research was published there was a big splash about a new missing link between fish and amphibians.6 This supposed transition occurred after the new biozone base derived from the unique fossil Tiktaalik found in northeast Canada. But the new discovery of tetrapod tracks (figure 1), which should push the supposed origin of tetrapods even further back than 18 Ma, has caused consternation over the range changes.7,8 (On a personal note, in an exchange of letters to the editor in the local newspaper between a certain evolutionist and myself, Tiktaalik was commonly brought up as a fulfilled prediction of evolutionary theory, until in my last letter I pointed out the new tetrapod track discovery.) Colonial eukaryotes are 200 Ma older Another major shift in evolutionary time was caused by the discovery of macroscopic, and probably multicellular, fossils in strata dated at 2.1 billion years old in the evolutionary timescale. 9,10 This pushes back the origin of such fossils 200 million years. After eliminating the possibility of them being inorganic structures, scientists now believe that the fossils are colonial eukaryote organisms. However, that date corresponds to a time in evolutionary history of insufficient oxygen level in the atmosphere combined with a toxic mix of greenhouse gases. The discovery raises more questions for the evolutionary scenario than it answers. Pushing back in time dinosaurs and certain reptiles Many recent changes have been proposed regarding dinosaurs, birds, and supposed dinosaur-bird transitions. A new discovery of a type of theropod dinosaur, an alvarezsauroid, in China pushes back this type of dinosaur 63 million years. 12 This is important because it is thought to be in the line leading to birds.A dinosaur-like animal was recently found in Tanzania.13 Evolutionists are reticent to call it a dinosaur because it is too “old”. It is classified as a member of the Silesauridae. This suggests to the evolutionists that the evolution of crocodiles and birds was rapid and happened earlier than previously thought.14 A ‘temporal or time paradox’ exists between the supposed first bird dated at 150 Ma and the ‘feathered dinosaur’ ancestors of birds dated at about 125 Ma. The sequence is reversed from that expected by evolution. But now evolutionists believe they have solved the temporal paradox. A new supposed feathered dinosaur was found in China that is now claimed to be 155 Ma, about the time expected for the evolution of birds. 15 But there is one big problem with this supposed transition in that it had feathers on its feet. It was, therefore, four-winged, like Microraptor. So, the evolutionists have ‘solved’ their temporal paradox by now having to believe that the evolution of flight first went through a four-winged stage only to lose the long foot feathers. 16 As research continues, new human abilities are found to be increasingly older, causing surprise within evolutionary quarters. Human abilities pushed back in time Evolutionists of course believe that man’s abilities evolved in conjunction with his biological evolution. Early man was thus both primitive biologically and technologically. But as research continues, new human abilities are found to be increasingly older, causing surprise within evolutionary quarters. For instance, music and the ability to play musical instruments are an indication of fully human behavior. Bone flutes have been found in archaeological sites in Europe back to about 30,000 years BP within the evolutionary time scale. But a new discovery in southwest German caves places bone and ivory flutes at more than 35,000 years old, possibly as old as 40,000 years, demonstrating a well-established musical tradition by that time.17 Although Neandertals were supposed to have been in Europe up to about 30,000 years ago, the flutes are attributed to modern humans. Is it possible that evolutionary bias has excluded the Neandertals from being the musicians? And speaking of human ‘inventions,’ the evolutionists have now found evidence that man was able to weave and possibly dye flax as far back as more than 30,000 years ago in what is now the Republic of Georgia. 18,19 Moreover, copper smelting by man has recently been dated at 7,000 years BP, an extension back of 500 years. 20

Many more time extensions Many odd creatures have been discovered in the Burgess Shale of southwest Canada. Scientists assign many of these to new phyla.21 The same creatures have since been found elsewhere in the world and assigned the same ‘age’. The ‘Burgess Shale fauna’ supposedly disappeared in the Middle Cambrian. But now they have been discovered in the Lower Ordovician of Morocco, extending their range upward by about 25 Ma.22 Also at the same location, some organisms previously thought to be higher on the evolutionary “tree” were also found, including cheloniellid and horseshoe crab fossils and fossil marks, which are “ … the oldest unequivocal examples of these groups, pushing their likely origins back into the Cambrian.”23 Bioturbation was rare—a common problem for geologists, since it would be expected during the proposed time frame. This problem is also seen elsewhere.24 Figure 2. Different echinoderm groups recorded In the middle Cambrian of north Spain. A: The gogiid eocrinoid Gogia gondi. B: Cothurnocystid stylophoran. C: The cinctan Lignanicystis barriosensis. D: The edrioasteroid Cambraster cannati. E: lsorophid edrioasteroid. F: Stromatocystitid edrioasteroid. G: The eocrinoid Ubaghsicystis segurae. H: Ctenocystoid. I: Lichenoidid eocrinoid. (From Zamora, ref. 27). Bryozoans are invertebrates characterized by colonial branching growth of a calcareous skeleton. Bryozoans have a wide fossil range, from the Ordovician to the present, and specific species are used as index fossils. Recently, a bryozoan was discovered in the Upper Cambrian in southern Mexico, pushing the origin of this phylum back 8 Ma. 25 With this discovery, all skeletalized metazoan phyla now extend back into the Cambrian. Bryozoans are not the only problem. The middle Silurian supposedly marks the time of the sudden appearance of vascular plants in the fossil record. Earlier, less evolved land plants— liverworts, hornworts, and mosses— are supposed to have been present but their fossil record is sparse. A new report of seven Appalachian carbonaceous fossils provides evidence that complex multicellular eukaryotes colonized the land at least 25 million years earlier than vascular plants. 26 The exact taxonomy of these plant parts could not be identified, so scientists had to rely on carbon isotopes to determine the terrestrial origin of the plant fossils, assuming of course that their interpretation of carbon isotopes is correct. Another range change has occurred with the discovery of diverse fossil echinoderms from the middle Cambrian of northern Spain, which pushes back the records of several types (figure 2). 27 These fossils suggest that the echinoderms diversified as early as the early Cambrian. These finds demonstrate that the confidence that evolutionists project to the public on the order in the fossil record is dramatically overstated.In another case, the record of living groups of bony fish originated in the Devonian (about 400 Ma). Prior to that time, paleontologist had found only isolated teeth and scales. But a new fossil of a bony fish has been found in southern China in the Silurian. This pushes the origin of bony fish back about 18 Ma. 28 Up until recently, crustacean feeding specializations were thought to have remained simple until well after the Cambrian. However, the discovery of a sophisticated feeding apparatus in an Early Cambrian arthropod has pushed back the major expansion of large-bodied, particle-handling arthropods by more than 100 Ma. 29 Finally, another ‘living fossil’ has been found. A type of tiny damselfly supposedly disappeared from the fossil record 250 to 300 Ma ago, but has been found alive in Australia. 30 Why hasn’t it been found in younger rocks? Conclusion These finds demonstrate that the confidence that evolutionists project to the public on the order in the fossil record is dramatically overstated. Furthermore, the corollary confidence in the geological time scale is also suspect; ongoing empirical discoveries seem to undermine it at every step. Therefore, a healthy skepticism in both the fossil record and the rock record, as interpreted by secular scientists for many years, seems appropriate. Larger questions about their very validity also seem overdue. Fossils—do they get more complex? Another evolutionary idea rattled by research One thing that most people think they ‘know’ about evolution is that organisms become more complex as they evolve. After all, isn’t that how a single-celled organism became a person?There are ways for evolutionists to try to test this assumption by looking at the fossils. Within their system, as you go up through the fossil-bearing rock layers, they believe you are looking at millions of years of time unfolding slowly. So do the fossils show increasing complexity? We are not talking here about looking at a reptile in one layer, and then a bird in a higher layer and comparing the complexity. In such a situation it would be enormously difficult to determine which was objectively more complex anyway. Several researchers have tried looking at the fossils of spiral-shelled creatures called ammonoids, to see if apparently related types get more complex as one goes higher in the layers. Another evolutionist, Dan McShea of the University of Michigan, approached the same question using detailed measurements on the backbones of many creatures which evolutionists believe represent ancestordescendant pairs. His aim was to see if the ‘descendant’ was more complex than the ‘ancestor’ on the average for each case. What would the creationist expect the result to be, and why? Obviously, the two fossil creatures believed to be an ancestor-descendant pair would most likely be of the same created kind, laid down at different times during the Flood. There would be no reason for any trend in complexity, if enough pairs are looked at. And this is precisely what was reported in these studies by evolutionists—no trend at all. How well do paleontologists know fossil distributions? by Michael Oard

It is unfortunate but true. Similar fossils can be given different names when found in strata of different supposed ages. This practice masks the true range of the fossil within the geological time scale. In a recent example, even though the fossils were almost identical, they were assigned to different species. Such practices multiply the number of names, confuse our knowledge of fossil distribution, and hide the fact that the geological column may well be compromised.It would be great if we could know the actual three-dimensional distribution of the fossils in the earth. This would go a long way towards understanding their deposition during the Flood. Usually all that is available is a fossil sample along a cliff, ravine or some other cut into a particular formation.One might think that good extrapolations have been made from these limited, twodimensional outcrops and that the fossil content in the remainder of the formation is well understood. But some surprises would be in store if we could actually know the distribution of all the fossils in the formation. The more the sedimentary rocks of the earth are examined, the more the fossil ranges are expanded—especially downward.One such surprise occurred on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, when a sponge of Upper Triassic ‘age’ (the standard geological time scale is used for communication purposes only) was discovered in a carbonate formation.1 It was named Nucha? vancouverensis sp. nov. Now, the formation where the sponge was found is considered a standard reference for the North American Triassic because of its ammonoid index fossils. Surprisingly, the sponge is nearly identical to one previously found only in the Middle Cambrian of western New South Wales, Australia, named Nucha naucum.2In spite of the obvious similarity, because the Vancouver Island specimen was not exactly the same as its Australian counterpart, a question mark was placed after its genus name and it was given a different species name. Still, the researcher who reported the find, George Stanley, believes the similarities are striking enough to put the fossil in the same genus.The Vancouver Island fossil is used to support some very large geological ideas—that an exotic terrane3 (the Wrangellia terrane) was plastered onto the western side of the North America plate from an unknown, tropical-ocean locality. The problem is that the two fossils are located on opposite sides of Pangaea, the hypothetical, huge ancient landmass of the Paleozoic. Their respective oceans were supposedly separated by thousands of kilometres of continent.Because it was previously only known from Australia, Nucha is considered a Tethyan taxon from the Paleozoic tropics.4 So the two fossils, although very similar in appearance, are separated greatly in space and time.Stanley downplays the significance of the separation in time: ‘The absence of Nucha between Middle Cambrian and Late Triassic time is somewhat of a conundrum.’ 5 The reason for this nonchalant attitude toward a fossil not found during a supposed 300 million-year period and separated spatially by a considerable distance is, I believe, because this case is not isolated.In fact, Stanley mentions several examples and refers to other authors who know of a number of other examples. These seeming anomalies are referred to as ‘holdover taxa’, ‘refugia species’, or even ‘Lazarus taxa’. Of course, if a representative of the fossil is found alive today, it is called a ‘living fossil’. The importance of such holdover taxa to paleontologists is stated by Stanley: ‘Of great interest to paleontologists and evolutionary biologists alike is the occurrence of relict or holdover faunas, also known as Lazarus taxa. These taxa, mostly at family, genus, and species levels, appear to leapfrog large intervals of geologic time, including the recovery phases following mass extinctions. They seem to elude our most concerted sampling efforts, failing to be accounted for over considerable intervals of time.’2 What lessons do such holdover taxa have for creationists? First, they show that geologists and paleontologists do not know the three-dimensional distribution of fossils, although they may have reasonable estimates in isolated formations. There have been and will always be surprises. Fossils seem to be constantly extending their geological time ranges. We should be sceptical of statements to the effect that a particular fossil is an index fossil that is restricted to, say, the Cambrian ‘period’, or the Permian ‘period’, etc.Second, such holdover taxa make it hard to believe that the alleged millions of years between the fossil occurrences are real. Where was the organism living all those millions of years? Why is there no fossil record of its existence throughout all that time? In this particular example, paleontologists may eventually find fossils of this sponge between the ‘Middle Cambrian’ and the ‘Upper Triassic’. Even so, the fossils would still be very scarce between these two ‘periods’ and a few finds would not alter the obvious conclusion that the time gap is illusory.Third, a fossil can be assigned to a different species because it is found at a supposed different geologic time, obscuring the true range of the taxon within the geological time scale. In the case of Nucha, the difference between the Vancouver Island sponge and the Australian sponge was slight, but the former fossil was given a different species name with a question mark after the genus name.Similar practices with other taxan contribute to the multiplication of names and a more limited distribution of taxa. Thus, the true range of any organism is likely broader than one is led to believe by the examination of its taxonomy.Since much variability is present within any given organism and hence its fossils, paleontologists often do not know where to draw the line in their classification schemes. Different names for nearly identical fossils are probably common. This tendency to give different names to similar fossils found in formations with supposedly different ages, even to placing them in different superfamilies, has been demonstrated by Tammy Tosk for the microfossils called foraminifers.6John Woodmorappe found that much of the stratigraphic order in the ammonoids is due to time-stratigraphic concepts and taxonomic manipulations. 7 This is particularly serious because particular types of foraminifera and ammonoids are used as index fossils for dating formations.Geologists do not know the three-dimensional distribution of fossils in the rocks, and tend to invent different names for similar fossils, just because they are found in strata of supposedly different ages.8 This does not engender confidence in the geological column they construct, or in the fossildating scheme on which it is based. ‘Oldest’ fossil shrimp? by Shaun Doyle Published: 30 November, 2010(GMT+10) Researchers have recently found what has been dubbed the oldest known fossil shrimp. Found in Upper Devonian shale in Oklahoma, the specimen of Aciculopoda mapesi was exceptionally preserved: “the muscles … have been preserved completely enough that discrete muscle bands are discernable.”1 The news reports commented that “The fossil is a very important step in unraveling the evolution of decapods.”2 However, one looks in vain in either the popular reports or the original research to find justification for this statement. Extension of fossil ranges Does the claimed age of the fossil tell us something new about the evolution of decapods? The more we investigate the fossil record, the larger fossil ranges tend to get.3 Aciculopoda adds to this trend by

extending the known fossil range of shrimps and prawns from the early Triassic (‘dated’ by uniformitarians to 245 Ma) to late Devonian (360 Ma), completely skipping the Carboniferous and Permian geologic ‘ages’. This is a 115-million-year extension in fossil range on the basis of one fossil! This is one more, particularly extreme, example of a progressive randomization of the fossil record. The classification of strata in the geologic column depends on index fossils, which are supposed to only occur over short spans in the rocks, and thus enable researchers to globally correlate strata. However, if fossils as a rule continually have their stratigraphic ranges extended, how reliable can the geologic column concept be since it relies on index fossils?4 If fossils as a rule continually have their stratigraphic ranges extended, how reliable can the geologic column be that relies on index fossils? Evolutionary stasis Not only does Aciculopoda resemble ‘younger’ fossil shrimp, it closely resembles modern shrimp (figure 1). So shrimp are not only older than was thought, but they’ve stayed the same much longer. This is one more case of “evolutionary stasis”, which is a contradiction in terms that mean “change that stays the same”. As such, “evolutionary stasis” is a meaningless concept; you can convey the meaning properly by simply calling it stasis. However, evolutionists often feel the need to add “evolutionary” to make sure the public gets the impression that stasis, like every other conceivable pattern in the fossils, can be ‘explained’ with an evolutionary story. And since evolution can apparently explain anything, it ultimately explains nothing. 5 “Evolutionary stasis” is nothing more than a meaningless nod to a meaningless concept to accommodate an evolutioncontrary pattern in the fossils. Things staying the same is not evolution.This is one more case of ‘evolutionary stasis’, which is a contradiction in terms that mean ‘change that stays the same’. Fine preservation evidence for rapid burial Lead researcher Rodney Feldmann pointed out that the exceptional preservation of the muscles in the fossil points to rapid burial: “When the animal died, it came to rest on the seafloor. The muscles then were preserved by a combination of acidic waters and a low oxygen content as the animal was buried rapidly.” 2 In order to preserve the muscles, they had to be permineralized quickly: “Under conditions of low pH and anoxia, it has been estimated that phosphatization of the soft tissue will occur within a few weeks.”1 Rapid burial and permineralization is completely consistent with a Flood setting. Evolutionary spin of the fossils Nevertheless, the news story proclaims: “The fossil is a very important step in unraveling the evolution of decapods.” 2 This is mere spin—the fossil tells us nothing about how shrimp or decapods evolved because it’s little different from modern shrimp. Decapods were already ‘dated’ as far back as the Devonian, just not shrimp. So this fossil has neither changed the age range of decapods, nor told us anything about the supposed changes the ancestral decapod went through to become a shrimp. Shrimp are simply older than originally thought.Fossils make for good stories, but they’re not much help for evolution. Paleontology by itself can’t conclusively demonstrate whether creation or evolution is true. Historical interpretation of the fossil record, like long-age dating, is notoriously subjective. Fossil patterns can’t give a history; that is imposed on the evidence.6 However, we can say that these fossils are consistent with rapid burial during the a Globl Flood. Slow fish in China The fossil find in China now confirms that fish appear suddenly in the fossil record along with all the other kinds of animals Photograph courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey by Tas Walker This lake trout has been a host to these two lampreys, seen here attached to the fish’s side. A fossil lamprey found in China resembles the larvae of living ones, demonstrating that no evolution has occurred.A friend of mine once tried to use the fossil record to disprove evolution. If he could find just one extraordinary out-of-place fossil, he thought, it would upset the entire geologic column, and hence the theory of evolution. He was badly disillusioned when he couldn’t find any. However, I don’t think he understood how fossil discoveries are handled by evolutionary scientists or the order in which Global Flood would have buried them. The reality is that fossils are being found in new places all the time 1 but these finds do not cause evolutionists to doubt evolution. This is because most scientists have already decided that evolution over millions of years is ‘a fact’. This is called a presupposition—something which is assumed to be true at the outset, because the only alternative is creation. So, when new fossil evidence is considered, the idea that evolution could be wrong is never contemplated. Take for example animals with backbones. Vertebrates were once the only major animal group not found fossilised in the Cambrian system of rocks.2 All other kinds of multi-celled animals, including trilobites and shellfish, appeared abundantly at the base of the Cambrian (said by evolutionists to be 545 million years old3). Fish were the ‘first’ vertebrates found, and these were only in much higher strata—in the upper Silurian system, 4 dated by evolutionists at about 420 million years old. A number of varieties were identified, including sharks, and fish without jaws—agnathans. 5,6 The eel-like sea lamprey and hagfish are examples of agnathans and they live in the oceans today. Lampreys are semi-parasitic and use their mouth to attach to other fish. So, fish appeared much ‘later’ in the rocks than many other animals, and this seemed eminently logical to the evolutionists. They surmised that it would take much longer for chance and natural selection to ‘work out’ how to construct animals with backbones than it would shellfish or trilobites. 6 An extra 125 million years would be more than enough time, they thought. However, by the 1950s, fish fossils had been found in Colorado, USA, from Middle Ordovician rocks (these occur just below the Silurian and above the Cambrian).7 Similar finds were later reported from Australia.7 These are dated at some 470 million years. But even though the first fish now appeared some 50 million years earlier, still there was plenty of time for evolution to have worked, they thought. The new finds just affected the ideas about what fish had evolved from and when, not if fish had evolved (that is a ‘fact’, remember). Evolutionists do not question evolution because they already believe it as a fact. New fossil discoveries just make them change their stories.By the late 1990s, fish had been found even ‘earlier’, from the Early Ordovician system, supposedly around 490 million years ago. There were even accounts of fish fossils in older rocks but these were only fragments of bone-like material 8 and scales,9 and were disputed. However, just last year a team of nine scientists reported well-preserved fossils of two different kinds of agnathan fish from China found in

Lower Cambrian strata.10,11 The fossils are described as ‘the most convincing Early Cambrian vertebrates ever found’,11 and extend the fossil range of fish by at least 20 and possibly 50 million years in evolutionary thinking. Vertebrates had now been found at the base of the Cambrian along with all the other multi-celled animals. The first point to realise from this sequence of events is that, in scientific terms, there is no such thing as an out-of-place fossil. Fossils are found where they are found— there is really no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ place. A scientist may have difficulty explaining some fossils by his notion of evolution and so he may be reluctant to accept the fossil as authentic. Indeed this may have been why for many years the fragments of early fish fossils were disputed. But once the location of a fossil is reliably established, the evolutionist scientist turns his attention to the question ‘What does this mean for how evolution occurred?’ And the second lesson to learn is that belief in evolution is not upset by new fossil finds. In the case of the fossils from China it was even suggested that the find was ‘long awaited’.11 Evolutionists do not question evolution because they already believe it as a fact. New fossil discoveries just make them change their stories. Fossil finds are automatically absorbed into the general evolutionary scheme of things as evolutionist scientists set about developing evolutionary models to explain the data. Photo by Tas Walker Creationists also have presuppositions, but ones that are entirely different from those of evolutionists. Naturally we have exactly the same fossil evidence, but because we have a different starting point, we have different explanations. It is not a matter of manipulating the data, but modifying the scientific models used to explain the data. For the fossil fish, the answer is easy because fossils buried all over the earth are what we would expect from Global Flood. There is no need for millions of years for the different species of plants and animals to evolve. They were already all living on the earth when the Flood began. The fossils simply record the order in which plants and animals were buried about 4,500 years ago during the one-year Flood. It is not hard to appreciate that the global Flood would produce a definite order for fossils. The first sediments would have been deposited in the oceans, and buried marine animals. Slow movers such as the trilobites would have been entombed first, while fish could have more easily escaped the underwater avalanches. Remarkably, the fossils from China show clear evidence that the fish were buried suddenly by an underwater rush of sediment, just as expected from the global Flood. The throat of one fish contained sediment, showing that it had been buried alive.12 The scientists who found the fish in China proposed exactly the same explanation. They suggest that fish are very rare in Cambrian and Ordovician rocks because they were active swimmers and could generally escape from the underwater avalanches. 12 Interestingly, one of the fossils resembled a young lamprey 11 which is parasitic on other fish. This means that although fossils of other fish are not found until later, they must have been alive at the same time. They were just more successful than the lamprey at avoiding the avalanches. The fossil find in China now confirms that fish appear suddenly in the fossil record along with all the other kinds of animals. In evolutionary thinking this is some 50 million years earlier than previously known, and should compound the problem of how the different kinds of animals all evolved together in such a short time. For the creationist, the new fossil find is no problem at all. It was just a matter of a few slow fish buried in (what is now) China. They were not quick enough to escape the sudden underwater avalanches during the Flood, and paid the price. ‘Remarkable’ mammal hairs in amber? by Shaun Doyle Published: 22 June 2010(GMT+10) Figure 1. The microscopic details of this hair are identical to modern mammal hair—but this is supposed to be from the Cretaceous, 100 million years ago, supposedly way back in the ‘age of dinosaurs’.Amber, which is fossilised tree resin, is a fascinating substance (See Amber needed water (and lots of it)). It has preserved stunning specimens of many different types of biological structures and organisms, from bacteria1 to insects,2 and even marine life.3 Many of these organisms are said to have been preserved for over 100 million years. The latest amber-encased fossil find that has made headlines is that of some strands of mammalian hair, which have supposedly been preserved in almost pristine condition for 100 million years (figure 1). 4 They were found in the Font-de-Benon quarry at Archingeay-Les Nouillers in Charente-Maritime, southwest France.5 It has been making headlines because it apparently shows that mammal hairs have remained untouched by evolution for the last 100 million years. So what should we make of this find?The exceptional 3D preservation of the hair enabled the researchers to compare the hairs to living mammals to see if there was any difference. The researchers found that the hairs were ‘remarkably similar’ to modern mammal hair. For the evolutionist, “This discovery implies that the morphology of hair cuticula may have remained unchanged throughout most of mammalian evolution.”4 Mammals in the ‘age of the dinosaurs’ However, from a creation perspective, mammals, even in the so-called ‘age of the dinosaurs’, would not be radically different to mammals today.The popular impression among people today is that mammals in the dinosaur era, if they existed at all, were only small, reptile-like creatures and only diversified after the dinosaurs died out. However, from a creation perspective, mammals, even in the so-called ‘age of the dinosaurs’, would not be radically different to mammals today. Of course, some mammal kinds may have died out, and modern-day mammals are the genetically impoverished descendants of the original kind (which is why we would not expect a domestic cat in ‘dinosaur rock’, for instance). But a creationist would anticipate that any hair or fur, one of the chief distinguishing characteristics between mammals and reptiles, would be identical to that of mammals today, and this is exactly what this find shows. By way of aside, a general rule of thumb for the fossil record, which is also the case with these mammal hairs, is that when one finds the same type of creature in a fossil as

the living form, then the more detail that is preserved in the fossil, the more striking will be the similarity of the fossils to living creatures.However, it’s more than just the detail of this particular fossil that points in this direction. The entire fossil record bears witness to this. Mammal fossils with ever increasing diversity and specialization have been found over the last 15 years even back into the Jurassic.6 And most orders of mammals were present well before the dinosaurs supposedly went extinct, while there was little change when the dinosaurs supposedly went extinct. 7 After commenting on a number of recent mammal fossil finds, Oard comments: “Evolutionists would have expected that any mammals found that were this ‘old’ to be generalized and able to evolve in many different directions with time. However, all these mammals are surprisingly (to the evolutionists) specialized and diverse—clear back in the Middle Jurassic!”8 Even on evolutionary assumptions, it’s now plain that mammals lived in great diversity and abundance with dinosaurs. From a creation perspective, we would expect mammals and dinosaurs to be buried together, at least in part because they are both land-dwelling animals. Since the Flood caused a lot of mixing, however, this is not a hard and fast rule, but a general guide that still allows for a lot of randomization of fossil placement: “Dinosaurs and trilobites lived in different environments, and we would expect a vertical order in the Flood [i.e. land animals (dinosaurs) above marine animals (trilobites)]. However, I would be more cautious in developing a vertical order with organisms from the same or similar environments”.9 Mammal hair non-evolution These mammal hairs also present a problem for evolution: nothing has changed (figure 1). And they are only the tip of the iceberg. The big problem for evolution is that the general rule of the fossil record is that things stay the same (see Fossils questions and answers). Darwin recognized this in his own day, but relied on people finding the intermediate fossils after him: “We should not forget that only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy.” 10 But this problem has not been solved in 150 years of searching since Darwin wrote those words. The fossil record is certainly incomplete for evolutionists, but if people have only found a few disputable transitional fossils in 150 years, with tens of thousands of tons of fossils found, then the problem is not with the fossils, it’s with the prediction and the idea that gave birth to it: evolution. But if it can explain everything in the fossil record, that means it is incapable of predicting anything. And that is why evolution is an utterly meaningless concept for explaining patterns in the fossil record.Despite the failure of Darwin’s original prediction, researchers still readily use evolution to explain patterns in the fossil record. But now evolution, which by definition means change, can also accommodate non-change in the fossil record (See Evolutionary stasis). Evolution has become a rather neat way to explain the fossil record: it can now account for every sort of change you can think of, and even no change at all! Wow! But if it can explain everything in the fossil record, that means it is incapable of predicting anything. And that is why evolution is an utterly meaningless concept for explaining patterns in the fossil record (See The slow rise of dinosaurs). As ReMine quipped: “Evolutionary theory predicts nothing, not even a nested hierarchy. Rather, the theory adapts to data like a fog adapts to landscape.” 11 However, stasis in the fossil record is not a problem for the creationists. On the contrary, this is what it would expect, i.e. if we observed in the fossil record what Darwin predicted (countless chains of ‘links’, with untold thousands of indisputable transitional fossils) then creation model would be seriously undermined, if not falsified completely. ARE THRE REALLY MISSING LINKS IS THIS A PROBLEM FOR EVOLUTION Another major ‘link’ fails Puijila, claimed ancestor of pinnipeds is an otter by Don Batten Figure 1. A page from Appendix E of Dr Werner’s Evolution: the Grand Experiment, 2nd edition, showing the skeltons of the supposed transitional fossil (top) and the North American river otter (bottom). Other than Puijila standing flat-footed, it is hard to see much difference. For 150 years, evolutionists had not been able to find evolutionary ancestors for the aquatic group of mammals called pinnipeds—the seals, sea lions, and walruses. This was odd because they had found well over 15,000 fossil pinnipeds1 but they had not found any land ancestors that were on the way to becoming a seal, sea lion or walrus. Their ‘oldest’ fossil, a creature called Enaliarctos, looked like a modern sea lion, with fully aquatic front and back flippers, not feet or even webbed feet.2 Such a wealth of fossils but no transitional creature fossils posed a conundrum for evolution scientists. For creation scientists, this was not a problem at all but the expected fossil pattern: Pinnipeds were created ‘as is’, and did not evolve from another animal, hence the missing links should not be found. In 2009 Puijila darwini was announced as the latest ‘missing link’ found, a triumph of evolution.3 This was published in Nature, regarded as the most prestigious journal in the world. Richard Dawkins waxed lyrical about this fossil: “Puijila neatly straddles the gap between land and water in the ancestry of pinnipeds. It is yet another delightful addition to our growing list of ‘links’ that are no longer missing.”4 According to Dr Carl Werner… it looks like the authors of the Naturearticle seriously misrepresented and misinterpreted the fossils.

However, according to Dr Carl Werner, who investigated this claim in detail for his book Evolution the Grand Experiment (2nd Edition), it looks like the authors of the Nature article seriously misrepresented and misinterpreted the fossils.5The skeleton of Puijila looks like a modern river otter, not a missing link. The scientists who discovered the fossil tacitly acknowledged this: “Puijila did not possess flippers, its feet were probably webbed, it had a long tail and its limb proportions were generally similar to modern otters” and “the postcranial skeleton [everything other than the head] of Puijila appears most similar to that of the extant [(living) North American] river otter Lontra canadensis.”Dr Werner pointed out that Puijila looks like a modern river otter and does not have the necessary anatomic features to even call it a pinniped: “Puijila did not have the typical oversized finned back feet or front flippers diagnostic of pinnipeds. Rather, Puijila had four small webbed feet similar to North American river otters.” Even the overall length of Puijila was similar to the North American river otter (Puijila: 110 cm versus 112 cm; see figure 1). Nevertheless, the Nature authors claimed that their fossil was a “primitive Arctic pinniped”. This would be equivalent to calling a hippopotamus a ‘whale’ because you believed hippos evolved into whales, as some evolution scientists claim.So what about the skull, which they claim is different to an otter? The authors of the Nature article argued that Puijila had large eye sockets like pinnipeds and back teeth like pinnipeds. Simply put, these claims don’t stack up. Puijila did not have large eye sockets as claimed. The size of the eye socket ofPuijila is small, similar to a river otter, not ‘large’—as seen in Dr Werner’s detailed comparisons in Evolution the Grand Experiment, (2nd Edition).Regarding the teeth, Puijila, like living North American river otters, has two distinct types of teeth behind the canines: premolars and molars, which are also large. Their back teeth are nothing like those of pinnipeds, which are uniform and small. This strongly refutes the claim that Puijila had pinniped-like teeth (see figure 2).Pinnipeds also have very short tails. The authors claimed that “the tail of Puijila appears to have been shorter and more gracile [thinner] than that of Lontra [the river otter]” but this claim is, again, misleading. Puijila’s tail looks like the modern river otter (compare the tails in the pictures of the two skeletons, figure 1).

Figure 2. Comparison of the teeth of a pinniped (top left), a river otter (top right) and Puijila. The teeth of Puijila look just like otter teeth, not at all like a pinniped. PM: pre-molar tooth, M: molar, PC: post-canine tooth. Credits: Puijila, Canadian Museum of Nature, Fur seal and otter: Dr Carl Werner. Dr Werner made other comparisons, which make a strong case that, in their enthusiasm for finding a significant ‘missing link’ the paleontologists got it very wrong. Puijila is just an otter, almost identical to the North American river otter, which is still very much alive today. It appears that evolution scientists have yet another missing link gone ‘missing’. But wait … there’s more The Nature paper has a ‘family tree’ (cladogram) showing Puijila grouped with the pinnipeds, not the otters.

However, Dr Werner shows why this does not stand up to critical scrutiny. For one thing, the authors do not include any of the six classic distinguishing characters of pinnipeds in the analyses. See creation.com/puijila-s. Cladistics, evolution and the fossils by Shaun Doyle Cladistics is the premier method used for determining evolutionary relationships in biology. The results of cladistics analyses, tree diagrams called cladograms, are often used as demonstrations of evolution. Though cladistics was developed by and for evolutionists, it still fails to demonstrate evolution, let alone biological reality. Evolution is still typically seen as the theoretical justification for using cladistics in paleontology, so the conclusion of evolution merely begs the question. Cladograms only demonstrate a nested hierarchy of biological characters; they tell us nothing about what produced the pattern. Evolutionary cladistics also depicts a simplistic view of biological change and fails to deal with pleiotropy within organisms. These problems were recognized by some evolutionists over 30 years ago, but their criticisms largely fell on deaf ears, most likely because their comments were used as ammunition by creationists. Many problems of phylogenetic inference that cladistics claims to solve still remain largely unsolved, such as distinguishing between homology and homoplasy. Perhaps the largest problem, however, is the illusion of evolution that cladograms and the language used to describe them give to the public. They both create the illusion of a resolved genealogy despite some cladists’ disavowal of any strict genealogical connotations. What is cladistics? Figure 1. Rooted cladogram of vertebrates based on analysis performed in table 1. This gives the illusion that ancestor–descendant relationships have been identified. However, none of the nodes (hypothetical ancestors) have been identified; the only identified organisms are at the end of the branches.Cladistics has become the premier method that evolutionists use to map out evolutionary relationships in paleontology. Cladograms are ubiquitous in the paleontological literature, and are often used as evidence for evolution. Cladistics is a method that classifies organisms in a nested hierarchy of similarity based on a comparison of individual characteristics. It will identify a series of characteristics in each taxon for comparison (table 1), and then arrange the taxa in a cladogram (figure 1). Then different cladograms are compared in order to find which cladogram organizes the taxa in a hierarchy that has the least non-nested characters and/or the most nested characters. Evolutionists typically interpret the nested pattern as descent with modification. Character state changes are seen as phylogenetic changes. History of cladistics Cladistics was first proposed by Willi Hennig in 1950 as an alternative to then current systematic methods.1However, Hennig did not coin the term ‘cladistics’, but preferred to call his method ‘phylogenetic systematics’, as he believed his method was a more empirically based way of constructing phylogenies. Rather, Ernst Mayr, a noted critic of Hennig, first coined the term ‘cladistics’ in 1965.2 Moreover, it wasn’t until 1966, when Hennig’s original work was revised and translated into English,3 that cladistics begun to have a substantial impact on English-speaking evolutionists. Hennig argued that methods current in his day had two fundamental flaws: they were hopelessly subjective, and they failed to properly identify evolutionary relationships. Traditional Darwinian taxonomy was generally driven by the intuition of the individual biologist, which of course creates problems when disagreements arise because there are no evidential reasons to choose between the two. Phenetics sought to get around this by subjecting characters of organisms to pairwise comparisons, and thus evaluating the overall similarity between taxa. However, such a method would seem ill-equipped to deal with taxa that have similar forms, but are clearly not closely related, e.g. sharks, ichthyosaurs and dolphins. Character weighting then became inherent in the analysis, and it thus became as subjective as traditional Darwinian taxonomy. Hennig countered that cladistics was able to identify homology empirically by identifying what he called synapomorphies, or ‘shared derived characters’. A comparison of individual traits across a range of taxa would reveal these synapomorphies, which he assumed arose through common ancestry.4 Evolutionary fights Much of the focus then turned to the philosophical underpinnings of cladistics. By the 1980s most systematists agreed that cladistics was a useful methodology. However, there was considerable debate over what cladistics meant, and what it was supposed to be used for.The dominant school of thought traced itself back to Hennig, and continued to argue that evolution is a necessary assumption for cladistics to work.5 The Hennigians were clear when they call cladistics ‘phylogenetic systematics’—they worked with the assumption that evolution is the foundation of cladistics. Therefore, they believed the purpose of cladistics was to elucidate the most probable evolutionary relationships that unfolded throughout history. Essentially, cladistics became an exercise in evolutionary theorizing. Chambered heart

Jaws

Four limbs

Amniotic egg

Hair

Birthing live young

Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus)

1

0

0

0

0

0

Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

1

1

0

0

0

0

Australian green tree frog

1

1

1

0

0

0

(Litoria caerulea) Frill-necked lizard (Chlamydosaurus kingii)

1

1

1

1

0

0

Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus)

1

1

1

1

1

0

Cat (Felis catus)

1

1

1

1

1

1

Table 1. A simple cladistic analysis of character traits commonly held to be shared derived characters in vertebrates. Traits are polarized: 0–Absent and 1–Present.However, some systematists broke with Hennig’s insistence that cladistics necessarily demonstrated transformation through character state changes.6 These so-called ‘transformed’ or ‘pattern’ cladists called this process assumption of Hennigian cladistics into question by saying that the methodology does not require the assumption of evolution to work. For transformed cladists, the purpose of cladistics was classification based on a descriptive definition of homology. They viewed cladistics as agnostic about history, and that ‘evolutionary histories’ based on cladograms were nothing more than futile speculation. Pattern cladists Ebach et al. summarize it like this: “Cladistics is not about evolution, but about the pattern of character distribution in organisms, or the recognition and characterization of groups.”7This argument spilled over into the ‘creation science’ controversies of the day.8 Some candid statements of Colin Patterson, a noted critic of Hennigian cladistics, were particularly influential in the controversy. 9 He discounted the speculative evolutionary reconstructions many systematists attached to their cladistics analyses because there was no way to identify in reality the putative ancestors ‘identified’ by the nodes on a cladogram: “As the theory of cladistics has developed, it has been realized that more and more of the evolutionary framework is inessential, and may be dropped. The chief symptom of this change is the significance attached to nodes in cladistics. In Hennig’s book, as in all early works in cladistics, the nodes are taken to represent ancestral species. This assumption has been found to be unnecessary, even misleading, and may be dropped.”10This raised a rather pertinent question: why invoke evolution at all if there’s no way to reconstruct evolutionary history from morphological comparisons? It’s very well to acknowledge that one believes in evolution, but transformed cladists essentially threw out the fossil record as evidence for it. With no fossil record and no viable biological mechanism for evolution, transformed cladists were left with a thoroughly unscientific ‘evolution-of-the-gaps’ mentality. It’s not surprising Hennigian cladists didn’t like it; transformed cladistics validated the creationist critique of evolutionary ‘reconstructions’ from the fossils! Acceptance With the availability and power of computers in the 1990s, cladistics became much easier to do, since before then weighing up cladograms with more than about 15 characters included in the analysis was unwieldy.11 Much of the contention then died down and Hennig was essentially proclaimed the victor.9,12 Hennigian cladistics ended up becoming the dominant cladistics method used by systematists today, more on the strength of academia’s commitment to evolution than the actual dependence of the cladistics method on evolution. However, many of the important issues raised in the 1970s and 1980s remain contentious today, though they are rarely talked about as openly. Incompatibility of cladistic assumptions and evolution Despite the fact that cladistics was originally intended to demonstrate evolution and the most probable phylogenies, there are a number of assumptions essential to cladistics methodology that make it ill-suited to demonstrating evolution. Defining discrete, independent variables in biology Cladistics regards all characters within the analysis as discrete, independent variables. However, biology can hardly be described in solely discrete terms; there are many features of animals that are continuous. Moreover, there are complex interdependencies within biology from the molecular to the organismal level, many of which we don’t currently understand. Therefore, defining a character for cladistics analysis even in genetics can be incredibly difficult. This problem generally becomes more pronounced with complex morphological features such as bones, as Lieberman points out: “Bones have generally low degrees of heritability because they form parts of complex, integrated functional units that are subject not only to many genes with multiple effects (pleiotropism), but also to a large number of nongenetic influences. It is therefore difficult to divide bones into discrete, independent units of phylogenetic information. For these reasons, bones and other aspects of morphology can yield reasonably correct results for phylogenetic analyses of high-level taxonomic units, but become increasingly less reliable at lower taxonomic levels, such as species.” 13One of the major reasons for this problem is scale—the smaller one defines the morphological characters used for analysis, the larger the problem of interdependence generally becomes. Therefore, character selection becomes less reliable, and so do any interpretations of homology that are based on them. And since homology can really only exist in any meaningful way for evolution at the species level, it is practically impossible to demonstrate evolution using cladistics methodology unless one assumes evolution from the outset. ‘Shared derived characteristics’ and the illusion of lineages Diagram courtesy of Faustino Núñez Hernández Figure 2. Diagrammatic representation of fundamental notions used in evolutionary cladistics. The letters represent individual characters. The terms are: apomorphy (derived trait), plesiomorphy (ancestral trait), synapomorphy (shared derived trait), symplesiomorphy (shared ancestral trait), and autapomorphy (unique trait to a particular taxon).Synapomorphies, or ‘shared derived characters’, are the hallmark of Hennigian cladistics. 14 These are contrasted with symplesiomorphies, or ‘shared ancestral characters’, which cladists believe don’t possess any useful information for cladistics analysis (figure 2). The difference between the two is formally indistinguishable unless a character rooting procedure is used, which gives direction to the cladogram.15In cladistics, synapomorphies are usually equated with homologous characters, which are understood as evidence of common ancestry.11,16 As noted above, there are difficulties in defining ‘character’ in biology in useful ways for

cladistics analysis. However, when we take these limitations into account, we can still arrive at a fairly accurate description of the morphological patterns of similarity throughout multicellular life through a comparison of ‘shared’ characters.The major problem with shared derived characters, however, rests with the word ‘derived’. Similarity in form does not guarantee a common ancestry, and this is an interpretation of the cladogram. Patterson pointed out quite aptly: “Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. … I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.” 17Note the biggest problem: there is no way to tell from the fossils if any lineage has been preserved. Cladistics doesn’t demonstrate evolution. Cladistics is a classification scheme, nothing more. Woodmorappe illustrates this point very well (figure 3): “But doesn’t the fact that organisms lend themselves to being arranged in nested hierarchies of polarized traits (that is, cladograms) itself prove that they evolved that way (or at all)? Hardly. Assuming evolution a priori, one could construct a cladogram that has an 18-wheel truck as its crown group, and which shows a clearly transition-filled, incremental appearance of ‘truckness’, beginning with the stem-group unicycle. Note also that the human, elephant, and bat is each highly-derived fish, just as an 18-wheel truck is a highly-derived unicycle. Such is the reductio ad absurdum of cladistic methodology.”18 Figure 3. A mock cladogram of wheeled vehicles, showing ‘transitional’ changes leading to the ‘evolutionary’ emergence of 18-wheeled trucks (from Woodmorappe, ref. 41, p. 114). There is no reason to assume that the nodes of a cladogram represent putative ancestors, and there are no direct lineages demonstrated.19 What is a clade? Typically, a clade is defined by ancestor-descendant relationships; it is an ancestral organism and all its descendants. All taxa within a clade are said to be monophyletic, i.e. they contain all the descendants of the possibly hypothetical closest common ancestor of the members of the group. Cladistics, by discovering synapomorphic characters, is meant to be able to distinguish monophyly from paraphyly (figure 4). A paraphyleticgroup is a monophyletic group minus one clade within that monophyletic group. An example is reptiles, a group which doesn’t include birds in common parlance, because evolutionists believe birds are supposedly descended from reptiles (theropod dinosaurs). Endothermic animals (mammals and birds) would be an example of a polyphletic group because endothermy is a homoplastic character, according to evolution.However, we again run into the problem that cladistics methodology does not demonstrate a lineage. The ancestor is not just unknown in paleontology; it is unknowable. But the evolutionary extent of a clade is also arbitrary: it could be anything from a single parent and daughter to all biology (since orthodox evolution postulates everything arising from one common ancestor, not many). Cladists contend that all other methods of classification are biologically useless because genealogy is the only means of demonstrating the relative similarity between different organisms. However, Ernst Mayr points out that cladists don’t fully appreciate the genetic and phenotypic distance that may exist between supposed ‘sister taxa’: Figure 4. Comparison of phylogenetic groups, showing a monophyly (all descendants of the first reptiles), a paraphyly (descendants of reptiles, minus birds), and a polyphyly (warm-blooded animals: mammals and birds). “One of several phyletic sister lines may enter a new adaptive zone and there become exposed to severe novel selection pressures. As a result it will diverge dramatically from its cladistically nearest relatives and may become genetically so different that it would be biologically misleading to continue calling the sister groups near relatives. Yet being the joint descendants of a stem species they must be designated sister groups. And being sister groups they must be coordinate in rank, i.e., according to cladistic theory, they must have the same absolute categorical rank in the hierarchy (Hennig 1966, 139). This decision ignores the fact that one is still very much like the stem species while the other has evolved in the meantime into a drastically different type of organism.”20Mayr also makes a distinction between different types of divergence that cladistics fails to identify: “Any theory of classification which pays no attention to the tremendous range of difference between shifts of phyletic lines into minor niches and into entirely new adaptive zones, is bound to produce classifications that are unbalanced and meaningless. But such a neglect of different kinds of phyletic evolution is precisely what the cladistic method demands.” 21 Cladistics only acknowledges changes that arise due to a branching pattern (cladogenesis), and thus homogenizes different types of morphological disparity, producing a biologically unrealistic situation. Ironically, this makes phyletic gradualists (such as Mayr) unwitting allies with creationists because we too acknowledge different types of morphological disparity. The difference of course is that (in spite of the evidence) Mayr et al. are convinced that large-scale morphological discontinuity can be bridged naturalistically—creationists are not. Nevertheless, this inability to differentiate between different types of biological disparity renders cladistics inadequate for reconstructing the history of biology. Evolution does not require a nested pattern Cladistics assumes that its units for comparison can be arranged in a nested hierarchy. 22 Evolutionists assume that evolution is the only viable explanation for a pattern of nested hierarchy. Hennigians go a step further, and then say that that makes

evolution a viable process theory which gives cladistics real-world meaning, justifying its use in systematics. 23 However, this is demonstrably untrue. Patterns of nested hierarchy in nature are not dependent on evolutionary assumptions since they were recognized well before naturalistic evolution was accepted by the scientific community: “Although it is not in principle demonstrable from external evidence (Panchen, 1992), the existence of a single, irregularly branching hierarchy of relationships among biological taxa has been considered an empirical fact by Brady (1985), based on its historical emergence as the predominant means to represent patterns of taxonomic grouping used by pre-evolutionary systematists during the early 19th century. That this occurred prior to the general acceptance of evolutionary theory by the scientific community is clear evidence that a hierarchical conception of the Natural System is not dependent on an evolutionary process theory (Crow, 1926; Platnick, 1982).” 24If evolution was not required to conceive of life as a nested pattern, then life’s nested pattern is accommodated by evolution, not predicted or verified by it. When Hennig tries to establish the theoretical priority of evolution on nested hierarchy, 23 he fails to see his anachronistic and ill-founded assumption of naturalism. Darwin assumed the nested pattern of life that had already been demonstrated independently of evolution. He then constructed an explicitly naturalistic explanation for its origin.However, evolution does not demand a nested pattern because it can accommodate other patterns just as easily, if not more so. 25 For instance, transposition (also known as lateral gene transfer) would provide a much faster mechanism than common descent for disseminating new genes/structures throughout the biosphere. Evolutionists would still assume descent with modification occurred because it provides the mechanism for biological novelty. But widespread transposition would add so much noise to any nested pattern assumed to be congruous with descent with modification that the nested pattern would be lost. Evolutionists don’t accept transposition as a widespread phenomenon, especially in multicellular life, simply because patterns that suggest transposition are not observed.Moreover, not even common descent requires a nested pattern. 26 Since characters are assumed to have independent phyletic histories and rates of evolution, there is no guarantee that even close sister taxa will have relatively similar morphology in comparison to more distantly related organisms. Moreover, transformation within a lineage (anagenesis) does not produce a nested pattern because the transformation that supposedly occurred was not caused by a branching event. Homoplasy confuses the issue even further because it can make distantly related creatures more morphologically similar than supposed sister taxa. Common descent has access to a veritable grab-bag of explanations that need not produce a nested pattern.Pattern cladists, though they dismiss evolution as theoretical justification for cladistics, still believe it is the only viable explanation for it. However, common design also explains such a pattern, and with potentially more force. 27 If life is designed to send a robust message that it is the product of one designer, nested hierarchy does the job. Even if the message receiver (us) has vastly incomplete comprehension of the data (through species extinction, or inability to investigate all the data), a nested pattern unifies life, is filled with homoplasies, and also presents large enough morphological gaps between different life forms to foil common descent. Life thus sends a unified non-naturalistic message: it is the product of one designer who designed life to resist naturalistic explanations for its origin. Cladistics demands a nested pattern, and the fossil evidence fits into such a pattern relatively well, especially for higher taxonomic categories. However, neither evolution in general nor descent with modification in particular demand a nested pattern. Moreover, the nested pattern can be explained at least as well in a common design paradigm. Therefore evolution cannot claim to be the logical justification for cladistics, and it’s not the only available explanation for such a nested pattern. Neither can evolutionists legitimately consider cladistics an accurate reflection of actual phylogeny because evolution demands anagenesis, not just cladogenesis. Problems in results and interpretation Homology The problems that the concept of homology presents for evolution in general have been well documented elsewhere, and will not be revisited here. 28 However, there are a few important comments to make regarding homology and the cladistics method. Cladistics as a methodology may help identify homology, depending on the definition of homology that’s used. Defining homology with respect to cladistics analysis has proven as difficult as it has with respect to other systematic methods.16 The term ‘homology’ originated with Richard Owen, and he only saw it as similar structures used for different functions. Darwin defined homology in a similar way: 29 “All physiologists admit that the swim bladder is homologous, or ‘ideally similar’, in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals … .” The rest of the sentence shows he interpreted homology as providing support for common ancestry: “ … hence there seems to me to be no great difficulty in believing that natural selection has actually converted a swim bladder into a lung, or organ used exclusively for respiration.” It was only post-Darwinian biologists that defined homology as “similar structures resulting from common descent”. They defined a common designer explanation out of existence.Some transformed cladists have recognized this distinction and have since abandoned the ‘traditional’ evolutionary definition of homology and adopted something closer to Owen’s descriptive definition.30 Homology thus may or may not demonstrate common descent, but common descent is irrelevant to the cladistics relationship because common descent becomes a historical explanation for homology rather than homology by definition. Homoplasy One of the biggest questions facing evolutionists regarding their morphological analyses is how to distinguish homoplasy from homology. Homoplastic traits are similar in function, but have different underlying structures, and as such cannot be explained by common descent. An obvious example is different types of wings: the wings of insects, birds, bats and pterosaurs all have very different structures, but have the same function—flight. Even the most ardent defenders of Hennigian cladistics take it for granted that homoplasy is common in cladistics analyses. 31 Homoplasy creates noise in any cladogram because it can lead to false identifications of homology if not properly identified. However, the problem becomes one of scale—the smaller one subdivides characters to gain more characters, the more subjective character selection becomes. Woodmorappe points this out: “ … whereas a nested hierarchy may well characterize living things when viewed in terms of general similarities and differences, it does not exist when large numbers of detailed morphological similarities and differences are simultaneously considered.”32Moreover, since many structures that were assumed to be homologous at the morphological level have since been shown to be homoplastic at the molecular and/or developmental levels,28 the argument from homology is consistently getting weaker. Mosaic evolution

A corollary for evolutionists in defining morphological traits as independent variables is that individual characters have independent phyletic histories, otherwise known as mosaic evolution. Individual traits can have evolutionary rates that speed up, slow down, stop, or reverse, all independently of other characters. However, if characters can evolve like this, why should we expect a nested pattern as opposed to any other? Such a concept can explain anything, which makes it unfalsifiable.It also means that organisms that possess a combination of fully formed characters found in different clades are called ‘intermediate’ or ‘transitional’ fossils. However, such creatures are better termed ‘mosaics’, and they were fully functional. Moreover, no transformation has been demonstrated, only for example, fish with some tetrapod characters (Tiktaalik)33 or birds with some reptilian features (Archaeopteryx).34Essentially, mosaic evolution is ubiquitous homoplasy without a discernible evolutionary pattern. Mosaic evolution thus has limitless explanatory scope; but it comes at the high price of sacrificing all explanatory power. Evolution needs an empirically demonstrable mechanism for historical plausibility, and no viable ones have ever been demonstrated, nor are they likely to be.35,36 However, mosaic evolution exacerbates this problem 100-fold. All the discontinuities and reversals mosaic evolution purports to explain have to be accounted for mechanistically. However, such a mechanistic explanation would be hopelessly complex and contradictory because it would have to explain every possible evolutionary scenario at the same time. Mosaic evolution is thus a smokescreen that hides the fact that a mechanistic explanation for the fossil pattern it describes would be hopelessly complex and contradictory, not to mention biologically unrealistic.One then wonders: if this is the case, would evolutionists ever use such a ridiculous explanation for the fossil patterns? Most major vertebrate evolutionary series: such as the evolution of tetrapods,37 birds,38,39 mammals40 and whales,41 have been found to possess many discontinuities and reversals in individual character states. Daeschler et al., amid all the fanfare of the discovery of the now famous ‘transitional fossil’ Tiktaalik, describe the fish-to-tetrapod fossil series (including Tiktaalik) in this manner: “Major elements of the tetrapod body plan originated as a succession of intermediate morphologies that evolved mosaically and in parallelamong sarcopterygians closely related to tetrapods, allowing them to exploit diverse habitats in the Devonian [emphasis added].” 42They are forced to invoke mosaic evolution because of the numerous discontinuities and reversals present in the series. This pattern is present in the majority of the major vertebrate fossil ‘evolutionary transitions’ despite 150 years of looking for the myriad transitional forms Darwin predicted. If evolution has to rely so heavily on mosaic evolution to explain fossil patterns, evolution simply cannot explain the patterns in the fossil record. Emphasis on morphology at the expense of timeline Cladistics focuses primarily on morphology while working with its own idealized timeline governed by cladogenesis. This is nominally fine for comparing extant creatures since there is no separate timeline for comparison. However, it is troublesome for evolutionary paleontology because there are frequent conflicts with fossil dating and the idealized morphological ‘timeline’ produced by a cladogram. As a result, many morphological analyses end up producing the ‘grandfather paradox’, where organisms deemed ‘ancestral’ by the cladistics analysis are actually reported by evolutionists to be millions of years younger than the supposed descendants. A recent example is tetrapod tracks from Poland that were ‘dated’ 20 Ma older than Tiktaalik, the heavily promoted ‘transitional fossil’ between fish and tetrapods.43 These are also often termed ‘ghost lineages’, since these supposed ‘ancestral’ organisms leave no trace in the fossils where they’re expected to be. Sometimes there is ‘only’ a few million years’ difference, which renders the fossils prone to being ‘redated’, since a few million years either way is generally geologically insignificant to long-agers. However, one area where this is a major problem is orthodox dino-to-bird speculation. Evolutionist Peter Dodson sums up the problem nicely: “Personally, I continue to find it problematic that the most birdlike maniraptoran theropods are found 25 to 75 million years after the origin of birds … . Ghost lineages are frankly a contrived solution, a deus ex machina required by the cladistic method. Of course, it is admitted that late Cretaceous maniraptorans are not the actual ancestors of birds, only ‘sister taxa’. Are we being asked to believe that a group of highly derived, rapidly evolving maniraptorans in the Jurassic gave rise to birds, as manifested by Archaeopteryx, and then this highly progressive lineage then went into a state of evolutionary stasis and persisted unchanged in essential characters for millions of years? Or are actual ancestors far more basal in morphology and harder to classify? If the latter, then why insist that the problem is now solved?” 44With regard to dinosaur-to-bird evolution, the irony is that this problem is perhaps worst for the most basal dramaeosaurid currently known (which are said to be the closest dinosaurian relatives of birds), Mahakala omnogovae.45 The extant fossils for Mahakala are ‘dated’ at 80 Ma, but the split between dramaeosauridae and paraves supposedly occurred about 140 Ma. 46 Moreover, there are many dramaeosaurs that fill in that chronological gap, but they are all ‘more advanced’ in their morphology than Mahakala. This is a ghost lineage 60 Ma in the making! Cladograms and the illusion of evolution ReMine identifies cladograms as one of the main culprits in giving the illusion of evolution. 47 The evolutionary tree is a powerful image that has been one of the hallmarks of evolution’s public image, and cladistics plays on that very hallmark because cladograms look very much like traditional evolutionary trees. It has power because it purports to demonstrate a ‘lineage’, which the public automatically interprets as akin to a family tree (figure 1). 48 Pattern cladists are often quick to point out that cladograms are not lineages in the strict sense, but that they purport to be best-guess models of the path evolution took. At the same time, Hennigian evolutionists are keen on repeating the mantra that cladistics “is the purest of all genealogical systems for classification, since it works only with closeness of common ancestry in time [emphasis added].”8Textbooks on cladistics can be laden with genealogical terms, as if cladistics and genealogy are speaking about the same thing.49 Words such as ‘ancestral’, ‘derived’, ‘lineage’, ‘genealogy’, ‘primitive’, ‘advanced’, etc. are constantly used to depict the relationships between taxa determined by cladistics to the public. However, cladistics never identifies ancestors: it uses myriad other methods to represent what an ancestor may have been like. 15 This creates confusion because it makes cladograms look as if they are equivalent demonstrations of genealogy as family histories. Therefore, the continued use of terms loaded with genealogical connotations in the public arena will alwaysmislead the majority of the public, who know little of the intricacies of biological systematics. There seems to be only one viable solution to avoiding this confusion: avoid the use of such terms.I believe, however, that this honesty would inevitably come at a high cost. If the public truly understood what cladists mean, evolution would likely lose much public credibility because it would become evident that they can’t demonstrate the sine qua non of Darwin’s theory: descent with modification. Conclusions Fossils are fickle. They are fragmentary, sparse and open to contrasting and contradictory interpretations. Moreover, cladograms based on morphology have often been shown to be completely at odds with embryological and molecular data. When cladistics and fossil analysis are then combined, it results in a hopelessly subjective game of evolutionary theorizing, and has no power to independently verify evolution. This subjectivity is worsened since cladistics analyses are often

completely at odds with fossil dating. Ad hoc hypotheses are usually required to harmonize the timeline implicit in the cladogram with the accepted fossil timeline.Cladistics, by making cladogenesis the sole method of character state change, ignores different types of biological disparity. It simply extrapolates known mechanisms of speciation and assumes that they can produce complex novelty, which both creationists and many evolutionists reject. Moreover, defining characters for cladistics analysis is tricky because interdependent characters can skew analyses, which becomes worse with higher resolution character selection. By essentially ‘digitizing’ taxa and linearizing biological disparity, cladistics produces a biologically unrealistic situation and speaks little to the truth or falsity of evolution or creation.Nevertheless, cladograms are paraded as demonstrations of evolution, and yet it fails to identify ancestors and descendants. Language connoting ancestry and the usage of cladograms in presentations of phylogeny is often used to convey what systematists understand as mere topology. The ‘evolutionary tree’ has been a powerful metaphor used to demonstrate evolution for the past 150 years, and cladograms play on this image in the public consciousness, whether the experts intend them to or not. This confuses the public because they misunderstand what the cladograms actually demonstrate.Cladistics enables us to gain a picture of the nested hierarchy of life, but the method itself tells us nothing about what produced that pattern. Since evolution wasn’t needed either to discover or understand the pattern, it’s not evidence for evolution. Therefore, creationists need not worry about what cladistics purports to show. Nevertheless, this also stresses the need for a proper systematic method that can demonstrate biological disparity. Until creationists and evolutionists learn to communicate using a form of systematics that can empirically identify biological disparity, we will continue talking past each other.The irony is that cladistics was developed by evolutionists for evolutionists, and it still fails to demonstrate evolution, let alone biological reality. This suggests that the problem lies not so much with the method, but with the underlying theory it purports to demonstrate. The cladograms are models of the pattern of life, and as such have limitations. However, reading evolution, which is inescapably genealogical, into a method that explicitly shies away from notions of genealogy, makes evolution look like it’s running from reality. That quote!—about the missing transitional fossils Embarrassed evolutionists try to ‘muddy the waters’ by Gary Bates Anyone reading creationist literature for a few years soon becomes aware that we often use quotes by evolutionists which discredit their own belief system. This raises the ire of many in the evolutionary establishment, and often they will accuse creationists of ‘taking their remarks out of context’. This is rarely the case. However, one can imagine that the spectre of condemnation from fellow evolutionists would these days tend to limit any careless remarks from the pro-evolutionary camp.One of the most famous and widely circulated quotes was made a couple of decades ago by the late Dr Colin Patterson, who was at the time the senior paleontologist (fossil expert) at the prestigious British Museum of Natural History.So damning was the quote—about the scarcity of transitional forms (the ‘in-between kinds’ anticipated by evolution) in the fossil record—that one anticreationist took it upon himself to ‘right the creationists’ wrongs’. He wrote what was intended to be a major essay showing how we had ‘misquoted’ Dr Patterson. 1 This accusation still appears occasionally in anticreationist circles, so it is worth revisiting in some detail.Dr Patterson had written a book for the British Museum simply called Evolution.2 Creationist Luther Sunderland wrote to Dr Patterson inquiring why he had not shown one single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. Patterson then wrote back with the following amazing confession which was reproduced, in its entirety, in Sunderland’s bookDarwin’s Enigma: ‘I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?’ He went on to say: ‘Yet Gould [Stephen J. Gould—the now deceased professor of paleontology from Harvard University] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. … You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.’3 [Emphasis added].

Transitional fossils—what are they? Transitional fossils are the remains of those creatures which should be found ‘in-between’ one kind of creature and another kind. For example, evolutionists have long sought the ‘missing link’ between ape and human—some sort of half human/half ape intermediate form. None has ever been found, though many candidates have come and gone. Amplified, no doubt, by the lure of prestige, fame and fortune, the desire to discover such a fossil has led some even to fabricate evidence, such as with the famous Piltdown Man hoax. In that case, though the perpetrator has never been definitively identified, a human skull was ‘planted’ with an ape’s jaw which was crudely ‘doctored’. The result fooled the world for decades into thinking this was proof of human evolution.

An anticreationist tries to minimize the damage Evolutionists have been strongly pushing the idea that dinosaurs turned into birds. Museum displays, complete with artistically imagined creatures halfway between a dinosaur and a bird give the impression that such animals are

fact. Fossils such as the one above right have markings which evolutionists have interpreted as feathers, though others strongly disagree. The anticreationist sceptic mentioned earlier wrote to Patterson asking for clarification about the comments in Sunderland’s book. Patterson replied that the quote was accurate in its reproduction, but its interpretation was faulty because he had also written: ‘The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question.’1 Well, precisely. So why have evolutionist textbooks almost universally and dogmatically declared Archaeopteryx to be an obvious transitional form? But the issue goes deeper. Patterson’s ‘revision’ seemed to be claiming (or at least it was in the way the sceptic tried to highlight it) that all he meant with his original quote was that it is impossible to determine whether any ‘candidate’ fossils (ones that might have the appearance of transitional forms) actually were real transitional ones— not that there was a scarcity or absence of inbetween forms in the fossil record. In other words, they might look like missing links, but how can one know for sure? The fossil bird Archaeopteryx(above) had fully functional wings and feathers, and true birds are ‘dated’ as older. Even some evolutionist experts deny it is a ‘link’. However, to suggest that this was all he was saying is really impossible to square with the words of the quote itself. Note, for example, how Patterson referred to comments by Stephen J. Gould and ‘the American Museum people’ who are wellknown to have specifically admitted the rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record. They actually proposed a theory of ‘evolution in jumps’ 4 to explain away the fact that links seemed to be absent.Gould even said in another place that ‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches … in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.”’5So if one rereads the original Patterson quote above, it is clear that it is perfectly legitimate to use it to highlight this ‘extreme rarity of transitional forms’ in the fossil record. Otherwise, the reference to Gould is meaningless.Note that Gould et al. were committed evolutionists; even interpreting the record through evolutionary eyes, they admitted that it was ‘extremely rare’ to find transitional forms, not that it was impossible in principle! Creationists would of course claim that there are none, except within a created kind. But even candidates for transitional forms are clearly so rare that Patterson was able to refer to Gould et al. as saying that there were (for all practical purposes) ‘no transitional fossils’. Yet a straightforward understanding of neo-Darwinism would suggest that there were many more transitional forms than the ‘end’ forms we see today. So one would expect ‘transitional’ fossils to dominate the record.This 1925 edition of a London newspaper reports on the then recent ‘discovery’ of an alleged ‘missing link’ between humans and apes, the ‘Taung child’. SeeCreation 28(4):38–40, 2006. The context of Sunderland’s letter to Patterson also needs to be remembered. He was simply asking why Patterson didn’t show even one single picture of any proposed transitional form anywhere in his book. Patterson’s reply made it abundantly clear that if he did, it would be storytelling, not science! In fact, he went on to say in his original letter to Sunderland: ‘It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.’ [Emphasis added]. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story Evolutionists often make these kinds of frank admissions among themselves. But they are generally ‘not for publication’ as public dissension is regarded as being traitorous to the cause.Note what Patterson said in his response to the anticreationist in question: ‘I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. … I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist’s duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.’1 He seems to be saying that it’s OK to doubt as long as we don’t let the creationists know.Being a world-renowned fossil expert, Patterson’s frank admissions were embarrassing to adherents of the ‘religion of evolution’—including himself, it would appear. But there were even more devastating revelations to come from Dr Patterson.During a public lecture presented at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History on 5 November 1981, he dropped a bombshell among his peers that evening, who became very angry and emotional. Here are some extracts from what he said: ‘ … I’m speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it’s true to say that I know nothing whatever about either … One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let’s call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realisation. ‘… One morning I woke up … and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff [evolution] for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it.’ He added: ‘That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long … I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that you think is true?” I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago … and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: “Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.”.’6 Although these are only excerpts from Patterson’s very frank and startling lecture that evening (the full text is even more revealing), it is plain to see the doubts he was having. It also shows that creationist usage of such quotes by Patterson does not amount to ‘creationist foul play’.Dr Patterson’s penchant for openness did not do him any service with the proevolutionary scientific establishment, who often expressed anger and dismay at his comments when they could not make excuses for them. His experience and expertise as holder of one of the most prestigious scientific posts in the world did not

grant him immunity from pressure for having dared to express doubts about the evolutionary worldview. It is a sad reminder that political and ideological correctness can be more important than any so-called ‘objective facts’ in determining scientific acceptance of an idea. Refuting Evolution 2—Chapter 8 A sequel to Refuting Evolution that refutes the latest arguments to support evolution (as presented by PBS and Scientific American). by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D. with Michael Matthews Argument: The fossil record supports evolution Evolutionists say, ‘Paleontologists have found many examples of transitional fossils for creatures such as birds, whales, and horses.’ First published in Refuting Evolution 2, Chapter 8 This chapter discusses the fossil record, how interpretations are strongly influenced by one’s assumptions, how it lacks the transitional forms evolution predicts, and discusses in detail some of the common evolutionary claims. Note: the human fossil record is not covered in this chapter, but inchapter 12. The fossil record: prediction of evolution? Scientific American claims that the placement of fossils in the geologic record was predicted by evolution and is strong evidence for it. But it can’t even keep the ‘facts’ straight.But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). [SA 80]Of course I don’t believe the millions of years in the first place (see The Young Earth1 for some reasons), but I know enough to know that Scientific American made a blooper even under its own perspective. Evolutionists assign the date of 65 Ma to the K–T (Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary), not to the Jurassic period. Instead, the Jurassic is dated after 208–144 Ma. After I first posted a rebuttal on our website, Scientific American corrected their error on the web version of the article.Actually, even if they found human fossils deeply buried in the earth that contradicted their assumptions about the geologic column and the fossil record, evolutionists could easily accommodate such ‘out of place fossils,’ as they have with living specimens of the ‘ancient’ Coelacanth fish and ‘dinosaur era’ Wollemi pine. These recent finds are just as sensational—from an evolutionary paleontologist’s perspective—as finding a living dinosaur. Since the materialistic paradigm (interpretive framework) is all important, evolutionists would be able to explain an ‘old’ human fossil by ‘reworking’ (displacing from the initial burial depth), or maybe even reassigning such bones to another creature, since after all ‘we know’ that humans can’t be that deep in the fossil record!A good example of reworking is the famous fossil footprints at Laetoli, Africa, of an upright walking biped—the University of Chicago’s Dr Russell Tuttle has shown that these are the same sorts of prints as made by habitually barefoot humans. But since they are dated at millions of years prior to when evolutionists believe modern humans arrived, they are regarded as australopithecine prints, by definition, even though australopithecine foot bones are substantially different from human ones. And then in an amazing twist, the same prints are held up as evidence that australopithecines walked upright like humans—regardless of the fact that other aspects of their anatomy indicate otherwise. 2In spite of evolutionists’ assumptions to the contrary, the fossil order can be explained in a creationist framework, which actually avoids some of the contradictions of the evolutionary view.3 Water plants would generally be buried before coastal and mountain plants. Land creatures would be buried last, especially the mammals and birds that could escape to higher ground. The more intelligent creatures would find a way to escape until the very end, leaving their bodies nearer the surface, where post-Flood erosion would destroy most evidence of their existence. Humans would have been most resilient of all, clinging to debris and rafts, before they died of exposure; their floating bodies would have made easy meals for scavenging fish, so would not have fossilized as readily. Most mammal and human fossils are post-Flood. Multitudes of transitional fossils exist? Evolutionists recognize a serious threat to their whole argument—evolution predicts innumerable transitional forms, yet all they have are a handful of debatable ones. Yet they are unwilling to admit to the magnitude of the problem. Scientific American states the problem in this way, and it answers with an unsupportable claim that there are numerous intermediate fossils. 13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils—creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. [SA 83] Actually, Charles Darwin was worried that the fossil record did not show what his theory predicted: Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.4 More recently, Gould said: The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.5 But modern evolutionists, including Gould, have asserted that there are nevertheless some transitional forms, but they always seem to name the same handful of disputable ones, instead of the many that Darwin hoped for. It’s the same with Scientific American below.

Bird evolution One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. This hardly qualifies for a fossil ‘intermediate in form’; it is more like a mosaic or chimera like the platypus. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, says:

The fossil bird known asArchaeopteryx is among the most prized relics in the world. [Artist’s impression ofArchaeopteryx, by Steve Cardno.]

Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.6 Archaeopteryx had fully-formed flying feathers (including asymmetric vanes and ventral, reinforcing furrows as in modern flying birds), the classical elliptical wings of modern woodland birds, and a large wishbone for attachment of muscles responsible for the down stroke of the wings. 7 Its brain was essentially that of a flying bird, with a large cerebellum and visual cortex. The fact that it had teeth is irrelevant to its alleged transitional status—a number of extinct birds had teeth, while many reptiles do not. Furthermore, like other birds, both its maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw) moved. In most vertebrates, including reptiles, only the mandible moves. 8 Finally, Archaeopteryxskeletons had pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis. This indicates the presence of both a cervical and abdominal air sac, i.e., at least two of the five sacs present in modern birds. This in turn indicates that the unique avian lung design was already present in what most evolutionists claim is the earliest bird.9 Scientific American hurls more elephants without examples. A flock’s worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. But our website has documented that two famous alleged feathered dinosaurs are ‘dated’ younger than their supposed descendant, Archaeopteryx, and more likely to be flightless birds (Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx). Another famous example, Archaeoraptor, was a fake. Horse evolution The horse sequence is another popular evidence of a fairly complete series of transitional fossils. Scientific American boldly claims: A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Like the Archaeopteryx, however, this doesn’t hold up. Even informed evolutionists regard horse evolution as a bush rather than a sequence. But the so-called Eohippus is properly called Hyracotherium, and has little that could connect it with horses at all. The other animals in the ‘sequence’ actually show hardly any more variation between them than that within horses today. One non-horse and many varieties of the true horse kind does not a sequence make.10 Mollusks Scientific American makes another false claim: Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Again, what does this mean? One must wonder if the author of the article believes the old Ostrea/Gryphaea story, i.e., that a flat oyster evolved into more and more coiled forms till it coiled itself shut. Once this was regarded as a key proof of an evolutionary lineage in the fossil record. But now it seems that the coiling was the oyster’s built-in programming to respond to the environment, or ecophenotypic change.11So the anti-creationist neo-catastrophist geologist Derek Ager wrote: It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student, from Trueman’s Ostrea/Gryphaea to Carruthers’Zaphrentis delanouei, have now been ‘debunked.’ Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive. 12Scientific American closes its argument about transitional fossils with these mocking words about their demands for a truly transitional fossil: Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds—it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Actually, as stated, of the few transitional forms usually touted, most are actually chimeras. No, creationists have long simply requested a sequence of creatures with certain characteristics consistently following a series, e.g., 100% leg/0% wing → 90% leg/10% wing → … 50% leg/50% wing … → 10% leg/90% wing → 0%leg/100% wing.Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record. First, this again charges creationists with believing in fixity of species, which is rather a belief held by compromisers like Hugh Ross. Instead, creationists ask for transitions between major categories, such as between nonliving matter and the first living cell, single-celled and multicelled creatures, and invertebrates and vertebrates. The gaps between these groups should be enough to show that molecules-to-man evolution is without foundation.Second, this is hardly a new charge when made of fossils transitional between two phyla, for example, and it is hardly unreasonable for creationists to point out that there are still two large gaps rather than one even larger gap.13

Pakicetus: ‘evidence’ for whale evolution?

Whale evolution? Whale evolution is a topic that deserves special attention. Scientific American claims: Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus andRodhocetus helped to make that transition [see ‘The Mammals That Conquered the Seas,’ by Kate Wong, Scientific American, May]. [SA 83] Here is an especially serious example of ‘hurling elephants’ by completely ignoring the fragmentary nature of the evidence. This was a tricky problem for Darwin, but nevertheless he still had faith that whales evolved from land mammals. The paleontologist

Left: Gingerich’s Pakicetusreconstruction. [J. Gingerich, Geol. Educ.31:140–144, 1983] Right: Actual bones found (stippled). Note nothing below skull. [Gingerich et al., Science220:403–6, 1983]

Phil Gingerich of the University of Michigan has publicly said, ‘It’s a real puzzle how whales originally evolved.’ But on the PBS Evolution series, he gives the impression that his fossil finds have gone a long way toward solving this puzzle. Gingerich discovered in Pakistan a few skull fragments of a wolf-like creature that allegedly had an inner ear like a whale’s. But this is far from conclusive. There wasn’t any post-cranial skeleton found, so we haven’t the faintest idea how it moved. However, this didn’t stop Gingerich from writing an article for schoolteachers with an illustration of an animal that had splashed into the sea and was swimming and catching fish, and looking convincingly like an intermediate between land animals and whales. He also claimed, ‘In time and in its morphology, Pakicetus is perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales.’14 The diagram right shows the glaring contrast between reconstruction and reality. New research since the PBS series was produced has blown away this reconstruction. This demonstrates an oft-repeated phenomenon in evolutionary paleontology. Many of the alleged transitional forms are based on fragmentary remains, which are therefore open to several interpretations, based on one’s axioms. Evolutionary bias means that such remains are often likely to be interpreted as transitional, as with Gingerich, and is also prevalent in ape-man claims. But when more bones are discovered, then the fossils nearly always fit one type or another, and are no longer plausible as transitional. It’s also notable that alleged intermediate forms are often trumpeted in the media, while retractions are usually muted or unpublicized. A prominent whale expert, Thewissen, and colleagues unearthed some more bones ofPakicetus, and published their work in the journal Nature.15 The commentary on this paper in the same issue says, ‘All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and … indicate that the Ambulocetus: missing link? Pakicetus [Illustration: Carl <www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Pakicetid.html>]

Buell,

animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground’ (see illustration left).16 This is very different from Gingerich’s picture of an aquatic animal! But the evolutionary bias is still clear, describing Pakicetusas a ‘terrestrial cetacean’ and saying, ‘The first whales were fully terrestrial, and were even efficient runners.’ But the term ‘whale’ becomes meaningless if it can describe land mammals, and it provides no insight into how true marine whales supposedly evolved. Also, ‘solid anatomical data’ contradict previous theories of whale ancestry. A Reuters news article reported in September 2001: Until now paleontologists thought whales had evolved from mesonychians, an extinct group of land-dwelling carnivores, while molecular scientists studying DNA were convinced they descended from artiodactyls [even-toed ungulates].17 ‘The paleontologists, and I am one of them, were wrong,’ Gingerich said. Such candor is commendable, and it shows the fallacy of trusting alleged ‘proofs’ of evolution. Pity that Gingerich is still committed to materialistic evolutionism.

Top: Ambulocetus skeleton, as drawn in Miller’s book. Middle: Ambulocetusreconstruction, Miller’s

as

drawn in book.

Bottom: Actual bones found (shaded). Note missing pelvic girdle.

Ambulocetus Ambulocetus is another popular example of a ‘missing link,’ featured prominently in anti-creationist propaganda, such as the book Finding Darwin’s God, by Kenneth Miller—the who starred in PBS 1. In his book, Miller claimed, ‘the animal could move easily both on land and in water,’ and presented a drawing of a complete skeleton and a reconstructed animal. 18 But this is misleading, bordering on deceitful, and indicative of Miller’s unreliability, because there was no indication of the fact that far fewer bones were actually found than appear in his diagram. Crucially, the all-important pelvic girdle was not found (see diagram at right). Without this, it’s presumptuous for Miller to make that proclamation. His fellow evolutionist, Annalisa Berta, pointed out: … since the pelvic girdle is not preserved, there is no direct evidence in Ambulocetus for a connection between the hind limbs and the axial skeleton. This hinders interpretations of locomotion in this animal, since many of the muscles that support and move the hindlimb originate on the pelvis.19 Basilosaurus This serpentine and fully aquatic mammal has been known since the 19 th century, but Gingerich discovered something new in some specimens in the Sahara. The PBS narrator pointed out that this desert area was under water once, and he described a 100-mile stretch of layered sandstone called the ‘valley of the whales’ allegedly 40 million years old. The narrator theorizes that this valley was once a protected bay where whales came to give birth and to die. Here Gingerich discovered what he alleged were a pelvis, leg bones, and a knee cap, so he said they were evidence of ‘functioning legs’ and ‘dramatic proof that whales were once fully four-legged mammals.’But this contradicts other evolutionists, including Gingerich himself! For example, the National Academy of Science’s Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science claimed, ‘they were thought to be non-functional’ (p. 18), and Gingerich himself said elsewhere ‘it seems to me that they could only have been some kind of sexual and reproductive clasper.’ 20 So these bones can be explained as a design feature, while the interpretation as ‘legs’ reflects evolutionary wishful thinking.21 Whale evolutionary sequence?

The PBS program claims that there is a series including Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus, etc., where the nostrils supposedly migrate to the back of the head. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science contains a diagram (see right) on page 18. But when the mammal-to-whale series is examined, the sequence is not as smooth as they imply. For instance, this diagram failed to indicate that Basilosaurus is actually about ten times longer than Ambulocetus (and the fragmentary nature of the remains has been discussed already). Another problem is that Basilosaurus has a number of features that mean it could not possibly have been ancestral to modern whales, e.g., body shape, skull structure, and tooth shape. There is certainly no support for the program’s claim, ‘front legs became fins, rear legs disappeared, bodies lost fur and took on their familiar streamlined shape.’ Waving the magic wand of mutation/selection is hardly sufficient without an observable mechanism that would effect these changes. Recently, John Woodmorappe <www.rae.org/johnw.htm> analyzed the alleged transitions and found that their various characteristics did not change in a consistent direction. Rather, they are chimeras—non-whales with a few minor cetacean ‘modules,’ inconsistent with the evolutionary prediction of a nested hierarchy but consistent with a common Designer.22 Locomotion PBS 2 also claims support for a transition from the way the mammal-to-whale fossil links moved. Marine mammals move through the water with vertical undulating movements of the spine, just as many fast-running mammals do on land. Fish move with sideways undulations instead. But this could be another common design feature of mammals, like milk or hair. It’s also doubtful whether this is a unique prediction of evolution; if whales used side-to-side movements, evolutionists could presumably have ‘predicted’ this because the tails of land animals also swish sideways. My book, Refuting Evolution, written to rebut Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, has a chapter on alleged whale evolution that covers all this section in more detail, with full documentation. It is also available on the Creation CD-ROM produced in answer to the PBS series.

Alleged sequence of land mammal to whale transition [From Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science]

Tetrapod evolution? Tetrapods are animals with four limbs, i.e., amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. In 1995, Niel Shubin and Edward Daeschler found in Pennsylvanian cliffs a shoulder bone of a tetrapod allegedly 370 million years old.Cambridge University paleontologist Jenny Clack found an early tetrapod hand in Greenland, called Acanthostega. Supposedly, this creature had gills, a fish-like tail, paddle-shaped fins, and a hand with fingers.On PBS 2, Clack said this refuted the usual textbook theory that fish evolved limbs for a selective advantage because they were being stranded in drying pools. Rather, the limbs evolved before they crawled on the land, while they were still aquatic. The selective advantage was the ability to escape the weird and wonderful predatory fish that lived during this time (called the Devonian Period).Shubin stressed that ‘evolution wasn’t trying to do this,’ and later the PBS program claimed, ‘we’re here through chance coincidences.’ This should make it clear that evolution, as believed by evolutionists, is not ‘progressive’ and shows no sign of a divine guiding hand.Shubin also highlighted the common limb pattern between tetrapods, illustrated by fish and humans having the sequence one bone/two bones/small bones/rods (digits). But this fails to explain the totally different developmental sequence, as previously explained (chapter 6). Cambrian explosion During his appearance on PBS 2, Cambridge University paleontologist Simon Conway Morris explained that the Cambrian explosion was ‘one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of life.’ Essentially all the different animal phyla (major groups) appeared abruptly, without any known transitional forms preceding them. According to evolutionary dating methods, this was about 500 million years ago. Morris acknowledged that Darwin recognized this as a problem for his theory, with animals appearing out of nowhere. Morris said, ‘To a certain extent that is still a mystery.’ Darwin predicted that animals diverged gradually from a common pattern, so there should be fossil examples of this divergence, while instead we see that the major differences arose abruptly at the beginning. Again, this is according to the evolutionary time frame; creationists see the fossil record not as a time sequence but a sequence of burial by Global flood and its after-effects. Then the PBS program shifted to the Burgess Shale, with lots of bizarre creatures, e.g., one with five eyes, another wormlike creature with large spines, and still another with prongs around its mouth. But none of this showed what the Cambrian animals could have evolved from. Supposedly the evidence shows that evolution tinkered with a few basic body plans, but provides no evidence for their origins.It should also be noted that, when geologists say life appeared suddenly during the Cambrian explosion without transitional forms, they’re making a backhand admission of the paucity of transitional fossils. Extinction! The whole emphasis on extinction, such as PBS 3 on ‘Extinction!’ is rather strange. It hardly tells us anything to prove evolution per se. Rather, it says a lot about species dying out, which is hardly news to anyone, but it doesn’t itself shed any light on how species arose in the first place. The PBS program makes plenty of assertions about new species diversifying to take the place of the old ones, but it offers noevidence of any mechanism by which this could occur. It’s just another example of how vacuous words can become when survivors of extinctions are called ‘evolution’s big winners.’ How exactly does the word ‘evolution’ explain anything here? The only purpose seems to be to further the indoctrination of the public with the idea that it does. But really, saying ‘history’s big winners’ or ‘winners of the lottery of life’ would be just as informative. Have most species become extinct? PBS 3 repeated the common claim that 95–99 percent of species have become extinct. However, the known record of extinct and extant species does not support this. The number of fossil species actually found is estimated to be about 250,000, while there are about three million living ‘species,’ or even more, depending on who’s telling the story. But if this

>95% claim were correct, we would expect many more fossil species than living ones.The only plausible explanation is evolutionary bias. For evolution to be true, there would have been innumerable transitional forms between different types of creatures. Therefore, for every known fossil species, many more must have existed to connect it to its ancestors and descendents. This is yet another example of evolutionary conclusions coming before the evidence. Really, the claim is an implicit admission that large numbers of transitional forms are predicted, which heightens the difficulty for evolutionists, given how few there are that even they could begin to claim were candidates. Mass extinctions Supposedly there were five mass extinctions in earth’s history, caused by planet-wide catastrophes. The greatest was the Permian extinction about 250 million years ago, where 90 percent of species became extinct. The period allegedly represented by rock layers above the Permian, the Triassic, was almost void of life. But later, in the upper Triassic, the dinosaurs supposedly evolved. Alongside them were the mammal-like reptiles that supposedly evolved into mammals. The best-known extinction was alleged to be that of the dinosaurs, at the end of the Cretaceous, dated at 65 million years ago. Supposedly the small mammals, who kept out of sight when dinosaurs were around, managed to survive the catastrophe by hiding in burrows, while dinosaurs couldn’t hide or protect their eggs. In the next period, the Tertiary, mammals are supposed to have diversified and filled the vacant niches.The PBS program presents the usual meteorite impact theory as fact, i.e., a chunk of rock the size of Mt Everest hit earth at 25,000 mph. The many problems with this idea are ignored. For example: The extinction was not that sudden (using evolutionary/long-age interpretations of the geological record). But the spread in the geological record makes sense if much of the sedimentary deposits were formed in Global flood. Light-sensitive species survived. Extinctions don’t correlate with crater dates, even given evolutionary dating assumptions. Modern volcanic eruptions don’t cause global extinction patterns, even if they cause a temporary temperature drop. The iridium enrichment, supposedly a key proof of meteor impact, is not nearly as clearly defined as claimed. Drill cores of the apparent ‘smoking gun’ crater on the Yucatán peninsula in southeast Mexico do not support the idea that it is an impact crater. It seems that some scientists didn’t speak out against the idea for fear of undermining the ‘nuclear winter’ idea, and being grouped with ‘nuclear warmongers.’23 In general, mass extinctions are explained as a house of cards collapsing, where each card represents a species. One species may collapse, but then all other species that depend on it, either directly or indirectly, will also collapse. Even without a catastrophe, there are many factors that can cause a ‘bottom card’ species to die out, e.g., a new predator or climatic change. Why bother preserving species? All of this talk about fossils and extinctions causes a problem for evolutionists who are also rabid environmental extremists. The PBS episode on extinction exposes this problem: first, it asserts that humans are just another species, then it insists that extinction is simply part of earth’s history, and finally it moralizes that humans should try to preserve other species. The narrator says that humans ‘may be the asteroid that brings about the next mass extinction,’ and that we ‘competed with other species and won.’But if we’re just another species, then why shouldn’t we act like one? Why should we aid our competitors for survival, when other species act in self-interest? The only reason might be a practical one, that we might lose some species that are beneficial to us. But this is very different from a moral obligation to care for them. If we are all rearranged pond scum, then talk of moral obligation is meaningless. Under a consistent evolutionary worldview, our moral sentiments are merely chemical motions in the brain that happened to confer a survival advantage in our alleged ape-like ancestors. Creationist explanation Creationists would explain much of the fossil record by the global flood. However, this didn’t directly cause any land vertebrates to become extinct, because each kind was represented on the ark. 24 But many became extinct in subsequent centuries, because of factors already well known to conservationists. 25 But the Flood probably did cause many marine species to become extinct.Creationists and evolutionists interpret the geological layers differently because of our different axioms. Evolutionists interpret the sequence of layers as a sequence of ages with different types of creatures; creationists interpret them as a sequence of burial by a global flood and its after-effects. This makes better sense of phenomena such as ‘living fossils’ and finding creatures such as the coelacanth, which isn’t found in rocks ‘dated’ younger than 70 million years. Punctuated equilibrium: come of age? by Dr Don Batten The concept of punctuated equilibrium (PE) is explained. The development of the idea since its inception by Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge is traced, as well as some of the controversies. PE consists of two aspects: (1) an observation—that the fossil record is characterised by (a) abrupt appearance of species, and (b) stasis, or lack of substantial change, throughout a species’ range in the fossil record; and (2) a theoretical attempt to explain how this pattern can fit an evolutionary (naturalistic) model for the origin of species. Gould and Eldredge claimed that the abrupt appearance of species could be explained by the transition occurring quickly, geologically speaking, in small, isolated populations such that the transitional forms would be highly unlikely to be preserved. They claimed that this theory arose out of biology, but there is no empirical biological basis for such speciation events. It seems that the ‘mechanism’ was adopted because it ‘explained’ their observation of the fossils (they are both palaeontologists). Gould gave air to ideas of macromutational change to explain major transitions and fueled perceptions that PE’s rapid speciation was a form of ‘hopeful monsters’ evolution. Gould and Eldredge denied that this is what they meant.The debate over PE has given publicity to stasis as a serious problem for evolution (how can you believe in evolution, or change, when the fossils testify to stasis, or lack of change?). The recognition of the reality of abrupt appearance and stasis corroborates what creationists have been saying since Darwin—that the evidence fits special creation combined with the results of a worldwide Flood. In this context, Wise’s ‘punc eq creation style’ is also discussed. The Concept Of Punctuated Equilibrium Niles Eldredge (now curator of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City) and Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University) gave birth to the idea of ‘Punctuated

Equilibria’ at a symposium on models in palaeontology in 1970 at the University of Chicago, with a paper being published in 1972.1,2 The idea grew out of their recognition of stasis (lack of gradual change) in the fossil record. That is, that species remain remarkably stable throughout their ‘history’, showing little change from when they appear in the fossil record to when they disappear. Eldredge in particular had spent much effort trying to find evidence for gradual evolutionary changes linking trilobite species in Devonian strata in the United States and Canada, without success. For example, the number of lens elements in the eye should have, according to neo-Darwinian theory, changed gradually from one species of trilobite to another. But it did not. There was little variation over long periods of time and ‘species’, seemed to just appear and disappear.Eldredge and Gould recognized, as palaeontologists, that this pattern, of little change over long periods of time (in the evolutionary interpretation of the record), and lack of evidence for gradual transformation of one species into another, was a general characteristic of the fossil record; it was not peculiar to Devonian trilobites. New species ‘appear’ in strata without indication of gradual change from a different form. The fossil record is characterised by long periods of stasis, or equilibrium, where species are clearly identifiable and stable, punctuated on occasions by the sudden, or ‘rapid’, appearance of new species. Hence: ‘punctuated equilibria’.Palaeontologists had generally blamed the gaps in the fossil record (lack of evidence for gradual change and phylogeny) on incompleteness of study, as did Darwin; Eldredge and Gould faced up to the truth that gaps characterised the fossil record. Palaeontologists also ignored stasis as ‘non-data’, as of no interest; Gould and Eldredge recognized ‘stasis is data’.Gould and Eldredge saw species as discrete entities with an identifiable beginning (at speciation) and end (at extinction), in contrast to the neo-Darwinian concept of species as continually transforming, without a clear identity. Eldredge and Gould spoke of species as ‘individuals’. ‘Speciation’ is for species what mutation is for individuals. Speciation is viewed as random, just as mutations are for individuals. Natural selection operates on the new species to weed out the non-viable ones.The original paper 3 began with a philosophical treatment of the reluctance of mainstream evolutionists to admit the lack of fossil evidence for gradualism. That is, the preeminence of theory over ‘facts’. Eldredge and Gould recognized, like other commentators on the scientific method, that facts only ‘speak’ when theory accommodates them; otherwise they are explained away. They claimed they were proposing a new theory which would allow the facts of stasis and abrupt appearance in the fossil record to be accommodated in an evolutionary (that is, naturalistic) framework. Previously, stasis had been ignored and the gaps were explained as due to incomplete knowledge.At one level punctuated equilibrium (PE) is merely a description of the fossil record (assuming geologic time, of course). At another level, it is a process of evolution which Eldredge and Gould claimed could account for the pattern in the fossil record. They claimed that major changes occurred in small, isolated populations removed from the major population (allopatric speciation via peripheral isolates). Furthermore, they claimed these changes happened rather quickly (geologically speaking). This was the supposed ‘mechanism’ which accounted for the stasis and ‘gappiness’ of the fossil record. They said: ‘Since speciation occurs rapidly in small populations occupying small areas far from the center of ancestral abundance, we will rarely discover the actual event in the fossil record.’4 They did not define ‘rapidly’, except to say the changes happened, ‘in a short period of time relative to the total duration of a species’.5 The other main proponent of PE has been Steven Stanley, who claimed that: ‘Gradual evolutionary change by natural selection operates so slowly within established species that it cannot account for the major features of evolution’,6 thus agreeing that changes which produced new species occurred relatively quickly. Punctuated Equilibria or Punctuated Equilibrium In their 1972 paper, Eldredge and Gould used the term ‘punctuated equilibria’ to refer to their concept. Eldredge used this term in his writings, whereas Gould used ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (compare the titles of references 9 and 28 for example). Their review paper of 1993 used ‘punctuated equilibrium’, so it appears that this term has come to prevail.

The Pedigree Of Punctuated Equilibrium Others had recognized that the fossil record did not show gradual transitions between taxa. For example, in 1940 Richard Goldschmidt7 argued that transitions must have occurred quickly, in jumps, such that there were no intermediate forms to be fossilised because they never existed. Goldschmidt’s ideas were ridiculed by the establishment of the 1940s and 1950s, because mainstream palaeontologists still believed that the transitional fossils would be found with further study. Furthermore, there was no biological basis for understanding how new species could arise as quickly as Goldschmidt suggested.The basic ‘mechanism’ of speciation proposed by Eldredge and Gould was borrowed from others. The concept of allopatric (geographic) speciation had been recognized as a mechanism of evolutionary change, albeit in a gradualistic manner. Mayr8 in particular had elaborated on this. Eldredge 9 acknowledged that allopatric speciation can be traced even to pre-Darwinian biology. Eldredge and Gould made one controversial addition, that: ‘Most evolutionary changes in morphology occur in a short period of time relative to the total duration of a species’10 and argued that it was a logical deduction from the peripheral isolate theory of allopatric speciation. Although they acknowledged that: ‘No new theory of evolutionary mechanisms can be generated from paleontological data’,11 one suspects that the concept of rapid speciation came from their reading of the fossil record rather than from any new understanding of allopatric speciation. Even this concept of rapid speciation was not really new. Other than Goldschmidt, Soviet workers had proposed in the 1960s that change tends to be concentrated in rapid speciation events and that species remain remarkably stable after becoming established.12 Punc Eq Creation Style Kurt Wise,* a creationist palaeontologist, suggested an alternative explanation for the fossil evidence of abrupt appearance of species and stasis that Gould and Eldredge recognized. Gould and Eldredge assume the conventional interpretation of the stratigraphic column as resulting from deposition over a long period of time, such that each layer represents a sample of the earth’s life forms at that time. The fossil record is then a bit like a time-lapse movie of the history of life on earth (albeit with variable time-lapses). Wise pointed out that if most of the stratigraphic record resulted from a single catastrophe, such as the Great Flood and its aftermath, this would account for the pattern of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record. Each species would be sampled in a moment of time by such an event and would thus show stasis. Rare exceptions to stasis, that is, consistent vertical gradients of change, such as increasing size upwards (a common observation called Cope’s Law), could be accounted for by sorting processes. Trends could also reflect original geographic or altitudinal gradients in morphology. Additionally, a vertical gradient in form could possibly result from an actual transition during the catastrophe, but this could

only occur in a species resistant to the conditions of the catastrophe and with a generation time substantially, shorter than that of the duration of the catastrophe (a year for the Flood). Wise suggested that exceptions to stasis would be marine organisms with short generation times. The best possible exception to stasis that Wise knew of was a Permian foraminifer, which is a marine organism with a short generation time, consistent with a catastrophic Flood model. Wise wrote: ‘The rarity of exceptions to PE sensu stricto [that is, stasis and abrupt appearance of species] indicates that a model of catastrophic deposition of the earth’s rocks could be invoked as a mechanism to account for the paleontological observation of PE theory.’ * Wise, K. P., 1989. ‘Punc eq creation style’, Origins (USA), 16:11–24.

The First Ten Years In the 1970s, following the publication of the original paper, Gould was quite assertive about the lack of gradualism in the fossil record and the rapidity of the evolutionary ‘spurts’.In their original 1972 paper, Eldredge and Gould argued that the fossil record is characterised by stasis and gaps, and candidly admitted that this could not be due to incomplete study. Gould in particular made a number of strong statements in the 1970s about the lack of evidence in the fossils for the gradual transformation of one species into another. For example, in 1977 Gould wrote: ‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology… . to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’13In their 1972 paper Eldredge and Gould did not define what they meant by rapid change, or what biological mechanism could be responsible for such change. In a joint paper published in 1977, Gould and Eldredge reiterated their claim of ‘rapid’ speciation saying ‘most evolutionary change … is concentrated in rapid (often geologically instantaneous) events … ’14 What does ‘geologically instantaneous’ mean? Gould wrote of speciation occurring over ‘thousands of years at most compared with millions for the duration of most species.’15 He also wrote of ‘… a host of alternatives that yield new species rapidly even in ecological time’ (my emphasis).16 Notice that Gould here switches from ‘geological time’ to ‘ecological time’—he is emphasizing the rapidity of change. Gould And ‘Hopeful Monsters’ Although PE was initially restricted to ‘conventional speciation in sexually reproducing Metazoa’, 17 Gould and Eldredge suggested the concept could be applied with benefit at higher taxa than species, indeed even as a general principle in palaeontology. In this context, Gould and Eldredge wrote of ‘Speciation, the source of macroevolutionary variation … ’ and ‘Smoother intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments … We believe that a coherent, punctuational theory … will be forged … ’18 Although PE strictly applies to speciation, Gould and Eldredge recognized that the fossil record fitted the same pattern at higher taxonomic levels. In a paper published in 1977 titled ‘The Return of Hopeful Monsters’, Gould wrote: ‘All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.’19He agreed with Goldschmidt, that small changes in genes controlling rates of early embryo development could result in the production of an adult differing significantly from its parents—a ‘hopeful monster’, although Gould distanced himself from the more extreme changes, such as a reptile egg hatching a bird. He wrote: ‘Indeed, if we do not invoke discontinuous change by small alteration in rates of development, I do not see how most major evolutionary transitions can be accomplished at all’20 and ‘I … predict that during the next decade Goldschmidt will be largely vindicated in the world of evolutionary biology.’ 21 In 1980 Gould reiterated the problems in the fossil record for gradualism: ‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.’22He again wrote approvingly of Goldschmidt’s ideas—he wrote of the ‘Goldschmidt break’ in reference to a qualitative difference between adaptive change within populations and the origin of new species. (In arguing for PE Gould and Eldredge had argued that speciation was different to adaptation within populations.) Gould here downplayed the importance of allopatric speciation, (that is, via geographic isolation of groups on the periphery of the main population) compared to sympatric speciation (whole population, in place), arguing that isolation could occur in a small group in the centre of the population by genetic means such as ‘chromosomal speciation’ (Goldschmidt’s ideas again).In 1980 Gould discussed macromutations in the context of a mechanism for rapid speciation: ‘The most exciting entry among punctuational models for speciation in ecological time is the emphasis … on chromosomal speciation’ (my emphasis).23 This paper was written in the context of punctuational models for speciation. He also said: ‘We [Gould and Eldredge] regard stasis and discontinuity as an expression of how evolution works … ’24 Is not stasis and discontinuity the essence of PE? He also discussed the inadequacy of the ‘modern synthesis’, or gradualism, to explain the origin of new species, as well as other levels in the hierarchical scheme of life (genera, families, orders, classes, phyla). Their joint papers, and Eldredge’s, on PE omitted to suggest a ‘genetic process’ to account for ‘rapid speciation events’, or the ‘punctuations’ in punctuated equilibria, but Gould made plenty of saltationist suggestions. John Maynard Smith25 understood that Gould was proposing that speciation is decoupled from microevolution, involving nonadaptive change. It is not surprising that many evolutionists and creationists (such as Parker 26) have understood PE as a saltational (macromutational) model because that is surely how Gould often wrote of punctuational speciation in the 1970s. Gould probably has himself to blame for ‘the misunderstandings of colleagues who … interpreted punctuated equilibrium as a saltational theory.’ 27 Since 1981 As we have seen above, before 1981 Gould was dogmatic about the lack of fossil evidence for gradual (neo-Darwinian, or ‘modern synthesis’) evolution bringing about species transitions. In the 1980s he seemed to soften his stand markedly. In 1982 he wrote:

‘I am not saying that punctuated equilibrium is the only mode of speciation’ and ‘Gradual, phyletic transformation can and does occur.’28 Previously, PE was the explanation for the fossil record; now it complements gradualism, although it is still more important. The 1980s saw a marked lack of clear statements about the lack of transitional fossils, or criticism of claimed fossil series. Maybe it’s just that he had said it all before, but I suggest there may have been a change in Gould’s attitude following the Arkansas creation/evolution trial in 1981. Gould testified at the Arkansas creation/evolution trial, where he criticised creationists for supposedly misusing his statements about the fossil record and punctuated equilibrium. Eldredge weighed in by writing a book criticising creationist views.29 In their recent review of punctuated equilibrium, they wrote with pride of these actions, speaking of creationism as ‘this philistine scourge’.30 Gould in particular was annoyed by creationists’ use of his admissions about the lack of evidence for phylogeny in the fossils and his sympathy for Goldschmidt’s ‘hopeful monsters’ mode of speciation. Gould’s statements in the 1970s had been widely quoted by creationists. A recent paper 31 shows that Gould seems to have ‘come full circle’. He has abandoned his earlier position that there are no indisputable examples of transitional fossil series, either inter-specific or between major designs, and has embraced the ‘walking whale’ story as evidence for transformation of one species into another. The evidence for this transition is scant, but Gould uncritically accepts the fanciful description of how Ambulocetus natans walked and swam, as given by Thewissen et al.32 In the 1970s, a number of examples of gradualism in the fossils were proposed by others as refutation of the concept of punctuated equilibria (that is, as evidence for gradualism). Gould and Eldredge dismissed these claims arguing ‘that virtually none of the examples brought forward to refute our model can stand as support for phyletic gradualism.’33 Claimed examples of transitional series and intermediate forms received an incisive critique from Gould in the 1970s, but now he describes the very flimsy story of whale evolution as ‘the sweetest series of transitional fossils an evolutionist could ever hope to find.’ 34One only has to read Gould’s paper to see how uncritically he accepts the whole story. The paper also reveals Gould’s almost obsessive concern for countering creationist claims that the fossil record does not show evolution; that there are no indisputable intermediate forms—a claim that Gould made a number of times in the 1970s when he was pushing stasis and punctuationalism, and when creationists were apparently not such a consideration. In 1982 Gould distanced himself from ‘hopeful monsters’: ‘Punctuated equilibrium is not a theory of macromutation, it is not a theory of any genetic process.’35 Gould admits to having supported ‘certain forms of macromutational theory … though not in the context of punctuated equilibrium.’36 In 1986, Eldredge published Time Frames: the Re-thinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria. He wrote: ‘This book is my version of the story of “punctuated equilibria” … ’ (my emphasis),37 suggesting that he would like to distance himself from other versions. Eldredge was less dogmatic than Gould had been in the 1970s about the lack of gradual change in the fossil record. He wrote: ‘gradual change remains a theoretical possibility’38 and ‘… there is some gradual change … But it doesn’t tell us, really, about the advent of the truly new. It never really gets us anywhere.’39 He emphasized the importance of allopatric (geographic) speciation in explaining gaps in the fossil record. That is, Eldredge saw major changes as occurring somewhere else, away from the main population, in small, isolated populations, so they are not (usually) preserved, especially in situ with the parent species. He emphasized the peripheral isolate theory of allopatric speciation. Eldredge objected to the ‘hopeful monster’ characterisation of PE: ‘The assertion that punctuated equilibria represents a resurrection of Goldschmidt’s "macromutations" and "hopeful monsters" remains the most serious and irksome misconstrual of our ideas.’40 He also wrote about ‘The most common misconception about "punctuated equilibria"—that Gould and I proposed a saltationist model of overnight change supposedly based on sudden mutations with large-scale effects (macromutationsá la Richard Goldschmidt) …’. 41 Eldredge said, ‘selective change will ordinarily be rapid. But rapid in the context of millions of years’ (my emphasis).42 By the time of their 21st anniversary review of PE, 43 Gould and Eldridge had retracted to proposing PE as ‘a complement to phyletic gradualism’. This is a rather major backdown on the brashness of their claims in 1972, and especially Gould’s claims up to 1980, as recognized by Levinton in a response to the review.44 Is Evolution By Punctuated Equilibrium A Biological Absurdity? Gould and Eldredge say, ‘Stasis, as palpable and observable in virtually all cases (whereas rapid punctuations are usually; but not always, elusive), becomes the major empirical ground for studying punctuated equilibrium’ and ‘ … stasis, inevitably read as absence of evolution, had always been treated as a non-subject. How odd though to define the most common of all palaeontological phenomena as beyond interest or notice!’a What are Gould and Eldredge ultimately saying? What is PE? Ultimately, PE is a proposed mode of evolution. What is evolution? Is it notchange? PE is supposed to be a mode of change and yet the evidence for it is stasis. But what is ‘stasis’? Is it not lack of change? So then lack of change (stasis) is the evidence for change (evolution via PE)! As a matter of amusement, the tautological nature of ‘survival of the fittest’ as a definition of natural selection in neo-Darwinian evolution is wonderfully preserved in Gould and Eldredge’s extrapolation of the concept to species: ‘ … the geological record features episodes of high dying, during which extinction-prone groups are more likely to disappear, leaving extinction-resistant groups as life’s legacy.’ b ReMinec has shown how evolutionary theory is commonly formulated in a way that is either tautological, or in other ways untestable. The addition of PE to neo-Darwinian ‘theory’ effectively renders the very concept of evolution itself untestable. That is, even more than before, whatever the fossils show, ‘evolution’ can account for it! If lineages can be found, that is evidence for gradualistic evolution; if lineages cannot be found, then that is evidence for punctuational evolution. ‘Heads we (evolutionists) win; tails you (creationists) lose’!

a. Gould. S. J. and Eldredge. N., 1993. ‘Punctuated equilibrium comes of age’, Nature, 366:223–227 (p. 223). b. Gould and Eldredge. Ref. a, p. 225. c. ReMine, W., 1993. The Biotic Message, St. Paul Press, St. Paul. Minnesota.

Significance And Acceptance Of Punctuated Equilibrium In 1993 Gould and Eldredge wrote that they. ‘believe … that punctuated equilibrium has been accepted by most of our colleagues … as a valuable addition to evolutionary theory.’45 Many palaeontologists do indeed support the concept of PE. For example, Stanley46 and Vrba.47 However, PE has received less acceptance amongst evolutionary biologists or geneticists. For example, Maynard Smith’s overall view ‘ … is that we can forget about new paradigms and the death of neodarwinism.’48 In regard to species selection, he said ‘there never was much sense in the idea anyway.’ Others such as Clarke49 refuse to acknowledge any significant contribution from Gould and Eldredge, claiming that Simpson and Mayr had proposed everything worthwhile that PE contained. Undoubtedly the PE debate has heightened appreciation for the true nature of the fossil record—that of stasis. Gould and Eldredge said, ‘ … palaeontologists never wrote papers on the absence of change in lineages before punctuated equilibrium granted the subject some theoretical space,’ and ‘Many leading evolutionary theorists … have been persuaded that maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem.’50 Mayr seems to have come to agree with them on the reality of stasis.51 Even opponents of PE seem to have accepted the concept of stasis, and even brief periods of rapid change, but they reject the anti-neo-Darwinian concept of non-adaptive, random origin of new species and species selection as the mode of macroevolution. John Maynard Smith, for example, said: ‘It would be quite possible, however; to accept the claim that the typical pattern of change is one of long periods of stasis interrupted by brief periods of rapid change, without accepting the ideas of non-adaptive change, species selection, and the uncoupling of macro- and micro-evolution. This is a question for palaeontologists to settle.’52 It is interesting that in their 1993 review paper, Gould and Eldredge define macroevolution in terms of ‘species sorting’ and somewhat softly assert that ‘darwinian extrapolation cannot fully explain large-scale change in the history of life.’53 But what does explain large-scale change? They once again claim ‘that punctuated equilibrium was never meant as a saltational theory’.54 They offer no suggestion of a biological basis for large-scale change. Indeed, ‘continuing unhappiness, justified this time, focuses upon claims that speciation causes significant morphological change, for no validation of such has emerged’ and ‘Moreover, reasonable arguments for potential change throughout the history of lineages have been advanced, although the empirics of stasis throws the efficacy of such processes into doubt.’55 In other words, theoretical processes for change exist, but the fossil data show stasis, thus bringing into question the reality of processes which could bring about change (evolution). As they said, ‘stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem’.56 Undoubtedly Gould and Eldredge have done palaeontology a great service by giving the real data of palaeontology, that is, stasis and abrupt appearance, theoretical breathing space. One can only hope that there will be similar frankness amongst evolutionary biologists about the lack of any observed biological mechanism for producing abrupt appearance. Another leggy snake? What should creationists think? by Jonathan Sarfati Evolutionists are excited about a recent discovery: hind legs in a fossil snake.1 But what was actually found, and what are acceptable—and unacceptable—interpretations? What was found? Actually, the fossil itself is fairly old news: French palaeontologists Jean-Claude Rage and François Escuillié discovered it in 2000, imprinted in a thin limestone block near the Lebanese village of al-Nammoura. The 85 cm (33.5 in) long creature was assigned under uniformitarian stratigraphy to the Cenomian stage, the first stage of the Upper Cretaceous, and ‘dated’ to about 94 million years old. It was first namedPodophis descouensi,2 but the genus name was taken so it had to be renamed Eupodophis.3 Alexandra Houssaye from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, and her team analysed this with the intense X-ray beams from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility on the edge of the Alps. The process is called computed laminography, where a 3D picture is worked out from hundreds of 2D X-ray images slicing through the creature. Thus the creature could be analyzed in fine detail without destroying it. The researchers make a reasonable claim to have found a femur (thigh bone), tibia and fibula (lower leg bones), knee joint and ankle bone. Dr Houssaye commented: ‘We were sure he had two legs but it was great to see it, and we hope to find other characteristics that we couldn't see on the other limb.’

Indeed, the name means ‘snake with good legs’, so even the legs were not really a new discovery; it was the detail revealed by the advanced analytical technique. But whether ‘legs’ 2 cm (<1 inch) long and missing toes could be classed as ‘good’ is another matter. Proof of evolution? Even assuming it could be established that the ancestor of snakes today had legs, creationists have no problem in principle with loss of features through natural processes. Development of leglessness is not evidence for molecules-to-man evolution, which requires the addition of new genetic information. Loss of legs could be achieved through degeneration of the DNA information sequences that specify leg development. See also Beetle bloopers: Even a defect can be an advantage sometimes.There are two rival evolutionary theories: one says that snakes came from the sea reptiles called mosasaurs, while others claim they came from land-based burrowing monitor lizards. The researchers hope that this new fossil will settle the debate. But this means that features that are alleged to show common ancestry according to one theory, must really be homoplasies, i.e. convergent evolution of features that arose independently, if the other theory were right. But homology is alleged to be the evidence for evolution (despite many problems—see Common structures = common ancestry?) Appeal to homoplasy is really explaining away evidence that doesn’t fit the paradigm, and indeed such explaining away is ubiquitous.A better explanation is that the mosasaur advocates are right that snakes couldn’t have evolved from monitor lizards, and monitor advocates are right that snakes couldn’t have evolved from mosasaurs. Rather, snakes didn’t evolve from anything, and were created as snakes! How Eupodophis descouensi might have looked. The legs are far down the body A credible evolutionary story should show ‘primitive’ snakes with pronounced legs, and as the snakes become more ‘advanced’, the legs should shrink. Yet the fossil record of snakes doesn’t demonstrate this. Snakes dated as ‘older’ than the leggy ones have not been shown to have legs. Rather, the leggy ones seem to be ‘advanced’ in certain ways. The previously described leggy snake Haasiophis terrasanctuswas ‘advanced’ enough to unhinge its jaw to eat prey larger than its head, just as land constrictors like pythons do. This and another leggy snake, Pachyrhachis problematicus, were ‘advanced snakes that re-evolved legs’, according to Olivier Rieppel of the Field Museum in Chicago.4 In other words, he does not believe that this specimen is an evolutionary precursor to the first legless snake.Rage and Escuillié say of all three leggy snakes Haasiophis, Pachyrhachis and Eupodophis:‘the three hindlimbed snakes have a macrostomate skull; but in existing snakes this character appears only in forms considered to be the most ‘advanced’, the Macrostomata; a priori, this structure should be derived.’ 5It’s notable that all these snakes are in one stratigraphical stage and one major geographic location. Rage and Escuillié say: ‘The fact that all snakes confirmed or inferred to be limbed are of Cenomanian age is striking. … In addition, these snakes have a very restricted geographic distribution. All occur in the “Mediterranean” area of the Tethys or in its immediate vicinity: the north, east and south margins of the existing Mediterranean and its extension as far as the transitional area between the Aquitaine and Paris basins.’It is reminiscent of the peculiarity of one province in China churning out all the alleged feathered dinosaurs as well as the Archaeoraptor hoax, except that the leggy snake research lacks the questionable aspects of the feathered dino industry.The legs are tiny compared to the size of the creature, in all three leggy snakes. But even today, boas and pythons have ‘tiny “spurs” sited near their ends, which today are used as grippers during sex.’ See also Vestigial Organs: What do they prove? Possible creation explanation If this is so, a mutation might have turned some of this information back on, but incompletely. Also, unused sections of the genome would be more likely to accumulate mutations without natural selection to weed them out. So if this section was turned on over a thousand years after the Fall, it could have been ruined by all the mutations. So the only result is tiny deformed legs too small to walk on. The fact that these leggy snakes were buried in one area and at the same stage in the Flood suggests a common environmental factor affecting this ecological zone.Nowadays, a much longer time after creation, even more mutational load could have accumulated, meaning that there would be even less coherent information to switch on. Dr John Sanford, inventor of the gene gun, has showed that the rate of accumulated mutational damage is so great that it would have wrecked our genomes completely in the alleged millions of years. See his book Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome.Indeed, turning off information happens all the time: every time an embryo grows into an adult. Each individual begins as a single cell—a zygote or an ovum fertilized by a spermatozoon. This fertilized ovum has all the instructions coded in the DNA to make us what we are physically (given the right environmental conditions).But as the embryo grows, different cells in different places have to specialize, so that only certain instructions are executed—the cells become differentiated. The instructions are there, but turned off somehow, and in the right sequence. There are complicated genetic switches involved, and also a process called methylation—attaching methyl groups to the chemical ‘letters’ of DNA which code for instructions that need to be ‘turned off’.It is hardly a stretch to propose that the One who programmed the sequences of turning off information during development could turn off information in the snake. Similarly, one explanation of carnivory arising after the Fall is turning on latent genetic information for defence-attack structures—see the specific example of the stinging mechanism in jellyfish. Summary A few snakes with tiny legs have been discovered, but all around a single geographic locality and ‘age’.Researchers used an advanced technique to show some fine detail in the legs of one of them, Eupodophis.Loss of structure is consistent with the Fall, so is not proof of evolution over creation.There are two mutually incompatible theories of snake evolution: from water reptiles called mosasaurs, and from burrowing lizards.The legs exist in snakes that are hardly ‘primitive’ even by evolutionary reckoning; rather, they have features that exist only in snakes that evolutionists consider ‘advanced’. They also appear ‘later’ in the fossil record than legless snakes. Some evolutionist authorities do not consider them to be the ancestors of the first legless snakes. Evolution of multicellularity: what is required? by Shaun Doyle

All evolution assumes either the augmentation of some prior system to fit a new need, or lateral gene transfer adding information for the same end. Even systems that seem to require completely new structures (feathers for example) are assumed to be modified from pre-existing structures. However, there are two significant events in evolutionary history where far more would have been required—the origin of life, and the origin of co-ordinated multicellularity. Requirements for multicellular evolution Genetic sameness Volvox spp. fail to meet the requirements to achieve true multicellularity.The first requirement for multicellularity to emerge is that all the cells must contain the same genetic information. Wolpert and Szathmáry provide a good overview of why genetic sameness is required for a multicellular organism to be viable as an individual: ‘The first step in the development of a complex organism is the establishment of a pattern of cells with different states that can differentiate along different pathways. … [P]atterning processes require signalling between and within cells, leading ultimately to gene activation or inactivation. Such a process can lead to reliable patterns of cell activities only if all the cells have the same set of genes and obey the same rules [emphasis added].’1 Without the same genetic blueprint to work from, there is no guarantee that cells will be able to communicate properly so as to co-ordinate their actions. A new level of biological organisation Evolution requires more than a mere augmentation of an existing system for co-ordinated multicellularity to evolve; it requires the ex nihilo creation of an entirely new system of organisation to co-ordinate cells appropriately to form a multicellular individual. Nedelcu and Michod concur: ‘The current hierarchical organization of life reflects a series of transitions in the units of evolution, such as from genes to chromosomes, from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, from unicellular to multicellular individuals, and from multicellular organisms to societies. During these evolutionary transitions, new levels of biological organization are created [emphasis added]’.2Williams talks of the irreducible structure of the cell, and finds a universal example in autopoiesis (self-making).3 He describes five levels of organisation in all living things that are needed for autopoiesis to occur: Perfectly-pure, single-molecule-specific biochemistry Molecules with highly specific structures Highly structured molecules that are functionally integrated Comprehensively regulated information-driven metabolic processes Inversely-causal meta-informational (information about information) strategies for individual and species survival. Moreover, each level is greater than the sum of the levels that make it up such that the only way these levels can be explained is by information. ‘Each level is built upon, but cannot be explained in terms of, the level below it. And between the base level (perfectly pure composition) and the natural environment, there is an unbridgeable abyss.’ 4To Williams’ autopoietic hierarchy, I wish to add another level of structure found only in multicellular organisms: intercellular co-ordination. The organism has strategies for arranging and differentiating its cells for survival and reproduction. With this comes a communication network between the cells that regulates the positioning and abundance of each cell type for the benefit of the whole organism. A fundamental part of this organisation is cellular differentiation, which is ubiquitous in multicellular organisms. This level cannot be explained by the sum of the parts, cells, and requires co-ordination from an organisational level above what exists in individual cells. Biologist Eric Davidson5 identifies a 4-level hierarchy of control in multicellular organisms that constitutes a gene regulatory network. This gene regulatory network is essential for the development of the single cell zygote into a full-fledged multicellular individual. To put it in an approximate Linnaean framework, the hierarchy consists of kernels6 that roughly determine phylum body plan, plug-ins7 and input/output linkages8 that approximately determine class, order and family body structure, and differentiation gene batteries9 that carry out the terminal stages of development and contribute to variation at the genus and species level. Repair and maintenance strategies Repair and maintenance strategies are integral for the survival of the adult multicellular individual because cellular selection operates with cell populations, including multicellular organisms, to select for the most reproductively aggressive cells. This needs to be controlled at the organismal level to maintain bodily integrity. To do this, most systems in multicellular animals undergo a process of serial differentiation. 10 In this system, multipotent11 stem cells are essential, though maintained at low population levels. Cellular selection vs organismal integrity12 Evolution faces a tough dichotomy to get around if multicellularity is to evolve: cellular selection vs organismal integrity. At the single cell level, selection will favour cells that reproduce better. But if those cells are allowed to reproduce uncontrollably in a multicellular organism, they will inexorably destroy organismal integrity, and harm or kill the organism, also causing the ‘fitter’ cells to die.13At the organismal level, selection will favour traits that preserve organismal integrity, which tries to control reproduction of cells beyond what is needed. Pepper et al. agree: ‘Multicellular organisms could not emerge as functional entities before organism-level selection had led to the evolution of mechanisms to suppress cell-level selection.’14However, this leads to a mystery for the evolutionist: how do multicellular organisms evolve from single celled creatures when cellular selection and organism-level selection are totally contradictory to each other? The multicellular organism seeks to control the reproduction to what is needed at a higher level of organisation; a single cell seeks to reproduce more than its competitors.It appears that mechanisms for apoptosis (programmed cell death) are necessary for multicellularity, whereby certain cells are triggered to die during development or because they have gone haywire. Such mechanisms are incredibly complex and arguably irreducibly complex. 15Explaining the existence of such a mechanism without intelligent design seems to be a futile exercise.16

Co-operation and colony: halfway there? Co-operative and colonial organisms are proposed to be the route through which multicellularity evolved. Cooperative behaviour occurs in unicellular organisms. For example, Salmonella typhimurium can arrange themselves in two ranks for invasion—the first rank launches a suicide attack and the second rank slips through the confusion in the defence caused by the first wave.17 Therefore, some communication between unicellular organisms occurs to allow for co-operation.Many organisms form colonies. However, single cells in most of these colonies retain the ability to ‘break off’ from the colony when circumstances are favourable to doing so. Colonial systems have co-operation, but no regulatory system to force the cells together as a unit of selection in its own right. Moreover, a colonial organism can be pulled apart without significantly damaging it, unlike a multicellular organism, which will be severely injured or die if pulled apart. Michod et al. concur: ‘Such associations and groups may persist and reform with varying likelihood depending on properties of the group and the component individuals. Initially, group fitness is the average of the lower-level individual fitnesses, but as the evolutionary transition proceeds, group fitness becomes decoupled from the fitness of its lower-level components. Indeed, the essence of an evolutionary transition in individuality is that the lowerlevel individuals must “relinquish” their “claim” to fitness, that is to flourish and multiply, in favor of the new higher-level unit.’18Some colonial organisms, however, do appear to be obligate and show some specialisation, such as some members of the Volvolaceae family, like Volvox carteri. The point at which colonial organisms fail as true multicellular organisms is their lack of division of totipotency19 and ‘immortality’:20 ‘The un-coupling of immortality and totipotency proved not possible in V. carteri: these traits are express either together and fully (i.e. in the gonidia) or not at all (i.e. in the somatic cells). Immortality and totipotency are thus still tightly linked inV. carteri, as they are in their unicellular ancestors. In support of this view is the fact that “cancer-like” mutant somatic cells, in which immortality but not totipotency is re-gained, are missing in V. carteri. There are, however mutant forms of V. carteri … in which somatic cells re-gain both immortality and totipotency, but in neither of these mutants are the two traits expressed partially or differentially (e.g. limited mitotic capacity or multipotency).’ 21This means that differentiation in the colony could only extend to two different types of cells and no further. Because they are unable to split totipotency and immortality, volvocine algae cannot create new somatic cells, and are as a result unable to survive for very long as an organism. In other words, there are no maintenance or repair strategies in volvocine life forms, so they lack one of the essential features of true multicellularity. Opportunities for further research I’ve here tried to present some basic requirements that must be met for the evolution of true multicellularity. For true multicellularity there has to be genetic sameness among all participating cells. Intercellular co-ordination serves as another level of organisation in life that can’t be reduced to the sum of its parts. There is a 4-level hierarchy in the regulatory architecture that must all be there for a viable developmental plan to proceed. Repair and maintenance requires one or more pools of undifferentiated, generally multipotent, stem cells. Cellular selection and organismal integrity remain diametrically opposed, and provide a very tough problem for evolution to overcome. Colonial unicellular organisms don’t fit the bill as multicellular creatures because of the difference between of their lack of this 4-level hierarchy, and the lack of maintenance and repair mechanisms for the organism.This is a neglected area of creationist research, where there are a number of opportunities for further investigation. Mammal-like reptiles: major trait reversals and discontinuities by John Woodmorappe Summary Evolutionists repeatedly claim that their assembled chain of mammal-like reptiles shows a step-by-step morphological progression to mammals. Despite this, a close and simultaneous examination of hundreds of anatomical character traits shows no such thing, even if one takes basic evolutionary suppositions as a given. Very many, if not most, of the pelycosaur and therapsid traits used in recent evolutionistic studies to construct cladograms actually show a contradictory pattern of progression towards, followed by reversion away from, the presumed eventual mammalian condition. Furthermore, gaps are systematic throughout the pelycosaur-therapsid-mammalian ‘sequence’, and these gaps are actually larger than the existing segments of the ‘chain’. These sobering facts demonstrate that, however the supposed evolutionary ‘lineage’ of mammallike reptiles towards mammals is interpreted, it is divorced from reality. The so-called mammal-like reptiles are believed by evolutionists to be the ancestors of the mammals and to have become more mammal-like with the passage of time. Evolutionists consider anatomical traits to be mammal-like if they occur in modern mammals but not in other modern vertebrates.The highly-touted, alleged succession of mammal-like reptiles towards increasing ‘mammalness’ is not found at any one location on Earth. It can only be inferred through the correlation of fossiliferous beds from different continents. Judgments are made as to which stratum on one continent is older than another stratum on another continent. Moreover, intercontinental correlations are made even when the fossil genera do not correspond with each other. Instead, the correlations are based on the general similarity of specimens, as well as their assumed degree of evolutionary advancement.1 The circularity of such reasoning is obvious. Thus, despite the claims of some evolutionists, it is clear that such biostratigraphic correlations are not empirically self-evident: ‘Stratigraphic correlations, like phylogenetic relationships, must be inferred from data and are not actually observations themselves.’2However, for purposes of an argument, it is acceptable to start with premises accepted by an opponent, even if I don’t accept them myself, and show that they imply a conclusion that undermines the opponent’s position—in logic, this is called reductio ad absurdum. Thus, in this work, I’ll presuppose that the evolutionist’s intercontinental correlations of therapsid fossils as true and valid. The same holds for evolutionary phylogenies and cladograms, as well as the anatomical deductions behind them. Despite granting all these concessions, it soon becomes obvious that many of the anatomicallybased evolutionistic claims, when analyzed, turn out to be questionable.3,4

A more fundamental issue, however, is that evolutionistic claims about transitional character states (however these states are defined) typically centre on a relatively small number of features. These features are pieced together and cited as examples of evolutionary change towards reptiles that are increasingly mammal-like. This claim is made despite the fact that evolutionists are usually not concerned with ancestordescendant relationships, but rather the degree of presumed evolutionary relatedness between mammal-like reptiles. Yet, using Reconstruction of gorgonopsid therapsid (after isolated bits of evidence, we could construct just about any progression Stearn & Carroll).42 we wanted. We could, for instance, arrange a sequence of spoons to show a progression in size, thickness, etc. And this would be all the more questionable if only partsof the spoons were considered (e.g. the spoons arranged to show a trend towards greater bowl size while the handles showed no trend at all).Clearly, a comprehensive approach is needed. All the anatomical features must be considered, not just a few. Accordingly, this work evaluates the claim that mammal-like reptiles, as arranged in succession by evolutionists (from pelycosaurs to mammals), show an essentially unbroken chain of progressively more mammal-like fossils. We examine large numbers of inferred morphological changes, simultaneously considering literally hundreds of characters that have been used by evolutionists in the construction of cladograms (branching patterns showing alleged degrees of evolutionary relatedness of one form to another). Even though cladograms are not intended to identify ancestor-descendant relationships, each node (branching point) in the cladogram is taken by evolutionists to be, more or less, morphologically intermediate between the previous node and the successive one. How to evaluate numerous presumed evolutionary changes To keep track of hundreds of anatomical changes, and analyze these changes semi-quantitatively, requires a method of scoring the extent of each change, and tabulating the total number of changes. One way would be to sum the character polarities that evolutionists use to construct their own cladograms. 5 To briefly demonstrate the methodology used in the present study, I have arranged seven hypothetical organisms in a series (Figure 1), to indicate evolution from (A) to (G). This series can be viewed either in the traditional ancestor-descendant sense or in a cladistic sense. Cladistically, evolutionists would consider ‘organism’ (A) to represent the least derived (earliest evolved) state and (G) the most derived (most recently evolved), but without any necessary connotation of immediate ancestordescendant relationships. Figure 1. Seven hypothetical organisms arranged in a series to indicate evolution from (A) to (G). The general stratigraphic succession of (A) through (G) is accepted as a given. In the traditional evolutionary sense, this series can be viewed as an ancestor-descendent relationship with (A) the ancestor of all other 'organisms'. Cladistically, (A) would be the least derived (earliest evolved) and (G) the most derived (most recently evolved). Of the five morphological traits shown, three are progressive (cap-morph, X-morph). Two are gradational (circle-morph, Xmorph) while the others have a polar nature, being either present or absent.Consider how progressive traits would be scored. Progressive traits proceed unidirectionally through the sequence that the evolutionists have constructed. Note that ‘organisms’ (A) through (D) don’t have the ‘cap-morph’ trait, but ‘organisms’ (E) through (G) do. This trait is a ‘presence-absence’ (zero-one) polarity trait, and can be scored as (0000111) in the sequence of seven ‘organisms’. In like manner, the ‘triangle-morph’ can be scored as (0000001), since it only appears in the most derived ‘organism’. The progressive ‘circle-morphs’, by contrast, are also gradational, increasing from zero to three circles per ‘organism’. This ‘evolutionary trend’ can be scored as (0011233).Look at what I call reversing traits: ones that change direction at least once in the accepted evolutionary sequence. For instance, note that the ‘bar-morph’ first appears in (C) and continues in (D), only to disappear in (E). It then makes an ‘evolutionary reappearance’ in (F) and persists in (G). This reversing trait can be scored as (0011011). As a final example, a reversing yet gradational trait is provided by the ‘X-morph’, which can be scored as (0102212).We can quantify the overall changes from (A) through (G) by summing the character polarities of all the traits. The sum is (0124568). However, this sum distorts the picture of the changes, because the reversing traits make the overall change appear much smoother (transition-filled) than it really is. If we only sum the progressive character polarities, a much less gradational chain is obtained (0011345). Thus, to circumvent the bias created by mingling numerous reversing traits with progressive traits, I omit the reversing traits entirely in Table 1. Where reversing traits are relatively few in number (Tables 2 and 3), I sum all the traits in one list, and only the progressive traits in another.To what extent could the hypothetical evolutionary progression from (A) through (G), as shown in Figure 1, support the evolutionary claim about ‘transitional forms’? Obviously, it depends not only on how the polarities are summed, as discussed previously, but also on which particular polarities are emphasized. The ‘circle-morph’ shows the most incrementally-filled progression of traits (0011233), and could be argued to support an evolutionary scenario. By contrast, the ‘cap-morph’ and ‘triangle-morph’ appear as sudden jumps without any gradual ‘evolutionary’ development. And the reversing characters, which go from ‘primitive’ to ‘derived’ and back to ‘primitive’ again, cannot be said to constitute an evolutionary trend by any stretch of the imagination. As we shall see, these same principles that apply to the hypothetical organisms in Figure 1 also apply to actual fossils of mammal-like reptiles, and the evolutionistic claims about their supposed series of ‘intermediate stages’ culminating in mammals.However, when analyzing character polarities in actual fossils, a few cautions are in order. To begin with, as discussed elsewhere,6 genera of mammal-like reptiles are inflated by taxonomic oversplitting, a fact that is substantiated by more recent studies.7,8 Another concern lies in the way that changes in anatomical characters are scored. This can always be done, deliberately or subconsciously, in a way which favours the desired evolutionary outcome: ‘By oversplitting apomorphies9 in its favor, one hypothesis can dominate over its rival without gaining any biological insight. One way to guard against this fallacy is to show how the apomorphies in support of a given hypothesis are biologically associated.’10Of course, the phrase ‘biologically associated’ smacks of evolutionistic just-so stories. However, in this study, I do not attempt to make any anatomical judgments, but rely on datasets provided by evolutionists. In this way, the negative conclusions regarding evolution become all the more compelling. Sources and types of data One way to limit the extent of potential biases in choice of apomorphies, 9 etc., is to use information from different authors, because each author has analyzed a largely-different set of anatomical characters. Accordingly, I employed three recentlypublished datasets for this comprehensive analysis as summarized in Tables 1, 2 and 3. To clarify the relationships between the members in each dataset, I have, as shown in all of the tables, assigned an identification number to each taxon.11 I have also used descriptive phrases for each entry in each table. 12 Although the use of these descriptors here is informal, they

approximate those used by Kemp.13 Adjectives such as ‘primitive’, ‘medial’ and ‘advanced’ (or ‘derived’) are used solely to follow the evolutionists in orienting the particular taxon relative to the mammalian condition, and are not intended to have any other connotation.14 They are definitely not intended to endorse any notions of succession of mammal-like reptiles through time, relative evolutionary relatedness of mammal-like reptiles, lineages of mammal-like reptiles or ancestordescendant relationships.The first of the three datasets used in this study, by Sidor and Hopson, 15 is essentially a broad overview of the entire sequence, starting with pelycosaurs and culminating in mammals. Because, as noted earlier, large numbers of reversing characters tend to confound the overall scoring of trends in the acquisition of mammalian characters, I have excluded these 77 reversing characters. More on this later. The relevant part of the data is summarized in Table 1,16 and consists of 88 anatomical characters. 17 Not all of the taxons, however, have data available for all of the 88 useable characters. For this reason, all of the entries in Table 1 are each normalised by taking the sum of character polarities divided by the number of available characters, and then multiplying the quotient by 100.18 This is what I call the Mammalness Index in Tables 1–3. Overall skeletal characters ID Number

Description

Taxon

Mammalness Index Progressive Characters 88 of 165 useable characters from 181 total characters

1

primitive pelycosaurs

Ophiacondontidae

5

2

advanced pelycosaurs

Edaphosauridae

0

3

primitive sphenacodont

Haptodu

1

4

overall sphenacodont

Sphenacodontidae

3

5

primitive therapsids

Biarmosuchia

29

6

primitive therapsids

Anteosauridae

32

7

primitive therapsids

Estemmenosuchidae

32

8

varied therapsids

Anomodonti

33

9

primitive therapsids

Gorgonopsidae

43

10

advanced therapsids

Therocephalia

52

11

primitive cynodont

Dvinia

80

12

primitive cynodont

Procynosuchus

81

13

medial cynodont

Galesauridae

85

14

varied cynodont

Thrinaxodon

87

15

advanced cynodonts

Cynognathia

82

16

advanced cynodont

Probelesodon

101

17

advanced cynodont

Probainognathus

102

21

sister-group candidates

Trithelodontidae

109

26

mammals

Morganucodontidae

120

Table 1. Mammalness Index for mammal-like reptiles calculated from overall skeletal characters from Sidor and Hopson.15 The ID number approximates the relative position each taxon would have on one comprehensive cladogram (including all three Tables 1-3).11Descriptions approximate Kemp13 and reflect evolutionary notions of the mammalian condition. The descriptions are not intended to endorse these evolutionary notions. The second database used (Table 2) is much more restricted in its anatomical scope, being confined to the presumed evolutionary changes in the quadrate bone. In fact, much of the discussion about mammal-like reptiles as presumed transitional forms centres on the alleged evolution of the mandibular-auditory system. Luo and Crompton 19 have evaluated 14 characters relative to the quadrate bone in the reptilian jaw evolving into the eventual mammalian incus (one of the tiny bones in the ear). This data is summarized in Table 2. Because there are only 14 traits, exclusion of the reversing traits, as in Table 1, would have left only a few traits to consider. On the other hand, simply amalgamating the progressive and

reversing characters for the sake of a larger database would have created bias in the data.20 As a compromise, both potential biases were set at cross-purposes towards each other by creating two separate columns in Table 2. These reflect the distinction I have made between all 14 traits (first column), and the five consistently progressive traits21 (second column). The small number of characters also necessitates a different approach, from that used in Table 1, in computing the Mammalness Index. Because there are only 14 traits, if one were to, as before, compute the relevant quotient and then multiply it by 100, it would cause serious distortion of the data.22 For this reason, the Mammalness Index in Table 2 is simply the sum of character polarities for each taxon. Quadrate skeletal characters Mammalness Index Progressive Characters (5 of 14)

ID Number

Description

Taxon

Mammalness Index Characters (14)

8

varied therapsids

Anomodontia

2

0

9

primitive therapsids

Gorgonopsid

6

0

10

advanced therapsids

Therocephalia

3

0

12

primitive cynodont

Procynosuchus

1

0

14

varied cynodont

Thrinaxodon

5

3

17

advanced cynodont

Probainognathu

15

5

19

advanced cynodont

Massetognathus

13

9

20

sister-group candidates

Tritylodontidae

20

9

21

sister-group candidates

Trithelodontidae

21

12

26

mammals

Morganucodontida

25

13

All

Table 2. Mammalness index for mammal-like reptiles calculated from quadrate skeletal characters from Luo and Crompton.19 ID numbers and descriptions are explained in Table 1. The third database (Table 3), like the first database, is relatively comprehensive, compared with the second database. Table 1 can be pictured as a broad overview of the entire chain of mammal-like reptiles, while Table 3 resembles a detailed closeup of the latter part of the chain.The third database is intermediate in size between the first and second.23 In Table 3, therefore, the progressive and reversing characters are treated the same as in Table 2, whereas the Mammalness Index is computed the same as in Table 1. The data in Table 3 also overcomes the limitations of the data in Table 1, which neglected ‘early mammals’ other than Morganucodontidae from consideration (as this would have largely limited the characters in Table 1 to those of the dentition 24). In fact, Luo10 deliberately focused his analysis on cranial and dental characteristics. Luo’s analysis is more of a detailed view of the latter part of the ‘evolutionary’ chain, and as such, complements Table 1. Dental and cranial characters ID Number

Description

Taxon

Mammalness Index Characters (81 of 82)

Mammalness All Index Progressive Characters (53 of 81 of 82)

14

varied cynodont

Thrinaxodon

0

0

17

advanced cynodont

Probainognathus

18

7

18

advanced cynodont

Diademodontidae

19

7

19

advanced cynodont

Traversodontidae

35

7

20

sister-group candidates

Tritylodontidae

78

34

21

sister-group candidates

Trithelodontidae

58

54

22

mammal

Sinoconodon

100

104

23

mammal

Haldanodon

131

120

24

mammal

Triconodontidae

139

131

25

mammal

Dinnetherium

134

126

26

mammal

Morganucodon

132

128

27

mammal

Megazostrodon

117

122

Table 3. Mammalness index for mammal-like reptiles calculated from dental and cranial characters from Luo. 10 ID numbers and descriptions are explained in Table 1. Reversing traits are the rule among mammal-like reptiles As discussed earlier, I have made every concession to the evolutionist. I have not disputed the validity of intercontinental biostratigraphic correlation, the temporal succession of mammal-like reptiles, the objectivity of anatomical analyses, the fact that cladograms are not intended to identify ancestor-descendant relationships, etc. Despite all these concessions, the evidence, taken as a whole, fails to conform to all the evolutionary ‘ballyhoo’ surrounding the mammal-like reptiles.One of the most striking findings uncovered by this analysis is that the majority of anatomical traits (the ones actually used by evolutionists in the construction of their cladograms) do not show a unidirectional progression towards the mammalian condition! Of the 181 anatomical characters considered by Sidor and Hopson, 165 were deemed to be sufficiently complete, in terms of data, for further consideration in the present study 25 (Table 1). Of these 165, 88 were found to be progressive. In stark contrast, no fewer than 77 of the 165 showed reversals of character. 26 This is not an isolated instance. As noted earlier, 9 of the 14 quadrate characters used by Luo and Crompton were likewise reversing (Table 2). Finally, in the analysis of 82 mostly dental and cranial characters, by Luo (Table 3), no fewer than 53 characters were found to be reversing. 27The abundance of reversing traits means that the mammal-like reptiles cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be portrayed as some sort of quasi-lineage (even a crude one) culminating in mammals. (Nor, for that matter, can individual mammal-like reptilian genera be placed in a lineage. According to Kemp, 28 few extinct vertebrates are sufficiently unspecialized, in terms of morphology, to be the direct ancestors of other vertebrates).Furthermore, the proliferation of reversing traits makes it difficult for evolutionists to decide which mammal-like reptiles, and inferred early mammals, are, evolutionarily speaking, closest to each other. This confusion is reflected in the construction of widely-contradictory cladograms. 29 To illustrate this, I now use a system of brackets to illustrate two of the four mutually-contradictory sets of evolutionistic nested hierarchies relative to the taxons numbered in Table 2. They are: 8—[(9—10)—<12—|14—{17—19—20—(21—26)}|>] versus 9—/8—!10—[12—<14—|17—19—21—(20—26)|>]!/ The large number of reversing traits also takes to task the evolutionistic claim about stratomorphic intermediates. To begin with, stratomorphic intermediates have validity only if one can legitimately infer ancestor-descendant relationships. This is not true of mammal-like reptiles, as noted earlier. Can it be said, in the context of mammal-like reptiles, that a less mammallike genus will inevitably be situated stratigraphically below a more mammal-like one? Apart from the fact that this argument takes the biostratigraphic correlation of mammal-like reptiles at face value (as I have done for purposes of this study), any such notion is soundly contradicted by the numerous reversing traits uncovered by this analysis. It is sobering to realize that a given mammalian trait can appear, disappear, and then freely reappear anywherethroughout the entire evolutionaryconstructed sequence of mammal-like reptiles. As a result, if all of the mammalian traits are considered together, it becomes obvious that any ‘stratomorphic’ sequence of mammalian traits as a whole is crude at best. Mechanisms related to the Global Flood should have no difficulty generating a sequence of organisms that happens to show a crude stratomorphic progression of mammalian traits interspersed with numerous other traits showing no progression at all (that is, the reversing traits).Of course, evolutionists have a series of stock rationalizations to cope with reversing traits. They can, for instance, allow for some traits to actually reverse themselves during the course of supposed evolution. But this makes their whole argument internally inconsistent: we are asked to believe that the ‘progressively-appearing’ mammalian traits constitute powerful evidence for evolution, while the more numerousreversing mammalian traits do not mean anything. Heads I win, tails you lose. And, owing to the fact that cladograms are not presumed to identify ancestor-descendant relationships, the evolutionists can always pigeonhole any reversing trait as a ‘specialization’ in that particular mammal-like genus.25 This allows them to ignore contrary evidence and to perpetuate their illusion of a generalized ‘chain’ of mammal-like reptiles that becomes progressively more-mammalian. Analysis of discontinuities From Tables 1–3 we see that the traits usually considered unique to mammals are distributed variously throughout the mammal-like reptiles. While this distribution is not haphazard or random, it does not form lineages. We will now see that the remaining gaps between these organisms are not gradualistic.Remember that mammal-like reptiles are not just any group of extinct creatures. They are supposed to be the very showcase of step-by-step, transition-filled evolutionary change. On this basis alone, the mammal-like reptiles should be subject to the strictest standards for evaluating alleged gradational evolutionary changes. Thus, the significance of morphological discontinuities becomes magnified. Second, as noted earlier, whatever step-by-step changes to the mammalian condition do exist, these come only at the cost of having to discard large numbers of anatomical traits because they are reversing—i.e. appearing, disappearing and reappearing in the chain. If, despite such treatment, the discontinuities can be shown to be significant in those relatively few traits which are unmistakably progressive to the mammalian condition, the credibility of mammal-like reptiles as genuine evolutionary transitions becomes all the more doubtful.Third, and most important of all, the magnitude of any discontinuities must be addressed. Are they large or small? To answer this question, we must compare the size of each discontinuity with the range of anatomical information available from known fossils.30 Using the same methodology employed to score inferred morphological changes throughout the presumed evolution of mammal-like reptiles, one can place the discontinuities into a semi-quantitative perspective. Consider the most comprehensive sequence of mammal-like reptiles (Table 1). We can see the precipitous gap between the pre-therapsids (0–5) and therapsids (29–52). From the vantage point of the Mammalness Index of 120 for the listed inferred first mammals (the Morganucudontidae), the mammal-like traits in pelycosaurs and

sphenacodonts are trivial in magnitude. This gap is all the more extreme because pelycosaurs and therapsids are each large, internally-diverse groups.This is only the beginning. It is eye opening to realize that the discontinuity between the therapsids (29-52) and cynodonts (80–109), at 28 points, is greater than the entire range of mammal-like traits within the evolution of the therapsids themselves, the latter of which amounts to 23 points! The gap within cynodonts (80–87 vs. 101– 109), while not as extreme, is nevertheless appreciable, and, at 14 points, is greater than both the ranges of the antecedents (7 points) and successors (8 points). Those with a strong background in vertebrate anatomy may want to consult the original sources and examine how the anatomical technicalities (here just summarized as numbered traits) fail to resemble anything like a gradational appearance of mammalian traits in the evolutionistic-constructed ‘chain’ of mammal-like reptiles.When the appropriate anatomical details of the middle part of the chain of mammal-like reptiles is analyzed, we find that the non-transitions grow in size. Consider all the characters relative to part of the inferred aural-mandibular evolution from mammal-like reptiles to mammals (Table 2). One is struck by the abrupt discontinuities between therapsids and early cynodonts (1–6), on one hand, and the advanced cynodonts (13, 15), on the other (we are, for a moment, excluding the trithelodonts and the tritylodonts). When we consider the latter two, both of which are the possible evolutionary sister groups of the earliest mammals, we observe yet another gap—between them (13, 15) and the inferred earliest mammals (20–25). In both instances, the gap is, once again, larger than the actual range of ‘mammalness’ that both precedes and follows the gap.The foregoing analysis of Table 2 actually understates the magnitude of the gaps because, as noted earlier, it does not consider the ‘smoothing-out’ effects caused by the inclusion of the reversing characters. Consider just the progressive characters in Table 2. Under such conditions, the discontinuities are stark. With the exception of the last member of the chain (the Morganucodontidae), every change in the sequence involves a series of jumps in increments of 2 or (usually) 3, and each such jump is relative to only 13 character points.Probably the most informative analysis of mammal-like reptiles as (alleged) transitional forms is the one which focuses, in detail, on the presumed changes from advanced cynodonts to the earliest mammals (Table 3). The sister-group cynodonts (Tritylodontidae and Trithelodontidae) rival each other for the status of the closest non-mammalian relatives to mammals. Yet, when all of the characters are considered, one is struck by the chasm between these sister-group advanced cynodonts (58 and 78) and the earliest presumed mammals (100–139). However, the ‘bottom falls out’ when only the progressive characters are considered in Table 3. Here, a giant evolutionary leap is required to make the presumed change from fairly advanced cynodonts (7) to the advanced sister-group cynodonts (34 and 54). From there, another great gulf must be spanned in order to link the sister-group cynodonts (at 34 and 54) with the earliest mammals (104–131).Thus, the gaps are as large, or larger, than the range of so-called mammalian traits actually present. This makes it difficult to maintain that even a crudely, ever-more-mammalian, quasi-lineage exists Figure 2. Labial view of among the mammal-like reptiles. Furthermore, the reversing traits are more common complex multi-cusped molar of than the gap-filled progressive traits. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the an extinct Mesozoic evolutionistic-constructed pelycosaur-therapsid-mammal chain is little more than a crocodilian from Malawi. These motley group of extinct creatures crudely cobbled together into an artificial evolutionary extinct crocodilians are related ‘progression’. Just because some ‘mammalian’ traits are present in mammal-like to neither mammal-like reptiles reptiles, this does not entail evolution in the slightest. It simply means that some traits nor mammals, and no now considered mammalian (by virtue of the fact that they are found only in extinct evolutionist would contemplate 31 mammals) once existed in some extinct non-mammals (Figure 2). these reptiles as ancestral to Regardless of which choice the evolutionist makes for the closest non-mammalian mammals in any way. Yet their relatives to primitive mammals, he/she must be content with either a rock or a hard dentition shows clear place: resemblances to mammalian ‘It is not known which cynodont family was ancestral to mammals, or whether all the cheek teeth, and these mammals originated from the same group (family) of cynodonts. In the vast literature crocodilians also contain concerning mammalian origins, it is easier to find suggestions that one or the other another mammalian trait—a therapsid or cynodont family cannot be ancestral to the Mammalia, rather than to find secondary palate (from a positive answer.’32 Melhert).41 ‘Both the tritheledontid-mammal hypothesis and the tritylodontid-mammal hypothesis are supported by large numbers of apomorphies in dentition, cranium and postcranial skeleton. Yet both are also contradicted by a substantial amount of anatomical evidence.’ 33And, ironic to the fallacious argument about mammalian traits appearing in correct ‘stratomorphic’ sequence, 34 we have a situation where one of the presumed sister groups (Tritylodontidae) is actually more mammalian than the first recognized mammals! Consider the following unenviable dilemma faced by evolutionists: ‘The main difficulty with the tritylodontid-mammal hypothesis is that too many apomorphic features of tritylodontids are more derived than the corresponding features in primitive mammals such asSinoconodon and Adelobasileus ... . By contrast, the main weakness of the trithelodontid-mammal hypothesis is that far too many trithelodontid characters are primitive ... [emphasis added].’35 ‘Primitive’ and ‘derived’, of course, are in comparison with the presumed earliest mammals, though neither the trithelodonts nor the tritylodonts are capable of being connected to the inferred earliest mammals in an ancestor-descendant lineage. Table 3 shows that a near doubling of characters (in fact, tripling if Tritheledontidae is chosen as the sister-group) is necessary to bridge the chasm between the sister-group cynodonts and the inferred primitive mammals. For evolutionists who portray the sister-group cynodonts as ‘almost mammals’, this is a sobering result.Several creationist scholars have pointed out the lack of evidence for gradational change in the mandibular-auditory mechanism of the ‘advanced’ mammallike reptiles towards that of the presumed early mammals. Interestingly, a few evolutionists have actually acknowledged this fact in print: ‘Intermediate stages in the transference of postdentary elements to the cranium are poorly documented. Indeed, the only fossil evidence on this critical interval is the presence of persistent attachment sites for the anterior end of the postdentary unit in the primitive theriansAmphitherium and Peramus.’36Finally, owing to the fact that the ‘mammalian traits’ do not, by any stretch of the imagination, occur in a nested hierarchy in the mammal-like reptiles, evolutionists must blame this state of affairs on convergence. In this regard, the mammal-like reptiles are hardly alone among fossil vertebrates: ‘The distribution of primitive and derived characters differs from lineage to lineage, showing that many features were evolved or lost convergently. As in the case of other major transitions in vertebrates, such as the origin of birds and mammals, the convergent origin of derived features makes it difficult to establish specific relationships, or to agree on objective criteria to differentiate tetrapods from their fish ancestors.’37 Conclusions

Mammal-like reptiles may indeed qualify as the very best examples of transitional evolutionary change that evolutionary theory has to offer from the fossil record. This only shows the barrenness and intellectual poverty of macroevolution. When all of the characters used for the conventional constructions of cladograms are considered, the majority of mammal-like reptile characters do not consistently progress towards the mammalian condition. Instead, within the ‘evolutionary’ chain of mammal-like reptiles, there are many ‘reversals’ away from mammalian characteristics.The use of mammal-like reptiles as an argument for ‘transitional change’ (however one strictly defines it) rests upon special pleading (like everything else in evolutionary theory). So let us permit the evolutionist special pleading and pretend that the large numbers of reversing traits don’t exist, so that the argument can be based solely on the progressive characters. Even this does not let the evolutionist off the hook. To the contrary, the chain of mammal-like reptiles, when examined closely and with attention to many (instead of just a selected few) anatomical characters is full of major discontinuities. And very many of these discontinuities are as large, if not larger, than the ranges of characters which both precede and follow them. Therefore, the oft-repeated evolutionistic claim about mammal-like reptiles showing a series of intermediate stages to the mammalian condition is, at best, an exaggeration.Could not the evolutionists argue that, as more fossils are discovered, the gaps will close? Perhaps. At least they have been trying to do so since the days of Darwin, but with little success, despite a vastly larger known fossil record. Remember that, as shown elsewhere, 38 new fossil finds can just as easily accentuate the gaps as reduce or close them. Consider three new genera that have been described in the 1980s and 1990s: Sinoconodon, Adelobasileus and Haldanodon. As noted earlier, not enough is preserved of Adelobasileus to include it in Tables 1–3. When it comes to Sinoconodon, its existence does narrow the gap in Table 3 that would otherwise exist without it, but not by much in comparison with the gap that remains afterward. Haldanodon, on the other hand, cuts the other way. By virtue of the fact that its characters fall within the range for previously-known primitive mammals, its very discovery actually reinforces the gap between cynodonts and mammals.What if mammal-like reptiles never existed? Would evolutionary theory be crippled? Certainly not. Evolutionary theory is so plastic that anyseries of observations in the natural world could be cited in its favour! If anyone thinks that this is an overstatement, consider the following: ‘Indeed, it was a fossil found in the Karoo in 1838—the skull of a mammal-like reptile with two large tusk-like teeth in its upper jaw—that first convinced the scientific establishment that mammals had evolved from reptiles, not directly from amphibians.’39 ‘T. H. Huxley (1880), for instance, proposed that amphibians gave rise to mammals. This conclusion was based on aortic arch patterns, heart morphology and features of the pelvis. Subsequent workers rejected Huxley’s ideas when theriodont pelvises, which were not known to Huxley, were found to be intermediate in structure between the pelvises of amphibians and mammals.’40Clearly, the ruling evolutionary paradigm existed before the discovery of mammal-like reptiles, and would have flourished had these reptiles never been discovered. In that event, today’s evolutionists would be extolling some extinct amphibian group as the transitions (or stratomorphic intermediates) leading up to mammals. Cladograms would be constructed to show the close branching pattern between that chosen group of amphibians and mammals.All else would fall in place according to the dictates of evolutionary dogma. The evolutionist triumphalists would be telling everyone that evolution is fact because of the many obvious similarities between the ‘ancestral’ amphibians and the ‘descendant’ mammals. Leading humanist scientists would inform us that anyone who questions the amphibian-mammalian transition cannot possibly be a scientist, no matter his degrees or publications. And, of course, the secularist fanatics would whip up considerable hysteria about the fact that the questioning of the amphibian–mammalian transition is a dangerous threat to the very survival of science and reason, and that, if not quickly reversed, it will soon return us to the Dark Ages. ‘Transitional form’ in mammal ear evolution—more cacophony by Shaun Doyle A new fossil mammal, Liaoconodon hui, was found in Liaoning and ‘dated’ at 120 Ma (million years) old. It has been hailed as a transitional form between reptiles and modern mammals because of its unique ear bone morphology. However, it is ‘dated’ 40–75 Ma after the appearance of the first fully formed mammalian middle ear. The middle ear morphology, though different from extant mammals in their adult form, still doesn’t provide evidence of the crucial changes required to go from the reptilian to the mammalian middle ear. Liaoconodon is clearly a mammal, though it possesses either an embryonic mammalian middle ear structure or a new functional morphology. Either interpretation is consistent with the creation model, but produces numerous homoplasies in the evolutionary model. Therefore the creation model provides a better explanation of the ear morphology of Liaoconodonthan evolution. A new fossil has been found in Liaoning and has been dubbed Liaoconodon hui and ‘dated’ to the Early Cretaceous, at 120 Ma (million years) old. 1 It has been hailed as a transitional form between reptiles and modern mammals because of its unique ear bone morphology. It has been paraded on many of the science news websites as the long-sought fossil mammal with a transitional middle ear.2,3,4 This is rather interesting, considering that the reptile-to-mammal ‘lineage’ is often held up as the most complete and irrefutable fossil evidence for microbes-toman evolution. However, the reptile-to-mammal ‘transition’ as a whole has many problems,5 and as we shall see, Liaoconodon doesn’t help the picture either. What of the fossil context? This fossil is from the Chinese Jehol Group, where it seems truckloads of ‘missing links’ (mostly of the dino-to-bird kind, but others such as the ‘early’ mammalYanoconodon have been discovered) have been hiding until the last 15–20 years. 6And since there is one well-known fraud to have come from there (theArchaeoraptor hoax),7 one wonders if that is the only fossil fraud to have been perpetrated on the scientific establishment. I’m not suggesting that this or any particular find from the Jehol group is fraudulent, but merely pointing out that there is reason for a priori scepticism about fossils from there.There also seems to be a consistent factor concerning fossils from this part of the world: they all seem to be dated many millions of years too late to shed any real light on evolution. Liaoconodon, which has what the authors describe as a “transitional mammalian middle ear” (TMME), is ‘dated’ to 120 Ma, which is 75 Ma younger than the first “definitive mammalian middle ear” (DMME), Hadrocodium.8 If this were a ‘mere’ 5 Ma difference, then it could be much easier to conclude that the ‘ghost lineage’ created by this paradox is just bad luck. However, when the age difference is greater than a geologic period, then it just becomes a brazenly ad hoc ‘solution’ to preserve evolutionary cladistics.9 An ‘earie’ morphology

This ear arrangement found in Liaoconodon and other ‘early’ mammals is not completely absent in modern mammals. The key morphological feature discussed by Meng et al., Meckel’s cartilage, is part of the developmental process of the mammalian ear and jaw, and the jaw of other tetrapods. The difference between living mammals andLiaoconodon is that while the Meckel’s cartilage dissolves during embryonic development of living mammals, it is present in Liaoconodon (allegedly retained during evolution, eventually becoming bone).1 Therefore, this could be akin to gills in the adult axolotl:10 a juvenile structure that has been preserved in an adult. This is an interpretation that was favoured in the closely related Yanoconodon: Haeckel returns! “Paedomorphosis, or retention of fetal or juvenile characteristics of ancestors and relatives through developmental heterochrony [differences in developmental timing], is a common phenomenon in vertebrate evolution. The heterochronic (‘premature’) ossification of Meckel’s cartilage in eutriconodonts is the immediate cause for this paedomorphic connection of middle ear and mandible, and is why there is an overall homoplastic distribution among therians (with DMME), eutriconodonts (without DMME), monotremes (with DMME) and pre-mammalian relatives (without DMME).” 11Another possible interpretation is that Liaoconodon and other ‘early’ mammals have a completely functional auditory system morphologically and functionally distinct from living mammals. Meng et al. favour this interpretation: “The transference from the mandibular middle ear (MME) to the TMME and then to the DMME represents two distinct evolutionary stages, each involving several morphological changes.” 12This would be explained by slight differences in the same basic developmental plan for the mammalian ear. Neither interpretation demands evolution, because the first involves information loss, and the second is simply common design. Both interpretations can be incorporated into a creationists picture of life’s diversity, as long as one abandons the universal common descent assumption of evolution. Haeckel returns! However, Meng et al. explain the reason for the morphological differences in a rather unexpected way: “Instead of being a paedomorphic resemblance, an alternative hypothesis is that the persistent Meckel’s cartilage in Mesozoic mammals, along with features such as lack of the manubrium and a partial ectotympanic, represents a phylogenetic stage in mammalian evolution, and that the embryonic pattern of modern mammals recapitulates the phylogenetic changes [emphasis added].”12Haeckel returns! But embryonic recapitulation is about as far removed from reality in this instance as Haeckel’s formulation was in the 19 thcentury. For a start, Liaoconodon would have to be an example of embryonic recapitulation running in reverse. There is solid evidence that other ‘early’ mammals, multituberculates and Hadrocodium, already possessed the DMME condition 40 Ma and 75 Ma before Liaoconodon lived, respectively, according the evolutionary scheme.Moreover, embryonic recapitulation is only an explanation of pattern, not an explanation of process. It doesn’t tell us how the developmental process was re-patterned to give completely different functional morphologies. Just because stages of alleged evolution appear in a developmental sequence, it does not mean those stages are all functional during ontogeny (either for hearing or as a jaw joint). This is the key difference between ontogeny and phylogeny—only the final product of ontogeny has to be properly functional, but every generation of phylogeny must be functional for evolution to have any plausibility. Neither does it tell us anything about how the crucial morphological changes necessary to move from the typical reptilian (stapes-only) middle ear to the mammalian (malleusincus-stapes) middle ear (whether ‘transitional’ or ‘definitive’) actually happened. (From Meng et al., ref. 1, p. 183) Figure 1. The middle ear/joint morphology of Morganucodon (MME) (a, d), Liaoconodon(TMME) (b, e), and modern mammals (DMME) (c (generalized therian), f(Ornithorhynchus), g (Didelphis)) . The futility of fossils Fossil evidence usually has a fundamental weakness: we can never see the bones, even if found in their correct articulation, in their full physiological context. Functional or phylogenetic inferences based solely on the intricacies of bone structure in extinct fossils have gotten palaeontologists into many problems before, as Lieberman points out: “Bones have generally low degrees of heritability because they form parts of complex, integrated functional units that are subject not only to many genes with multiple effects (pleiotropism), but also to a large number of nongenetic influences. It is therefore difficult to divide bones into discrete, independent units of phylogenetic information. For these reasons, bones and other aspects of morphology can yield reasonably correct results for phylogenetic analyses of high-level taxonomic units, but become increasingly less reliable at lower taxonomic levels, such as species.” 13Lieberman said this in the context of human evolution, where the features for comparison are often quite large, over 10 cm long. However, his comments only become more pertinent when we’re dealing with the three smallest bones in the mammalian body in mammals that are often only 2–3 cm long in toto. Evolutionists need to be extremely cautious about any phylogenetic inferences they make.Finally, for evolution to have any plausibility based on the fossils, the ‘processes’ invoked to explain the patterns need a firm empirical basis. However, evolution suffers from numerous problems. Microbes-to-man evolution suffers from the lack of a viable empirical mechanism. The empirical evidence testifies to universal and inevitable degradation of biological information —the opposite of what evolution requires.16 The basic ‘a watch implies a watchmaker’ analogy with respect to biology is valid, despite attempts to refute it.17,18 Finally, fossil evidence, because it is so fragmentary and sparse, is weak and open to contradictory interpretations.19 ‘Transitional forms’ leave more transitions to explain

Meng et al. also provide a rather detailed argument for the functionality of the TMME in Liaoconodon.20 Let’s assume that their description of the functioning of the TMME is accurate. We then have two large morphological gaps in the place of one huge one. If the structural evolution went MME–TMME– DMME, then we have not one, but two significant repatternings of the ear that have to be explained. The morphological disparity between the morganucodonts and Liaoconodon remains huge, and they’ve now added another large gap in morphology between some ‘early’ mammals and extant mammals! Note that we are talking about two large morphological gaps—the sizes of the gaps matter, as Woodmorappe explains: “In particular, as long as such things as half-legs/half-wings, or three-quarter scales/one-quarter feathers, are not found as fossils, the discontinuities among such things as reptiles and birds remain large. This remains the case whether or not some ‘transitional’ fossil can be thought of as replacing one larger gap into two smaller but nevertheless still large gaps.”21 The crucial morphological changes that are required to evolve a mammalian middle ear (whether a DMME or a TMME) from a jaw joint are still conspicuously absent from the fossil record.22 Liaoconodon possesses a malleus and incus, like all other mammals—they don’t form part of a jaw joint. The closest ‘relatives’ of mammals, the morganucodonts, had a double-jointed jaw—one mammal-like jaw joint and one slender reptile-like jaw joint. It has been speculated that the reptilian jaw joint in moganucodonts served a supporting function in supporting its middle ear.23 However, the fact that the morphology is vastly different from the typical mammalian middle ear articulation,24 and that it remains attached to the dentary (mandible), still points to the vast difference in middle ear morphology that morganucodonts have from all mammals. So, the reptile-like jaw joint is still primarily a jaw joint, and it has a completely different ear structure, the mandibular middle ear (MME) (figure 1). (From Meng et al., ref. 1, p. 184.) Figure 2. Meng et al.’s cladogram for the reptile-to-mammal transition. A solid star denotes a group where the DMME is known in at least some members. An empty star indicates that the presence of the OMC (ossified Meckel’s cartilage) is known in at least some members of the group. What’s more, the second gap (TMME to DMME) has to be breached at least five times independently according to Meng et al.’s cladogram—once each for Hadrocodium, monotremes, Vincelestes, therians (placentals and marsupials) and multituberculates (figure 2). And while this gap is not as large as the one between morganuconodonts and Liaoconodon, it is still a significant change in functional morphology.25 Meng et al. are completely aware of this, but their faith in the power of evolution is unshakeable: “The ear morphology of Liaoconodonrepresents a transitional stage in the evolution of mammalian middle ears regardless of how many times the DMME evolved.” 26This ‘transitional form’ was obviously successful because, from an evolutionary perspective, it had to have lasted at least 75 Ma, and should have first arisen before Hadroconium, which is typically ‘dated’ around 195 Ma old. That raises a problem: why did the DMME evolve so often from an obviously successful articulation, especially given that Meng et al. tell us that “the TMME must be more efficient in airborne sound hearing than the mandibular middle ear”?26 That “the middle ear of Liaoconodon is not so efficient as in extant mammals”26 is no excuse because evolution knows no direction or purpose.Meng et al., like most evolutionists, also assume that evolution is the only explanation for the developmental process of the mammalian ear. However, it also makes sense that a single designer would modify the same developmental program to create different creatures, otherwise it might look like life was the product of more than one designer.27 Since Liaoconodon can be explained according to creation model using Meng et al.’s own interpretation of the functional morphology, it’s disingenuous to portray evolution as having all the answers. Conclusions Liaoconodon seems to have a distinct middle ear bone articulation, though it is three-bone (malleus-incus-stapes), and thus still distinctly mammalian. It could be a paedomorphic trait, and as such is a loss in information from the DMME condition. However, it could also be a completely new functional morphology, though still distinctly mammalian. Evolution can only be seen in this ‘transitional form’ if one presupposes evolution in the first place. The crucial transformation required to decouple the extra middle ear bones in mammals from the reptilian jaw joint is still not evidenced in the fossils. This study also fails to appreciate why ontogeny is not a good guide for understanding phylogeny. Just because an embryo goes through a stage that looks like the adult condition of a presumed ‘ancestral’ trait, it does not mean that the embryonic trait was ever, in any way, functional in the genealogy of the organism with the ‘derived’ trait. And the fossil is dated far too late in the evolutionary scheme to work as a chronological intermediate. Therefore, there is no reason to postulate evolution to explain this curious fossil. Rather, it makes better sense to envisage a single designer modifying the same basic developmental plan for his individual creatures. Darwinopterus v Dawkins Pterosaur ‘missing link’ poses problems for a Dawkins’ evolutionary story in The Greatest Show on Earth by Jonathan Sarfati Published: 27 October 2009(GMT+10)

Richard Dawkins’ book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution fails to prove the case, using lots of strawman arguments to induce readers to accept goo-to-you evolution. Prominent antitheist and self-styled “atheist” Richard Dawkins has written a new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Ironically, he admits about all his previous pro-evolution books: “Looking back on these books, I realized that the evidence for evolution is nowhere explicitly set out, and that it seemed like a good gap to close.” Naturally, CMI is preparing a book to answer Dawkins’ latest. In a chapter about alleged bad design, Dawkins had a section about the loss of wings and evolution of features like halteres, the little drumstick-like stabilizers behind the one pair of wings on flies. To set the stage, Dawkins related the theory of English evolutionist (and former debate partner 1) John Maynard Smith (1920–2004) about the evolution of flying creatures. Maynard-Smith argued that flying creatures evolved first with high stability and low maneuverability (e.g. with the long pterosaur tail or an insect’s long abdomen). Then they shortened, which caused lower stability but greater maneuverability, and they evolved advanced sensory equipment to stabilize by fast reactions (e.g. larger semicircular canals in pterosaurs or halteres in flies).Even when Dawkins wrote, there were already dragonflies in the ointment, so to speak, because they have both long bodies (stability) but are also highly maneuverable and have advanced navigation systems. Furthermore, even known pterosaur types didn’t fit this theory, as Dawkins admitted in passing. But after writing our response to this Dawkins “Just-so” story, this new pterosaur turned up, and it adds a final demolition point. This new pterosaur, which to be fair Dawkins could not have known about when he wrote, has the stability of the long tail as well as the advanced correction features before loss of stability supposedly drove the selection for the advanced flying skills. As a sneak peek, to show that we are indeed rebutting Dawkins’ claims, here is a draft section from our forthcoming book answering The Greatest Show on Earth: Loss of wings Flightless birds The flightless cormorant most impressed Darwin, and impresses Dawkins today (p. 345). Dawkins claims: “But all flightless birds including ostriches and their kind, which lost their wings a very long time ago, are clearly descended from ancestors that used them to fly. No reasonable observer should doubt the truth of that, which means that anyone who thinks about it should find it very hard — why not impossible — to doubt the fact of evolution.” (p. 345) However, once again, this is no problem for the Creation model, which includes the Fall. That is, we agree with Darwin and Dawkins that flightless birds (at least most of them) descended from flying birds, losing their ability to fly. Once again, this is post-Fall devolution, not evolution. If Dawkins could show creatures acquiring the power of flight (or sight), then this might count as evidence for evolution; but lossof flight (or sight) does not. The argument might impress Dawkins’ gullible choir in the Church of Saint Darwin, but it should not convince anyone who does not already have a religious commitment to naturalism (materialism) and who cares to think about it. Flightless cormorants Here is our previous explanation on that bird that so fascinated Darwin and Dawkins: “This is the only variety of cormorant that lives on the Galápagos Islands, and is the only variety of cormorant that cannot fly. It has even been classified as a different genus; it is in the genusNannopterum while all other cormorants belong to the genus Phalacrocorax. The changes that the flightless cormorant underwent are similar to that of other flightless birds; the keel on the breast bone which supports the muscles used for flight is much smaller, and its legs are much stronger than those of other cormorants. Since it does not need to use its wings for flight, over time they have deteriorated in ways that would have been eliminated in flying birds; its feathers are softer and more hair-like, much like the feathers of other flightless birds.2 “Since the flightless cormorants could not have swum from the mainland to the islands (it never ventures more than 100 metres from shore while fishing), how did it arise? Darwin proposed that it developed from cormorants that had flown to the island, but whose descendants had lost this ability. Now we realize that this loss occurred through a mutation, or genetic copying mistakes. Such a mutation would normally be harmful for a bird species, but may have been beneficial to the cormorants on that particular island.3 “This would be similar to the case of flightless beetles on windy islands that are more likely to survive, while the beetles that can fly are more likely to be swept away.4 Or else it may simply have been a case of reduced selection pressure—with none of the mainland predators and plentiful food in the sea, loss of flight would be a less serious disadvantage, much like cave creatures that lose their sight over generations. However, this would not be an example of evolution; the mutation that caused the flightless cormorant to lose the ability to fly is an example of a loss of genetic information. Goo-to-you evolution would require changes that result in new genetic information.”5 Kakapo Dawkins describes this bird as follows: “ … kakapos, New Zealand’s flightless parrots, whose flying ancestors apparently lived so recently that kakapos still try to fly although they lack the equipment to succeed.” Once again, this is hardly news to creationists6 —a deterioration due to mutations, which natural selection did not “punish” in the absence of predators. Yet this is a problem for long-age ideas: New Zealand was supposedly isolated many millions of years ago, and its fauna isolated from predators for that time, yet this flightlessness is clearly recent. Penguins As Dawkins says, “ … penguins … use their wings to ‘fly underwater’ … ” This is compatible with a design explanation. The point is that the principles of flight are the same regardless of the fluid used—a fluid is a material that flows, i.e. a liquid or a gas. Merely the optimal dimensions must be changed. This is why flight simulations often use a different fluid and dimensions and are still accurate.7 Halteres: lost/evolved wings on insects?

A cast of a fossil specimen of the pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus muensteri Dawkins then discusses certain features of flies or diptera, with only two wings instead of four, like most insects. Instead of hindwings, they have little stalks with knobs called halteres. They have long been known to act as a gyroscope, because they beat in antiphase to the wings, i.e. in reverse direction. The base of the haltere has mechanical sensors called campaniform (bellshaped)sensilla that quickly pass on flight information to the wing-steering muscles, so they can respond fast enough to stabilize the fly. Thus halteres are the equivalent of an aircraft’s attitude indicator.8 Stability vs maneuverability Dawkins explains this as part of the trade-off between stability and maneuverability as all flying machines have, and puts the following evolutionary slant on it: “The great John Maynard Smith, who worked as an aircraft designer before returning to the university to read zoology … pointed out that flying animals can move in evolutionary time, back and forth along the spectrum of this trade-off, sometimes losing inherent stability in the interests of increased manœvrability, but paying for it in the form of increased instrumentation and computation capability—brain power.” (p. 348)Then there is a diversion to illustrate his point with pterosaurs. Pterosaurs Dawkins illustrates a supposedly early pterosaur, Rhamphorhynchus, with a long tail “with the ping-pong bat at the end”, so it was very stable, so “would not have needed sophisticated gyroscopic control”. But it was not very maneuverable, he says. But Anhanguera, allegedly 60 million years later, had almost no tail, so “it would surely have been an unstable aircraft, reliant on instrumentation and computation to exercise subtle, moment-to-moment control over its flight surfaces.” (pp. 347– 8).In this case, the controls were most likely provided by orientational information from the semicircular canals. Indeed, they were very large. But Dawkins grudgingly admits, “although, a touch disappointingly for the Maynard Smith hypothesis, they were large in Rhamphorhynchus as well as Anhanguera.” (p. 348).A new pterosaur fossil, published after I wrote most of this chapter, provides an even bigger problem:Darwinopterus modularis.9First of all, it was “dated” at 160 million years old, which is on the younger end of the evolutionary age range of Rhamphorhynchus (165 to 150 million years 10). But far more important, it is evidence against the Maynard Smith theory, since it had both a long tail and “advanced” features in the head and neck. I.e. the latter features arose without being driven by selection for compensation for loss of stability. This can be seen from comments of one of the discovers, Dr David Unwin from the University of Leicester, UK, who had expected an intermediate along the Maynard-Smith lines: “Darwinopterus came as quite a shock to us. We had always expected a gap-filler with typically intermediate features such as a moderately elongate tail — neither long nor short. “But the strange thing about Darwinopterus is that it has a head and neck just like that of advanced pterosaurs, while the rest of the skeleton, including a very long tail, is identical to that of primitive forms.”11 Instead, the researchers propose a novel idea, which goes against Dawkins’ Darwinian gradualism: that natural selection selected whole “modules”; hence the species name: “This pattern supports the idea that modules, tightly integrated complexes of characters with discrete, semi-independent and temporally persistent histories, were the principal focus of natural selection and played a leading role in evolutionary transitions.”But this evidence is better explained by the biotic message theory, as proposed by Walter ReMine in The Biotic Message.12 That is, the evidence from nature points to a single designer, but with a pattern which thwarts evolutionary explanations. In this case, the common modules point to one common designer—one who worked with different modules creating different creatures with different modules that fit no consistent evolutionary pattern. Also, in most cultures around the world, such a pattern of commonality would bring honour to a Designer, and would also indicate the Designer’s authority over and mastery of His designs.13 More is explained in the chapter on homology, titled “Common ancestry or common design?” Origin of Pterosaurs A far bigger problem is that the fossil record sheds no light on the alleged evolution of pterosaurs from non-flying creatures, a far bigger jump than between different types of pterosaur, which doesn’t fit Dawkins’ favourite evolutionary story anyway, as he and Unwin admitted. For example, researchers including Dr Unwin recently discovered that pterosaurs used their tiny pteroid bone as a support for a wing flap, without which they likely could not have risen off the ground in the first place.14,15 With bats, the problem for evolution is even stronger—the oldest known (by evolutionary ‘dating’ methods) fossil bats are practically indistinguishable from modern ones. Evolutionist Paul Sereno admitted: “For use in understanding the evolution of vertebrate flight, the early record of pterosaurs and bats is disappointing: Their most primitive representatives are fully transformed as capable fliers.”16 In like manner, evolutionary paleontologist Robert Carroll said: “The fossil record does not provide evidence for the transition towards either pterosaurs or bats: The earliest known members of these [bat] groups had already evolved an advanced flight apparatus.”17 More problems for evolution are discussed in the chapter “The links are still missing”. Pringle on halteres Returning to halteres, Dawkins cites the work of J.W.S. Pringle (1912–1982), one of his own Oxford professors from his student days, one of the first to work out the gyroscopic function of the halteres. But after this good science, Pringle speculated on their origin, as Dawkins relates: “Pringle suggested that the four-winged ancestors of flies probably had long abdomens, which would have made them stable. All four wings would have acted as rudimentary gyroscopes. Then, he suggests, the ancestors of flies started to move along the stability continuum, becoming more manœvrable and less stable as the abdomens got shorter. The hind wings started to shift more towards the gyroscopic function (which they had always performed [due to tiny sense organs in

the base, p. 347] becoming smaller, and heavier for their size, while the forewings enlarged to take over more of the flying. There would have been a gradual continuum of change, as the forewings assumed ever more of the burden of aviation, while the hind wings shrank to take over the avionics.” (pp. 348–9). Dragonflies in the ointment One problem with the Pringle story is that the allegedly primitive insects in the Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) have both long abdomens and sophisticated flying methods, so efficient that engineers are trying to copy them. 18 They have “unusual musculature” that allows them to move each of their four wings independently. Robotic simulations showed that their out-of-phase flapping allows the hind wings to extract extra energy from the wake of the front wings, improving energy efficiency by 22%.19 Indeed, the researchers realised that this was a problem for Pringle-type scenarios: “Caution must be applied when interpreting the biological significance of the above observations. Suggesting an evolutionary advantage to either two-winged or four-winged forms is unwise, considering the success and diversity of the true flies (Diptera), and yet the maintenance of the four-winged form by dragonflies since the Carboniferous.” A better idea is that they were designed by an intelligence far greater than our own, so it’s not surprising that we can learn from them. Creationist Prof. Stuart Burgess, leader of the Design Engineering Research Group at the University of Bristol (UK), informs us: “Flying insects like dragonflies are another strong evidence for design because their flight mechanisms (and navigation systems20) are incredibly sophisticated although evolutionists regard dragonflies as “primitive” insects that appeared many millions years ago. My own research group at Bristol University is developing micro air vehicles based on the wings of dragonflies. We have filmed dragonflies with high speed cameras and recorded the exact flapping and twisting motion of their wings. We have then produced linkage mechanisms that can copy that motion in man-made micro air vehicles.”21,22,23 Furthermore, not only do dragonflies have sophisticated flying, they also have sophisticated instrumentation. They can track other insects with incredibly intricate maneuvering that makes the dragonfly appear stationary to its target. 24 Insects’ compound eyes are good at detecting the slightest motion by optic flow, 25 so the flight patterns must have amazing control systems. Appearing stationary would be very useful for sneaking up on other insects or for eluding a predator. A brief report in New Scientist said, “Dragonflies overshadow their enemies in complex manoeuvres that military fighter pilots can only dream of. … It demands exquisite position sensing and control.”26The researcher, Akiko Mizutani, of the Centre for Visual Science at the Australian National University in Canberra, said, “This sort of performance is extremely hard to achieve without very expensive and bulky measurement systems.” Yet somehow, what the most ingenious human designers can’t achieve with bulky systems, was programmed into the tiny dragonfly brain without any intelligence involved at all!Dragonfly navigation adds to the Rhamphorhynchus semicircular canals, and even more Darwinopterus, as counter-examples to the Maynard Smith hypothesis, upon which the Pringle hypothesis for haltere origin depends.27 Straw man arguments Dawkins’ book is full of straw-man arguments, with example after example of adaptation by mutations and natural selection that supposedly “prove evolution” (plus lots of “Just-so” story telling). But creationist biologists have long accepted the reality of mutations and natural selection (see Mutations Q&A and Natural selection Q&A), but understand that they are incapable of creating any of the vast amounts ofnovel genetic information required for goo-to-you evolution to be believable. Richard Dawkins’ “proof” of evolution in The Greatest Show on Earth is nothing of the kind.

DO FOSSILIZED PLANTS AND ANIMALS REALLY LOOK ALL THAT DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS WE SEE TODAY Alligator ancestor antics by Don Batten Giving them different names gives the false impression that alligators have changed … Dr Carl Werner found this alligator fossil (bottom right) on display at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada. Evolutionists regard this as a ‘dinosaur era’ (Cretaceous) fossil. Dr Werner noted the similarity to living alligators that he had seen in Louisiana. A comparison with a modern alligator skull (bottom left) shows the high level of similarity. And yet the fossil and the modern alligator were given different names, even a different genus. Giving them different names gives the false impression that alligators have changed in the supposed 75 million years; but they haven’t! We could say, ‘Evolution is a croc’! Redpath Museum, Montreal, Canada

‘Dinosaur era’ alligator skull septum not preserved) Albertochampsa Modern alligator skull Alligator mississipiensis Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada

(The nasal langstoni

Evolutionists can’t dodge ‘Living Fossils’ by Don Batten

Modern Horseshoe Crab, Limulus polyphemus, World Aquarium, Missouri, USA Despite the clear similarity of these horseshoe crabs, evolutionists insist on giving the fossil different genus and species names to its living counterpart. But where’s the difference? Note that the fossil specimen was found in rock labelled as “Jurassic”—said to date from 180–225 million years ago. Why is there no evolution (‘change’) in all that (supposed) time? Dinosaur-Era (Jurassic) Horseshoe Crab, Mesolimulus walchi, Jura Museum, Germany

Some folk just don’t see the significance of the myriad examples of ‘living fossils’. Following our interview with Dr Carl Werner on the topic,1 one evolutionist protested: “There is no written rule that says a lineage has to die out just because an offspring develops a beneficial mutation. The theory of evolution explains how species change over time, it doesn’t say that all species must change over time. As long as a species can survive in its environment and pass on its genetic information to its offspring, it can survive indefinitely. It doesn’t mean that the ‘living fossil’ didn’t speciate, it just means those possible splits died out while the original lineage was able to always successfully reproduce even into today. How exactly does that not work with evolution?” Evolution is about change, and putting ‘evolutionary’ in front of ‘stasis’, does not explain the stasis in terms of evolution. However, as Dr Werner said in the article: “If a scientist believes in evolution and sees fossils that look like modern organisms at the dinosaur digs, he/she might invent an hypothesis to ‘explain’ living fossils this way: ‘Yes I believe that animals have changed greatly over time (evolution), but some animals and plants were so well adapted to the environment that they did not need to change. So I am not bothered at all by living fossils.’ This added hypothesis says that some animals did not evolve. But if a theory can be so flexible, adding hypotheses that predict the opposite of your main theory, one could never disprove the theory. The theory then becomes unsinkable, and an unsinkable theory is not science.”1 Furthermore, some evolutionists have admitted that living fossils (‘stasis’) are a big problem for evolution.2 They have no explanation. This is not about suggesting that something has to go extinct if something evolves from it; that is not the point. The point is the lack of change, which is a huge problem for evolution, which is about vast changes. As high-profile evolutionists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge admitted, “the maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem.” 3 Evolutionists like to call it ‘evolutionary stasis’. But evolution is about change, and putting ‘evolutionary’ in front of ‘stasis’ does not explain stasis in terms of evolution.4 All organisms undergo mutations (accidental genetic changes). There is no mechanism that prevents mutations such that many organisms can remain the same for supposedly hundreds of millions of years. Combine the observations of stasis and the paucity of transitional fossils and you have to ask, ‘Where is the fossil evidence for evolution?’ And as if explaining the stasis exhibited by living ‘dino era’ creatures such as horseshoe crabs (pictured here) wasn’t already hard enough for evolutionists, what about far ‘older’ examples such as fossil ostracodes (clam-like arthropods known as ‘seed shrimps’), complete with exceptionally well-preserved soft body parts.5 With an evolutionary ‘age’ of 425 million years, the fossilized ostracodes look just the same as living ostracodes today. 6 425 million years of stasis!? In that alleged timeframe, evolution by mutations and natural selection has supposedly changed some (unidentified) worm into all the species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals (including elephants and mice, and of course, us). At the same time all the land plants have supposedly evolved. Such is the claimed power of evolution to change things, and yet these ostracodes have remained unchanged (and many others ‘dated’ even older). In the evolutionary story, environmental change, or the development of new environmental niches, drives evolution as organisms adapt to new environments. So they argue that living fossils are the creatures whose environment did not change. However, in the evolutionary view Earth has sustained

multiple global catastrophes (but not a global flood;!) and multiple ice ages. How could there be any place on earth that has remained static, including no change in predators? And living fossils occur across the spectrum of life; and they are very common.Combine the observations of stasis and the scarcity of transitional fossils (there should be millions of them) and you have to ask, “Where is the fossil evidence for evolution?”Well-preserved fossils speak of rapid burial in water-borne sediment, consistent with the global Flood just 4,500 years ago. Pygmy pipehorse pipe dream by David Catchpoole Jayne Jenkins Given its superb camouflage and small size (up to about 5 cm = 2 in), it’s a wonder that this creature was ever discovered at all. A sharp-eyed underwater photographer spotted it off the east coast of Australia in 1997. The Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse, Idiotropiscis lumnitzeri, lives on rocky reefs covered with red algae in coastal marine waters 6–30 metres (20–100 ft) deep.1,2 The female Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse deposits about 60 eggs into the male’s pouch on the underside of his tail and then he completes brooding.Its skin has a very useful feature aiding camouflage—it attracts algal growth. The resulting colour mixture is extremely variable with specimens ranging from white to red to green to brown. The amount and colour of algal protuberances on an individual Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse’s skin tend to match the algal covering on the reef where it lives. Consequently, scuba divers report that these creatures’ stunningly “cryptic colouration”1 enables them to blend so well into their habitat that they are “almost impossible to find” during the day. 2 At night, the glare from divers’ lights shows the pygmy pipehorses perching high on the reef algae. They eat small crustaceans foraging on the algae.The Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse is classified with other pipehorses in the family Syngnathidae (Greek: ‘together-jawed’, which relates to their tube-snouted mouths), along with seahorses and sea dragons. Like most members of the Syngnathidae, pygmy pipehorses have a horizontal posture—seahorses being the exception, adopting an upright posture. Pygmy pipehorses are actually “morphologically very similar to seahorses”, 3 i.e. in form—the postural difference is associated with the pygmy pipehorse head being at a slightly smaller angle to the body than in a seahorse. Therefore evolutionists have suggested that pygmy pipehorses are a ‘surviving evolutionary link’ between the vertically-swimming seahorses and other members of the Syngnathidae family.3 The design inherent in the syngnathids’ air bladder and specialized mode of reproduction mode indicates that pipehorse evolution is a pipe dream.But there is no fossil evidence of pond-scum-to-pipehorse/syngnathid evolution whatsoever. Evolutionists admit that fossil seahorses are “morphologically similar” to syngnathids today, “rather than being primitive transitional forms”. 3 And how could mooted evolutionary processes have given rise to the syngnathids’ beautifully efficient internal air bladder, used for vertical motion? (With very little effort, they rise or sink by changing the air volume within the bladder.) Or the specialized reproductive role reversal, which especially perplexes evolution-minded scientists? 4 (The female Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse deposits about 60 eggs into the male’s pouch on the underside of his tail and he then completes brooding. 2) The design inherent in the syngnathids’ air bladder and specialized mode of reproduction indicate that pipehorse evolution is a ‘pipe dream’It makes much more sense to view pipehorses, seahorses and sea dragons as a single created kind, with built-in variety enabling them to colonize and blend into a range of habitats. Seahorses with their upright posture are well suited to their verticallygrowing seagrass habitat, while other syngnathids like the Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse, with its horizontal posture and skin attracting algal growth, are just right for living unobtrusively among the algae on rocky reefs. But as the photograph above shows, they are not so completely hidden under their algal covering that you can’t get a proper view of them. It’s similar to viewing the all-around-us evidence for creation, despite evolutionists’ attempts to smother everything with Darwinistic fog. You just have to know where to look, and have eyes to see. Horsetails are ‘living fossils’! by David Catchpoole Horsetails, also known as scouring rush (because when tied in bundles they make serviceable brushes), have a hollow, jointed stem. Note the detail of the joints preserved in the ‘dinosaur-era’ horsetail fossil from Jurassic rock found at the Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, USA.Now compare with the living horsetail—a ‘living fossil’ indeed. These photos are from p. 205 of Dr Carl Werner’s book, Living Fossils—Evolution the Grand Experiment Vol. 2. and superb documentary DVD—Evolution: The Grand Experiment (Episode 2 Living Fossils) DVD.Keen gardeners know that horsetail plants are just the thing to have around a water feature, or areas with poor drainage. An added attraction, apparently, is that horsetails are ‘living fossils’.1 That is, the horsetail is a plant that looks just like horsetail fossils ‘dated’ at over 145 million years old—what evolutionists refer to as the Jurassic Period or ‘dinosaur era’. But why no evolution in all that (supposed) time? The horsetail and other ‘living fossils’ show evidence of stasis, not evolutionary change. The horsetail is nevertheless often paraded as evidence of an evolutionary timeline, and is itself described in evolutionary terms. E.g. horsetails are said to be “too primitive to bear seed so they reproduce by spores like ferns”. 1 However, as with all ‘living fossils’, the horsetail is in accord with the cretion account. Why no evolution in all that (supposed) time?So it’s no wonder that both living and fossilized horsetails are the same. While some people might be disappointed at losing the evolutionary symbolism of having a ‘prehistoric’ plant growing in their own garden, creationists need to be ready to remind people that horsetails are very much from the present, not the past. By definition, no living plant can be ‘prehistoric’. Living Fossils: the Shovelnose Ray

Left: A fossil Shovelnose Ray (Belemnobatis sismondae). Evolutionary ‘age’: 148 million years. Right: A living ray (Rhinobatos productus) caught at Malibu, California, USA. The sheer number of ‘living fossils’ provides amazing testimony to recent creation. It is striking to see a well-preserved fossil specimen next to a living organism that is virtually identical, but with supposedly many millions of evolutionary years separating them. A picture (or two, in such cases) really is worth a thousand words. Compare the living Shovelnose Ray on the right, with the fossil specimen, from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, USA. The fossil comes from the famous (‘lithographic’) limestone in Solnhofen, Germany.1 The official ‘date’ is Jurassic (‘dinosaur-age’), 148 million years. There is obviously ‘no evolution’ here. But the astonishing similarities also raise serious doubts about the huge timespan allegedly separating the two specimens.There is obviously ‘no evolution’ here. But the astonishing similarities also raise serious doubts about the huge timespan allegedly separating the two specimens. In a creationist scenario, based on real-world observations, mutations are occurring continually, and natural selection is a simple fact (though causing downhill, not uphill change2). To have creatures ‘staying the same’ to such a degree for even a few tens of thousands of years is highly unlikely. Consider the constantly changing pressures of the environment, including the dynamic and changing interplay between the organism, the food available to it, and its predators. 3Note that the evolutionists tacitly show that they are aware of this problem by giving the fossil creature a different scientific name from its living counterpart—even a different genus! To admit that two creatures supposedly 148 million years apart were the same species would, it seems, be too difficult. Dr Carl Werner, who provided these photos, has put together a stunningly beautiful book on ‘living fossils’. The 274 full-colour pages feature an astonishing number of different living fossils, many of them original discoveries, with fascinating discussions. It’s a great conversation-starter for your living room, with powerful photographic evidence of things most people are completely unaware of. Death March Horseshoe Crab stopped dead in its tracks by Tas Walker This fossil Horseshoe Crab (Mesolimulus walchi) in limestone is exceptionally well preserved.1 Photo by Katherine Ching, courtesy of the Geoscience Research Institute. Its external skeleton (exoskeleton) is still intact. The largest section at the front, the cephalothorax (combined head and chest), is domed like a helmet. It looks like a horse’s hoof, giving the crab its name.2 The middle section, the abdomen, still displays a row of spines around its edge. In living crabs, the abdomen is connected to the cephalothorax by a hinge. The long spike-like tail, or telson, protrudes the same as it did when the creature was alive. This fossil is 15 cm (6 inches) from its head to the tip of its tail. A living crab uses its tail for steering, and to right itself if it flips upside down. 3Not only is the body preserved, but also its footprints—a series of tiny triangular impressions to the rear of the animal. Although the crab is benthic (bottom dwelling), the track is not a record of its normal activities. It is a death trail—the last steps that the crab took. Clearly, this crab perished in exceptional conditions. Normally, when animals die, bacteria destroy the soft tissue (it rots), and the body falls apart, often within days. Decaying agents and scavengers in living environments are very efficient, removing all traces of dead animals quickly. This Horseshoe Crab must have been buried quickly to isolate the body from scavengers and prevent it disintegrating. Photo by Joachim Scheven, LEBENDIGE VORWELT Museum The fossil is from the Solnhofen Limestone, part of the Jurassic geological deposits of Bavaria, Germany. There fine-grained, flat slabs of rock (called Plattenkalk in German) have been quarried as tiles and for lithography.4 The fossils it contains (even the delicate, soft-bodied organisms, which usually leave, at best, only fragmentary traces of their existence) are exceptionally well preserved.1Long-age scientists say that this limestone formed over hundreds of thousands of years in a warm lagoon, isolated from the ocean.4 They need to explain how the animals were preserved on the bottom while they were covered slowly with sediment. So they hypothesize that the salinity of the water increased greatly at the bottom of the lagoon, preventing bacterial decay and scavenging. But why would crabs want to live in such a hostile environment? They say the crab must have been washed in. But how could a crab be washed from the bottom of the ocean and into an isolated lagoon? Why would a storm, severe enough to lift a crab from the bottom of the deep ocean, not disturb the bottom of the shallow lagoon? For that matter, how would the delicate footprints be preserved from water movements produced by such a storm?The problem gets worse for the long-age explanation. The Solnhofen Limestone contains an amazing array of different fossil animals. There are bottom dwellers such as shrimps, lobsters, crabs and even bivalves. There are free-swimming animals, such as jellyfish, fish, sea lilies, ammonites and squid. There are

animals that inhabit both land and water, such as crocodiles. There are insects, such as beetles, cicadas and dragonflies. And there are even birds, such as the famous Archaeopteryx lithographica, which is now extinct.1,5 A hypothetical lagoon lasting for hundreds of thousands of years does not explain the Horseshoe Crab fossil. Rather, the fossil crab points to rapid burial in a watery catastrophe that affected the oceans, the land and the atmosphere. Fish that ‘fly’ The members of the fish family Exocoetidae, one of the families known as ‘flying fish,’ possess enlarged pectoral fins. Having propelled themselves out of the water with great force, they spread these fins out like wings to glide through the air for up to several dozen metres. The ‘flying’ fish Exocoetoides minor, fossilized in Lebanese Cretaceous rock. This rock is alleged by evolutionists to be around 100 million years old. The fossils indicate that flying fish have always been flying fish. The Darwinist sees this incredible feat as a chance development. The belief is that once upon a time a fish like this, but with ordinary fins (and so, lacking the ability to glide) had offspring in which, by a chance genetic accident, the pectoral fins were just a few millimetres longer than normal. This was supposed to have given it a survival advantage, because when it was chased by predators, it could glide a fraction longer after leaping out of the water. The ones that could glide less well were more likely to be eaten. By this means, it is believed and taught, the flying fishes gradually evolved to their present situation, with very long pectoral fins. Fortunately for those who are sceptical of this evolutionary theory, there are fossils of such ‘flying’ fishes found in rocks, which enable us to put it to the test! The example shown in the photo here, which is from Cretaceous rock in Lebanon, shows that the ‘earliest’ known Exocoetidae had pectoral fins which were just as enlarged as those today. None are known showing the ‘part-enlarged’ fins which evolutionists would predict. There are other fossilized fish with equally enlarged pectoral fins in so-called Triassic rock—which, if one were to believe the evolutionary age dating scheme, would be even 100 million years earlier. This certainly adds up to bad news for believers in the evolutionary origin of the flying fishes. Another ‘living fossil’ tree by David Catchpoole, CMI–Australia25 December 2000 When the Wollemi Pine was discovered to be living in a remote canyon in Australia in 1994, it was nicknamed the ‘dinosaur tree’ as it had previously been known only from fossils ‘dated’ at around 150 million years old (Creation 17(2):13; 19(3):7; 23(1):6). Now another new species of Australian tree has been found further north—also previously unknown except for a fossilized nut found in 1875 and ‘dated’ at 15–20 million years old.Not yet given a botanical name (though its finder has dubbed it the ‘Nightcap Oak’), the newlydiscovered ‘living fossil’ species is apparently confined to a single stand of 23 adult trees. As with the Wollemi Pine, the exact location of these ‘primitive’ trees is being kept a closely guarded secret. Meanwhile, authorities are endeavouring to multiply large numbers of these trees from cuttings. As with all ‘living fossils’, the discovery of the Nightcap Oak defies evolutionists’ expectations—but is right in accord with the creation model.Firstly, there has been no evolutionary change (ruling out any notion of ‘primitive’ vs ‘modern’).Secondly, since the time of catastrophic fossilization (the Flood) was thousands of years ago, not millions— it is not surprising at all that some species previously thought to be extinct turn out to be still living. (The intervening layers of rock do not represent vast ages, but layers of sediment deposited rapidly during the Flood and its aftermath.)As with the Wollemi Pine, no doubt there will be those eager to capitalize on the mystical appeal of having a ‘prehistoric’ tree growing in one’s own garden. creationists need to be ready to remind people that these trees are very much from the present, not the past, as by definition, no living tree Salamanders are ‘living fossils’! by David Catchpoole Salamanders are still salamanders—why no change in (supposedly!) 160 million years? You’ve heard of ‘living fossils’? These are usually announced (often with much media fanfare) when something known only from the fossil record, long presumed extinct for millions of years, is unexpectedly found living somewhere. Examples of such living fossils include the coelacanth fish, the Wollemi pine tree (see Missing? or misinterpreted?), and the

‘Gladiator’ insect.1But the latest animal to be pronounced a living fossil is one that has been familiar to generations of people for as long as anyone can remember; namely, the salamander.So how can something long known to be living, suddenly be dubbed a ‘living fossil’? Salamanders have always been salamanders. The circumstances behind this, and the rationale for it, are described in a scientific paper in the journal Nature, by researchers who found fossils of juvenile and subadult salamanders in Inner Mongolia, China.2The gist of the story is that these fossil specimens are from the Cryptobranchidae salamander family, which includes the modern-day Asian giant salamander (Andrias) and the North American hellbender (Cryptobranchus). Until this recent discovery, the earliest cryptobranchid salamander fossils were dated by evolutionists to around 60 million years ago, but these salamander fossils from Inner Mongolia are said to predate them ‘by a remarkable 100 million years’.3 And, with an assigned age of 161 million years, ‘the new cryptobranchid shows extraordinary morphological similarity to its living relatives’, which ‘underscores the stasis within salamander anatomical evolution’. 2 Stasis means ‘a period or state of inactivity or equilibrium’.4 However, major evolution should have happened in 160 million years! That’s why the researchers conclude that cryptobranchid salamanders alive today ‘can be regarded as living fossils’.Now that’s strong evidence for the creation model—living things were created to reproduce ‘after their kind’, i.e. salamanders have always been salamanders, which explains why living and fossil forms are identical.One particular juvenile specimen shows such ‘remarkable preservation’ that even the amphibian’s eye, external gill filaments, tail keel and tail seam can be clearly seen. But what about the ‘millions-of-years’ date assigned to the fossils? So how did the researchers come up with a date of 161 million years? They explained: ‘The assessment of the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) age of the fossil beds is based on biostratigraphic analysis of insect and vertebrate assemblages.’ 2 This means that they assume that other fossils buried in these rock layers lived back then; therefore, so did the salamanders!From a creation perspective, we would say that these deposits were laid down during the global Flood, around 4,500 years ago. So the order in which organisms appear in the fossil record is not the order in which they supposedly evolved, but the order in which they were buried. And when we have a closer look at the actual evidence, it certainly fits a scenario of catastrophic burial.Consider this: the researchers didn’t find just one or two salamander fossils. Said one, ‘What excites us is that we’re not only seeing the earliest known salamanders in the fossil record, but we’ve thousands of them.’ Note: thousands! He continued, ‘There are whole bodies, impressions of soft tissue preserved, and stomach contents.’ 5 Note: soft tissue and stomach contents!Such fantastic preservation fits with having been smothered by fast-moving water-borne sediment. This buried them deeply enough that scavengers couldn’t eat them. Nor could they decay, because of restricted oxygen supply. One particular juvenile specimen described by the researchers shows such ‘remarkable preservation’ that even the amphibian’s eye, external gill filaments, tail keel and tail seam can be clearly seen. Take a look at the photo—you can even see the folds in its tail! And the stomach bulging with clams shows that the normal digestive processes were obviously arrested quickly— evidence of rapid burial and death. To summarize, while evolutionists misinterpret layers of sediment as evidence for millions of years, the evidence actually supports the creation model: Identical living and fossil forms—no evolution! ‘Remarkable preservation’—consistent with catastrophic burial in the Flood! So, salamanders now officially join a long list of ‘living fossils’. I wonder which animal (or plant) will be next? The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, p. 1816, 1998. Return to text. Amos, J., Earliest salamanders discovered, BBC News, , 31 March 2003. Return to text. Sensational Australian tree ... like ‘finding a live dinosaur’ Any time someone finds a ‘living fossil’ (a creature alive and practically unchanged from its fossil representatives) this supports the creation model by showing that things either have not evolved (despite the alleged vast ages separating the fossil from its living representative), or the vast ages are not real—or both. The discovery of a living dinosaur would, however, be of even more interest. Not only would it be a living fossil (like the hundreds documented by Dr Joachim Scheven, see Living Fossils), but its embarrassment to evolutionists would also be because no dinosaurs have been found in rocks which they date as ‘younger’ than about 65 million years. Hence they have confidently declared that the last dinosaur died out millions of years before man appeared. Professor Carrick Chambers, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, has said of the sensational discovery of a type of tree in Australia’s Blue Mountains (200 kilometres west of Sydney, in Wollemi National Park) that it was like finding a ‘live dinosaur’. This is because the tree, nicknamed the Wollemi pine, is known from fossils classed as so-called Jurassic age around 150 million years ago, but not from fossils in rocks of later periods. Found in a remote patch of rainforest in an extremely inaccessible gorge, the Wollemi pine is also perhaps the world’s rarest, with only 39 specimens. These range to more than 35 metres (115 feet) in height. One fallen tree is 38 metres long. The unusual tree has dense, waxy, fern-like, lime-green foliage. Its distinctive chocolate-coloured bark is knobbly, as if ‘coated in Coco Pops’. It bears cones, but nothing like other known cone-bearers. 1 Just as with the living coelacanth fish, this is a finding surprising to evolutionary science, but in accord with the creation model. ‘Jurassic’ fossils are either of creatures still known today, or of those which have since gone extinct. There has been no significant evolutionary change, and as the time of catastrophic fossilization was thousands of years ago, not millions, it is not surprising that some creatures previously thought to be extinct turn out still to be thriving. Because the intervening rock layers do not represent vast ages, it is also not surprising that a ‘Jurassic’ creature can be found alive with no fossils of it in

the ‘intervening’ rocks. Unfortunately, some newspapers have incorrectly referred to the Wollemi pine as a ‘missing link’ rather than a living fossil, giving the impression that it somehow supports evolution, when the opposite seems to be the case.2 Authorities are trying to propagate this ‘dinosaur tree’ from tissue culture, in the expectation that the mystical appeal of having ‘something from the dinosaur age’ growing in one’s garden will ensure that it is a hot seller. If this happens, creationists need to be ready to remind people that these trees are very much from the present, not the past, and that their very existence actually casts doubt on the whole concept of a ‘dinosaur age’. Sources: New Scientist, December 24-31, 1994 (p. 5). The Sydney Morning Herald, December 14, 1994 (pp.1, 8). The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), December 15, 1994 (p. 3). The Advertiser (Adelaide), December 15, 1994 (p. 30). Footnotes The tree appears to resemble very closely fossils of the Araucariodies genus (not known in post-Jurassic rocks) of the family Araucariaceae (which includes the hoop pine, bunya pine, Norfolk Island pine, Chilean monkey puzzle, and the New Zealand kauri).The New Scientist report states that botanists ‘have no idea where the bizarre-looking tree fits into the evolution of pine trees’. One palaeobotanist disputes that it is a living fossil, saying it is ‘unique’. We have seen from pictures that the leaves are virtually identical to the ‘Jurassic’ fossil type, but forthcoming comparisons with the fossil cones will be of interest. Correcting the headline: ‘Coelacanth’ yes; ‘Ancient’ no by David Catchpoole The 1938 discovery ‘ignited worldwide interest’, and this latest Indonesian catch of a ‘living fossil’ (as the article described it) was also notable because the fisherman managed to keep it alive in a pool for a further 17 hours—’an extraordinary survival time’ for such a deep-water fish, according to a local marine biologist. Other coelacanth specimens have been caught in recent years, including one in the same waters off North Sulawesi in 1998, but the 17 hours that this latest coelacanth remained alive after being caught surpasses that of specimens captured previously.Separating fact from fictionLet’s now separate out the eyewitness-observed facts in the article from the evolutionary storyline woven through the article. Eyewitness account: A fisherman caught a fish in Indonesia. The fish, a coelacanth, had formerly been known Evolutionary storytelling: The coelacanth is only from fossil specimens, and long presumed extinct. Butan ‘ancient’ species, which disappeared from in 1938, a coelacanth was found off Africa’s coast, showing the fossil record 65 million years ago, along the species was not extinct, and other specimens have beenwith the dinosaurs. Presumed to have been caught since then. This latest coelacanth specimen from extinct for that time, the discovery that they’re Indonesian waters remained alive for 17 hours after being still alive earns them the tag of ‘living fossil’. brought to the surface—a record to date. Now that we’ve removed the evolutionary storytelling, how are the eyewitness-sourced facts of the article ‘strategically very useful’ for creationists? Using fact to destroy fiction When reaching out to non-creationists who assume that evolution explains our origins, we can use news items like this to show how evolutionary ideas about millions of years just don’t ‘stack up’ with the evidence, in stark contrast to the creation model.Evolutionists assume that the fossil-bearing rock layers have been laid down over millions of years, hence when creatures like the coelacanth are absent from upper rock strata (which evolutionists say straddle ‘the last 65 million years’) they presume that means that the coelacanth must be extinct. Hence, a news item like this one complete with a photo of the fisherman in the pool with his live, freshly caught coelacanth, flies in the face of evolutionary interpretations of the ‘fossil record’.you could point to the photo of the fisherman holding his still-wriggling catch and say something like: ‘For a fish that evolutionists had supposed was extinct for 65 million years, you can’t get much fresher than that!’So, when witnessing to non-creationist, you could point to the photo of the fisherman holding his still-wriggling catch and say something like: ‘For a fish that evolutionists had supposed was extinct for 65 million years, you can’t get much fresher than that!’A global flood helps us to understand why we find so many beautifully preserved fossils, such as the coelacanth, right around the world— i.e. A great many fossils show evidence of having been buried quickly under water-borne sediment, thwarting scavengers and decay—hence the often exquisite degree of preservation. So the ‘fossil record’ is a sobering legacy of the global Flood of just 4,500 years ago (and its aftermath), and reflects the order of burial in that event, not the order of evolution (’appearance’) and extinction (’disappearance’) over millions or billions of years.Thus, when creatures such as the coelacanth turn up alive and well, it’s no surprise to creationists. But for evolutionists, the discovery of a ‘living fossil’ is often not only a surprise—why no evolution in 65 million years?—but also can completely overturn previous evolutionary notions about it. For example, evolutionists once said that amphibians evolved from a Rhipidistian fish, something like the coelacanth. It was explained that they used their fleshy, lobed fins for walking on the sea-floor before emerging on the land. As long as the coelacanth was ‘extinct’, such speculation seemed impossible to disprove. But with the discovery of a living coelacanth in 1938 and their subsequent observation, it was found that the fins were not used for walking but for deft maneuvering when swimming. Also, its soft parts were found to be totally fish-like, not transitional. It’s now known also that the coelacanth has some unique features. It gives birth to live young after about a year’s gestation, it has a small second tail to help its swimming, and a gland that detects electrical signals. (Surely evidence of having been designed.) Thus the finding of live coelacanths proved fatal to the idea that such were a ‘transitional form’ from which amphibians (and subsequently land animals and birds) are descended.2 Accordingly, the coelacanth is a nice little ‘gem’ of a witnessing tool, and the secular media’s fascination with such an ‘ancient’, ‘living fossil’ regularly opens up opportunities for alert people to use the ‘news of the day’ in their outreach. (See our past items on the coelacanth, including: Living fossil turns up—again, More living fossil coelacanths, Dinosaur fish lady dies, The Lazarus effect—Creation 29(2):52–55, 2007.)Of course, it is wise to be prepared for ‘questions arising’, e.g. the obvious one relating to the latest article is ‘But what about the dinosaurs? If the dinosaurs haven’t been extinct for 65 million years, where are they today?’To answer, you could point out: There are intriguing and persistent modern-day ‘sightings’ of unidentified creatures bearing strong resemblance to scientists’ reconstructions from fossils. See, e.g., A living dinosaur?, Dinosaurs living in Africa?, Mokele-mbembe: a living dinosaur? There are inscriptions and documented descriptions of ‘dragons’ and other dinosaur-like creatures in relatively recent history. See, e.g., Bishop Bell’s brass behemoths, Dinosaurs and dragons—stamping on the legends, Dragons: animals … not apparitions, Australia’s aborigines … did they see dinosaurs?, Settlers feared the bunyip, chapter 10: ‘Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other records’, in Bill Cooper’s book After the Flood.

‘Fresh’ dinosaur tissue that could not possibly be millions of years old has been discovered. See, e.g., Dinosaur bone blood cells found, Sensational dinosaur blood report!, Still soft and stretchy, Schweitzer’s dangerous discovery. When pointing this out to others, be ready for incredulity, as it can take a while for some people to get over their ‘shock’ at hearing of such things for the first time, and they may challenge you with a return question that comes out of the evolutionary paradigm: ‘But if dinosaurs and people lived together, surely we would find their fossils together?’ In cases like this, sometimes it can be more strategic to answer the question by asking a question—one that highlights the flawed assumptions behind the original question, e.g., ‘Coelacanths and whales live together—but why don’t we find their fossils together?’3 By thus prompting your questioner to think for himself (or herself), and reminding them again of your earlier words about the Global Flood, who knows where the conversation might proceed from there? If further questions arise, there’s plenty of free online material available from here to help you with providing answers. Living fossils and evolution, and does it matter if ‘junk DNA’ has functions? Published: 8 October 2011 (GMT+10)

Living fossils, which are everywhere in the fossil record, provide tough questions for evolution. This week’s correspondence deals with the validity of using ‘living fossils’ and functions in endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), which are commonly seen as ‘junk DNA’, as evidence against evolution. CMI’s Dr Don Batten and Lita Cosner respond. Travis S. from the United States writes: Can you answer this rebuttal I received from my brother? There is no written rule that says a lineage has to die out just because an offspring develops a beneficial mutation. The theory of evolution explains how species change over time, it doesn’t say that all species must change over time. As long as a species can survive in its environment and pass on its genetic information to its offspring, it can survive indefinitely. It doesn’t mean that the “living fossil” didn’t speciate, it just means those possible splits died out while the original lineage was able to always successfully reproduce even into today. How exactly does that not work with evolution? CMI’s Dr Don Batten responds: Dear Travis, Thanks for your comment, which I have also shared with Dr Werner. Dr Werner said in the article: “If a scientist believes in evolution and sees fossils that look like modern organisms at the dinosaur digs, he/she might invent an hypothesis to ‘explain’ living fossils this way: ‘Yes I believe that animals have changed greatly over time (evolution), but some animals and plants were so well adapted to the environment that they did not need to change. So I am not bothered at all by living fossils.’ This added hypothesis says that some animals did not evolve. But if a theory can be so flexible, adding hypotheses that predict the opposite of your main theory, one could never disprove the theory. The theory then becomes unsinkable, and an unsinkable theory is not science.” Combine the observations of stasis and the paucity of transitional fossils (there should be millions of them) and you have to ask, ‘Where is the fossil evidence for evolution?’ Furthermore, evolutionists do admit that living fossils (‘stasis’) are a big problem for evolution (see: ‘Living fossils’ enigma). They have no explanation. This is not about suggesting that something has to go extinct if something evolves from it; that is not the point. The point is the lack of change, which is a huge problem for evolution, which is about vast changes. High profile evolutionists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge admitted that stasis was a major problem for evolution. All organisms undergo mutations. There is no special mechanism that prevents mutations such that many organisms can remain the same for supposedly hundreds of millions of years. Evolution is about change, and putting “evolutionary” in front of “stasis”, does not explain the stasis in terms of evolution. See Evolutionary Stasis. This article remarks on an example of 425 million years of stasis: Remarkable stasis of a fossil ostracode with soft parts. In that time-frame, evolution by mutations and natural selection has supposedly changed some (unidentified) worm into all the species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals (including elephants and mice, and of course, us). At the same time all the land plants have supposedly evolved. Such is the claimed power of evolution to change things, and yet these ostracodes remained unchanged (and many others ‘dated’ even older). Note also that according to the evolutionary story, the predators for organisms have supposedly evolved and this means that the environment for virtually every organism changes. Furthermore, even the idea that the physical environment has remained stable contradicts evolutionary notions of global mass extinction events such as the Permian extinction (supposedly at 225 Ma) and the Cretaceous extinction (65 Ma), through both of which the ostracodes and many other examples of ‘living fossils’ remained unchanged. Combine the observations of stasis and the paucity of transitional fossils (there should be millions of them) and you have to ask, “Where is the fossil evidence for evolution?” I hope this helps. Don Batten Does it matter if endogenous retroviruses have functions? F.B. from the United States writes: Just a question about your article on ERVs in junk DNA. This article you guys posted, Large scale function for ‘endogenous retroviruses’, argues that ERVs are functional and thus not proof for evolution. The evolutionists I have encountered rejoin by saying the issue of functionality is unimportant because the real evidence for common ancestors is the fact that ERVs are inherited. Meaning they were passed along from common ancestor to primates and humans.

Just curious as to what you’re all’s take is on that point. Thanks, F.B. CMI’s Don Batten and Lita Cosner reply: Dear Mr B., As we’ve said about other DNA similarities, there are two possibilities for similarities: they could be inherited, or they could be the result of being programmed by the same Designer. If the latter were the case, we would expect that humans would share some of the same DNA programming as primates, because we’re more similar to them in body type than any other sort of animal. This is one of the cases where the interpretation of the evidence is so important; the evolutionists see it as evidence for common descent, but creationists see it as evidence for a common Designer . I suggest that the evolutionists you have encountered are misinformed, even from a point of view of evolutionary orthodoxy. If a protein in an ape or a human has to be an almost exact sequence for it to function at all (and there are a number like this), then the similarity in DNA sequence that codes for that protein cannot be held up as evidence for evolution as opposed to creation. Your evolutionists are assuming a priori what they are claiming to prove: that all DNA sequences in humans came from common ancestry with apes, so any similarity must be due to common ancestry (aka evolution). This is circular reasoning, which is not logical reasoning at all. Evolutionists held up the ERV argument as “proof” of evolution precisely because they considered the “ERV inserts” to be random insertions of “junk” (useless DNA sequences). Because such junk DNA would have no function to constrain the sequence and location, the occurrence of the same sequences in the same locations in humans and chimps would indeed be strong evidence for evolution, as against creation. Why would an intelligent designer place useless bits of DNA with the same sequence at the same location in both humans and chimps? This would not seem to make sense. the evidence is mounting that these ERVs are not junk but are in fact functional. The sequences and their locations are not accidental. So the ERV argument evaporates. However, the whole argument depends on the correctness of the assumption that the sequences have no function. If they have a function, then their sequence and location have to be what they are for them to have the function and they would now be evidence for design. Well, the evidence is mounting that these ERVs are not junk but are in fact functional. The sequences and their locations are not accidental. So the ERV argument evaporates. Other than the article you mention, there are several articles that deal with this whole topic on our website. Try No joy for junkies and the articles under the headings “What about the similarities between ape and human DNA? Does this support evolution?” and “How does genetics point toward design?” on our Genetics Questions and Answers page. You can also search for “junk DNA” in the search window on creation.com.

Do fossils give evidence of their quick formation during great catastrophe, such as Global Flood A ‘165 million year’ surprise by Andrew A. Snelling A ‘mysterious network’ of mud springs on the edge of the ‘market town’ of Wootton Bassett, near Swindon, Wiltshire, England, has yielded a remarkable surprise.1 A scientific investigation has concluded that ‘the phenomenon is unique to Britain and possibly the world’. The mud springs Hot, bubbling mud springs or volcanoes are found in New Zealand, Java and elsewhere, but these Wootton Bassett mud springs usually ooze slowly and are cold. However, in 1974 River Authority workmen were clearing the channel of a small stream in the area, known as Templar’s Firs, because it was obstructed by a mass of grey clay. 2 When they began to dig away the clay, grey liquid mud gushed into the channel from beneath tree roots and for a short while spouted a third of a metre (one foot) into the air at a rate of about eight litres per second.No one knows how long these mud springs have been there. According to the locals they have always been there, and cattle have fallen in and been lost! Consisting of three mounds each about 10 metres (almost 33 feet) long by five metres (16 feet) wide by one metre (about three feet) high, they normally look like huge ‘mud blisters’, with more or less liquid mud cores contained within living ‘skins’ created by the roots of rushes, sedges and other swampy vegetation, including shrubs and small trees. 2 The workmen in 1974 had obviously cut into the end of one of these mounds, partly deflating it. Since then the two most active ‘blisters’ have largely been deflated and flattened by visitors probing them with sticks.3In 1990 an ‘unofficial’ attempt was made to render the site ‘safe’.4 A contractor tipped many truckloads of quarry stone and rubble totalling at least 100 tonnes into the mud springs, only to see the heap sink out of sight within half an hour! Liquid mud spurted out of the ground and flowed for some 600 metres (about 2,000 feet) down the stream channel clogging it. Worried, the contractor brought in a tracked digger and found he could push the bucket down 6.7 metres (22 feet) into the spring without finding a bottom. ’Pristine fossils’ and evolutionary bias So why all the ‘excitement’ over some mud springs? Not only is there no explanation of the way the springs ooze pale, cold, grey mud onto and over the ground surface, but the springs are also ‘pumping up’ fossils that are supposed to be 165 million years old, including newly discovered species.1 In the words of Dr Neville Hollingworth, paleontologist with the Natural Environment Research Council in Swindon, who has investigated the springs, ‘They are like a fossil conveyor belt bringing up finds from clay layers below and then washing them out in a nearby stream.’1Over the years numerous fossils have been found in the adjacent stream, including the Jurassic ammonite Rhactorhynchia inconstans, characteristic of the socalled inconstans bed near the base of the Kimmeridge Clay, estimated as being only about 13 metres (almost 43 feet) below the surface at Templar’s Firs. 5 Fossils retrieved from the mud springs and being cataloged at the British Geological Survey office in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, include the remains of sea urchins, the teeth and bones of marine reptiles, and oysters ‘that once lived in the subtropical Jurassic seas that covered southern England.’1Some of these supposedly 165 million year old ammonites are previously unrecorded species, says Dr Hollingworth, and the real surprise is that ‘many still had shimmering mother-of-pearl shells’.1 According to Dr Hollingworth these ‘pristine fossils’ are ’the best preserved he has seen … . You just stand there [beside the mud springs] and up pops an ammonite. What makes the fossils so special is that they retain their original shells of aragonite [a mineral form of calcium carbonate] … The outsides also retain their iridescence …’6 And what is equally amazing is that, in the words of Dr Hollingworth, ‘There are the shells of bivalves which still have their original organic ligaments and yet they are millions of years old’!1Perhaps what is more amazing is the evolutionary, millions–of–years mindset that blinds hard–nosed, rational scientists from seeing what should otherwise be

obvious—such pristine ammonite fossils still with shimmering mother–of–pearl iridescence on their shells, and bivalves still with their original organic ligaments, can’t possibly be 165 million years old. Upon burial, organic materials are relentlessly attacked by bacteria, and even in seemingly sterile environments will automatically, of themselves, decompose to simpler substances in a very short time.7,8 Without the millions–of–years bias, these fossils would readily be recognized as victims of a comparatively recent event, for example, the global devastation of Global Flood only about 4,500 years ago. No explanation Even with Dr Hollingworth’s identification of fossils from the Oxford Clay, 3 which underlies the Kimmeridge Clay and Corallian Beds, scientists such as Roger Bristow of the British Geological Survey office in Exeter still don’t know what caused the mud springs.1 English Nature, the Government’s wildlife advisory body which also has responsibility for geological sites, has requested research be done.The difficulties the scientists involved face include coming up with a driving mechanism, and unravelling why the mud particles do not settle out but remain in suspension. 1 They suspect some kind of naturally–occurring chemical is being discharged from deep within the Kimmeridge and Oxford Clays, where some think the springs arise from a depth of between 30 and 40 metres (100 and 130 feet). So Ian Gale, a hydrogeologist at the Institute of Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, is investigating the water chemistry. 9 Clearly an artesian water source is involved.10 Alternately, perhaps a feeder conduit cuts through the Oxford Clay, Corallian Beds and Kimmeridge Clay strata, rising from a depth of at least 100 metres (330 feet). 3 The mud’s temperature shows no sign of a thermal origin, but there are signs of bacteria in the mud, and also chlorine gas. 11 But why mud instead of water? Does something agitate the underground water/clay interface so as to cause such fine mixing?10 Conclusion Research may yet unravel these mysteries. But it will not remove the evolutionary bias that prevents scientists from seeing the obvious. The pristine fossils disgorged by these mud springs, still with either their original external iridescence or their original organic ligaments, can’t be 165 million years old! Both the fossils and the strata that entombed them must only be recent. They are best explained as testimony to the global watery cataclysm about 4,500 years ago.

For copyright reasons we are unable to display here the original images published in Creation magazine.There is an exquisitely preserved fossil of an extinct marine reptile called an ichthyosaur. The mother ichthyosaur is shown having almost completed giving birth to a live infant—the beak of the young reptile is still inside mother's birth canal.Most members of the public still think, as a result of years of conditioning, that the formation of fossils is somehow associated with long time-spans. When one finds a fossil of an isolated tooth or shell, for example, it is not possible to say how quickly or slowly it formed. However, there are countless examples of fossils concerning which it is obvious that long time-spans could not have been involved. For instance, fossils which have features so beautifully preserved that they must have been buried and hardened before they could be damaged by scavengers or decay.In this spectacular case, not only is the fossil exquisitely preserved, but the fact that mother and infant are 'trapped' in a not-yet-completed birth process makes it profoundly clear that both were rapidly overwhelmed by catastrophic burial, consistent with the world flood. It is, of course, not feasible that mother just lay on the bottom of the ocean floor giving birth for thousands of years while being slowly covered up by accumulating sediments!Unlike many other reptiles, ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young. Another photo shows another fossilised mother ichthyosaur with several unborn in her abdomen, and with what appears to be a newborn juvenile a short distance away (perhaps her own). Again, the beautiful state of preservation defies the idea that long time-spans were involved in the formation of this fossil. Dead whales: telling tales? How did over 300 whales, porpoises, turtles, seals, fish, and land animals such as ground sloths and penguins end up being catastrophically buried together? by Michael Oard ‘We knew it was a great find,’ said paleontologist Leonard Brand about the fossil whales he saw in Peru in 1999, 350 km (200 miles) south of Lima, the capital. Eagerly he organized a team of creationist research scientists. They recently published their findings in the secular journalGeology.1,2,3Overall, they found 346 whales within a 1.5-km2 (370-acre) area, buried in an 80-m (260-ft) thick layer of sedimentary rock called diatomite. This layer is part of the Pisco Formation, which varies in thickness from 200–1,000 m (650–3,300 ft).Diatomite is sedimentary rock containing a high percentage of fossil diatoms—small single-celled algae, which commonly live near the ocean surface. The layer of diatomite in Peru has 5 to

10% clay and abundant volcanic ash.Today, when diatoms die, their silica skeletons accumulate on the ocean floor. One gram (0.035 oz.) of diatomite may contain up to 400 million skeletons. 4 Diatomite sediment normally accumulates slowly— only a few centimetres per thousand years. 1 Even where the rate is higher, such as in some shallow-water areas, accumulation is still slow. For example, in the fjords of British Columbia, diatoms and clay accumulate at 2.5–5.0 mm (0.1– 0.2 inches) per year.2Also today, when a whale carcass sinks to the bottom of the ocean, many kinds of scavengers quickly attack and colonize it. And in their quest for food, some scavengers churn up the adjacent sediments. 5However, in Peru, the fossilized whales and diatoms were well preserved and the whale skeletons were mostly intact. There was no evidence of normal decay, such as wormholes, barnacle encrustations or general degradation. Neither was there any sign that organisms had churned up the adjacent sediment.The whale skeletons were partially mineralized, and, remarkably, baleen from five whales was preserved. Baleen forms the comb-like structure in the whale’s mouth that filters its food. This is remarkable because it is softer than bone—the same composition as our human fingernails.There is no doubt that these well-preserved whales, entombed in diatomite, indicate rapid burial. After eliminating other possibilities, Brand and his coauthors concluded: ‘The most viable explanation for whale preservation seems to be rapid burial, fast enough to cover whales 5–13 m [16–42 ft] long and approximately 50 cm [20 in] thick within a few weeks or months, to account for whales with well-preserved bones and some soft tissues.’1These burial times are probably a maximum, based on a comparison with modern environments. It could have been even faster than a few weeks.Remarkably, these rapidly buried fossil whales contradict one of the ruling principles of modern geology, uniformitarianism—i.e. rocks formed slowly in the past similar to what we observe in the present. Interpreted according to that principle, the whales were buried over a period of two million years about 10 million years ago. However, the fact that 80 m of sediment buried 346 whales within months or weeks (or less) creates a problem for those who believe in millions of years. Where do they put the time? There is nowhere for it in the rocks.The whale graveyard fits much more comfortably with the creation timescale of thousands of years.So, instead of uniformitarianism, we adopt the creation framework. But that raises another question. Did a Global Flood bury these whales or was it a local catastrophe after the Flood?From the report in Geology, we know that there were strong water currents in the region, since there are abundant, small channels that have been scoured out and refilled with sediment in the Pisco Formation. There was also time for sharks to scavenge, since the scientists found shark teeth with the skeletons. In fact, they noticed some whale bones embedded with the tips of shark teeth. The team found other vertebrates in the deposit besides sharks and whales. These included marine animals such as fish, turtles, seals and porpoises, and land animals such as ground sloths and penguins.Brand and his team favour a post-Flood shallow marine environment. They suggest the whales and marine vertebrates died when a massive bloom (multiplication) of diatoms, thickened by lateral water currents, poisoned the water.6 There is no evidence that the whales beached. Ash from volcanic eruptions could have provided the nutrients for a diatom population explosion. However, the existence of land vertebrates, especially the ground sloths, seems to be a problem here. A similar post-Flood scenario was applied to a whale found in diatomite at Lompoc, California. 7On the other hand, the whales may have been buried late in the Flood.8 Rapid deposition of 80 m of diatomite filled with skeletons of marine and land animals seems more like a Flood signature. Ground sloths are associated with the post-Flood Ice Age9 but they also lived before the Flood. The diatomite and whales could have accumulated by a comparable flood process as suggested for the chalk in southern England. 10 Chalk is similar to diatomite in that it consists of shells of countless microorganisms (but calcium carbonate instead of silica).To distinguish between the Flood and post-Flood possibilities, we would need more information on the deposit.Either way, the 346 fossil whales buried in thick, muddy, diatomaceous sediment graphically illustrate the accuracy of the creation model .

Deluge disaster Amazing Australian plesiosaur preservation by Tas Walker 2Location of Richmond, Queensland, where plesiosaur fossils were found.

Plesiosaur facts Plesiosaur means ‘near reptiles’: a group of marine reptiles which were air-breathing, much like whales. ‘The Monster of Aramberri’: this is the nickname given to a giant plesiosaur fossil found in Mexico in 2002 by Mexican and German researchers. It is thought to be a type of pliosaur known as Liopleurodon ferox. The BBC program Walking with Dinosaurs described the creature as being 25 metres (65–70 ft) long and weighing 150 tons. Considerable dispute exists, however, over the size and species of the fossil bones. Mistaken identity: mistaken reports continue to circulate about a Japanese trawler which was said to have hauled aboard a plesiosaur carcass in 1977. The body was more likely, however, to have been that of a basking shark, which typically decays to form what some mistake to be a plesiosaur because of its shape (see Live plesiosaurs: weighing the evidence).

Paleontologists Mary Wade and Cathy Mobbs excavating the Richmond plesiosaur. This part of Queensland is among the richest fossil-bearing areas in the world and a number extremely well-preserved marine reptiles have been discovered. Plesiosaur remains have been found on all continents including Antarctica, with dozens coming from the Oxford Clay of England.Cattleman Ian Ievers, in 1989, went looking for fossils on Marathon Station, the family cattle property near Richmond in northwest Queensland, Australia.1,2 His search was rewarded when he found some bones sticking out of a gully. There was a skull with a slender snout, like a crocodile’s, and some vertebrae. The rest of the skeleton disappeared into the bank.When the paleontologists at Queensland Museum in Brisbane heard of the discovery, they wasted no time organizing a recovery team. It could have been disastrous if the gully eroded in the coming wet season. Even cattle sliding down the slope could have damaged the find.Usually, fossil remains are recovered only after a great effort, but this creature was buried in fairly loose sediment, mostly shell-grit. After just 30 minutes of digging, the team could see that the skeleton was of a plesiosaur. It turned out to be of a kind not previously known in Australia. It took a further four days for the team, with help from Ian, his brother Rob and other members of the family, to excavate the creature completely.Plesiosaurs were air-breathing marine reptiles with a distinct neck, a prominent head and a round body. They are believed to be extinct. The creatures thrust themselves through the water with their four flippers and steered with their tail. The specimen buried on Marathon Station was 4.3 metres (14 ft) from the end of its nose to the tip of its tail.When the team removed the overlying sediment, they found the animal flat on its back with its flippers splayed out. Remarkably, the bones were not a jumbled heap or scattered around. Rather, every bone was individually fossilized, lying untouched in the exact place where the animal was deposited. Only a few bones from one paddle were missing.Rob Ievers said, ‘It looked just like the skeleton of an animal that had died yesterday or the year before.’ Excavation from the loose sediment was relatively easy. The team dug out the flippers, tail, neck and body as separate blocks, held together with plaster and bandages.3 They carefully labelled the skeleton so it could be reassembled at the museum.But how could the plesiosaur have been preserved so perfectly? The whole animal, large as it was, must have been covered in sediment quickly, before it had time to decompose and fall apart. Otherwise, the bones would have been scattered over the ocean bottom. Indeed, the sediment must have buried the animal so quickly that few other marine animals had a chance to scavenge the body. That could mean it was buried within hours.Properties in the area are famous for fossils. It was not surprising that Ian, the family fossil enthusiast, soon reported another find just 8 km away. This time it was a land animal—an ankylosaur called Minmi about 3 m (10 ft) long. These had a rough armour-plated skin with layers of tiny bones (ossicles). The specimen was well preserved and even the wrinkles in the skin could be ‘mapped’ from the ossicles.Indeed, the whole of inland Queensland is scattered with animal remains that are in extraordinarily good condition. The area has produced so many skeletons that tourist promoters call it the ‘fossil triangle’. In 1930, paleontologists retrieved a well-preserved plesiosaur from another cattle station near Richmond. It was a kronosaur and the largest marine reptile found anywhere in the world at the time. Its skull alone was over 3 m (10 ft) long and its total length was 13 m (43 ft). In Hughenden, another town in the area, tourists can view the skeleton of a huge dinosaur in a big iron shed. The town has also erected a life-size replica of the animal in the main street, where passing traffic can’t help but see it. All these animals, so incredibly preserved, testify to catastrophic conditions that buried them suddenly. Land animals and marine animals have been overwhelmed and quickly covered in sediment. Whatever it was that caused this, Thought to be one of the largest known it was huge, and it affected both the oceans and the land. marine predators in the world is the If there really was a global Flood,, then what would we expect to find? We would Kronosaurus—a type of plesiosaur with expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all massive jaws and teeth and believed to over the earth. The fossilized land and sea animals all over Queensland are be extinct. The world’s most complete exactly what we would expect from the global Flood. 4 Their bones are an specimen, known as Kronosaurus outstanding testimony to the reality of that event. queenslandicus, was discovered in Nowadays, highways bring travellers into the remote areas of Australia, to the 1932 in outback Queensland, Australia. museums that display these fossils. Its fossilized remains stretch 12.8 m (42 ft) and are housed in the Harvard Ancient Australia Museum, USA. ‘Minmi’ is the name given to the fossil bones of an Ankylosaurus, also found in western Queensland and now on display in the Richmond museum. This armoured dinosaur was covered with bony plates, many of which are still visible on this extraordinarily well-preserved specimen. Much of Western Queensland was once an inland sea, according to evolutionists; however, the abundance of both marine and terrestrial fossils is entirely consistent with what we would expect to find according to the Global Flood.

Fast fossils

Billions of well-preserved fossil fish clash with popular belief. by Carl Wieland For most people, the two words ‘fast fossils’ don’t seem to go together. Say ‘fossils’, and they think ‘slow and gradual processes; millions of years’. Unfortunately, even though many leading evolutionists are now conceding that catastrophic, rapid processes are needed to explain many fossils, the average person is still left with this deeply-ingrained belief.So, we would expect that most fossils were formed by rapid processes. What does the evidence show?The fish fossil shown here [Ed. note: Please see Creation 19(4):24–25, September 1997; due to copyright restrictions.] is a wonderfully preserved specimen. Though not all are as beautifully preserved as this one, there are literally billions of fish fossils in rocks around the world, so well preserved that they still show details such as scales, fin structure, etc. In fact, most people would have seen such fossil fish at one time or another.1What do these billions of well-preserved fossils fit—the common belief in slow and gradual processes, or implications of fast burial?The easiest way to answer this is to imagine what happens to a fish when it dies. After (for most) floating on the surface while being attacked by various scavengers, what is left (if anything) sinks to the bottom. Here, rather than lying quietly for thousands of years being gradually covered up by slowly settling sediment, it will be attacked further by fish, crabs, and many other creatures.Bacterial attack will also contribute to the process of disintegration. Even in a sterile, low oxygen environment, the flesh rapidly becomes soggy and falls apart, 2 leaving no trace of the beautiful structures which the fossil illustrated, for example, shows. That is why, when snorkelling on the sea floor, one does not see thousands of dead fish resting quietly on the ocean bottom in part-way stages of fossilization!To preserve such features, it is obvious that the creature needs to be buried quickly. Not just that, but the enclosing sediment needs to harden fairly quickly. If it stayed soft and unconsolidated for years, the fact that oxygen, moisture and bacteria could easily access the carcass means that one would very quickly have a disintegrated, stinking mess. To try to imitate how such features as scales and fins can possibly be preserved, the best experimental analogy would be to bury a fish rapidly in wet cement!How would hordes of fish be buried during the Flood? The upheavals necessarily associated with a year-long global Flood would generate ideal conditions for rapid sedimentation. Today, for example, localized earthquakes can trigger large submarine avalanches (called ‘turbidity currents’) which have been clocked as carrying millions of tonnes of sediment at over 50 kph (30 mph) underwater.3The silent testimony of the billions of well-preserved fossil fish around the world is, by the most obvious common sense, to rapid processes—rapid burial and rapid hardening (of the encasing sediment). Sadly, the mindset of our culture is such that most people miss the obvious, and continue to think ‘slow and gradual’ when they see fossils—even beautifully preserved ones like this. Folded ferns Simple, logical observation shows how ‘slow and gradual’ belief systems fail. 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-todate ones available by searching creation.com. The fossil fern fronds shown in Figure 1 can lead us to conclusions which are so straightforward that they are easily grasped by young children, yet they fly in the face of beliefs held by the majority of the most highly educated people in the world. The specimen is from the roof of a coal seam of the ‘Piesberg’, near Osnabrück in Germany. Evolutionists and others committed to long-age belief systems insist that coal is the result of the gradual accumulation of plant material over long time periods. This is in direct opposition to the creation model. Geological evidences are showing a global Flood catastrophe which would have suddenly and rapidly buried huge quantities of vegetation, thus accounting for the great coal seams. Fossil ferns such as these are often found in association with coal seams. Long-age believers routinely try to extrapolate present-day processes to explain the past. Therefore, according to them, such fossil ferns were not buried catastrophically, but were originally part of the litter of dead leaves from an ancient forest floor. However, the evidence is strongly opposed to this, as we shall see. For a start, as any owner of a backyard compost heap knows, ferns which are buried will naturally turn back into soil; there is no sign anywhere on earth today of dead ferns on forest floors retaining their shape for thousands and millions of years. Fossil ferns such as those shown have therefore somehow bypassed the normal processes of decomposition. Instead, they have retained their shape and turned into mineral matter (in this case a clay mineral)—that is, ‘fossilized’. Sudden live burial More significantly, compare the fossil ferns shown in Figure 1 with those in your own experience which have recently died and dropped to the ground. As pictured in Figure 3, such ferns will have their pinnules (the leafy parts coming out on either side of the midrib) crumpled and rolled. This is quite unlike the fossil ferns in Figure 1. The creationists explanation for coal would predict that there would be both dead and living fern fronds (mostly the latter) buried suddenly. The fossil ferns in Figure 1 thus show all the evidence of having been fresh, living ferns which were buried suddenly, in a load of mineral-laden sediment, before their pinnules crumpled.Finally, look at the main one of these fossil fern fronds in Figure 1, the one which is curved and bent over. Compare it to the photo of the living fern shown in Figure 2. Even a small child would be able to see that the living fern frond shown in this photo didn’t grow in that position; it has been bent over by force, and if it were let go, it would instantly straighten out. Even if one could not see the hands holding it, it would still be obvious that it is being restrained in an unnatural position. This is because the pinnules normally come out from the midline parallel to each other. Yet in this fern frond the upper ones diverge unnaturally away from each other, while the bottom ones do the opposite, to the extent of overlapping. Exactly the same thing is seen in the bent fossil fern frond.The conclusion is

obvious; this now-fossilized frond was buried and deformed into its unnatural curvature while living and fresh, supple enough to bend smoothly without breaking. It then remained permanently ‘pinned down’ by the weight of sediment, which prevented it from snapping back.

Fossil squid ink that still writes! by Carl Wieland Published: 15 September 2009(GMT+10) British scientists have found thousands of fossils at a site at Christian Malford, Wiltshire, UK, which often have such exquisitely preserved features that it can hardly be denied that their burial was sudden. 1 Under long-age convention, the rock in which the fossils are found, called the Oxford clay, is labelled as from the “Jurassic period”.The site has actually been known about since the Victorian era, and was “one of the first in the world to yield fossils of fragile muscle and stomach tissue.” 2 Its exact location was lost. Dr Phil Wilby, of the British Geological Survey, is leader of the team that excavated the fossils after having in 2008 rediscovered the site.The fossil that has been making headlines is the ink sac of an extinct type of squid, Belemnotheutis antiquus. Separated from the animal’s body, the ink-filled sac was preserved intact. The now-dry and solidified ink within it was nevertheless “of exactly the same structure as that of today’s version [of squid]” and when “ground up with an ammonia solution,” the resultant inky fluid was used to draw a picture of the fossil animal and write its Latin name underneath.2,3 Wilby was quoted as calling it the “Medusa effect”, after the creature in Greek mythology whose gaze turned people instantly into stone. He said, “Specimens turn to stone within a matter of days, before the soft parts can be eaten away.” 2 Obviously, not only would the chemical conditions have to be just right, but the creatures would have to be rapidly buried. His research will focus on trying to work out “why so many creatures perished in the area and how some have been so well-preserved they look as if they have only just died.”2 They can be dissected as if they are living animals, you can see the muscle fibres and cells.—Dr Phil Wilby, British Geological Survey Of course, the worldwide Flood is an obvious explanation that keeps on being overlooked. Also overlooked is the fact that this ink is supposed to be c.150 million years old. Even when isolated in perfect conditions, the idea that the structure would remain intact for such vast time periods is a very big stretch indeed. Chemical structures “fall apart” all by themselves over time due to the randomizing effects of molecular motion.Yet these fossilized squid are so well-preserved that Wilby himself observed: “They can be dissected as if they are living animals, you can see the muscle fibres and cells.” 3One would surely think that the researchers might have stopped to question the alleged age of what they were seeing with their own eyes. It was certainly credulity-stretching, as Dr Wilby admitted: “It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimensions, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old.” 3Interestingly, in 1997, Creation magazine featured an article on mud springs, also in Wiltshire, UK (near the town of Wootton Bassett, near Swindon)4—also disgorging Jurassic fossils, and from the same Oxford clay. A local palaeontologist described the phenomenon as being “like a fossil conveyor belt bringing up finds from clay layers below and then washing them out in a nearby stream”. That case, too, featured amazing preservation, with shells made of their original constituents (aragonite 5), and with their original iridescence, even “shimmering mother-of-pearl”. And in the astonished words of the same fossil expert, “There are the shells of bivalves which still have their original organic ligaments and yet they are millions of years old’!” It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimensions, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old.—Dr Phil Wilby Clearly, a large number of animals were killed and buried very suddenly under conditions consistent with those that a world Flood could produce in some areas. In fact, even fossils that are much less preserved require rapid (though not necessarily as rapid as this) burial. They cannot wait for years and years to be gradually covered up by sediment, or else even their bones would have disintegrated/dislocated much more than what is found.When one finds animal remains like original shell ligaments, and ink ‘powder’ that can still be reconstituted into usable ink, it reminds one of the equally astonishing recent finds of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils. These have now more than once been strongly confirmed. 6 There was no expectation at all that protein structures can last for millions of years—in fact, known chemistry and thermodynamics indicate that this should not happen. The “extended interview” about this matter with dinosaur fossil expert Phil Currie on CMI’s Darwin film DVD The Voyage that Shook the World is one not to be missed. The evidence at face value suggests a far smaller time, thousands of years at the very most, since these fossils were entombed. Hundreds of jellyfish fossils! by David Catchpoole Evolutionary stories The journal Geology carried the story our article comments on. Many observations at this fossil site better support the idea of large-scale flooding and fast sediment build-up. However, in the original article, a ‘slow and gradual’ evolutionary story is offered instead—because it fits with the current reigning evolutionary paradigm?What a storm it must have been! News reports said that hundreds of giant jellyfish once lived about 500 million years ago, but were ‘stranded by a

freakish tide or storm’ on an ancient beach. Sand later buried them, forming fossils.1,2 With many specimens measuring over 50 cm (20 in) across, these are the biggest fossil jellyfish known.Found in a Wisconsin sandstone quarry, it must have been an extraordinary set of circumstances that preserved them, geologists say, for fossilized impressions of jellyfish, which have no skeleton or other hard parts, are extremely uncommon.3 “To preserve a jellyfish, that’s hard, because it has no hard parts. Something is there we don’t understand.”— evolutionary paleontologist James Hagadorn ‘Preservation of a soft-bodied organism is incredibly rare, but a whole deposit of them is like finding your own vein of gold’, said James Hagadorn, one of the paleontologists who reported the find. 1,4 Also remarkable is that the rock was sandstone (i.e. the jellyfish were buried in sand which later ‘cemented’ into rock), rather than fine-grained rock like mudstone. In sand, buried jellyfish quickly break down because oxygen readily filters through interconnected air spaces between sand grains, allowing rapid decay. But in fine-grained settings, Dr Hagadorn and his colleagues explain that ‘catastrophic burial and stagnation’ inhibit decay; therefore, jellyfish are more readily preserved. ‘You never get soft bodied preservation in that kind of coarse grain size’, Hagadorn says excitedly.5 ‘When people find a T-rex, that doesn’t excite me that much, because a Trex has bones and teeth—really easy to fossilize. But to preserve a jellyfish, that’s hard, because it has no hard parts. Something is there we don’t understand.’ The fossils that shouldn’t be there Paleontologist Dr James Hagadorn displays fossilized jellyfish in rock taken from a sandstone quarry in Wisconsin, USA. He suspects that ‘hordes of other fossilized jellies’ await discovery worldwide.The ‘storm tide’ scenario proposed by James Hagadorn and his colleagues seems at first to explain some of the puzzle. They point out that when jellyfish are stranded on beaches today, they quickly fall prey to scavenging predators such as birds and beachdwelling crustaceans. So why didn’t scavengers rip into these stranded jellyfish? The answer, say the paleontologists, is that these fossils are over half a billion years old, i.e. they lived before land animals and birds had evolved. New Scientist explained, ‘Because there were not any birds back then, the carcasses remained stranded until they were buried by subsequent storms.’ 6 So their preservation is attributed to the absence of scavengers and that the jellyfish were buried soon after they were stranded. But note that this ‘explanation’ for the absence of scavengers assumes that evolution is demonstrated fact—which it most certainly isn’t. And these jellyfish fossils certainly don’t support the idea of burial over millions of years either. The evidence doesn’t fit A scanned copy (right) of Hagadorn et al.’s Figure 3 on page 149 of Geology journal, February 2002,4,7 gives us a closer look at the evidence and we can determine how well their interpretation fits. The figures reveal a number of puzzles which the ‘multiple storm tide’ scenario does not satisfactorily explain: The presence of beautifully-preserved ripples, so obviously evident in photographs A–F, is a major difficulty for the jellyfish-stranded-by-ebbing-tide story. Sand ripples are formed by flowing water, but when the tide recedes, the swash and backwash of waves on the beach completely obliterates any sand ripples formed earlier. Yet the Hagadorn et al. theory proposes that there were (a) multiple tidal cycles (vertical range approx. 1–2 m (3–6 ft)) before the jellyfish were buried under layers of sediment deposited each time the tide returned, and (b) waves (generated by wind). Clearly, the story doesn’t fit the evidence.The paleontologists conclude that the ‘multiple generations of ripples’ (photo C) in the first few layers of sediment in and around jellyfish impressions, together with the absence of ripples within the central area of each impression (B–G), indicates that jellyfish carcasses remained intact through multiple tidal cycles. But today, whenever an ebbing tide leaves stranded jellyfish exposed to drying air and sun, the carcasses shrink and the stomach cavity collapses—i.e. today’s jellyfish carcasses do not remain ‘intact’ as the fossil jellyfish did. To try to explain this puzzle, the paleontologists suggest that perhaps the fossil jellyfish carcasses reabsorbed water (thus expanding back to their original size) each time the tide returned. But this is really stretching the ‘multiple tides’ story to try to make it fit the evidence. Instead, the evidence rather seems to show that the fossilized jellyfish were under water continuously as they were being buried under layers of sediment. What a storm that must have been! A major problem for the paleontologists’ scenario is that, today, when masses of jellyfish are stranded by a storm etc., they commonly pump their bells to try to escape. But the tell-tale ‘concave rings’ of sediment resulting from the bell contractions of dying jellyfish, as seen on beaches today, are absent in nearly all these fossil impressions. It would seem that the paleontologists are correct to surmise that most of the jellyfish were dead or didn’t pulse, but their ‘beach stranding’ scenario does not explain why.In the quarry, the paleontologists found that ‘at least seven flat-lying planar bed surfaces contain hundreds of medusae [jellyfish] impressions’ (our emphasis). And the depth of these fossil-bearing bands of sediment from the lowest jellyfish fossil layer to the highest was several metres (about 12 ft). What a storm that must have been! Actually, Hagadorn et al. invoke ‘severe tropical storms’ (implying more than one storm) as the cause of jellyfish stranding, but their paper avoids any mention of a time period. (In newspaper reports though, Hagadorn is reported to have said that the fossilized jellyfish were ‘encased in about 12 vertical feet of rock representing a span of time up to 1 million

years’.2) Was it one storm every hundred thousand years or so, for a million years? If the storm tide scenario cannot satisfactorily explain the jellyfish fossils in one of the sediment beds, how much more difficult would it be to explain seven? And in each case, the fossils have been beautifully preserved. A better alternative: smothered in the Flood! The evidence makes much more sense from a GlobalFlood perspective: The preservation of the sand ripples is easily explained. Being at depth rather than in a tidal zone, waves did not erode the sand ripples. Also, ripples can only be preserved when covered by a different type of sediment—in this case, the ripples in coarse sand were overlain by a finer silty sand and red oxidized mud.Such a starkly different type of sediment is much more likely to have been carried and deposited by swirling floodwaters than by a returning tide in a beach environment.The multiple layers of ripples (and the variation in their alignment/orientation between layers) reflect their having been laid down by sediment-laden currents of varying strength (thus the variation in particle sizes between layers).This is much easier to imagine with swirling, surging floodwaters flowing over the continents than within the confines of a beach environment over millions of years.The likely reason why ‘The majority of jellyfish were dead or did not pulse, …’ is that they were overcome quickly by sediment-laden water, smothered under layer-upon-layer of sand and silt. So most had no chance to exhibit the usual beach-stranding ‘escape behaviour’ (hence the absence of concave sediment rings). Interestingly, Hagadorn et al. suggest that the asymmetrical steepened edges of the convex ring in photo G ‘perhaps reflect’ an effort to escape stranding. But might this actually reflect the jellyfish’s attempt to escape from being buried (by an underwater avalanche of silt) rather than from being stranded on a beach?The evidence indicating that the jellyfish did not dry out fits better with their being buried while continuously under water.The absence of any evidence of scavenging was not due to beach-dwelling scavengers having not yet evolved, but to the jellyfish having been covered by sediment quickly.The lack of any evidence of burrowing by worms etc. in the sediment shows that these layers were buried quickly underneath the overlying layers of sediment—consistent with the global Flood. Probably many more jellyfish impressions remain concealed within the quarry rocks. The seven sediment bands of jellyfish fossils, across several metres (about 12 ft) of layers, are readily explained by the Global Flood. (And remember that seven beds are all that we can see—probably many more jellyfish impressions remain concealed within the quarry rocks.)Jellyfish are essentially floaters, at the mercy of strong currents, and perhaps in the fastmoving, sediment-carrying waters of the Flood ,the bell-pumping action of jellyfish would have pumped silt/sand/mud into their stomachs and internal cavities, and as their sediment load increased, they would have progressively sunk to the sea bed, being quickly buried as layers of sediment built up. This also seems to fit with the carcasses all facing the same direction when they were buried, much better than does the Hagadorn et al. ‘storm tide’ scenario. So, the evidence fits with the Gobal Flood, not with Dr Hagadorn’s storm tide.8 As one science commentator said of stranded jellyfish: ‘Waves and sand destroy their bodies before they can be covered in sediment— essential for the slow process of fossilization.’ 9But the long-age uniformitarian idea that the fossils are formed by sediments slowly covering up dead animals does not describe how these jellyfish fossils could have been preserved.No wonder Charles Darwin, with his uniformitarian thinking, wrote, ‘No organism wholly soft can be preserved.’10With all these hundreds of jellyfish fossils in a Wisconsin quarry, I wonder what Darwin would say now? Lily of the sea A common fossil tells a story of Global Flood. The beautifully preserved fossil shown (available in Creation magazine) is of a crinoid, or sea-lily. Fossil crinoids are very widespread, and well known. Most living crinoids do not have a stem, and are known as the feather-stars. Those with a stem are known as sea-lilies. They are like a feathery starfish perched on top of a stem, which floats above a holdfast (or ‘root’) attached to, e.g., a rock surface.1 The stem (or stalk) of fossil crinoids consisted of a columnar stack of disks (or columnals). Such columnals, parts of a once-living crinoid, are extremely common fossils (see photo, right).Compared to what we find in the fossil record, today’s crinoids are fewer in number, significance and variety. However, when we look at living crinoids, something interesting emerges. After death, the head of the creature almost immediately disintegrates. That is why crinoid fossils are mostly found as fragments. Where one finds a crinoid as beautifully preserved as the one shown, it indicates very rapid burial of the live creature. A crinoid which died and then lay on the ocean floor waiting to be slowly covered would not look like this.In other places, such as the Redwall Limestone of the Grand Canyon, many crinoid heads are found ‘in a matrix of broken and sorted columnals. Rapid burial by an ocean current is indicated, because the same water that sorted the columnals also must have buried the Crinoid fossils, though common, can crinoid heads before decomposition.’2 Such rock layers containing result in attractive specimens like the catastrophically deposited crinoids are often massive in extent.In a complex one pictured here. They usually consist worldwide watery cataclysm such as Global Flood, a fundamental expectation only of the leftover columnals (disks) (apart from billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all from the stem of the sea-lily. over the earth) is that most fossils would be of marine creatures. Only a very small proportion of land creatures would be covered by sediment to form fossils—the rest would rot and disintegrate. This superbly preserved fossil of a delicate sea-lily is just one of the many instances in which fossils give testimony to fast processes, not millions of years of slow burial.

Fast Fossils What other evidence shows that fossils don’t take long periods of time to form The Amazing Stone Bears of Yorkshire

by Monty White Summary When Vet author James Herriot wrote about life in Yorkshire last century, he probably had no idea that this area of England held a fascinating key to unlocking one of the myths of evolution’s long-age ideas. I was surprised to read recently that small teddy bears placed under a waterfall in Yorkshire ‘turned to stone’ in three to five months. After all, I had been told by my geology lecturers at university that stalactites and stalagmites take many thousands of years to form, so how could teddy bears petrify so quickly? So, I decided to investigate these claims and take a trip to Knaresborough, a town some 21 km (13 miles) west of York, England. When I saw the stone teddy bears hanging under the waterfall, along with clothes, top hats, shoes, trainers and even an umbrella, I realized that I was observing an amazing geological spectacle. I couldn’t resist adding [one of our creationist] neckties to the line-up. The so-called Petrifying Well at Knaresborough has been a tourist attraction since 1630. Its water originates underground and has a high mineral content. As the water splashes onto the hanging objects, the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate) is deposited along with small amounts of other minerals. Gradually, these deposits build up and coat the object with a crust of rock. The time needed for petrification depends on the size Known variously as the ‘Dropping Well’ and then the ‘Dripping and porosity of the object. Small teddy bears take Well’, this fascinating attraction has drawn curious visitors for between three and five months. Larger porous items hundreds of years. Note the myriad hanging pieces which people (large teddy bears and clothing) take six to 12 months. have added over the years. It is like the Petrified Waterwheel Non-porous items such as a top hat or a fireman’s (inset) in Australia’s west which has become totally encased in helmet can take up to 18 months to be encased in stone in only several decades. stone. The most impressive petrified objects are now just two bulges sticking out of the flowstone. These are the remains of a Victorian top hat and a lady’s bonnet left at the waterfall in 1853—some 148 years ago! These hats are now completely covered in a thick layer of flowstone—so much for its taking thousands of years for such flowstone thicknesses to form! As I surveyed the petrified teddy bears at Knaresborough, I thought about how often I had been fed the myth that petrification needs millions of yearsTaking this as our cue, we need to challenge those who promote millions of years, ‘Were you there to observe these processes taking place?’ There, at the Petrifying Well, I observed first hand that objects can petrify in months and years. A.J. Monty White, B.Sc., Ph.D., C.Chem., MRSC, has a PH.D. in chemistry and studied geology up to pass degree level during his honours chemistry course. Tarawera's night of terror The Beautiful ‘Dripping Well’ of Yorkshire Tarawera's night of terror by Renton Maclachlan At 1:40 am, on the morning of 10 June 1886, a mountain a mere 29 kilometres (18 miles) from Rotorua in the North Island of New Zealand, blew its top. For around four hours, Mt Tarawera, as it is now known, spewed red hot rocks, mud, ash, and smoke over the countryside from fissures up to three kilometres wide and around 19 kilometres (12 miles) long. 1 The immediate area around the mountain was devastated with an estimated 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 square miles) of countryside affected in some way. The mission house on the hill above Te Wairoa, following the eruption. By 5:30 am the eruption was over, although ash continued to fall, and steam vented from the mountain for days. The death toll was 153, a relatively small number due to the low population of the area, but two whole Maori villages were wiped out.Close by the mountain at its western end were two of the wonders of the world. The famous pink and white terraces descended the slopes alongside Lake Rotomahana in a series of brilliant white and pink steps.2 The white terraces were the larger, covering some three hectares (eight acres) and beginning in an enormous boiling cauldron 243 metres (about 800 feet) above lake level. The steps formed as a result of sinter3 dissolved in the water being deposited as the water made its way to the lake. When the sun shone on the vast area of silica-coated steps it sparkled like crystal. The colouration of the pink terraces went from pure white at the bottom through various shades of pink, which deepened towards the top. Then the colour mingled with a yellowish tinge until right at the top it became a delicate primrose. From all reports the terraces were a stunning sight. One observer said, 'This is a revelation of beauty that strikes one dumb. I have seen all the world has to offer in glory and grandeur and this is supreme among them all'. 4The text of The Great Eruption of Tarawera, a tourist booklet, describes them this way: 'In sunlight they glittered like a footstool of heaven itself as St John the Divine might have described it; flashing with varied hues of opal, its pools azure blue, and every terraced step hung with chalcedonic stalactites'.5The large pools formed behind the steps varied in temperature from boiling in the highest to cold in

those near the lake. The lower ones were ideal for visitors to bathe in.The eruption on that 10 June blew the pink and white terraces out of existence. An old photograph shows New Zealand and the world lost two of their natural the white terraces as they wonders.Te Wairoa was a small settlement close to appeared before their destruction the mountain on its north-west side. It had a church, in Tarawera's volcanic firestorm. a school, and two hotels, all of which were destroyed. The Te Wairoa of 1886 is today 'The Buried Village'. The remains of some of the buildings have been excavated, and artefacts entombed in the ash for 60 or so years are displayed in a small museum.Some of these artefacts are fascinating, as the photos below show. For example, there is a bowler hat which is now as hard as stone. Further, you could, if you had the stomach, tuck into a petrified sandwich or two. Along with a fossilized bag of flour for the bread, there's a petrified ham for the filling. There are other items that look like sausages. Who could resist petrified sausages? However, for all their appearances, it seems they are not sausages at all, but perhaps some sort of medicine or fuel.6 All these artefacts were petrified as a result of being buried in the ash from the eruption. Recently, as a result of inquiring after the whereabouts of this fossilized ham, I received a letter from the Physics A petrified bowler hat from The Buried Village. Department of the University of Auckland. The writer said, among other things, 'You may of course be using the term "fossil" in a loose sense but a ham could really in no way be a fossil—nor indeed could it be 'petrified' in so short a space of time. (True petrification takes times in the order of millions of years.) I do not know the state of the ham when discovered but there are a number of processes that I could imagine would harden it significantly and it was no doubt one of these that produced the item ...'.7 Recently, as a result of inquiring after the whereabouts of this fossilized ham, I received a letter from the Physics Department of the University of Auckland. The writer said, among other things, 'You may of course be using the term "fossil" in a loose sense but a ham could really in no way be a fossil—nor indeed could it be 'petrified' in so short a space of time. (True petrification takes times in the order of millions of years.) I do not know the state of the ham when discovered but there are a number of processes that I could imagine would harden it significantly and it was no doubt one of these that produced the item ...'.7 I asked why the ham could not be a fossil, and was given the following definition from the Dictionary of Geological Terms, 1974, published for the American Geological Institute: 'FOSSIL: 1. The remains or traces of animals or plants which have been preserved by natural causes in the Earth's crust exclusive of organisms which have been buried since the beginning of historic time. 2. Anything dug from the Earth. (Obsolete)'.8 As the ham was petrified within 'historic time', it was excluded on the basis of the first of these definitions from being called a fossil. Furthering the amiable exchange, I objected to the definition, even though it came from a reputable dictionary. First, fossilization occurs through a number of processes. How fast or when those processes occurred is irrelevant. The important thing is that a process has occurred. Second, the definition stacks the deck in favour of a particular view of history —the evolutionary view, by including in the definition an evolutionary concept. Since creationists say there is no such thing as 'prehistory', only history (man has been here from the beginning), this definition works against their A petrified bag of flour from The understanding of fossils. If a fossil was determined purely Buried Village on the basis of a process having occurred, which is the creation position, then much of the evolutionary mystique attached to fossils would evaporate. One consequence of focusing on the process is that we know it is incorrect to say petrification takes millions of years. This ham, flour, and hat have not even taken 110 years to fossilize. They would have been transformed Sausage-like objects that are into their petrified state in perhaps days or weeks, or at believed to be medicine or lampfuel. the outside, a few years. The absolute maximum is 60 years—the length of time they were buried. Actually, some of the Maori folk who lived in the area made pocket money as a result of the tourist trade developing around the pink and white terraces. They placed various items, such as hats, into the water at the terraces so as to petrify them.* Once petrified, they were sold as souvenirs.And then there was the tourist graffiti. Hundreds of names, dates, addresses and poems, even the name of Sir George Gray, an early Governor of New

Zealand, were scribbled on the silica to be covered in short measure by a transparent film and so be indelibly there for all to see!9 Fossilized graffiti! How about lunch papers and tins and bottles the tourists left behind? A sheet of newspaper left on the white terraces was within days encased in silica. Fossilized news or garbage depending on how you view last week's paper! Of course things fell into the waters of their own accord. One scientific visitor to the terraces in 1868 found 'many insects, such as beetles and dragon-flies, as well as some feathers of a lark, and the whole body of a hawk' encrusted in the sinter.10 Mt Tarawera is yet another testimony to the rapidity with which fossilization can occur, and that the evolutionary concept of fossils as being 'prehistoric' does not conform with the evidence.

Petrified flour by Tas Walker The oblong rocks at the Eureka Springs Gardens in Arkansas, USA, bring a curious smile to passing tourists, once they inspect them closely. Grey and smooth, the rocks have a fabric imprint, resembling coarse canvas sacking. They look remarkably like sacks of flour! The bottom of one sack is elongated and even preserves a pattern of stitching. The top is pulled together, complete with petrified wrinkles, as if it was once tied with rope. Although they look like bags of flour, they are heavy and difficult to lift. The largest one weighs 38 kg (84 lb) — over three times heavier than a similar amount of flour.The bags feel different too. A bag of flour is normally soft, and bends when it is lifted. These bags are as hard as rock. They make a hard, sharp sound when slapped, and would break your knuckles, too, if you punched them.The little sign gives the story: ‘You are looking at parts of petrified flour sacks from the Blue Spring mill.’ Although not suitable to eat, these sacks of petrified flour give lots of ‘food for thought’.Blue Spring holds the secret of these petrified flour sacks. It is a tranquil circular pool at least 155 metres (510 feet) deep, into which cool water rises silently from the earth at 150 million litres (38 million gallons) per day. It is a feature of the gardens.Since the 1840s, spring water was used to drive a large mill, and grind wheat and corn (maize). The bags of flour were almost certainly made in the mill, and left abandoned when it stopped operating around 1903.The bags became petrified after they were saturated by water from the spring. Minerals from the limestone strata dissolved in the spring water before it flowed from the earth. Later those minerals precipitated in the waterlogged flour sacks—turning them into solid rock.A small sample of petrified flour was chipped from one of the bags for analysis. It was like hammering hard rock. Microscopic examination revealed that the flour was still present, but all the air space had been filled with tiny calcium carbonate crystals. There was no burlap bag remaining—it must have rotted away.We are told repeatedly that petrification (or petrifaction) requires an unimaginably long time—millions of years—to occur. Because of this cultural conditioning, people are surprised to discover that rocks can form quickly. This sense of surprise is the reason for the exhibit, and the notice alongside the sacks explains it all: ‘It is commonly believed that petrification is a process taking millions of years … not true! Under ideal conditions petrification can take place in as few as three weeks.’ It’s a fact. Petrification does not need millions of years. Rocks can harden very quickly under the right conditions. The evidence is all around us. We just need eyes to see and willingness to evidence is all around us. We just need eyes to see and willingness to accept the obvious.This miner's hat is rock hard. It was found in a mine in Tasmania where it had been covered with water for more than 50 years.Over that time the chemicals in the water precipitated within the open structure of the felt material of the soft hat, thus turning the soft hat into stone by a process called calcification, which means that solid calcium carbonate has impregnated the original felt material of the hat.The hat is now on display in a mining museum on Tasmania's west coast.This quick-forming 'stone' hat adds weight to the claims that creation scientists are correct when they say that thousands or millions of years are not needed to form rocks and fossilize animals and plants. Message in a bottle by Tas Walker An old bottle, entombed in conglomerate rock (below right), has a surprising message for visitors to the Maritime Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.1In 1986, divers salvaged this glass treasure, along with other historic items, from the wreck of the British troopship, HMS2 Birkenhead. Around 2:00 am on the dark morning of 23rd February 1852, her metal hull ripped open on a treacherous rock pinnacle some 150 km (100 miles) south-east of Cape Town. Within 20 minutes, she broke apart and sank in roughly 30 metres (100 feet) of water about 1.5 km (one mile) off Danger Point. Sadly, 445 of the 638 people on board perished — most of them young soldiers headed for the frontier in Eastern Cape.3 But the bottle does not just speak of the fragility of life.What is remarkable is that the bottle is firmly embedded in a solid rock-like mass. Bits and pieces from the ship have mixed with material from the ocean bottom, and been cemented together. On closer inspection, it can be seen that the ‘rock’ comprises a ceramic jar, basketware, iron corrosion products, pebbles and shell fragments. Impressions of other bottles are also visible in the conglomerate. It has obviously formed since the ship came to rest on the ocean floor on that fateful night.

But why should it be amazing that minerals precipitated from seawater could cement all these things together into solid rock? After all, the wreck had been on the ocean floor for over 130 years which, in human terms, represents a long period of time.The reason people see this situation as extraordinary is that we have been culturally conditioned. We are constantly told that geological processes like petrifaction, fossilisation, and stalagmite formation take millions of years — an unimaginably long time. This constant barrage of a slow-and-gradual evolutionary philosophy is antagonistic to the creation model of a catastrophic world-wide Flood.This unusual bottle, entombed in conglomerate rock, salvaged from the bottom of the ocean, shows us that rocks do not need millions and millions of years to form as evolutionists and other long-agers tell us.

Whale explodes fossil theory by Tas Walker Television images showed a new tourist attraction floating in the ocean off South Australia—a bloated whale corpse being eaten by dozens of Great White Sharks.1,2 The dead Southern Right Whale had drifted offshore for over a week and the sharks were ripping chunks of flesh from the carcass in a feeding frenzy.Originally, it was thought that a large freighter killed the whale, but there were no visible signs of injury on the carcass—nothing to indicate that it died of anything other than natural causes.Local charter-boat operators were thrilled with people lining up at Cape Jervis wharf, 90 km (55 miles) south of Adelaide, eager to pay for a closer look. Dozens of boats were busy for days going back and forth to the drifting whale. The regular ferry detoured to allow passengers a first-rate view. Some of the thousands of people who made the trip described the experience as ‘awesome’. Reckless behaviour The activities of the boat operators soon came to the attention of State authorities. Televised video footage, beamed around the world, showed male sightseers climbing onto the 15-m (50-ft) carcass. White Pointer Sharks were hungrily tearing its blubbery flesh and one of the men standing on the whale was seen holding a young child. Several people on the boats were filmed patting the snouts of the White Pointers as they circled and fed.Next day, police crews from the water operations unit were monitoring the crowd behaviour. Some officials even suggested that laws might be changed ‘to protect people too stupid to protect themselves’.3Worried officials, fearing the whale would become a hazard to shipping, or wash ashore causing an environmental crisis, enlisted the police bomb squad to sink it.4They placed three explosive charges in the whale’s belly to blow holes in its side so it could fill with water. At the very least, the authorities hoped the explosives would accelerate its disposal. As one spokesman said, ‘It will give marine scavengers a better chance of doing what they do best, which is to clean up dead and decaying material in the ocean.’The carcass was towed away from the coast out of the way of the shipping lanes, and the charges detonated. Media reports said that no-one was standing on the whale at the time. Official reports said the operation was entirely successful and the whale no longer presented a problem.Later though, it was found that, in spite of detonating enough explosive to ‘knock a hole in a concrete wall’, the dead whale continued to bob around, refusing to sink.5 Instead of opening up holes that filled with water, the explosions only made a small dent. According to official sources, the attempt to sink the dead whale was a learning curve because such a procedure had never been tried in Australia before. Contradicting theory To alert observers, the whale episode dramatically contradicts the standard theory about how fossils form. Fossils, of course, are abundant on every continent, buried in sedimentary rock, even on high mountains. Remarkable fossil remains of many almost-complete animal skeletons have been excavated and displayed in museums all over the world. Figure 1 The standard theory about fossils is presented in museums, school and university text books, encyclopedias and popular nature books. For example, the National Dinosaur Museum, in Canberra, Australia, has a diagram at its entrance (Figure 1). The first picture shows a dead dinosaur, eyes closed, sinking in water. Upside down with legs pointing upwards, streams of tiny bubbles are shown floating to the surface as the animal descends. The next picture shows the dinosaur skeleton lying on the sandy bottom, waiting to be covered by sediment. The bones are not scattered but are correctly related with each other. The third picture shows the bones, still in their correct position, covered by a thick layer of sediment, while the final picture shows the fossilized bones exposed after the rock had been uplifted and eroded.But the dead South Australian whale explodes this fossil theory. The whole saga vividly demonstrates that dead animals don’t immediately sink to the bottom of the ocean—they generally float on the surface. Anyone who has kept an aquarium would know that. It’s only after other marine creatures have substantially scavenged the corpse that it will sink. Rapidly scavenged Even when the remains eventually sink, the skeleton does not fossilize. Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii has been studying whale corpses on the bottom of the ocean for more than a decade. 6 As a rule, there is not much food around on the deep ocean floor—it’s a bit like an underwater desert. So, when the remains of a whale arrive at the bottom, it signals feeding time for everything that lives down there.For months the carcass is alive with scavengers. 7,8 Hundreds of long, tendon-like hagfish curl in and out of every opening. Huge sharks feast on the softening flesh. Crabs are busy eating all they can. In as little as four months, the soft tissue can be stripped away, leaving a pile of bones. Furry worms and shrimp-like animals then multiply and consume the small fragments of tissue dispersed over the sea floor. After another year, the furry worms have gone and the bones are covered in mussels, clams, tubeworms and bacteria. Over ten or so years, the bones are slowly consumed until they disappear and the site is clean.Clearly, dead animals will not fossilize in the ocean under

normal circumstances. Their scattered bones do not lie around long enough to be covered by sediment. Special conditions are needed to form fossils, especially to preserve the bones in their correct orientation. The creature has to be buried quickly to protect it from marine scavengers.However, we don’t find animals being rapidly buried in the oceans today. Wellpreserved fossils point to catastrophe—to sudden death and burial before the animal was scavenged, scattered and obliterated. Well-preserved fossils are consistent with the unusual conditions associated with the global Flood. At that time, huge torrents of water flowed across the continents, dumping tonnes of sand and silt into the oceans and burying fish and animals catastrophically. The dead whale off the coast of South Australia alerts us to the problems with the standard fossil theory. Global Flood explains why so many fossils are found in sedimentary strata all over the Earth.

Toy car rocks million-year belief by Tas Walker Sandstone is just grains of sand held together by cement—in this case by the mineral called calcium carbonate (CaCO3).When you stroll along the beach you are walking on rocks that are millions of years old—right?That’s the impression we get from TV and newspapers, and they seem to vie for the oldest date—in millions of years of course. But Chris and Sandra Barnes were in for a shock as they walked along the beach near their home in Brisbane, Australia.One particular rock on the shore at Victoria Point just looked like any other rounded piece of ordinary sandstone. But when they kicked it over, it exposed a child’s toy encased inside. What a surprise! It looks like an ordinary piece of sandstone rounded smooth over millions of years. But presto—underneath it contains a modern toy car. Inside the rock, previously hidden from their view, was a miniature toy car. It had an ivory-coloured body, little black tyres and a yellow plastic cover. Some of the inside workings of the toy were also visible. Clearly the rock was not millions of years old. It could only have been 10 or 20 years at the most. Yet it ‘looked’ old. Rocks don’t need millions of years to form—they just need suitable conditions. Keys to rapid rock formation 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. If you know anyone who thinks rocks and fossils must take thousands or millions of years to form, here's an example to show them they may need to revise their ideas. The photo shows a set of car keys which was found in solid sandstone rock on the Pacific Coast of the United States. The keys are encrusted by rock, and were found on the coast of Oregon. They were given to college lecturer Richard Niessen in California, and are now displayed in the Museum of Creation and Earth History at the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego. The keys, joined to a plastic-topped key chain, are thought to belong to an automobile from the early 1960s. ICR's museum curator, John Rajca, says the rock-encrusted keys show that the commonly accepted idea of slow rock formation is clearly wrong in this case. The rock encasing the keys had to harden rapidly, so rock formation is not necessarily a slow process. Next time you hear someone say that rock formation must take thousands or millions of years, tell them about these keys that were rapidly encased in rock! That choking feeling ...

A cross-section of a gas field pipe. The metal of the pipe casing is clearly distinct from the layered rock which has formed inside it, and has drastically narrowed the flow area. Ordinary measures failed to clear the rock, which is hard and firmly adhering to the metal, so the whole pipe was removed.

An astonishingly fast growth of solid rock in a man-made pipe The photo below shows something that is startling to those who, conditioned by the dominant long-age belief of our culture, instinctively feel that such things must take many thousands, if not millions of years.The specimen, sent by Mr John Heffner, is the cross-section of a metal pipe from a gas field. Inside the pipe, one can clearly see solid rock which has grown in rings from the outside inwards until it left only about a two cm (3/4") diameter opening. It is a section of the flowline (a pipe at the surface) fed by the Sonat Minerals 16-1 natural gas well, in Lousiana, USA. The well was drilled into the Austin Chalk formation in January, 1997, then shut until all the new production facilities and piping at the surface were constructed. It started producing in March 1997.The flow from the well, which then went through this pipe at the surface, consisted of natural gas, condensate and salt water from the host rock layer.

This lasted for only three months before problems became apparent. In June, 1997, the well was shut and this flowline pipe was inspected. What they found was the massive amount of ‘scale’ that you see here, which had almost completely choked the flow. Attempts to remove this buildup with pressurized water and mechanical methods were unsuccessful, and therefore the flowline was replaced.The deposit that has formed inside the pipe consists of completely hard and dense rock. Its appearance is similar to that of the laminated (layered) flowstone deposits, derived from dissolved limestone or chalk, which one finds in caves. A stalactite, for example, sometimes has concentric rings in cross-section. Such rock consists mostly of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), known as the mineral calcite.Chemical analysis of the rock by the Petrolite Corporation of St Louis, Missouri, confirmed that it was around 84% calcium carbonate.1 Seeing such solid, layered rock forming in only three months shows that long time-spans are not necessary. It is just one of the many examples we have featured in Creation which defy various common long-age beliefs.

Are there transitional forms between fish and tetrapods The fossil record of ‘early’ tetrapods: evidence of a major evolutionary transition? by Paul Garner Summary According to evolutionary theory, the origin of tetrapods from a fish-like ancestor during the Devonian Period was one of the major events in the history of life on earth. The ‘drying pond’ hypothesis was proposed to explain the selection pressures behind the transition. According to this hypothesis, the tetrapods evolved as fishes became progressively better adapted to terrestrial conditions during prolonged episodes of drought. Recently, however, the assumption that feet and legs evolved to facilitate life on the land has been called into question. The ‘earliest’ known tetrapods with feet and legs are now thought to have been aquatic animals; evolutionists therefore argue that feet and legs evolved in a shallow water environment and were only later co-opted for use on the land. This paper reviews the radical changes in thinking about the fish-tetrapod transition that have taken place in the evolutionary community. It also considers the chimeromorphic nature of Devonian tetrapods and fishes, and offers some critical comments on the evolutionary interpretation of their fossil record. Evolutionists believe that tetrapods—i.e. vertebrates with four limbs—were the first animals to move on to the land, having evolved from a fish ancestor during the Devonian period (conventionally 408 to 360 million years ago). The fossil record of Devonian tetrapods is often presented as compelling evidence of this major evolutionary transition. 1Science writer Carl Zimmer has written a popular book, At the Water’s Edge,2 which purports to show how life came ashore (i.e. how fish evolved into tetrapods) and then went back to the sea (i.e. how land mammals gave rise to the whales). A more technical presentation was written recently by Jenny Clack, Reader in Vertebrate Palaeontology and Senior Assistant Curator of the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. Entitled Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods,3 it begins with these words: ‘About 370 million years ago, something strange and significant happened on Earth. That time, part of an interval of Earth’s history called the Devonian Period by scientists such as geologists and paleontologists, is known popularly as the Age of Fishes. After about 200 million years of earlier evolution, the vertebrates—animals with backbones—had produced an explosion of fishlike animals that lived in the lakes, rivers, lagoons, and estuaries of the time. The strange thing that happened during the later parts of the Devonian period is that some of these fishlike animals evolved limbs with digits— fingers and toes. Over the ensuing 350 million years or so, these so-called tetrapods gradually evolved from their aquatic ancestry into walking terrestrial vertebrates, and these have dominated the land since their own explosive radiation allowed them to colonize and exploit the land and its opportunities. The tetrapods, with their limbs, fingers, and toes, include humans, so this distant Devonian event is profoundly significant for humans as well as for the planet.’4 Indeed, according to the cladistic framework that now dominates evolutionary systematics, humans are not simply descended from fish—theyare fish! Clack states: ‘Although humans do not usually think of themselves as fishes, they nonetheless share several fundamental characters that unite them inextricably with their relatives among the fishes … Tetrapods did not evolve from sarcopterygians [lobe-finned fishes]; they aresarcopterygians, just as one would not say that humans evolved from mammals; they are mammals.’5 In this paper I will critically examine the fossil record of ‘early’ tetrapods and discuss the way in which older evolutionary views of their origin have been overturned in the last two decades. I will also consider the mosaic distribution of characters that we observe in Devonian tetrapods and fishes, the problems that it poses for evolutionary theory, and how it might be understood in a creationist framework. The ‘drying pond’ hypothesis Many evolutionary scenarios have been proposed to explain the origin of tetrapods. Most of them were developed to answer the question, ‘Why did fish leave the water and come onto the land?’ The early theories usually focused on the environmental setting and selection pressures behind the transition. Tetrapods were thought to have evolved during the Devonian, a period associated in many parts of the world with sediments stained red by iron oxide. Classic red beds, such as the Siluro-Devonian rocks of Europe (the Old Red Sandstone) and their North American equivalents (the Catskill and Escuminac formations), have often been interpreted as the product of hot, semi-desert environments with seasonal wetness. This led many to speculate that an increasingly arid climate was a major influence on the evolution of airbreathing vertebrates. A classic paper by Barrell6 set the scene for much future discussion. He argued that the first tetrapods arose ‘under the compulsion of seasonal dryness’.7 Under such conditions, it was suggested, the air-bladder of certain fishes became progressively better adapted as an organ of respiration and the gills atrophied. The development of a new system of breathing allowed fishes to survive the drought conditions by

Figure 1. Reconstruction of Ichthyostega, showing skull, vertebral column, and limbs, and its hind limb based on a specimen collected in 1987. Note the seven digits on the hind limb (from Clack).15

moving between bodies of water. Those fishes with more limb-like appendages were better able to make the journey and this ultimately led to the evolution of limbs with digits. This became known as ‘the drying pond hypothesis’ and was popularized by the great vertebrate palaeontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer.8

‘Early’ tetrapods from East Greenland When Romer was popularizing the ‘drying pond’ idea, the earliest known tetrapods wereIchthyostega and Acanthostega from the Upper Devonian of East Greenland.Ichthyostega was first described by SäveSöderbergh9 and then by Jarvik in a series of papers and a monograph. 10–12 Although the anatomy of Ichthyostega is known in considerable detail, its body proportions are uncertain because the fossil material comes from more than one individual. Ichthyostega is about one metre long with a broad, flat head, short, barrel-shaped body, stocky legs, large pelvic and pectoral girdles, and a rib cage with broad, overlapping ribs (Figure 1). It is very evidently a tetrapod, with limbs rather than fins. Nevertheless, Ichthyostega has some fish-like characteristics, including a lateral line system and a tail with bony fin rays. Early reconstructions portrayedIchthyostega as a semi-aquatic creature but most later ones depicted it as a predominantly terrestrial animal (e.g. Jarvik13). As recently as 1988, a major vertebrate palaeontology text described Ichthyostega as a fairly typical land animal with the usual complement of five digits on the hind limb.14 The second Devonian tetrapod from East Greenland was Acanthostega.9,10 For many years this animal was known only from two partial skull roofs, but these were enough to mark it out as different from Ichthyostega. The search for evolutionary ancestors Evolutionists sought the ancestry of the tetrapods among the lobe-finned fishes. Although the lobe-fins are dominant in the fossil fish faunas of the Palaeozoic (conventionally 590 to 248 million years ago), they are represented today by only four surviving genera (the coelacanth Latimeria and three genera of lungfish). In 1892, Cope and others argued that tetrapods had evolved from the crossopterygians, the group of lobe-fins that includes the coelacanths.16 Various crossopterygians were proposed as the ‘model ancestor’, including Sauripteris17,18 and Osteolepis.19 However, most attention settled upon Eusthenopteron, from Escuminac Bay in Quebec, Canada. This is the fish that was commonly illustrated, in popular books on fossils, as hauling itself up onto Devonian riverbanks (e.g. Owen20). Nevertheless, there was evidently a substantial discontinuity in the fossil record between terrestrial vertebrates like Ichthyostega and their presumed ancestors. This was reflected in creationist treatments of the problem 21 and acknowledged by evolutionists, such as Carroll22 who wrote: ‘We have not found any fossils that are intermediate between such clearly terrestrial animals and the strictly aquatic rhipidistians described in the previous chapter.’ Taxon

Stratigraphic unit

Age

Location

Material

Reference(s)

Pederpes

Ballagan Fm

Tournaisian

Scotland

Skull, almost complete 23 articulated skeleton

Sinostega

Zhongning Fm

Famennian

Ningxia Hui, China

Incomplete left mandible

Tulerpeton

Khovanshchina Beds

Famennian

Tula Russia

Ventastega

Ketleri Fm

Famennian

Latvia

Skull fragments, fragments

Acanthostega

Britta Dal Fm

Famennian

East Greenland

Skulls, skeletons

Ichthyostega

Aina Dal Fm Britta Famennian Dal Fm

East Greenland

Skulls, skeletal elements, 9–12,44 some articulated

Hynerpeton

Catskill Fm

Famennian

Pennsylvania, USA Pectoral girdle, fragments

Densignathus

Catskill Fm

Famennian

Pennsylvania, USA Lower jaw

38

Metaxygnathus

Cloghnan Shale

Famennian

New South Wales, Lower jaw Australia

39

Elginerpeton

Scat Craig Beds

Frasnian

Scotland

Ilia, limb bones, skull and 40–42 pectoral girdle fragments

Obruchevichthys

Ogre Beds

Frasnian

Latvia

Lower jaw fragments

40

Livoniana

Gauja Fm

Givetian

Latvia

Lower jaw fragments

43

24

Region, Fore and hind limbs, 25–28 partial pectoral and pelvic girdles, skull fragments girdle 29

articulated 9,10,30– 36,44,50

skull 37,38

Table 1. ‘Early’ tetrapods and so-called ‘near tetrapods’. Most are represented by single specimens; Acanthostega is unique in that it represents a stratigraphic range. Givetian is a subdivision of the Middle Devonian, Frasnian and Famennian are subdivisions of the Upper Devonian, and Tournaisian is a subdivision of the Lower Carboniferous. Aquatic tetrapods challenge the ‘drying pond’ hypothesis

Since 1990 our knowledge of ‘early’ tetrapods has been greatly expanded, with many new taxa being described. Fossil material is now known from Scotland, Greenland, Latvia, the USA, Australia, Russia, and China (Table 1). 23–43 Furthermore, our understanding of the Greenland tetrapods has been revolutionized by the discovery of new material. As a consequence, a major re-evaluation of tetrapod origins has taken place, and almost every aspect of the ‘drying pond’ hypothesis has had to be discarded. The fatal blow to the ‘drying pond’ hypothesis has been the realization that the Devonian tetrapods were predominantly aquatic in habit. New ichthyostegid material, including a wellpreserved and articulated hind limb, collected by an expedition to East Greenland in 1987, revealed that Ichthyostega was polydactylous, with seven Figure 2. Acanthostega in a swimming posture (from Clack).46 digits on the hind limb (Figure 1).44 This was a very surprising discovery because pentadactyly had been assumed to be the normal condition in ‘early’ tetrapods. Furthermore, the flattened bones and inflexible ankle of the hind limb suggests that it was more like the paddle of an elephant seal than the leg of a terrestrial animal.45 It appears that the earliest reconstruction of Ichthyostega as a creature at home in the water was more accurate than later ones portraying it on land. Acanthostega is also much more completely known as a result of material collected by the 1987 expedition, including the first postcranial remains.47,48 It was a smaller animal than Ichthyostega and its teeth suggest that it had a different diet. Several articulated specimens were found in a single lens of rock, interpreted as a possible flash flood deposit. 49The remarkable preservation meant that some delicate structures, not often preserved in fossil tetrapods, are known in Acanthostega. The gill skeleton was fish-like50 and it has been suggested that Acanthostega had internal gills somewhat similar to those of the Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus). Acanthostega had a tail with fin rays, even larger than that of Ichthyostega (Figure 2). The fin rays also extended further beneath the tail, in similar fashion to those of a lungfish, suggesting that Acanthostega was a thoroughly aquatic creature. This conclusion is supported by the morphology of the fore and hind limbs which are difficult to interpret as load-bearing structures; rather, they appear to be designed for swimming. As with Ichthyostega, perhaps the most extraordinary feature was the number of digits. An articulated fore limb revealed eight digits in a paddle-like arrangement (Figure 3). Clack51 speculates that they may have been enclosed in some kind of webbing. Most evolutionists had assumed that the origin of limbs with digits was synonymous with the vertebrate invasion of the land. This led to the popular ‘conquest of the land’ idea, typified by artistic reconstructions and museum displays of fish crawling out of Devonian pools. However, the latest thinking about the aquatic or semi-aquatic nature of the Devonian tetrapods has led modern-day evolutionists to reject this assumption. They now argue that the key tetrapod characters evolved for a shallow-water existence and were only later co-opted for terrestrial use. The new generation of Figure 3. The left forelimb ofAcanthostega, Darwinists dismisses the ‘drying pond’ hypothesis as untestable showing the eight digits (from Clack).52 story-telling, and increasingly relies on cladistics as an alternative framework for understanding the transition. The cladistic approach to the fish-tetrapod transition focuses on determining the sequence of acquisition of key tetrapod characteristics, from which inferences are drawn about the nature of the transition. 53 We should recognize, however, that the cladistic methodology is inherently Darwinian and assumes from the outset the continuity of life. By its very nature, cladistics is insensitive to the discontinuities which creationists believe characterize living things.54 Other problems with the ‘drying pond’ hypothesis The drying pond hypothesis has other problems.55 For instance, it is recognized that red beds are not necessarily indicators of arid climates: ‘The red bed problem has been extremely controversial, with marked differences of opinion, possibly due to the fact that the term “red bed” is a catchall for many sedimentary types produced under different conditions, the only common feature of them being the red color.’56 Modern red beds develop in the oxidizing conditions of the low latitude tropics (e.g. the Amazon Basin). Such environments are characterized by monsoonal rainfall, not arid conditions. Another problem is that, even if the red beds were laid down under conditions of semi-aridity, evolutionists cannot assume that the tetrapods arose in such environments, for the simple reason that many Devonian sediments are not red beds. Some are interpreted as river, lake, or near-shore sediments rich in organic matter, suggesting nearby forests.57Furthermore, a survey of modern fishes that leave the water to spend time on land58 affords no support for the ‘drying pond’ hypothesis. There is no association between those that leave the water and those that possess digit-like fins. For example, eels undertake long journeys overland but they have nothing that could be described as digit-like appendages. Indeed, most of the fishes that possess digit-like structures are deep water species or habitual bottom dwellers, such as the Sargassum frogfish.

New views on tetrapod ancestry There have also been changes of opinion about which group of fishes is closest to the ancestry of tetrapods. Eusthenopteron is no longer regarded as the model ancestor. Depictions showing this fish emerging onto dry land owed more to evolutionary presuppositions than evidence. Eusthenopteron was a rather undistinguished fish with no obvious adaptations to terrestrial life; tetrapod-like behaviour was attributed to it simply because there was no better candidate to fill the role of tetrapod ancestor. The true lifestyle of Eusthenopteron seems to have been that of a lurking aquatic predator, somewhat similar to the modern pike (Esox).Attention is now focused on the formerly more obscure lobefinned fishes, Panderichthys and Elpistostege. Until recently, these two genera were united in a family called the panderichthyids, but evolutionists now believe that they are not uniquely related to each other.59 Fossil material from Latvia and Canada shows that these fish were more tetrapod-like than other lobe-fins. Indeed, based on a partial skull roof,Elpistostege was originally described as a tetrapod. 60 Although there has been dissent,61,62 these genera are increasingly regarded by evolutionists as the closest known relatives of tetrapods.63–65 The latest work by Ahlberg et al.43 indicates that Elpistostege is even more tetrapod-like than Panderichthys. These fish have crocodile-like skulls with dorsally placed eyes, straight tails, and slightly flattened bodies without dorsal or anal fins (see Figure 4). Like tetrapods, but unlike all other fishes, they also have frontal bones in the skull roof. LikeEusthenopteron, they seem designed for life as shallow-water predators.

Figure 4. Panderichthys, an Upper Devonian lobe-finned fish regarded by evolutionists as close to the ancestor of tetrapods (from Clack).59 Chimeromorphs pose problems for evolutionary theory Creationists and evolutionists have observed that many organisms, both fossil and living, exhibit a mosaic distribution of character traits. Parker66 put it this way: ‘Each created kind is a unique combination of traits that are individually shared with members of other groups.’Stephen Jay Gould called such organisms ‘mosaic forms’ or ‘chimeras’67 while Kurt Wise68,69 calls them chimeromorphs. The duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), for instance, has features of both mammals (hair, milk production) and reptiles (egglaying). Perhaps the best-known fossil example is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers with teeth and wing claws. In fact, a mosaic pattern of character distribution is seen in many other fossil organisms. For instance, Woodmorappe70 recently drew attention to the chimeric nature of the pakicetids, a group of terrestrial artiodactyls with a whale-like inner ear.This observation seems to apply to the Devonian tetrapods and fishes considered in this article. For example, Daeschler et al. noted that: ‘Devonian tetrapods show a mosaic of terrestrial and aquatic adaptations.’71 Some of the fishes possess tetrapod-like characters while the tetrapods have fish-like features. Evolutionists interpret mosaic organisms like these as evolutionary intermediates linking major groups. However, Wise 72 makes an important point against this interpretation: ‘Although the entire organism is intermediate in structure, it’s the combination of structures that is intermediate, not the nature of the structures themselves. Each of these organisms appears to be a fully functional organism full of fully functional structures.’ Evolutionary theory might lead us to expect examples of intermediate structures, but there is nothing intermediate about, for example, the internal gills of Acanthostega, its lateral line system, or its limbs. They are fully developed and highly complex. What is unusual is their combination in a single organism. Intelligent design offers an alternative understanding of this widespread pattern. The Devonian tetrapods are thought to have lived a predatory lifestyle in weed-infested shallow water. They were therefore equipped with characteristics appropriate to that habitat (e.g. crocodile-like morphology with dorsally placed eyes, limbs and tails made for swimming, internal gills, lateral line systems). Some of these features are also found in fishes that shared their environment.The mosaic pattern makes it difficult to identify organisms or groups of organisms that possess the ‘right’ combination of characters to be considered part of an evolutionary lineage. Consider the tetrapod-like lobe-fins Panderichthys and Elpistostege. Despite their appearance, these fish have some unique characters (such as the design of the vertebrae) that rule them out as tetrapod ancestors. At best, evolutionists can only claim that they are a model of the kind of fish that must have served as that ancestor. The same problem is encountered with the Devonian tetrapods. For example, Ichthyostega is described as ‘a very strange animal, and parts of it are like no other known tetrapod or fish’.73 Similarly, the shoulder girdles of the Devonian tetrapods ‘are not obviously halfway in structure between those of fishes and those of later tetrapods but have some unique and some unexpected features’. 74 Another example is Livoniana, a so-called ‘near tetrapod’ known from two lower jaw fragments. It possesses a curious mixture of fish-like and tetrapod-like characteristics, but it also has up to five rows of teeth, a feature not seen either in the fishes from which it is thought to be descended nor the tetrapods into which it is said to be evolving. 75 That the mosaic distribution of characters can cause great confusion is exemplified by the recent discovery of Psarolepis, a fish from the Upper Silurian/Lower Devonian of China, which combines characters found in placoderms, chondrichthyans, ray finned fishes, and lobe-fins.76 Additional problems with ‘early’ tetrapod evolution Another problem is that the fossil record imposes tight constraints on the timing of the supposed transition. The earliest tetrapod fossils are found in late Frasnian sediments, but their presumed ancestors are hardly much older. To exacerbate the situation, the Frasnian ‘near tetrapods’ (Obruchevichthys, Elginerpeton, Livoniana) are already morphologically diverse at their first appearance.77 Thus Darwinists are compelled to postulate a rapid burst of evolution in which radical changes must have taken place: ‘Panderichthys and Elpistostege flourished in the early Frasnian and are some of the nearest relatives of tetrapods. But tetrapods appear only about 5 to 10 million years later in the late Frasnian, by which time they were widely distributed and

had evolved into several groups, including the lineage leading to the tetrapods of the Famennian. This suggests that the transition from fish to tetrapod occurred rapidly within this restricted time span.’78 Second, key morphological transitions, such as the purported change from paired fins to limbs with digits, remain undocumented by fossils. Where appendages are known they are clearly either fish-like fins or digit-bearing limbs, not at some transitional stage from one to the other. At one time it was claimed that the pectoral fins of rhizodonts, a group of lobefinned fish, were remarkably similar to tetrapod limbs, but following the description of Gooloogongia from the Famennian of New South Wales, Johanson and Ahlberg 79 have urged that they not be used as a model for the origin of tetrapod limbs. Furthermore, the pectoral fins of lobe-finned fish tend to be larger than the pelvic fins, whereas the Devonian tetrapods were ‘rear-wheel drive’ animals with larger hind limbs than fore limbs.80 None of the recent fossil discoveries shed any light on this supposed reconfiguration.Third, there are functional challenges to Darwinian interpretations. For instance, in fish the head, shoulder girdle, and circulatory systems constitute a single mechanical unit. The shoulder girdle is firmly connected to the vertebral column and is an anchor for the muscles involved in lateral undulation of the body, mouth opening, heart contractions, and timing of the blood circulation through the gills. 81 However, in amphibians the head is not connected to the shoulder girdle, in order to allow effective terrestrial feeding and locomotion. Evolutionists must suppose that the head became incrementally detached from the shoulder girdle, in a step-wise fashion, with functional intermediates at every stage. However, a satisfactory account of how this might have happened has never been given. Conclusion Recent discoveries have undoubtedly advanced our knowledge of Devonian tetrapods and future creationist discussions of tetrapod origins must take this into account. It is no longer sufficient for creationists to contrast Eusthenopteron with Ichthyostega and point to the large morphological gap between them. We need to have more to say. Nevertheless, the presumed transition from fish to tetrapods remains contentious. The data and their interpretation are a source of lively debate and ongoing controversy: ‘In the not-too-distant past, there was almost no fossil material, and ideas were based largely on informed guesswork. Speculation was intense, and as is often the case, in inverse proportion to the amount of data. To be truthful, there is still not much real data, so that speculation is still active, and whatever is concluded today may be overturned by the discovery of a new fossil tomorrow. That in some sense is to be hoped for, because only in that way can guesses be falsified and tested as scientific hypotheses.’82A robust rationale for concluding that the Upper Devonian tetrapods evolved from a fish ancestor, or that they gave rise to Carboniferous tetrapod lineages, is lacking. It is hoped that this paper may stimulate creationists to develop a fuller understanding of these remarkable creatures and their ecological and geological context.83 Paul Garner has a B.Sc. (Hons) in Geology and Biology and is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. He works fulltime as a speaker and researcher with Creation Ministries in the UK. He is also a Committee Member of the BCS, co-editor of the BCS journal, Origins. Tiktaalik roseae—a fishy ‘missing link’ by Jonathan Sarfati 15 April 2006 Fig. 1: Tiktaalik fossil. The secularized mainstream media (MSM) are gleefully promoting a recent find,Tiktaalik roseae (right), as the end of any creationist or intelligent design idea. Some paleontologists are claiming that this is ‘a link between fishes and land vertebrates that might in time become as much of an evolutionary icon as the protobirdArchaeopteryx.’1 So is Tiktaalik real evidence that fish evolved into tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates, i.e. amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds)? As will be shown, there are parallels withArchaeopteryx, the famous alleged reptile-bird intermediate, but not in the way the above quote claims!The alleged fish-to-tetrapod evolutionary transition is full of difficulties, explained in great detail in The fossil record of ‘early’ tetrapods: evidence of a major evolutionary transition? In this, it parallels the record of reptile-to-bird, Mammallike reptiles, land-mammal–to–whale and ape-to-human evolution; superficially plausible, but when analyzed in depth, it collapses, for many parallel reasons. For simpler summaries on the fossil record than the preceding linked articles, see The links are missing and Argument: The fossil record supports evolution. What was found? The above quote comes from two leading European experts in the alleged evolutionary transition from fish–tetrapod, Per Ahlberg and Jennifer Clack. It was about the find of well-known American leaders on the same alleged transition, Neil Shubin and Edward Daeschler, and which was the cover story for Nature.2,3 Clack, Shubin and Daeschler even previously featured on the PBS-Nova seven-part series, Evolution, Episode 2: Great Transformations about the origin of tetrapods. Shubin et al. found a 20-cm-long skull sticking out of a cliff. They found that this skull, superficially like a crocodile’s, was part of a fish that had a fin that was supposedly on the way to becoming a tetrapod limb. They ‘dated’ it to 383 Ma (million years ago). Since it was in Ellesmere Island, Nunavut Territory (Canada), it was given a genus name from the indigenous Inuktitut word for burbot, or large, shallow freshwater fish. Is it transitional? Clack and others are naturally enthusiastic about Tiktaalik’s transitional status. But this is not surprising—to her, we are all fishes anyway! She states: ‘Although humans do not usually think of themselves as fishes, they nonetheless share several fundamental characters that unite them inextricably with their relatives among the fishes … Tetrapods did not evolve from sarcopterygians [lobe-finned fishes]; theyare sarcopterygians, just as one would not say that humans evolved from mammals; they are mammals.’4 This is reminiscent of University of Kansas paleontologist Larry Martin criticising overly enthusiastic ‘feathered dinosaur’ claims: ‘You have to put this into perspective. To the people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a feathered dinosaur.’5 Clack also admitted: ‘There remains a large morphological gap between them and digits as seen in, for example, Acanthostega: if the digits evolved from these distal bones, the process must have involved considerable developmental repatterning. …

‘Of course, there are still major gaps in the fossil record. In particular we have almost no information about the step betweenTiktaalik and the earliest tetrapods, when the anatomy underwent the most drastic changes, or about what happened in the following Early Carboniferous period, after the end of the Devonian, when tetrapods became fully terrestrial.’1 Indeed, the evolution of land limbs and life on land in general requires many changes, and the fossil record has no evidence of such changes. Geologist Paul Garner writes: ‘[T]here are functional challenges to Darwinian interpretations. For instance, in fish the head, shoulder girdle, and circulatory systems constitute a single mechanical unit. The shoulder girdle is firmly connected to the vertebral column and is an anchor for the muscles involved in lateral undulation of the body, mouth opening, heart contractions, and timing of the blood circulation through the gills.6However, in amphibians the head is not connected to the shoulder girdle, in order to allow effective terrestrial feeding and locomotion. Evolutionists must suppose that the head became incrementally detached from the shoulder girdle, in a step-wise fashion, with functional intermediates at every stage. However, a satisfactory account of how this might have happened has never been given.’ Indeed, Tiktaalik’s fin was not connected to the main skeleton, so could not have supported its weight on land. The discoverers claim that this could have helped to prop up the body as the fish moved along a water bottom, 3 but evolutionists had similar high hopes for the coelacanth fin. However, when a living coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was discovered in 1938, the fins turned out not to be used for walking but for deft manœuvering when swimming. Thus all the claims about Tiktaalik are mere smokescreens, exaggerating mere tinkering around the edges while huge gaps remain unbridged by evolution. Similarly, all the hype about Archaeopteryx and alleged feathered dinosaurs is beside the point while feathers, the avian lung andflight are still an evolutionary enigma. See also Does a ‘Transitional Form’ Replace One Gap with Two Gaps? Transitional limb? Fig. 2: Cladogram of the pectoral fins on the tetrapod stem, from Ref. 3. Click to see larger image Quite aside from the huge problems explaining the origin of locomotion, there are other problems. The series of corresponding limbs (Fig. 2, right) does not appear to show the clear progression. Even from looking at it, it is not obvious that the Panderichthys limb belongs in between the adjacent ones in the series. It has fewer small bones. The authors themselves appear to recognize this: ‘In some features, Tiktaalik is similar to rhizodontids such as Sauripterus. These similarities, which are probably homoplastic, include the shape and number of radial articulations on the ulnare, the presence of extensive and branched endochondral radials, and the retention of unjointed lepidotrichia.’ ‘Homoplastic’ essentially means ‘convergent’ or ‘analogous’, i.e. independently evolved because of a common function (such as the wings of pterosaurs, bats, birds and insects, according to evolutionists), rather than evolved from a common ancestor (homologous, as evolutionists claim for features such as the different forelimbs here). But homology is alleged to be the evidence for evolution (despite many problems—see Common structures = common ancestry?) But appeal to homoplasy is really explaining away evidence that doesn’t fit the paradigm, and indeed such explaining away is ubiquitous. Two evolutionists admit: ‘Disagreements about the probable homologous or homoplastic nature of shared derived similarities between taxa lie at the core of most conflicting phylogenetic hypotheses.’7 In fact, when more characteristics than just one are analysed, homoplasies become even more necessary to explain away anomalies, as will be explained in the section Mosaic rather than transitional. Another major problem is that evolutionists appeal to the common pentadactyl 5-digit pattern as evidence for their common ancestry from a 5-digited creature. Yet the nearest creatures they have to a common ancestor did not have five digits! Acanthostega had eight, whileIchthyostega had seven. Fossil order Fig. 3: Alleged lineage including Tiktaalik, from ref. 1. Click to see larger image. Fig. 3 (right) does much to popularize evolution, but there are a number of problems. The caption admits, ‘These drawings are not to scale, but all animals are between 75 cm and 1.5 m in length.’ If size were taken into account, would there be such a clear progression? Compare a far more extreme example, the supposed land-mammal–to–whale sequence. This was also illustrated as equally sized, but Basilosaurus was 10 times longer than Ambulocetus. Another admission is, ‘The vertebral column of Panderichthys is poorly known and not shown.’ We should remember the Pakicetus fiasco: when a few bones were known, evolutionists drew it like a half-way land-water form. But when more bones were found, it was realized that it was a fast-running land mammal. All the fossils of this entire series are assigned to middle-upper Devonian, or 385–365 Ma. Naturally, there are many problems with dating , but even under the evolutionists’ own scenario, there are problems. E.g. the entire fish-to-tetrapod transition is supposed to have occurred in 20 Ma, but other salamanders, according to Shubin himself, have remained unchanged for far longer :

‘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.’8 Fig 4: Lobe-finned fish and amphibians, according to evolutionary order. Click to see larger image. Even more importantly, the order is not right! Compare Fig. 4 (right): Panderichthys is dated earlier than its supposed predecessor, Eusthenopteron. And all are earlier than the undoubted fish, the coelacanth. This is yet another parallel with alleged bird evolution—undoubted beaked birds like Confuciusornis are 10 Ma older than their alleged feathered dinosaur ‘ancestors’. Evolutionists would argue that it is not a problem, for the same reason that sometimes a grandfather can outlive his grandson. This is correct, but one of the major ‘evidences’ of evolution is how the evolutionary order supposedly matches the fossil sequence. So the mismatch of claimed order of appearance with claimed phylogeny undermines the evolutionary explanation. Also, Acanthostega is allegedly a predecessor to Ichthyostega, but they were actually contemporaries. Mosaic rather than transitional Many of the alleged transitional forms do not have structures in transition from one form to another. Rather, the alleged transitional nature is a combination of fully-formed structures that in themselves are not transitional. 9For example, Archaeopteryx has fully formed flight feathers, an avian lung and an avian braincase (which is why the ‘hoax’ claim is indefensible), but had allegedly reptile features like a tail and teeth. Alleged whale evolution also has a number of ‘modules’, as documented inWalking whales, nested hierarchies, and chimeras: do they exist? These creatures with a mixture of characteristics are called mosaics orchimeras.Also, who was the predecessor of whom in the case of Acanthostega and Ichthyostega? It depends on which characteristic one looks at: e.g.Ichthyostega's skull seems more fish-like than Acanthostega’s, but its shoulder and hips are more robust and land-animal–like.10 The inconsistencies in progression are much like that of the Mammal-like reptiles: major trait reversals and discontinuities. Andrew Lamb, commenting on another alleged tetrapod claim by Per Ahlberg, Livioniana, points out: ‘The same sort of reasoning and logic as was used in this article would apply to the fish-to-tetrapod series. In this proposed reptile-to-mammal series, features do not progress consistently. Some organisms towards the mammal end of the series are devoid of certain mammal-like features present in organisms closer to the reptile end of the series. The majority of the hundred-odd traits examined did not progress consistently.’ Lamb’s paper demonstrates this, using Ahlberg’s own table, showing that: ‘For example, Acanthostega, ninth organism in his series, boasts two tetrapod features that are absent in the tenth organism! ’ The same is true of the limb pattern as shown above. This is also consistent with a designer who used ‘modules’ of different characteristics. A better explanation When analyzed in detail, the evidence is consistent not with evolution, but with a particular form of intelligent design. But not just intelligent design in the broad sense, which allows for any sort of designer(s), even aliens (such as the Raëlian cult), and even can allow for evolution (Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, accepts evolution, for example). Rather, it supports a particular subset of ID: the biotic message theory, as proposed by Walter ReMine in The Biotic Message. That is, the evidence from nature points to a single designer, but with a pattern which thwarts evolutionary explanations. In this case, the common modules point to one common designer, but evolution is powerless to explain this modular pattern, since natural selection can work only onorganisms as a whole. That is, it cannot select for particular head design as such, but only for creatures that have a head that confers superior fitness. But a designer who worked with different modules could create different creatures with different modules, that fit no consistent evolutionary pattern. But as we say, Design is not enough! Nature does not reveal the identity of the Intelligent Designer. Fortunately, the Designer already has. Is the famous fish-fossil finished? Tiktaalik, the transitional star, faces an evolutionary dead-end By Tas Walker Figure 1. This neat fish-to-animal transition has been transformed from an evolutionary icon into an evolutionary dead-end.Wikipedia.orgTracks of footprints found in a quarry in Poland have turned the palaeontological world upside down.1 For years there has been a neat evolutionary story about how fish evolved four legs and came out of the ocean onto the land (figure 1). Probably the most famous fossil in this sea-to-land icon of evolution is Tiktaalik roseae, a fish with fins that was claimed to have had features intermediate between fish and tetrapods.

Piotr Szrek, Uppsala University Figure 2. Limestone slab from Poland with fossil footprints. Creationists consistently rejected the evolutionary spin put on the fossil and showed that it had nothing to do with any alleged sea-to-land transition. 2 All the same, evolutionists promoted Tiktaalikrelentlessly. It has its own website, 3 features in evolutionary diagrams (e.g. figure 1), stars on the covers of books about evolution4 and was even the theme of a song to promote evolution.5Richard Dawkins, in his latest book The Greatest Show on Earth,6claims “Tiktaalik is the perfect missing link—perfect, because it almost exactly splits the difference between fish and amphibian, and perfect because it is missing no longer.” (See Jonathan Sarfati’s refutation of this book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth?)But now this footprint evidence from Poland consigns Tiktaalik and all its companion fossils onto the garbage heap. From being stars of the show they have suddenly become an evolutionary dead-end. So the creationists were right all along. At first glance the evidence does not look very impressive. The tracks are preserved as shallow indentations on the surface of large limestone slabs from Zachelmie Quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains of Poland. The rough surfaces have an array of roundish indentations arranged in lines (figure 2). But, with the use of lines and diagrams (figure 3), the authors have argued a strong case that these indentations are indeed trackways of four legged animals that resembled large lizards.The authors were even able to show the shape of the foot within some of the individual prints and identify the toe marks (figure 4). From the dimensions of the prints they concluded that some animals were more than 2 metres long.These trackways are a remarkable find but tracks are not particularly unusual in the fossil record. Thousands of trackways of land animals have been found in many different locations all over the world. What has captured world attention is that that these tracks are dated (using evolutionary assumptions) at 397 million years, which makes them fully 18 million years older than Tiktaalik (again, by evolutionary thinking). If fourlegged animals existed 18 million years earlier, then Tiktaalik can’t be the transitional fossil it has been claimed to be. We thought we’d pinned down the origin of limbed tetrapods. We have to rethink the whole thing—Paleontologist Jenifer Clack, University of Cambridge It’s suddenly been demoted to an evolutionary dead end along with all the other fossils connected with it. In other words, all those neat evolutionary diagrams that vividly displayed the transition from fish to four-footed animal ancestor (such as figure 1) need to be disposed of. The evolutionary house of cards, so proudly paraded before the world, collapses with a breeze of evidence from Poland. A total upset This is not some small correction or a minor detail. It has turned the paleontological world upside down. Something of the magnitude of the upset can be gleaned from statements made about the find. “They force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting of the fish-tetrapod transition, as well as the completeness of the body fossil record.”7 “[It] will cause a significant reappraisal of our understanding of tetrapod origins.”8 “[They] could lead to significant shifts in our knowledge of the timing and ecological setting of early tetrapod evolution.”9 “We thought we’d pinned down the origin of limbed tetrapods. We have to rethink the whole thing.”10 “That’s surprising, but this is what the fossil evidence tells us.”11 “These results force us to reconsider our whole picture of the transition from fish to land animals.”12 Figure 3. Illustration showing how animal could have made trackways. (from ref. 7). Note the terms “radical reassessment”, “reappraisal”, “surprising”, “reconsider … whole picture” and “rethink”. We are given the impression that paleontologists scratch around in the sediments and the evidence for evolution just pops out. Creationists are castigated because they are accused of working by faith and not evidence. Well, this Polish upset demonstrates that evidence does not speak for itself. It takes thought, ingenuity, mental exercise and interpretation to make sense of it. The paleontological world is going to take quite some time to rethink its stories. Figure 4. Laser scan of surface showing detail of individual print and diagram relating it to an animal’s foot (from ref. 7).

Remember that all scientists come to the evidence with their own beliefs, biases and … vested interests. Those who have dedicated their lives and careers to the standard fish-to-beast story will not be very enthused by the implications of the latest find. They will be reluctant to change, especially since they have nothing to replace it with. Curiously, there are a few different ways they could choose to rework the evidence and hold onto Tiktaalik at the same time. If that doesn’t work they may simply ignore it. Time will tell. Livoniana—have they (finally!) found a missing link? by Andrew Lamb Appearing on SBS TV [Australia] on 29 September 2001, was a program called: As it Happened: the Missing Link. Produced by the BBC in the UK,1 it tells the story of how young scientist Per Ahlberg discovered, in a long-neglected drawer in a museum in Latvia, a fossil fragment of an unusual jaw. He ran its details through cladistic analysis software that had been programmed with all the distinguishing anatomical features of fish and tetrapods, and the jaw supposedly turned out to be part fish and part tetrapod (vertebrate with four limbs). He named the organismLivoniana.There seems to be only one published academic paper on Livoniana, written by Ahlberg himself and some colleagues. 2 In their paper the authors compiled a table comparing 34 different features of 10 different organisms on their supposed transition series from fish to tetrapod (see Table 1). The 34 features include presence/absence of accessory teeth rows, presence/absence of digits, etc. The first organism in their table, Eusthenopteron, which is 100% fish, scores 0 for all 34 features. The second organism, also a fish, scores 0 on most features and 1 on a few features. The tenth organism, lchthyostega, an undisputed tetrapod, scores 0 on only seven of the 34 features examined. Organisms 5 to 9, all tetrapods, score 1 for most features, out of those features that could be determined.

Table 1. Phylogenetic analysis of supposed fish to tetrapod evolution (from Ahlberg et al).8 Organisms number 3 and 4, Elpistostege and Livoniana respectively, score a mix of 0’s and 1’s. However, from the small scrap of Livonianan jawbone available, only a paltry eleven of the 34 features could even be determined! As with most proposed transitional forms, it is this lackof evidence that makes it suitable for the evolutionists as a transitional form, since this gives them room to speculate on those features that are not available for observation. Note that the BBC program was supposed to be about how tetrapods got their legs. However, all that Ahlberg found was a fragment of a jaw—no legs; no partly-formed legs, etc.It is reminiscent of the situation with the proposed land-mammal to whale transitional forms, Pakicetus and Ambulocetus. Because only fragments of their skeletons were found, and because the crucial pelvic bones were missing, evolutionists were able to make fanciful ‘transitional’ claims that would not have been possible had more complete data been available. This applies especially to the reconstruction ofPakicetus’s alleged mode of locomotion, now known to be totally wrong, and which was based on mere skull fragments! Despite repeated embarrassments, many evolutionary paleontologists still compulsively engage in speculative reconstructions from fragmentary fossil remains.3 Recently we published a paper refuting the supposed reptile-to-mammal transitional series.4 The same sort of reasoning and logic as was used in this article would apply to the fish-to-tetrapod series. In this proposed reptile-to-mammal series, features do not progress consistently. Some organisms towards the mammal end of the series are devoid of certain mammal-like features present in organisms closer to the reptile end of the series. The majority of the hundred-odd traits examined did not progress consistently.The same occurs in Ahlberg’s fish-to-tetrapod series. For example, Acanthostega, ninth organism in his series, boasts two tetrapod features that are absent in the tenth organism! Despite much effort, evolutionists cannot find organisms that will fit into their theoretical constructs of smooth progression from one type of organism to another.5It is probable that if more data about Livoniana becomes available, scientists will either conclude that it was definitely a fish or definitely a tetrapod. Even if it does turn out to be a ‘mosaic’ creature like the platypus, 6 which contains features which are typical of various different classes of animals but which are not usually found together in one organism, this does not indicate evolution. Evolutionists do not regard mosaic creatures such as the platypus as evidence of transformation of one basic kind of creature into another. Creation is a valid, and far more logical and reasonable, explanation for such creatures.Interestingly, the TV programme gives a good account of this process of abandoning a

transitional form as more data becomes available. It describes how when living coelacanths were found, they were seen to be 100% fish, and so had to be abandoned as a transitional form. At the end, the programme says of Livoniana: ‘It also has one freakish feature: there are seven rows of teeth. It is unlike any other creature we know of. This suggests it must be one of the host of mutants that made this change, just one of which would eventually become our ancestor.’ But multiple rows of teeth are not unusual in fish. In a typical supermarket you can usually find fish with multiple rows of teeth. Two well-known fish with multiple rows of teeth are piranhas7 and sharks. In summary the claim that Livoniana constitutes a ‘missing link’ between fish and tetrapods is not only false, but highly fanciful. Gogonasus—a fish with human limbs? by Daniel Anderson and Shaun Doyle 3 November 2006 So often, there are two stories to be heard when one hears of the latest ‘missing link’ finds: the popular media story and the proper story told in the science journals that rarely gets a mention. This has especially been the case this year with fish-tofrog evolution, with the discoveries of the Tiktaalik fossil and a new species of ‘walking’ sharkrecently paraded in the media as if they were irrefutable proof of fish-to-frog evolution. Now a new candidate has stepped up to take the spotlight: a magnificently preserved fish fossil called Gogonasus. Gogonasus has received the usual media parade reserved for ‘missing links’, boldly proclaiming that the fins are ‘like human arms’. 1 As usual, the original Nature article2 is far more conservative about the claims. So what is the actual story behind this fossil? Image from Williams, B. 1

Fantastic fossil formation Gogonasus was exquisitely preserved in the Gogo formation, a limestone formation in the Kimberley region of northwest Western Australia. ‘It’s one of the few sites in the world where you can get whole complete fish in limestone’, John Long, one of the authors of the Nature paper, told LiveScience.3 It was so well preserved that scientists could even open and close the mouth of this fossil fish. ‘It’s like it died yesterday’, Long said.3 This formation ‘is widely acknowledged for its perfect threedimensional preservation’ of fish fossils.2,4 But Gogonasus is placed in the late Devonian period, giving it a ‘date’ based on index fossils of around 380 million years. The standard uniformitarian interpretation of the Gogo formation is that the limestone deposits Despite the descriptions in the media suggesting ‘fish with human form part of an ancient coral reef.5 However, arms’, this reconstruction accompanying one of the popular media such certainty regarding interpretations of stories shows that the reality is far more prosaic. 6 ancient environments is never justified. Rather than speaking of a coral reef ecosystem, which would have developed slowly, the limestone deposits interspersed with shale in the Gogo formation, together with the magnificent preservation of the anatomical structure of the fish buried, suggest a recent catastrophic burial during the Global Flood.7,8 Therefore,Gogonasus looks ‘like it died yesterday’ because it died a lot closer to yesterday than 380 million years ago! ‘Earie’ holes and fins that’ll grab you If Gogonasus is such a well-preserved fossil that is clearly a fish, why is there so much media attention? All the attention revolves around two structures, the spiracle opening and the pectoral fin.The spiracle opening is a hole in the head of a fish that leads to the gill chamber. This opening in Gogonasus is ‘thought to be the forerunner for the middle ear in modern land animals.’ 3 This is based on Gogonasus possessing a stubbier-than-usual hyomandibula bone (a bone in the gill arch which suspends the jaw joint from the braincase 9), making it look slightly more like the middle ear bone of the early tetrapodAcanthostega than most other fish fossils. The hyomandibula supposedly retracted from the spiracular opening from Eusthenopteron (the ‘model fish ancestor’ used at the beginning of the fish-to-frog evolutionary story), through Gogonasus and Tiktaalik, to the early tetrapods to basically begin turning a gill into an ear. 2,10,11This is a new interpretation of the evidence, and is not supported by all evolutionists, e.g. Michael LaBarbera, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. Not even convinced about the structure Brusseau and Ahlberg identified as a spiracle inPanderichthys (which has many similarities to Tiktaalik, supposedly two steps along the line from Gogonasus),11 he states that Brusseau and Ahlberg’s idea is ‘based on the interpretation of a structure that would be completely novel and unprecedented in this lineage’. 12 One thing is clear, and that is the identification of the bone that supposedly underwent the change from gill to ear function (the hyomandibula, allegedly evolving into the stapes, a middle ear bone). In fish, including Gogonasus, it is always identified as a hyomandibula. In all tetropods, including the earliest, e.g. Acanthostega, it is always identified as a stapes.13Concerning the pectoral fins of Gogonasus, the Nature article described them as ‘approaching the condition of Tiktaalik ’. 2 Therefore, while superficially more ‘arm-like’ than most other lobe-finned fishes, Gogonasus ’ fin structure is not even as close to tetrapod limbs as Tiktaalik. Note that Ahlberg and Clack, who believe Tiktaalik is a true transitional form, wrote in their review of that fossil: ‘Although these small distal bones bear some resemblance to tetrapod digits in terms of their function and range of movement, they are still very much components of a fin. There remains a large morphological gap between them and digits as seen in, for example,Acanthostega: if the digits evolved from these distal bones, the process must have involved considerable developmental repatterning. The implication is that function changed in advance of morphology.’ 14Therefore, if the fins of Gogonasus and the rest are a long way from turning into the arms of even their supposed closest land-dwelling ancestor, any claims that Gogonasus’ fins are in any new or spectacular way ‘similar to a human arm’ 15 are substantially misleading. Bat wings, whale fins and human hands all have the pentadactyl pattern, with five digits, a humerus, radius and ulna, but that doesn’t mean they had a common ancestry. 16 Vast amounts of biological, genetic and soft tissue restructuring

would be required to effect such a change. However, such restructuring has never been observed, tested or even successfully modelled in living organisms. A common designer is just as good an explanation for such a widespread pattern as ‘common descent’. In fact, common descent falls down when it comes to the obvious similarity between the bone pattern in forelimbs and hind limbs—clearly, no evolutionist teaches that this is the result of common descent from an ancestor which had only fore- or hind limbs. They would probably claim that the similarity was because natural selection chose the same pattern for good bioengineering reasons. An object lesson in speculation Molecular biologist Michael Denton once wrote, ‘To begin with, ninety-nine per cent of the biology of any organism resides in its soft anatomy, which is inaccessible in a fossil.’ 17 This is especially true of the parts of anatomy of all these recent fish-tofrog ‘missing links’ that are being used to establish evolution. In order to establish the evolution of what is most likely a respiratory structure into an ear, or a fin into a leg, much more needs to be known than the bone structures of these traits. A huge chasm exists.The coelacanth is a perfect example of such imaginative speculation buckling under the weight of hard, scientific data. Thought to be extinct for 65 million years, the coelacanth was discovered alive and well off the coast of South Africa in 1938. Scientists were excited by this discovery because the coelacanth is a close relative of the Rhipidistia, considered by many scientists, at one time, to be the ancestors of amphibians. They thought that their bony pectoral fins enabled these fish to make the transition from walking in shallow water to walking on dry land and evolving into amphibians. However, scientists have spent a considerable amount of time filming coelacanths underwater, and they do not walk at all. Instead their robust pectoral and pelvic fins are utilized for high powered, highly manoeuvrable swimming in the deep sea. In addition, a soft tissue analysis revealed that their physiology was 100% fish, and was in no way transitional between fish and amphibian.18Extrapolating function from bones alone is a highly inexact science. Where does Gogonasus fit? Long et al. give a cladistic analysis of the traits of the fossils either side of the supposed aquatic/land-dwelling vertebrate barrier (figure 1). Cladistics is a method of classifying singular traits that are distributed though a collection of organisms. 19 In this analysis, Long et al. placeGogonasus in a sister group alongside the two closest fish ‘relatives’ of tetrapods, Panderichthys and Tiktaalik, which is a large reshuffling of a number of the fossils in this group, compared to previous arrangements (figure 1). This shows that these evolutionary trees are based on a little bit of evidence and a whole lot of speculation. For all we know, another single fossil find will cause another complete revision of the entire arrangement! Importantly, cladograms (tree diagrams based on a cladistic analysis), such as those in figure 1, are not evolutionary lineages. They merely describe the relative similarities between a suite of singular traits of organisms. Unfortunately, evolutionists often portray cladograms as evolutionary lineages. But cladograms can give the appearance of evolutionary relationship where none exists at all—you can arrange a collection of teaspoons in a cladogram. The Courier Mail quoted Long as saying, regarding human ancestry, ‘You can now trace it back to this fish [i.e. Gogonasus]’. However, a cladogram does not identify ancestors, even for those who believe in evolution.20 As a palaeontologist, Long should know this. So Long’s claim about this fish being our ancestor is ‘spin’ for public consumption, presumably to promote evolution to the gullible. Long’s fanciful story-telling suggests that he is tarred with the same brush as his colleague at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Michael Archer,21 with whom he has co-authored previously.22 Homoplasy and evolution Looking at the relationship between Gogonasus and the early tetrapods in the Nature article, Long et al. aver: ‘The conspicuously large spiracular opening is proportionally similar to those recently reconstructed for Panderichthys and Tiktaalik. … There are some surprising similarities to the recently described pectoral fin in the advanced elpistostegalian Tiktaalik. … such features could indicate homoplasy between Gogonasus and early tetrapods’. 2 The key word to note here is homoplasy.23 It is very commonly used to describe the evolutionary relationships between different traits and different organisms. However, homoplasy provides no support for evolutionary explanations. Homoplastic structures are similar enough to require an explanation for the pattern observed, but are too different to be described as a ‘genetic throwback’24 or don’t fit a pattern of common descent. So the idea of ‘parallel’ or ‘convergent’ evolution is used to maintain that evolution independently came up with the same solution more than once—in ‘parallel’. Indeed this is part of a mosaic pattern seen widely in living things and fossils, one that thwartsevolutionary explanations.25 The tetrapod-like spiracle gap and fin structures in Gogonasus, combined with the many fish structures, provide an example of homoplasy. This homoplasy between Gogonasus and early tetrapods (this includes the comparison of Tiktaalik to the early tetrapods, and possibly other lobe-finned fish) is convergent,23 which is not helpful for constructing an evolutionary lineage of tetrapods from a supposed evolutionary ‘ancestor’. As ReMine quipped, ‘convergence thwarts lineage’.25 The conclusions of Daeschler et al. concerning Tiktaalik and the fish-to-frog picture, of which Gogonasus is now claimed to be a part, are instructive: ‘Major elements of the tetrapod body plan originated as a succession of intermediate morphologies that evolved mosaically and in parallelamong sarcopterygians closely related to tetrapods, allowing them to exploit diverse habitats in the Devonian [emphases added].&rsquo10Despite the media hype, they are therefore not claiming that the fossils present a direct lineage from fish to tetrapods, but that different parts of tetrapod morphology evolved at different times, often independently in different lineages, in response to the demands of their habitats. However, mosaic and parallel evolution, convergence, homoplasy, etc. are part of the evolutionists’ contingency plan for when common descent fails. Gogonasus, like many of the fossils closely related to it, appears to have a mix of traits that are similar to different animals. Though fundamentally a fish, Gogonasus provides an example of a chimera in a few features. 26 From a creation viewpoint, this suggests thatGogonasus was fully functional, therefore designed for a specific habitat. What are they claiming? With all of the news hype, one would think they’ve actually found something akin to video evidence of fish turning into frogs. However, whatever Gogonasus is precisely, it is first and foremost a fish. In contrast to the statements made for public consumption, the Nature paper does not actually claim that Gogonasus is the ancestor of all land-dwelling vertebrates. Rather, the Nature article concludes somewhat more circumspectly: ‘A new phylogenetic analysis places Gogonasus crownward [i.e. closer to the tetrapods] of Eusthenopteron as the sister taxon to the Elpistostegalia.’ But then they boldly assert that their ‘new phylogeny replaces the tristichopterid Eusthenopteron as the typical fish model for the fish–tetrapod transition [emphasis added].’ Basically, they’ve found a new fish they can use in their textbooks as the starting point for telling the story of fish-to-frog evolution: ‘Once upon a (geological) time there was a fish called Gogonasus …’. Gogonasus is yet another example of nothing much being blown up to look as if it is the final nail in the coffin for the creation model . When one actually takes the time to look beyond the media parade at the actual evidence, it is clear that the claims

are far less spectacular and do not in the slightest threaten the straightforward history. Even given the assumptions of the evolutionary model, they are at most mildly interesting—except, perhaps, for their potential use in the political struggle to make it look as if there is this barrage of evidence coming out to support evolution. Image from Williams, B. 1

Figure 1. Old and new cladograms of fishes to early tetrapods. The upper left diagram shows the old position ofGogonasus, and the upper right one shows Long et al.’s new position for Gogonasus, which is much closer to the ‘early’ tetrapods. The lower image shows the inferred lineage showing the fin/foot structures of different fossils along the ‘lineage’. (From Long et al.1) Return to text.

The oldest pregnant mum’—not! Media headlines and scientific journals are proclaiming the discovery of ‘the world’s oldest mum’, a fossil named after Sir David Attenborough by David Catchpoole and Jonathan Sarfati The Kimberleys, Western Australia The ‘Gogo formation’ is a famous fossil deposit in Western Australia’s Kimberley region,1 and worldwide news reports are proclaiming it has now yielded ‘a 380-million-year-old fossilised fish which was in the process of giving birth before it died’—the extinct placoderm dubbedMaterpiscis attenboroughi (‘Mother fish of Attenborough’).2In dramatic fashion, Nature journal drew attention to the researchers’ paper3 with the headline ‘The oldest pregnant mum’4—but, as we shall see, ascribing such an identity to this placoderm fossil named after Sir David Attenborough5 is misguided, as the evidence actually fits with the creation model, not uniformitarian evolutionary theory.First, consider the high degree of preservation of this specimen (and other ‘Gogo fish’ fossils), consistent with it having been buried rapidly under multiple layers of sediment : ‘remarkably well-preserved fish from the Devonian period’4 ‘remarkably preserved in three dimensions’3 ‘“Gogo fish are three-dimensional, uncrushed, perfect specimens —as if they died yesterday,” says Long.’4 (Paleontologist John Long, Museum Victoria, Australia) [Emphasis added.] ‘Soft tissues, including muscle and nerve structures, have been reported in Gogo specimens’4,6,7 [Emphasis added.] ‘the [Materpiscis attenboroughi] fish was giving birth to live young when it died, and shows evidence of an umbilical cord still attached to the offspring’2 [Emphasis added.] ‘intra-uterine embryo connected by a permineralized umbilical cord’3 [Emphasis added.] ‘the first maternal feeding structures preserved in any fossil ever found’5 All of which speak indeed of having been buried quickly and deeply—not the slow-and-gradual processes so often emphasized in uniformitarian-based evolution textbooks. So these fish would date from the Global Flood only around 4,500 years ago, not the claimed millions of years.

Gogonasus fossil from the Gogo formation, the Kimberleys, Western Australia. One of the discoverers of Gogonasus, Dr Kate Trinajstic, also discovered Materpiscis attenboroughi, the subject of this article.Second, consider how evolutionists’ ideas about millions-of-years ages leaves them puzzling over ‘advanced’ features found in organisms buried deep in the fossil ‘record’, such as thisMaterpiscis attenboroughi fossil, which now forces a revision of evolutionary thinking: ‘When you look down the microscope and there it was—an embryo inside a 380-million-year-old fish—and I was blown away by the very thought of this fish giving birth to live young almost 400 million years ago.’2 (Dr John Long) ‘Dr Gavin Young from the Australian National University says this reveals an advanced reproductive process to have evolved in such an ancient fish.’5 [Emphasis added.] ‘“It’s very significant because we always thought that egg laying was the primitive condition among fish,” [Dr Kate Trinajstic] said.’2 ‘Indeed, one of the Gogo species from the current paper was first described by Long two decades earlier, but he had mistaken the embryos for an unusual cluster of external scales.’4 ‘In earlier studies of placoderms, remnants of young have been observed inside adults and it was assumed to be cannibalism.’4 ‘“These early primitive fish, which were thought to be big, slow, dull, armoured fish, probably had an amazing courtship ritual,” says Long.’4 [Which represents an amazing turnaround in thinking!] ‘Gogo-type’ fish were supposed to be transitional forms linking fish to tetrapods. One of the researchers above, Dr Kate Trinajstic, said: ‘Wonderful transitional fossils which are helping us get an understanding of how fish moved out of the water and onto the land.’2 Yet they have found no such thing. There is nothing transitional in Materpiscis’ reproductive method! Fish, amphibians and reptiles all lay eggs, yet the allegedly in-between form does not. It is far from the only ‘transitional form’ that might appear transitional when one or two characteristics are analysed, but not when the whole organism is considered. See Tiktaalik—a fishy ‘missing link’.This is also another example of evolution impeding real science. Evolutionary expectations about this fossil’s ‘primitivity’ misled researchers about the true nature of the embryos. That is, because live birth should not have evolved so ‘early’, the developing embryos were mistaken for the victims of cannibalism. No, Materpiscis attenboroughi, like all organisms living and that have ever lived, is not ‘primitive’. Rather it testifies to having been designed. The particular fossil specimen enjoying a blaze of publicity at present was not the world’s first mother. It’s true she died while giving birth. Ventastega—not a leg to stand on by Shaun Doyle Once more, fish-to-tetrapod evolution is getting its shot in the spotlight. Paleontologists have recently unearthed more bones of an ‘early tetrapod’ dubbed Ventastega curonica in the Upper Devonian (Upper Famennian) in Latvia, ‘dated’ to about 365 million years ago.1

Figure 1. Comparison of skull roofs of Tiktaalik to Acanthostega, Ichthyostega and Ventastega. From Ahlberg et al.,1p. 1202. Ventastega has been hailed as the latest transitional fossil, one that bridges the gap between Tiktaalik and Acanthostega. But is it all it’s cracked up to be? A mean feat with no feet Fins need to turn into weight-bearing limbs for fish-to-tetrapod evolution to work, 2 and evolutionists have realised this, making extravagant claims about the supposed smooth transition of fins to limbs, particularly in Tiktaalik.3,4 So, for such publicity about a supposed transitional form between Tiktaalik and Acanthostega, where are the fins/feet of Ventastega? Nowhere to be found!What was found? The researchers found parts of the shoulder and pelvis. However, Ventastega bears close relation to Acanthostega in these key areas, and from this they inferred that Ventastega’s limbs were similar to Acanthostega’s as well. So in perhaps the key point of transition between fish and tetrapods, Ventastega is completely tetrapod, as far as the evidence goes. So why do they claim Ventastega as a transitional fossil? How not to get ahead One does not look to the legs, but the head. They claim that the structure of the skull is intermediate between Tiktaalik and Acanthostega. In an analysis of the skull shape, the overall features, as interpreted by Ahlberg et al., place Ventastega slightly closer to Tiktaalik thanAcanthostega in overall morphology (figure 1).In many of the features of the skull deemed important for fish-to-tetrapod evolution, Ventastega clearly resembles, or is inferred to resemble,Acanthostega. For example, Ventastega is inferred to have a stapes (as in tetrapods), not a hyomandibula (as in fish, including Tiktaalik),5and the brain case, lower jaw structure and spiracular architecture all resemble those of ‘early’ tetrapods and not Tiktaalik and lobe-finned fish.6 This does not deny that in some features, Ventastega resembles Tiktaalik the most. However, in most features Ventastega resembles either Acanthostega or Tiktaalik; it does not present any intermediate morphologies of its own. In most features deemed important for fish-to-tetrapod evolution, Ventastega has an early tetrapod morphology. Therefore, it is more likely that Ventastega is has an independent mosaic morphology, with most distinct relation to ‘early’ tetrapods.

Fossil fragment fog The fragments dubbed Ventastega are not the remains of a single skeleton either; they were a compilation of several skeletons, as more than one set of a number of different bones were found. 7 They were found in the same horizon, but they had to be inferred to be from the same taxon, rather than demonstrably from the same animal, as with Gogonasus. Therefore, the reconstruction is selective and interpretive, rather than straightforward.It is easy to get lost in morphological analyses of fossil fragments if not careful. There is a far bigger issue lying behind these analyses though. The fundamental assumption of fish-to-tetrapod evolution is that it happened in mosaic and parallel fashion: ‘Major elements of the tetrapod body plan originated as a succession of intermediate morphologies that evolved mosaically and in parallelamong sarcopterygians closely related to tetrapods, allowing them to exploit diverse habitats in the Devonian [emphases added].’8The way Ventastega is described, it sounds like it had the head of Tiktaalik, and the body ofAcanthostega (that is not necessarily true—see above). This describes a mosaic form, which merely has structures that can be found in more than one animal. This is not demonstrative of an evolutionary lineage, but is merely an attempt to fit unresponsive data into an evolutionary strait jacket, and claiming it as evidence for evolution. 9,10Also, there is limited information from fossils—soft parts are usually not preserved, and may not be transitional. This was shown in the recent discovery of Materpiscis attenboroughi (‘Mother fish of Attenborough’), which was fossilized while pregnant. So while this might have been called ‘transitional’ between fish and amphibians, its mode of reproduction was very different from that of the creatures it supposedly bridges—see The oldest pregnant mum not! What’s a transitional fossil? One of the many news items about this latest fossil find concludes with an interesting note from none other than Dr Neil Shubin, co-discoverer of the Tiktaalik fossil, and arch evopropagandist: ‘The earliest tetrapods probably evolved between 5 million and 7 million years before Tiktaalik, [Shubin] notes, and the new fossils will help researchers predict what those creatures would have looked like.’11 However, Tiktaalik is often listed as a transitional fossil, including by Shubin himself: ‘New discoveries of transitional fossils such as Tiktaalik make the distinction between fish and the earliest tetrapods increasingly difficult to draw [emphasis added].’The problem here is that what is actually meant by the term ‘transitional fossil’ in these cases is not what popular parlance takes the term to mean. In popular understanding, a ‘transitional fossil’ is a fossil that is involved in a direct evolutionary lineage. In the case of Tiktaalik, people think it is the ancestor of all living tetrapods (i.e. a fish begat Tiktaalik begat a tetrapod).12 But then how did the grandson beget his own grandfather? This is very similar to the case of true birds, even possessing beaks, dated to well before their alleged feathered dinosaur ancestors.However, as is plain from Shubin’s reasoning, this is not what he means by ‘transitional fossil’. He does not put Tiktaalik in any direct lineage between fish and tetrapods. Rather, he is saying that the morphology of Tiktaalik has some characteristics in common with lobe-finned fish, and others in common with ‘early’ tetrapods. Like all other claimed ‘transitional fossils’, Tiktaalik and Ventastega are mosaic forms, which provide no support for fish-to-tetrapod evolution because they are merely forcing resistant data into an evolutionary mould. Conclusion Ventastega, like other claimed ‘transitional fossils’, doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. Much information is lacking, especially the limbs, so the designation of transitional fossil is dubious even from the start.Ventastega is described as having a Tiktaalik-shaped head, and an Acanthostega-shaped body. This alone places it as a mosaic form, a creature with fully formed parts brought together from different animals, which itself creates a fully functional animal independent of others. However, even this is dubious, asVentastega is by far more likely to be just another ‘early’ tetrapod like Acanthostega. There has also been much equivocation in the literature on fish-to-tetrapod evolution on the definition of ‘transitional fossil’. What is meant in the scientific literature is not what is meant in popular speech. This serves to further confuse the public, and cause them to think that evolution is proved by this parade of ‘transitional fossils’. However, the parade is only convincing if the ‘transitional fossils’ label has a leg to stand on. Like Ventastega though, it doesn’t. Is the fish really our ancestor? A review of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin Pantheon Books, New York, 2008 reviewed by Colin Mitchell The author, Neil Shubin, is Professor of Anatomy at the University of Chicago and Provost of its field museum. He has wide expertise in both fossils and biology. His coworker, Edward Daeschler, is Curator of Vertebrate Biology in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The book is well researched with much information about earlier work and a comprehensive reference section. It is highly readable with the author’s modest and friendly personality coming through strongly. It incidentally includes a most useful guide to fossil hunting. It is illustrated mainly by Kalliopi Monoyios’ graphic and appealing black-and-white drawings.The author puts his cards on the table from the start. The book’s stimulating title indicates that the central thrust is evolutionary—seeking to explain humans as the product of a succession of life forms from an original cell. It supports the whole multi-million year evolutionary sequence. It emphasizes a common origin for body features such as limbs, hair, teeth and senses in both animals and humans.It emphasizes three types of alleged evidence: a) similarities between the body parts of living creatures, arguing for common ancestry, b) indications from microbiology which seem to argue the same way, and c) detailed examination of one apparent missing link—that between fish and amphibians: Tiktaalik. Body evolution? Summary of the author’s views There are remarkable analogies between body parts of creatures which otherwise differ widely. All advanced creatures have similar architecture.They have heads containing brains and sense organs, spinal columns with an anus at the opposite end of the body from the mouth and comparable plans of flippers, wings, legs and arms. We can see this especially by comparing upper limbs. Whales, birds and humans have single arm bones leading to two more which in turn connect to fingers or toes. In humans, this series runs from the humerus through the radius and ulna to the wrist bones and fingers.Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals all share hard teeth. The book quotes the claim that this could have evolved from the juxtaposition of two layers of tissue, and that this hardness could have evolved from eel-shaped sea

creatures called conodonts with tooth-like hard parts allowing them to bite and feed on other sea creatures. Behind this is the idea that the tooth, which is part of our survival kit, arose originally not to protect mammals but to eat them. Genes, embryos and microbes Microbiology has made great advances notably in showing how the differentiation of species depends on small differences in genes which make evolutionary change possible and which can indeed now often be manipulated to effect desired change. The author points out that all appendages, whether fins or limbs, are built by similar kinds of genes. Experiments on mice, sharks and flies show that the great evolutionary transformation from the fin to the limb mainly involved nothing more than using ancient genes in new ways. This holds out wide possibilities of using work on the genes of one species to find one that tells us about the birth defects in another.The author claims that embryos of all creatures look similar in their early stages and everything from sharks to humans shares four anatomical swellings in the neck called ‘arches’. In comparing how the skeleton developed in birds, salamanders, frogs and turtles the author found that limbs as different as bird wings and frog legs look very similar during their development. Experiments with salamander embryos have shown that lopping off one part of the embryo of one species and grafting this onto the embryo of another species led to the formation of a whole new body including spinal cord, back, belly, even head.The transferred patch of tissue was called ‘the organizer’. We now recognize that the general structure of the body is initiated by this organizer region which contains what is known as the Hox gene, which controls the activity of the organizer in the embryo. 1 It is now known that all mammals, birds, amphibians and fish have organizers. If you take the organizer from a chicken and graft in on to a salamander embryo, then you get a twinned salamander.The book also reports research on algae which suggests how they can adapt in the battle for life. Some workers took a type of alga and let it live for 1,000 generations. They then introduced a microbe predator to eat the descendants. In less than 200 generations, the alga responded by producing clumps with hundreds of cells, eventually reducing their number to eight. This made each clump large enough to avoid being eaten but small enough for each constituent cell to survive. The interesting fact was that this adaptation to predation caused the algae to adopt this result and continue to reproduce and form individuals with eight cells. Smell, seeing and hearing The book also traces the presumed evolution of the senses of smell, seeing, hearing and of the brain itself. Eyes, ears and nasal structures are similar and all show an apparent upward progression from simpler to more ‘advanced’ animals. We have obtained our sense of smell from fish but have many more odour genes which arose ‘by many rounds of duplication of the small number of genes present in primitive species’ (p. 146).Because of their softness, eyes seldom appear in the fossil record although their presence can be inferred in the earliest marine creatures such as trilobites. The basis of the eye is the light-gathering cell. Most mammals have only two kinds of receptors whereas humans have three and so can distinguish more differences in colour. This from an evolutionary point of view suggests that our colour vision began when one of the genes in an ancestral mammal duplicated and the copies specialized over time for different light sources. The author suggests that this may relate to changes in the flora of the earth. Monkeys living in trees would benefit because colour vision enabled them to discriminate better among many different kinds of fruit and leaves.The book likewise gives the ear a complex evolution. The inner ear gives us our sense of balance and controls the nerve impulses sent to the brain. It is thought to be the original part. The middle ear consists of three bones in all mammals while reptiles and amphibians have only one and fish none.These three bones allow us to hear higher frequency sounds than can animals with a single middle ear bone. The evolutionary view is that when we evolved from reptiles the bones originally used by reptiles for chewing became used by mammals for hearing. The outer ear is seen as a recent evolutionary addition to bodies. Criticism of claimed evolutionary evidence But when we review all these findings about body form and development there is nothing that conclusively supports transspecific evolution. Similarities or homologies 2 between the bodies of creatures point at least as strongly to a single common designer, as opposed to many designers.3 Also, the commonalities would even bring such a designer great honour in most cultures, indicating his mastery over his designs. 4This view is strengthened when one considers the transcendental complexity of even the simplest living cell. Likewise, the similarity of microbiological processes in different species argues as much—indeed more—for their common design than for a common physical ancestry. The reader of the book is left with the feeling that the billion-year evolution model so permeates the author’s thinking that he passes over the much more obvious evidences of ubiquitous design. A ‘missing link’? Is there any clear example of a ‘missing link’ in the fossil sequence which will finally prove trans-specific evolution? One proposed step which has provoked much research is the transition from fish to amphibians. Professor Shubin is one of the outstanding researchers in this area and discusses it in the book.The Devonian geological period is ‘the age of fishes’. In and below this almost all fossil life is marine. Above it there is an increasing presence of land-living reptiles and then mammals. It is generally believed that this change must have come via an evolution from fish to amphibians and then to reptiles. But there appeared to be no clear link between these groups.Fish and land-living animals differ in many respects. Fish have conical heads whereas the apparently earliest animals have almost crocodile-like flat heads. Fish lack necks while all land animals have them so that they can bend their heads independently of their shoulders. Fish have fins while land creatures have limbs with fingers and toes, wrists and ankles.The author and his fellow workers actively sought for a fossil showing ‘the advance’ from fish to land-living animals. In 2004 they apparently succeeded. They found the fossilized remains of three examples of a creature with both fish-like and amphibian-like characters on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. This creature was apparently the link. It appeared in the right place in the geological sequence in Devonian rocks with an assigned age of 375 million years. The author has called it a ‘fishapod’. 5–7 Like a fish it has two front fins, two small back fins and no bones in the tail. The front fins have jointed bones which could enable it to raise itself, but it could not walk.Like a 4-legged reptile, it has a flat head able to move separately from its shoulders and eyes on top, rather than a fish’s side-looking eyes near the front of its head. It has spiracles on top of its head which suggest it had lungs as well as gills. This indicates some similarity to lungfishes although it differs from these in having its front fins connected to the spinal column. At the same time virtually all the features it shares with land creatures are apparently primitive, suggesting an evolutionary transition.The author and his fellow workers, with help from the local Inuit people, named the creature Tiktaalik roseae, deriving the first name from that for ‘large shallow-water fish’ in the Inuktikuk language. The find received wide publicity including headlines in the New York Times. Since then more than 20 fossils of this species have been found, ranging in length from less than one metre to nearly three metres.But is Tiktaalik really a link in ‘our evolutionary ancestry’ supporting the claim in the book title? There are strong reasons why it cannot be. 8First, the bones in its front fins differ both

from those in fish and from the digits in amphibians. To evolve these would require many changes, none of which appear in the fossil record.

This proposed sequence for the evolution of limbs looks impressive: Glyptolepis—Sauripterus—Eusthenopteron— Panderichthys— Tiktaalik—Acanthostega—Tulerpeton. But these extinct fossil creatures differ considerably among themselves and don’t provide a valid evolutionary sequence. (Image from: Nature440 (7085):764–771) Secondly, Tiktaalik’s head, as in amphibians, is not connected to the shoulder girdle. In fish the head, shoulder girdle and circulatory system constitute a single mechanical unit. A change from this would require the head to become incrementally detached from the shoulder girdle with functional intermediates at every stage. None are known. Thirdly, paleontologists have placed the evolution of limbs connecting fish and reptiles in a proposed sequence which sounds impressive: Glyptolepis—Sauripterus—Eusthenopteron—Panderichthys—Tiktaalik—Acanthostega—Ichthyostega—Tulerpeton. But these extinct fossil creatures differ considerably among themselves and are not an obvious evolving sequence. Their order is doubtful.Panderichthys ‘dated’ earlier than its supposed predecessor Eusthenopteron. Acanthostega’s skull is more tetrapod-like than Ichthyostega’swhile the latter’s shoulder and hips are more robust and land-animal-like than Acanthostega. Fourthly, all calculations of evolution depend on the assumption of a multi-million-year old Earth to allow time for it to work. But there is now increasing evidence of a much younger Earth.9 To summarize, Tiktaalik appears to be a unique creature which has both amphibian and fish-like features. It must have been one of a mosaic of fauna living in an area described by Shubin as ‘a shallow stream surrounded by large seasonal mud flats’ under warm conditions before the Flood. Conclusions There are a number of reasons why the approach of this book, despite its wealth of detail, cannot explain our present natural world. The multi-million year chronology depends on two assumptions: the validity of radiometric dating and the operation of gradual inter-type evolution.The first is doubtful because of sampling problems and ignorance of the past history of samples, the second because of the unlikelihood of organic evolution in the absence of any credible transitional forms in the fossil record. Life forms are too complex for any trans-specific evolution because of the unanswered need for exactly integrated multiple simultaneous changes in one type of creature to give another. There is little evidence for the evolutionary origin of the earliest creatures. All appear without apparent ancestry or evidence of trans-specific change. There is only slight evidence of Precambrian life, contrasting with the considerable fossil assemblage in Cambrian rocks where even the lowest contain representatives of nearly all the main branches of the invertebrate animal kingdom from jellyfish to crustaceans, including complex forms such as trilobites and brachiopods.Random natural forces cannot explain the ‘knowledge’ possessed by growing embryos which decides what part of a body they will form or the existence of ‘organizers’ combining genes to form a body plan. The use of evolutionary forces to explain natural phenomena can lead to some apparent impossibilities such as tracing the evolution of the mammalian middle ear from the reptilian jawbone10 and the suggested evolutionary origin of hiccups and propensity for hernias.Nor can evolution explain upward progress of life forms from simple to complex.11 The tendency of all random action is towards degradation of existing forms. There is no way that it can lead to a progressive advance in their complexity. And deeper questions lie behind these issues. A belief in the evolution theory impacts all moral and social considerations.12,13 The existence of life with all its wonders and complexities requires a dominant place for intelligent design. There is some good science in this book but it is devalued by the attempt by the author to shoehorn the data into supporting a theory which cannot explain the underlying origin and purposes of nature.

Panderichthys—a fish with fingers? by Shaun Doyle Published: 9 December 2008(GMT+10) Figure 1. CT scans of Panderichthys’ fin show that it has a fin structure like Tiktaalik.

Once more, fish-to-tetrapod evolution is paraded around, 1,2 this time with a study suggesting that Tiktaalik, the ‘poster boy’ of fish–tetrapod evolution, is not quite all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a new kid on the block, the 90–130-cmlong Panderichthys rhombolepis. Except, Panderichthys isn’t exactly new; it was actually named in 1941. 3 And it’s supposedly older too: 385 million years (Ma) old in comparison to Tiktaalik, which is supposedly 380 Ma old. However, a recent study has suggested that Panderichthys’ fin may becloser to tetrapods in morphology than Tiktaalik, 4 although evolutionary theory would predict that tetrapod characteristics would be more recent. Fishing for fingers Boisvert et al. have based their analysis on the pectoral fin of one particular Panderichthys fossil, which they reconstructed from a CT scan study of the fossil, which they then used to reconstruct a 3D image of the fossil fin. Panderichthys was found to have multiple ‘digits’ at the end of the bony part of the pectoral fin similar to Tiktaalik’s, which Boisvert et al. made out to be homologous with digits on tetrapod limbs (figure 1). Aside from the general biological 5 and theological6 problems with excluding common design, Panderichthys is still unequivocally a fish with fins.The small distal bones found between Panderichthys and Tiktaalik are nothing in comparison to the changes that need to be made between either of them and a limb, as one of the co-authors of the Nature paper, Per Ahlberg, has admitted before: ‘Although these small distal bones bear some resemblance to tetrapod digits in terms of their function and range of movement, they are still very much components of a fin. There remains a large morphological gap between them and digits as seen in, for example, Acanthostega: if the digits evolved from these distal bones, the process must have involved considerable developmental repatterning.’7They do not claim that the digits themselves in Panderichthys are any more advanced than Tiktaalik; but they do claim that some of the features of the so-called ‘wrist’ and the positioning of the digits are more tetrapod-like. However, they also acknowledge that Panderichthysand Tiktaalik are close in pectoral fin morphology, exhibiting largely the same bones in comparable proportions. The problem is that neither of them are anything like a tetrapod limb because the wrist morphology is all wrong. 8As Luskin points out, there are a number of things that need to radically change from Tiktaalik to get a proper tetrapod wrist/hand: ‘Shrink Tiktaalik’s [and Panderichthys’] radius and reposition it so that it articulates other bones further down the limb. ‘Evolve a radiale [a third bone alongside the ulnare and intermedium that articulates with the radius]. ‘Dramatically repattern, reposition, and transform the existing radials by lining them up, separating them out to form digits. ‘Evolve metacarpals and phalanges so that there are real digits extending distally from the radius. ‘Evolve the ‘lotsa blobs’, i.e. evolve other carpal bones between the radius, ulna, and the now-aligned digits to form a real wrist. In other words, evolve the bulk of the wrist-bones.’8Another important consideration is function. Since these particular fins have never been seen in live operation, there is no reason to suggest that they provide evidence for fish–tetrapod evolution. Coelacanth is a prime example. Before it was known that its limbs were used for deft manoeuvring of the fin, the coelacanth’s limbs were thought to be evidence of the fish–tetrapod transition. Now we know better. 9 The situation is no different in Panderichthys. The illusion of evolution Boisvert et al. are at the end of the day rather confused as to how and where to place Panderichthys in the evolutionary series: ‘It is difficult to say whether this character distribution implies that Tiktaalik is autapomorphic,10 that Panderichthys and tetrapods are convergent,11 or that Panderichthys is closer to tetrapods than Tiktaalik. At any rate, it demonstrates that the fish–tetrapod transition was accompanied by significant character incongruence in functionally important structures.’4 They don’t know which of their smorgasboard of just-so evolutionary ‘explanations’ they should use, so they leave the reader with a few possible ones to give the illusion that evolution has it all worked out, even if we don’t. However, there are no lineages—merely the comparing of finished products to come up with the illusion of a lineage. The story as Daeschler et al. described it remains true: ‘Major elements of the tetrapod body plan originated as a succession of intermediate morphologies that evolved mosaically and in parallel among sarcopterygians closely related to tetrapods, allowing them to exploit diverse habitats in the Devonian [emphases added]’12 The problem of mosaic and parallel evolution is that they occur to parts of organisms rather than the whole (mosaic) and that the same thing evolves more than once independently (parallel). Both of these are excuses that are used when common descent fails, and are extremely unlikely to happen.9,13 Conclusion For all the complex 3D imaging that went into this paper, there really is not much in it. It further confirms that Tiktaalik is an unequivocal fish, related to Panderichthys, and it tells us that fish–tetrapod evolution is a mess. This is not a surprise from a creation perspective, because evolution fails to explain the evidence, and these fish were created fully functional.

Does the fossil record of whales show that they evolved from land mammals Refuting Evolution A handbook for students, parents, and teachers countering the latest arguments for evolution by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M. Whale evolution? First published in Refuting Evolution, Chapter 5

Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are actually mammals, not fish. But they live their whole lives in water, unlike most mammals that live on land. But evolutionists believe that cetaceans evolved from land mammals. One alleged transitional series is prominently drawn in Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. This chapter analyzes this and other arguments for cetacean evolution, and shows some of the unique features of whales and dolphins. Wonderful whales Cetaceans have many unique features to enable them to live in water. For example: Enormous lung capacity with efficient oxygen exchange for long dives. A powerful tail with large horizontal flukes enabling very strong swimming. Eyes designed to see properly in water with its far higher refractive index, and withstand high pressure. Ears designed differently from those of land mammals that pick up airborne sound waves and with the eardrum protected from high pressure. Skin lacking hair and sweat glands but incorporating fibrous, fatty blubber. Whale fins and tongues have counter-current heat exchangers to minimize heat loss. Nostrils on the top of the head (blowholes). Specially fitting mouth and nipples so the baby can be breast-fed underwater. Baleen whales have sheets of baleen (whalebone) that hang from the roof of the mouth and filter plankton for food. Many cetaceans find objects by echo-location. They have a sonar system which is so precise that it’s the envy of the U.S. Navy. It can detect a fish the size of a golf ball 230 feet (70 m) away. It took an expert in chaos theory to show that the dolphin’s ‘click’ pattern is mathematically designed to give the best information. 1 One amazing feature of most echo-locating dolphins and small whales is the ‘melon,’ a fatty protrusion on the forehead. This ‘melon’ is actually a sound lens—a sophisticated structure designed to focus the emitted sound waves into a beam which the dolphin can direct where it likes. This sound lens depends on the fact that different lipids (fatty compounds) bend the ultrasonic sound waves traveling through them in different ways. The different lipids have to be arranged in the right shape and sequence in order to focus the returning sound echoes. Each separate lipid is unique and different from normal blubber lipids, and is made by a complicated chemical process, requiring a number of different enzymes. 2For such an organ to have evolved, random mutations must have formed the right enzymes to make the right lipids, and other mutations must have caused the lipids to be deposited in the right place and shape. A gradual step-by-step evolution of the organ is not feasible, because until the lipids were fully formed and at least partly in the right place and shape, they would have been of no use. Therefore, natural selection would not have favored incomplete intermediate forms. Missing links Evolutionists believe that whales evolved from some form of land mammal. According to Teaching about Evolution, page 18, they ‘evolved from a primitive group of hoofed mammals called Mesonychids.’ However, there are many changes required for a whale to evolve from a land mammal. One of them is to get rid of its pelvis. This would tend to crush the reproductive orifice with propulsive tail movements. But a shrinking pelvis would not be able to support the hind-limbs needed for walking. So the hypothetical transitional form would be unsuited to both land and sea, and hence be extremely vulnerable. Also, the hind part of the body must twist on the fore part, so the tail's sideways movement can be converted to a vertical movement. Seals and dugongs are not anatomically intermediate between land mammals and whales. They have particular specializations of their own. The lack of transitional forms in the fossil record was realized by evolutionary whale experts like the late E.J. Slijper: ‘We do not possess a single fossil of the transitional forms between the aforementioned land animals [i.e., carnivores and ungulates] and the whales.’ 3 The lowest whale fossils in the fossil record show they were completely aquatic from the first time they appeared. However, Teaching about Evolution is intended as a polemic for evolution. So it reconstructs some recent fossil discoveries to support the whale evolution stories that Slijper believed on faith. On page 18 there is a nice picture of an alleged transitional series between land mammals and whales (drawn at roughly the same size without telling readers that some of the creatures were hugely different in size—see the section about Basilosaurus in this chapter). This appears to be derived from an article in Discover magazine.4 The Discover list (below) is identical to the Teaching about Evolution series except that the latter has Basilosaurus as the fourth creature and the Discover list has ‘dates’: Mesonychid (55 million years ago) Ambulocetus (50 million years ago) Rodhocetus (46 million years ago) Prozeuglodon (40 million years ago) One thing to note is the lack of time for the vast number of changes to occur by mutation and selection. If a mutation results in a new gene, for this new gene to replace the old gene in a population, the individuals carrying the old gene must be eliminated, and this takes time. Population genetics calculations suggest that in 5 million years (one million years longer than the alleged time between Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus), animals with generation lines of about ten years (typical of whales) could substitute no more than about 1,700 mutations. 5 This is not nearly enough to generate the new information that whales need for aquatic life, even assuming that all the hypothetical information-adding mutations required for this could somehow arise. (And as shown in chapter 9, real science shows that this cannot occur.) Ambulocetus

(A) Reconstruction of Ambulocetus, ‘at the end of the power stroke during swimming.’7 The stippled bones were all that were found, and the shaded ones were found 5 m above the rest. (B) With the ‘additions’ removed there really isn't much left of Ambulocetus! The second in this ‘transitional series’ is the 7-foot (2 m) long Ambulocetus natans (‘walking whale that swims’). Like the secular media and more ‘popular’ science journals, Teaching about Evolution often presents nice neat stories to readers, not the ins and outs of the research methodology, including its limitations. The nice pictures of Ambulocetus natans in these publications are based on artists' imaginations, and should be compared with the actual bones found! The difference is illustrated well in the article A Whale of a Tale?6 This article shows that the critical skeletal elements necessary to establish the transition from non-swimming land mammal to whale are (conveniently) missing (see diagram). Therefore, grand claims about the significance of the fossils cannot be critically evaluated. The evolutionary biologist Annalisa Berta commented on the Ambulocetus fossil: Since the pelvic girdle is not preserved, there is no direct evidence in Ambulocetus for a connection between the hind limbs and the axial skeleton. This hinders interpretations of locomotion in this animal, since many of the muscles that support and move the hindlimb originate on the pelvis. 7 Finally, it is dated more recently (by evolutionary dating methods) than undisputed whales, so is unlikely to be a walking ancestor of whales. Basilosaurus Basilosaurus isis (a.k.a. Zeuglodon) is the fourth and last postulated transitional form on page 18 of Teaching about Evolution. Basilosaurus is Greek for ‘king lizard,’ but it was actually a serpent-like sea mammal about 70 feet (21 m) long, with a 5-foot (1.5 m) long skull. It was 10 times as long as Ambulocetus, although the Teaching about Evolution book draws them at the same size (above)—it helps give the desired (false) impression that there is a genuine transitional series. However, Basilosaurus was fully aquatic, so hardly transitional between land mammals and whales. Also, Barbara Stahl, a vertebrate paleontologist and Alleged sequence of land mammal evolutionist, points out: to whale transition The serpentine form of the body and the peculiar shape of the cheek teeth make it [From Teaching about Evolution and plain that these archaeocetes [like Basilosaurus] could not possibly have been the the Nature of Science] ancestor of modern whales. Both modern branches of whales, the toothed whales (Odontoceti) and baleen whales (Mysticeti), appear abruptly in the fossil record. Stahl points out the following regarding the skull structure in both types: … shows a strange modification not present, even in a rudimentary way, in Basilosaurus and its relatives: in conjunction with the backward migration of the nostrils on the dorsal surface of the head, the nasal bones have been reduced and carried upwards and the premaxillary and maxillary elements have expanded to the rear to cover the original braincase roof.8 Basilosaurus did have small hind limbs (certainly too small for walking), and Teaching Evolution says ‘they were thought to be non-functional.’ But they were probably used for grasping during copulation, according to even other evolutionists. For example, the evolutionary whale expert Philip Gingerich said, ‘It seems to me that they could only have been some kind of sexual and reproductive clasper.’9 Pakicetus Pakicetus inachus is yet another candidate as an intermediate between whales and land mammals in the eyes of some evolutionists. According to evolutionary ‘dating’ methods it is 52 million years old. Since some educational publications have also claimed Pakicetus is transitional (see diagram), it is worth discussing although it is absent from Teaching about Evolution. This indicates that its authors don't believe Pakicetus is a good example of an intermediate. This could be because Pakicetus is known only from some cheek teeth and fragments of the skull and lower jaw, so we have no way of knowing whether its locomotion was transitional. The diagram shows the imaginative reconstruction taught to schoolteachers and on the cover of Science, compared to the reality as reported in the same issue. Note 10,12 Top left: Gingerich’s first reconstruction Bottom left: what he had actually found10,12 that only the stippled parts of the skull Top right: more complete skeleton13 represent actual fossil evidence, while the Bottom right: more reasonable reconstruction15

rest is ‘reconstructed.’ But we do know that its hearing mechanism was that of a land mammal and that it was found in fluvial sediments with other land animals.10 So the evidence shows that it was probably a land mammal, not a transitional form. 11 After I first wrote Refuting Evolution, new research has blown away this reconstruction. This demonstrates an oft-repeated phenomenon in evolutionary paleontology. Many of the alleged transitional forms are based on fragmentary remains, which are therefore open to several interpretations, based on one’s axioms. Evolutionary bias means that such remains are often likely to be interpreted as transitional, as with Gingerich, and is also prevalent in ape-man claims. But when more bones are discovered, then the fossils nearly always fit one type or another, and are no longer plausible as transitional. It’s also notable that alleged intermediate forms are often trumpeted in the media, while retractions are usually muted or unpublicized.A prominent whale expert, Thewissen, and colleagues unearthed some more bones of Pakicetus, and published their work in the journal Nature.13 The commentary on this paper in the same issue14 says, ‘All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and … indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground.’ (See illustration, above right.) This is very different from Gingerich’s picture of an aquatic animal! But the evolutionary bias is still clear, describing Pakicetus as a ‘terrestrial cetacean’ and saying, ‘The first whales were fully terrestrial, and were even efficient runners.’ But the term ‘whale’ becomes meaningless if it can describe land mammals, and it provides no insight into how true marine whales supposedly evolved.Also, ‘solid anatomical data’ contradict previous theories of whale ancestry. The news article Fossil Finds Show Whales Related to Early Pigs says: ‘Until now paleontologists thought whales had evolved from mesonychians, an extinct group of land-dwelling carnivores, while molecular scientists studying DNA were convinced they descended from artiodactyls [even-toed ungulates]. ‘“The paleontologists, and I am one of them, were wrong,” Gingerich said.’ Such candor is commendable, and it shows the fallacy of trusting alleged ‘proofs’ of evolution. Pity that Gingerich is still committed to materialistic evolutionism. G.A. Mchedlidze, a Russian expert on whales, has expressed serious doubts as to whether creatures like Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, and others—even if accepted as aquatic mammals—can properly be considered ancestors of modern whales. He sees them instead as a completely isolated group.16 Vestigial legs? Many evolutionists support whale evolution by alleging that there are vestigial hind legs buried in their flesh. However, these so-called ‘remnants’ are not useless at all, but help strengthen the reproductive organs—the bones are different in males and females. So they are best explained by creation, not evolution.17 As with the allegedly functionless limbs of Basilosaurus, we should not assume that ignorance of a function means there is no function. One myth promulgated by some evolutionists says that some whales have been found with hind legs, complete with thigh and knee muscles. However, this story probably grew by legendary accretion from a true account of a real sperm whale with a 5.5 inch (14 cm) bump with a 5-inch (12 cm) piece of bone inside. Sperm whales are typically about 62 feet (19 m) long, so this abnormal piece of bone is minute in comparison with the whale—this hardly qualifies as a ‘leg!’18 A whale of a tale? by Don Batten National Geographic Image collection, Robert Caputo (A) Reconstruction of Ambulocetus, ‘at the end of the power stroke during swimming’, by Thewissen et al. (B) The stippled bones were all that were found. And the bones coloured red were found 5 m above the rest. With the ‘additions’ removed there really isn’t much left of Ambulocetus!Fossilized bones found in Pakistan are claimed to be those of a ‘walking whale’,1 supposedly an ancestor of today’s whales. The main claim of Thewissen et al. is that this was a walking whale. That is, had hind limbs which functioned as legs on land and paddles/flippers in water.The skeleton is incomplete, with critical parts missing. It is also highly fragmented. To establish hind leg function it is necessary to have the pelvic girdle to demonstrate that the leg bones (femur and small proximal piece of tibia) belong to the rest of the skeleton and to determine muscle attachments. The pelvic girdle is missing!With the forelimbs, the humerus and scapula are missing which are again crucial to interpreting function, as well as establishing connectedness to the skeleton. Prothero et al.2 suggest five features to unite whales: All incisors parallel with the tooth row—not preserved in Ambulocetus Medial lambdoidal crest semicircular—not preserved in Ambulocetus Nasals retracted—rostrum (snout) not preserved in Ambulocetus Protocones small (features of teeth) Accessory cusps large (features of teeth) Thewissen et al. use their own list of purported whale characters to establish Ambulocetus as a whale, but as Berta 3 points out, some of these characters may have a broader distribution than whales. Thewissen et al. use a phylogenetic definition of a whale. That is, they assume common ancestry (evolution) and so justify including the supposed ancestor with the whales, choosing characters which were common as their criteria. In the footnotes, the authors mention one major difference viz. ‘Unlike most other archeocetes, the pterygoid processes are enormous …’, but there are many big differences, including the degree of variation and specialization of vertebrae.A major characteristic of whales is the horizontal tail flukes. Involvement of the tail in swimming requires strong caudal vertebrae with large processes for muscle attachment. Thewissen et al. show one ‘caudal’ vertebra which has almost no processes for muscle attachment. Furthermore, this one caudal vertebra was not even found with the rest of the skeleton, being ‘referred material’, found 5 metres above. In other words, the whole of the lumbar, pelvic and caudal parts of Ambulocetus were ‘constructed’ from just one lumbar vertebra, one femur, a small piece

of tibia (no fibula, no pelvis), a small piece of the ball of the ankle joint and a few foot and toe bones. And yet a detailed description is given of how the animal moved in water and on land! The robust femur and presence of a hoof suggest that Ambulocetus was a land-dwelling creature.The paper was received by Science journal on 28 October, 1993 and accepted on 3 December, 1993, indicating that the paper passed the refereeing process with no, or only minor, changes being required before publication, and yet the paper is full of highly conjectural material. The reconstruction of the skeleton assumes it is a ‘whale’. The authors said, ‘Little is known about the tail, but there are always many caudal vertebrae in primitive cetaceans and their relatives’ and so they sketched in a long tail for Ambulocetus! There are several paragraphs of conjecture about locomotion on land and in water and yet there is not even a pelvis or any associated vertebrae! The movement of the forelimbs is also presented in detail and yet there is no humerus or scapula! If a paper of this quality was submitted for publication in an empirical field of science such as molecular genetics it would be rejected outright. Why then was this accepted so readily? It’s probably an indication of the status of paleontology as a ‘science’ and also the desperate desire of neo-Darwinian evolutionists to find some fossil evidence of an ‘intermediate’ form to reinforce belief in gradualism or indeed in evolution itself, as the lay newspapers obligingly and uncritically report the ‘find’.The Ambulocetus fossil was found in ‘lower to middle Eocene’ beds. Fossils of whales of the suborder Archeoceti have been found in lower Eocene strata,4 so Ambulocetus is unlikely to be an ancestor of modern whales, as claimed by Thewissen et al. There are too many crucial parts missing to be sure what Ambulocetus is. Whatever it is, it is unlikely to be a walking ancestor of the whales. Addendum 1 (1999) To see how so much is made of so little evidence, in the pro-evolution book Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science produced and avidly promoted by the National Academy of Science, 1998, the sketch at right of Ambulocetus is used as an illustration of a transitional form. Note the large amount of imagination involved, including webbed feet. This image is from their website at . This book has been answered by Refuting Evolution. Addendum 2 (4 January 2002) Some evolutionists have tried to counter this paper by charging me with faking the information presented. There is no deceit (faking), or contradiction, in the article. As stated at the beginning of the article, the article on the web was originally published in Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal (now Journal of Creation) in 1994, the year Thewissen et al. published their original article. The material referred to is that published by Thewissen in 1994. It is now claimed, on Thewissen’s web site, that more material has been found. As far as I am aware, none of this extra material has been subjected to peer review. That is, it has not been published in a refereed scientific journal. As such, it is not admissible as scientific evidence (evolutionists are quick to demand this of creationists). However, even if it is so published in the future, I don’t have much confidence in the peer review process when it comes to paleontology—there seems to be a different standard applied to these papers, compared to experimental (operational) science. So many false claims have been given credit in prestigious peer-reviewed journals that I have become rather sceptical of all the claims. For example, Gingerich’s Pakicetus story, published in the prestigious journal Science in 1983, was based on some skull fragments. Science even published, on the front cover, an artist’s reconstruction of the whole creature, with legs becoming flippers, swimming in the sea chasing fish for its lunch. It is illustrative to compare this with a more recent reconstruction based on a much more complete skeleton—it is now clearly a terrestrial creature. See Whale evolution?Even if the extra Ambulocetus material on Thewissen’s web site is legitimate, it does nothing to confirm it as a transitional form between whales and land animals. For example, there is no evidence of the development of the horizontal tail flukes so characteristic of whales, or the unique hearing system of whales (i.e. with no opening to the exterior), or the blow-hole, etc., etc. Indeed there is nothing that is uniquely ‘whale’ that identifies Ambulocetus as related to whales. Furthermore, the robustness of the femur, and presence of hooves confirm the creature as a land animal. See A Whale Fantasy from National Geographic for more [by a Muslim creationist posted on the creationist True Origins website].The supposed sequence from land animal to whale is so clear (I speak ironically) that evolutionists are now contemplating ‘switching horses’ regarding whale ancestry. Mesonychids were long touted as the ‘sister clade’ of whales, with fossils being so interpreted (mainly on the basis of ambiguous tooth and skull characteristics). Now the mesonychids are being questioned as the sister clade, based largely on molecular comparisons of living animals (Nature 404(6775):235–237, March 16, 2000).Of course in all this, one has to allow for the immense propensity of paleontologists for story telling. In a short paper in Nature (395:452, 1998), for example, Thewissen, et al., finished their discussion of whether or not the mesonychians should be considered a sister group to the whales by saying, ‘in any case, extensive convergence or reversals must have occurred in the dentition, basicranium and/or tarsus.’ In paleontological jargon, I interpret this to mean that you can make up any story you like, invoking ‘convergence’ (similarity not due to common ancestry), ‘reversals’, etc., to get the phylogeny you want. If something does not fit the proposed sequence, then it can be dismissed as due to convergence, a reversal, etc. Basically, Thewissen is saying, with a bit of story jigging, they can accomodate the new molecular data. Interestingly, in this paper Thewissen and co discuss similarities in ankle bones in various extant and extinct creatures and how this relates to the phylogeny of whales. But the whole discussion is predicated on the assumption that Pakicetus and Ambulocetus are in the whale phylogeny—and calling something a whale—‘cetus’— does not make it a whale! Luo, in the other paper cited above, said: ‘Both morphological and molecular data are vulnerable to the problem of homoplasies—reversals to ancestral conditions or parallel changes in different lineages that can camouflage the true phylogeny …. For example, the ear region of the skull, traditionally considered to be a good source of highly stable characters, shows some glaring homoplasies among the ungulates and cetaceans [refs].’In other words, the supposed whale transition is not at all clear—unlike the propaganda pronouncements intended for public consumption. Journal of Creation 16(1) will have a thorough analysis of the supposed phylogeny of whales by John Woodmorappe. He exposes the extent of the story telling in this tale of tails (or is it a tale of teeth?). Addendum 3 (15 May 2012) Along with baseless accusations of dishonesty from the misotheists and some of their fellow travellers, I have been informed that the extra material referred to in Addendum 2 above has been published in a peer-reviewed journal (after I wrote the addendum). Please note that the original Perspective, “A whale of a tale”, was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Creation (then called Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal) in 1994, based on the material published at the time. The web archive of this article is part of an archive. Such publications cannot be edited later (that would be a cause for accusations of

dishonesty if other than typographical corrections were made). No peer-reviewed journal provides updates to archived papers years later, so we have gone way beyond what any evolutionary journal does to inform readers. National Geographic Image collection, Robert Caputo Figure 1. All the material Ambulocetus natans (from:

found

of

Here is the reference to the paper: Madar, S.I., Thewissen, J. G. M. and Hussain, S. T., Additional holotype remains of Ambulocetus natans (Cetacea, Ambulocetidae), and their implications for locomotion in early whales. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22(2):405–422, 2002. Figure 1 shows an image of the complete material found, from Dr Thewissen’s website. As has already been said, the extra material does not add one shred of evidence to the story that this creature had anything to do with the origin of whales.Indeed the whole story is seriously unravelling as time goes by. The discovery of a jawbone of a fully aquatic whale (a Basilosaurid) was announced in October 2011. 1 This was ‘dated’ to 49 million years ago and since Ambulocetus ‘dates’ from 50-48 Ma, this does not leave much time for some stupendous evolutionary changes. The jawbone predates all other supposed whale ancestors except Pakicetus, which is as much a whale as someone’s pet dog.As of the date of writing, the jawbone discovery has not been published in a peerreviewed journal. Even if it does not pass muster (unlikely considering the international team involved), evolution of whales was ‘dead in the water’ anyway. We just have to consider what changes are necessary to change a land creature into a whale. Dr Richard Sternberg has listed some of them:2 Counter-current heat exchanger for intra-abdominal testes (to keep them cool) Ball vertebra (to enable the tail to move up and down instead of side to side) Tail flukes and musculature Blubber for temperature insulation Ability to drink sea water (reorganization of kidney tissues) Fetus in breech position (for underwater birth) Nurse young underwater (modified mammae) Forelimbs transformed into flippers Reduction of hindlimbs Reduction/loss of pelvis and sacral vertebrae Reorganization of the musculature for the reproductive organs Hydrodynamic properties of the skin Special lung surfactants Novel muscle systems for the blowhole Modification of the teeth Modification of the eye for underwater vision Emergence and expansion of the mandibular fat pad with complex lipid distribution Reorganization of skull bones and musculature Modification of the ear bones Decoupling of esophagus and trachea Synthesis and metabolism of isovaleric acid (toxic to terrestrial mammals) Emergence of blowhole musculature and neurological control This list is not exhaustive—think about behavioural changes, underwater communication system, echo-location, navigation capacities, ability to dive to great depths without the bends, etc. How many mutations would need to occur and permeate (be ‘fixed’ in) the evolving whale population to achieve such changes? How often would multiple mutations have to occur together, in a coordinated way, for any advantageous functionality to be achieved?Using calculations published by evolutionists themselves3 (applying the equations of population genetics), which of course make assumptions as favourable as possible to evolution, Sternberg has shown that about all that could be expected in a whale-like population would be two coordinated mutations in about 43 million years. This is about the total time frame claimed for the evolution of all the whales. So the science of population genetics rules out the whale evolution story—even with the millions of years there has not been enough time. There has not been enough time even if we ‘buy’ the claimed evolutionary processes that they claim are responsible for new genetic information—mutations and natural selection (the evolutionary train is actually going in the wrong direction). With the new jaw discovery, the problem is enormously bigger because the millions of years they thought they had have evaporated.Further, more and more of the fossil stories are unravelling. What is so often presented as a nice looking sequence based on the fossils is anything but. 4 Rodhocetus is undoubtedly the key claimed link between terrestrial creatures and whales—the first creature in their claimed sequence that looked anything like a whale. It has been universally represented in illustrations as having a tail, tail fluke and flippers—a nice transitional form, if ever I have seen one. However, Dr Philip Gingrich, its discoverer, now concedes that further fossil evidence has been found showing it did not have flippers. And there was never any evidence that it had a long whale-like tail and he now doubts that it would have had a fluked tail.5 New discoveries over time have not been a friend of this story. I expect further discoveries will unravel the story-telling even more, just as it seems to with all evolutionary stories (see the story of Pakicetus, for example). When there is not much fossil evidence available and lots of unrestrained imagination can come to play, evolution reigns. But, inevitably the story runs up against the hard evidence of additional fossil discoveries and the biological realities of what ‘nature’ has to achieve just by chance mutations and natural selection. The strange tale of the leg on the whale by Carl Wieland

Some years ago, while speaking on evidence for creation at a university in New Zealand’s South Island, there was a serious challenge from someone in the audience. I later found out he was an ardent theistic evolutionist. He asked how I could possibly sustain my position when there had been a documented find of a modern whale with a complete hind leg attached to its side. I recall being somewhat taken aback. Surely such a find, if genuine, would be the pride and joy of all anticreationist skeptics. It would have featured repeatedly as a front-line weapon in their many attacks on the defenders of creation model, so why hadn’t any of the world’s creation organizations heard of it?I knew, of course, that some modern whales have a pair of bones embedded in their tissues, each of which strengthens the pelvic wall and acts as an organ anchor. I knew that evolutionists generally claim that these small, yet purposeful structures are vestigial (‘leftover’) organs. They choose to believe that each bone of the pair is all that is left of the pelvic bone of the whale’s ancestor which, according to evolutionary doctrine, once walked and ran on land. They believe this even though these strips of bone have a known function, differ in males and females, and are not even attached to the vertebral column. I also knew that people are sometimes born with abnormalities such as an extra finger, or an extra rib, but no evolutionist claims that we evolved from a six-fingered ancestor. Whales could be born with a little extra lump of bone which evolutionists therefore insisted was a throwback Above: Photo of the skeleton of a Greenland Right whale, corresponding to a second limb bone. with bony disease. The small pelvic bone is seen below. From E.J.Slijper, Whales,2 fig. 226, p. 423. Reproduced However, the spectacle of a whale being hauled out of the with permission from Routledge, and may not be ocean with an actual leg hanging down from its side was a reproduced elsewhere without their permission. totally different issue. I don’t remember my exact response, Below: Drawing shows a similar (small) pelvic bone of a but I indicated that, if true, this would be a serious challenge Sperm whale with an even smaller abnormal lump of bone to explain on the basis of a creation model. I expressed fused to it, which abnormality is labeled by evolutionists a doubt, whereupon the challenger vigorously affirmed the ‘vestigial femur.’ However, this tiny blob of bone bears little truth of the ‘discovery.’ I invited him to send me the resemblance to the leg bone of any land animal. documentation, and he said he would.That was the last I heard of it until I spoke at the same university several years later. A local medical specialist stood up in question time and recounted the ‘whale’s leg’ incident, saying he had been there at the time. What had come of the exchange—had I ever received the documentation? I said that I hadn’t, and that I still doubted the story.At that time, my theistic evolutionary challenger of the previous time did not make himself known. However, he did surface at a subsequent seminar session I gave on the same visit. He challenged some point about the reation model , while cradling an ethically and scientifically discredited anti-creationist book by a prominent humanist crusader. He must have heard about my dismissal of the ‘whale tale,’ because he approached me in the interval, saying in front of the gathered bystanders that he would now provide me with the documentation. He said that he had read it in the best-selling book The Dinosaur Heresies, by renowned evolutionary paleontologist Robert Bakker. The plot thickens Once back in Australia, we looked up this source. Indeed, while not referring to a specific find, Dr Bakker writes on p. 317: ‘And every once in a while a modern whale is hauled in with a hind leg, complete with thigh and knee muscles, sticking out of its side. These atavistic hind legs are nothing less than throwbacks to a totally pre-whale stage of their existence, some fifty million years ago.’1Since there was no supporting documentation, we arranged for a colleague in the U.S. to contact Dr Bakker and ask him for the evidence he relied on for this major claim. Our colleague reported that Bakker told him his source was the book Whales by E. Slijper, apparently including a picture of a whale with a complete leg.Everhard Johannes Slijper (1907–1968) was professor of general zoology at Amsterdam University, Netherlands. He was the world’s leading authority on whales. Chapter 2 of his classic work is entitled ‘Evolution and External Appearance.’ In it, he talks about a bone in whales that he calls the ‘pelvic bone,’ which is some 30 centimetres (12 inches) long, ‘but unlike the pelvis of normal mammals it is not attached to the vertebral column.’ This bone serves as an anchorage for the male reproductive organs. Slijper goes on to say that sometimes ‘another small bone may be attached to it.’ Being an evolutionist, he naturally interprets this smaller piece of bone as a throw-back to the femur, or thigh bone, of the whale’s evolutionary ancestor. However, he states that in these occasional cases, the bone in question is generally 2.5 cm (just over an inch) in length, and that it is sometimes ‘fused’ with the pelvic bone.Note how to this point he has not mentioned anything about a ‘leg’ protruding from a whale’s side. The evidence so far fits just as easily with the idea that some whales (who normally have functional bones in their pelvic region, as he admits) can be born with abnormal bits of bone. There is a complex DNA program which causes the development of the normal bone in this part of the whale’s anatomy. A mutational defect in this program could easily cause one or more extra pieces of bone to form, which would almost inevitably be in the same region, either separate from or fused with the normal bone. In the same way, people can be born with extra fingers, ribs, nipples, etc. If this should extend to two extra pieces of bone, no matter how misshapen or otherwise these were, enthusiastic evolutionists would no doubt interpret one additional piece of bone as a ‘femur,’ and any second one would be labeled a ‘tibia’ (shin bone). Sure enough, Slijper refers to an occasional third bony structure attached to what he has already called a ‘femur’ and labels it as a ‘tibia.’ It occurs in some Right whales and occasionally in some Sperm whales.So far, so good. However, such an explanation would be unable to cope with the occurrence in modern whales of an actual leg (internal or external), since this would clearly have design features which would never have been needed if the first whales were created. So our curiosity continued. Myth tracked down

The closest thing to the claim which launched our pursuit of this whole trail is where Slijper states, ‘Thus, at Ayukawa Whaling Station (Japan), a Sperm Whale was brought in in 1956, with a 5-inch tibia projecting into a 5½-inch “bump," and a Russian factory ship in the Bering Sea had a similar experience in 1959.’ No photo is provided.Ignoring for the moment the purely anecdotal nature of the evidence, what is it that is being claimed? Sperm whales are massive—up to about 19m (62 feet) long. A 14 cm (5.5 inch) ‘bump’ on its side would look like an almost unnoticeable pimple. Inside the bump is a piece of bone, some 12.5 cm (5 inches) ‘long.’ There is no evidence Do fossil whales have legs? given of anything which could Many claims have been made in recent times that the fossil ancestors of modern whales reasonably be called a ‘leg.’ have been found, and that some extinct creature or another shows the transition from Slijper calls the bone inside the creatures walking on land, with legs, to today’s whales which have no legs. ‘bump’ a ‘tibia.’ But we have Pakicetus was claimed to be a ‘walking whale’—yet the type specimen consisted only of already seen that it doesn’t take jaw and skull fragments. much for evolutionary believers Basilosaurus has been claimed as the whale’s ancestor. However, while it did have to label abnormal pieces of functional hind limbs, these were far too tiny to have anything to do with walking, and bone in ways to fit their evolutionists themselves have said they were probably used for grasping in reproduction. naturalistic religion. Ambulocetus, with clear-cut hind limbs, was obviously able to walk, and is the latest fossil From whales to human tails candidate—but it is doubtful that this imaginatively reconstructed creature had anything to Even if these poorly do with the history of whales, as previous articles (see ‘further reading’ list above) have documented accounts are true, shown. a fist-sized bump on the side of a whale, with bony tissue inside, bears little resemblance to the report by the popular evolutionist Bakker, quoted earlier. Sadly, many people are being given the idea that there is good scientific evidence of modern whales being born with complete legs dangling from their sides! It seems as if this particular ‘evidence’ for evolution is about the same as that of the occasional human babies which are born with an abnormal lump of fat close to the base of the spine. In spite of the fact that these lumps have no tail-like structures in them, and are often not even on the mid-line, they are still frequently claimed to be ‘throw-backs’ to an alleged evolutionary ancestor with a tail!The changes required in the evolutionary belief system for a land animal to become a whale are incredibly complex and far reaching. Evolutionist Anthony Martin explains: ‘Principally it meant developing a new mode of locomotion (from walking to swimming), a physiology to cope with a dense medium (water rather than air), new methods of detecting and catching prey, and a means of breathing efficiently at the sea surface.‘This adaptation was achieved by changing every part of the body, particularly the head … As well as changes to the head, adaptation to an aquatic way of life brought about fundamental alterations to the rest of the body.’ 3 By contrast, there is nothing about the anatomy of modern whales, including the occasional minor abnormalities, which is difficult to incorporate into a creationist understanding of their origins. To make a tail for a whale The difference between the tail of a whale and a cow’s tail (or that of any other mammal, for that matter) is quite simple. When a cow swats the flies from its back, it moves its tail generally from side to side. A whale, however, can’t do this. Not that it has to swat flies, but it does have to move its tail up and down in order to swim.Now while this differing way of moving a tail may sound insignificant, it isn’t. It is enough to show that the supposed evolution of whales from land-dwelling mammals cannot possibly be true. Why not? Simply because that little change of direction in the way the tail moves, could not happen without some rather elaborate changes between the side-swinging creatures and those which swing their tails vertically.Any land-dwelling mammal wishing to evolve into a whale could certainly practise moving its left-right tail in an updown fashion, and there is no doubt that it could certainly improve up to a point. Maybe even learn to swim faster and catch more fish. But after that its tail movement would begin to crush its reproductive apparatus against its pelvis. This would have a tendency to lower the animal’s sexual urges somewhat and it would soon lose interest in reproduction—not a very positive evolutionary step. Taken to extremes, this new tail movement would simply crush the whole pelvis. Such a transition would have no survival value whatsoever. The selective pressures of the environment, or natural selection, would work against any such change of tail on a land-dwelling mammal.To make the claim as evolutionists do, that land-dwelling mammals evolved into sea-dwelling whales is to claim that there had to be simultaneous accidental genetic changes which allowed the tail to grow larger while the pelvis grew smaller. And all this ignores the problems caused as the ever shrinking pelvis or hip bones reached the point where they were far too small to support the creature’s weight on its hind legs, and yet still too large to let the animal move its tail up and down with any efficiency.Of course, tails are not the only thing on whales that make them different from land-dwelling mammals. To totally convert a land-dwelling mammal into a whale you would also have to replace its sweat glands with thick layers of blubbery fat, change its eyes so that the light rays under sea water are still brought to focus on the retina, change its skin to produce a curious surface efficiently designed to streamline the flow of water, and also find some way to enable it to give birth to young which suckle under water without drowning, a rather essential ‘adaptation.’In other words, if you wanted to make a tail for a whale you could not do it by using evolutionary random chance small mutational accidents on some land-dwelling mammals, no matter how long you let the process take. A whale’s tail is too well designed to be made that way. In fact, it shows all the evidence of the intelligent engineering which we associate with deliberate creation.

The world of whales by Angela Meyer Teremedia's 'World of Whales' exhibition was at the Auckland Museum, New Zealand, June to September 1996. Typical of many other evolutionary exhibits on the same subject, the display featured animated life–size models (by Dinamation) of whales and dolphins, along with a lot of biological information and interactive computer software on whales. The display also contained two creatures which are claimed to be ancestors of the whales. The Andrewsarchus is said to be a relative of the actual ancestor. Andrewsarchus is a terrifying wolf–like creature, with a large head and fierce teeth. All these details from one skull! Yes, the display is unashamedly honest about the fact that all that is known about Andrewsarchus comes from one 90–centimetre (3–foot) skull!

Efficient Swimmer The question on the information board was: How would The whale is an efficient swimmer, its huge tail flukes beating this creature have had to change from a land–dwelling up and down quite slowly and displacing a large volume of animal to become a sea–dwelling animal like the whale? water. The largest muscles in its body run along the whale's As the information board points out, this creature would back so when contracting they move the tail up strongly, have to lose its shaggy hair, its backbone flexibility and its providing the main forward thrust, with the down stroke being waggly little tail; its nostrils would have had to move from a more relaxed recovery stroke. The beautiful sight of tail the end of the snout to the top of the head, the long front flukes is a memorable event for anyone taking a whale– legs would have had to change into flippers, the back watching tour. legs would have had to disappear, and the external ears would have had to become internal for the shape to become streamlined. And that's not all! Not only would the structure of the creature have had to change, as if that were not enough, but what about all the other changes that would allow a mammal to live under water? What about the breathing, skin, and hearing changes? What about the birth of babies under water, and feeding babies? Breathing Some whales can hold their breath for 1 1/2 hours under water. Some can dive to depths of one kilometre without damage to their tissues. When an animal or a person dives, the increased pressure causes more nitrogen from the air to dissolve into the body's fluids and tissues. As they return to the surface, bubbles of nitrogen may re–form in the tissues and blood, causing what is known as the 'bends'. Dolphins and whales have a different air exchange system which allows them to avoid the bends. Their lungs are also supplied with very fine capillaries which allow the dissolved nitrogen to return rapidly from the blood to the lungs without causing bubbles. Another amazing difference between whales and land mammals is that when they are at the surface they can exchange 90 per cent of the lungs' stale air with fresh air in less than a second. Compare this with humans, who can only exchange 30 per cent in one breath!1 Echolocation Whales and dolphins make clicking and whistling sounds which give information about their surroundings by the returning echoes. To do this, they need special structures for making and focusing the sounds, plus they need special oil-filled sinuses in the lower jaw which pass the echo to the inner ear. The timing of the echo gives the animal the distance, and the difference between the echoes received by the different sides of the head allows the animal to tell the direction. Baby whales are born tail first (unlike most other mammals2) into the water— probably so that they do not drown during birth, and then swim up to the surface to take their first gasp of air. There was a lovely video clip of this on the computer displays. The milk is pumped into the baby—rather than the baby having to suck it from the mother. Blue whales grow to 19 tonnes, at 11 months, before they are weaned from their diet of 450 litres (100 gallons) of milk per day.3 That's a lot of milk! And the milk is very different in composition from the milk of land mammals. It has twice as much protein, half as much sugar, and eight to ten times as much fat as cow's milk.Certainly, a lot of changes would have to occur for a land mammal to live in the sea. On the computers at the exhibition children were asked, 'Which creature is the ancestor of the whale?' They were given several choices, including a penguin, a sea–living dinosaur, and Andrewsarchus. When you click on to Andrewsarchus the computer told you, 'Believe it or not, the whale evolved from Andrewsarchus.' Well, I don't believe it! In–between Fossils? What about the alleged in–between fossils that have been found? Do these prove that the whale has slowly become the whale we see today? One of these was pictured in the exhibition—the Basilosaurus. This was shown as an animal with a long snaky body, with flippers and smallish flukes on the tail. Its nostrils were halfway along the snout, as if they were midway between being at the end (like Andrewsarchus) and the top (like the whales). It had very tiny hind limbs, which are claimed to have evolved (devolved?) from hind–legs like those of Andrewsarchus—and its backbone was flexible. What the display did not tell us was that although hundreds of skeletons of Basilosaurus have been found, and hundreds of whale skeletons, nothing which would qualify as intermediate between these two has been found. 4 Also, Basilosaurus was fully aquatic—not a part–land, part–sea dweller. Nor did it tell us that the tiny hind appendages are believed to have been useful 'grasping organs' during mating— they were not useless evolutionary leftovers!5Other fossils have been claimed as whale ancestors since the exhibition was put together. A key one, and one of the most complete, is Ambulocetus ('walking whale'), announced in 1993. Major conclusions were made about its mode of walking, and about its tail structure, and yet the important fibula bones, pelvis, and tail bones were not found. Only one tail vertebra was found, and it was five metres away from the rest of the skeleton. But because the researchers assumed the skeleton was of a 'whale', they assumed a long tail for Ambulocetus. Even more disturbing is the fact that fossils of Ambulocetus were found in strata at or above the stratigraphic levels where whale fossils were found. [See also A Whale of a Tale?, including the addendum addressing claims of subsequent Ambulocetus bones and their (ir)relevance to evolution.]6 Our conclusion on going through that exhibition was that those wonderful creatures, the whales, are perfectly suited to their environment, probably designed that way by ainetligent designer. Echoing Design Most echo–locating dolphins and small whales possess a fatty protrusion on the forehead. This 'melon' is actually a sophisticated structure designed to focus sound waves (originally emitted by the animal) to form a clear sound 'picture'. This sound lens depends on the fact that different lipids (fatty compounds) bend the ultrasonic sound waves travelling through them in different ways. The different lipids have to be arranged in the right shape and sequence in order to sharply focus the returning sound from echoes. Each separate lipid is unique and different from normal blubber lipids, and is made by a complicated chemical process, requiring a number of different enzymes. For such an organ to have evolved, random mutations must have formed exactly the right enzymes to make the right lipids,

and other mutations must have caused the lipids to be deposited in the right place and shape. A gradual step–by–step evolution of the organ is not feasible, because until the lipids were fully formed and at least partly in the right place and shape, they would have been no use. Therefore natural selection would not have favoured incomplete intermediate forms.

Walking whales, nested hierarchies, and chimeras: do they exist? by John Woodmorappe Summary Recent claims about ‘terrestrial’ whales are examined and refuted. The trends cited in whale evolution are rather superficial in nature, and little different from those that become apparent by lining up wheeled vehicles within a cladogram. A close examination of whale evolution in general, and whale-ear evolution in particular, demonstrates that most anatomical traits do not change in a consistent whale-like direction. Recently discovered pakicetids consist of cetacean ‘modules’ within otherwise non-cetacean bodies. These extinct creatures are examples of chimeric creatures. The cetaceans, mesonychids, and artiodactyls share a number of anatomical traits in a pattern that is inconsistent with any type of evolutionary nested hierarchy, and this argues strongly for the special creation of all these creatures. In Greek mythology, the Chimera was an animal whose body consisted of anatomical modules (part-goat, part-snake, and part lion) (Figure 1).1 Another familiar chimera is the mermaid.2 Evolutionists tell us that chimeric creatures do not exist because an extremely improbable set of circumstances3 would have to take place in order to make their existence a reality. Therefore, organisms supposedly evolve as slightly modified versions of their ancestors, and thus culminate in a nested hierarchy of all living things. It is at this point that some evolutionists take a big leap. They speculate that an Intelligent Designer, repeatedly using the same bauplan (construction plan) while creating different forms of life, should create living things by assorting at least some of the modular units. This would result in truly chimeric animals, thereby preventing any sort of classification of living things according to a nested hierarchy. The nonexistence of chimeric creatures is supposed to favor organic evolution over Special Creation. Let us examine these premises. Figure 1. The Chimera according to Greek mythology: part goat, part lion, and part snake. Implications of chimeric creatures To begin with, the notion that specially created living things should contain chimeric modules (assemblages of morphologies) presupposes the will of the Creator in making them.4 We can easily see that extensive deployments of chimeric structures do not necessarily follow from intelligent design. This can be seen from all of the devices which man, the intelligent designer, has built, in which extensive usage of chimeric structures is uncommon. 5 Finally, it takes little imagination to arrange man-made devices and machines into a nested hierarchy.6 What qualifies as a chimeric creature? The very existence of chimeric creatures depends upon its definition. Whereas chimeras involving entire half-body modules, such the human-module/fishmodule of the mermaid, have not been discovered, less pronounced examples of mosaic creatures do exist, and do so in large numbers. Every time we hear the word ‘convergence’ in ‘evolspeak’, in reference to some anatomical attribute, we are actually hearing about a chimeric creature that has violated, to some degree, an evolutionary nested hierarchy. ‘But’, evolutionists commonly say, ‘while individual traits, or small groups of traits can re-appear on an occasional and sporadic basis in different evolutionary lineages, it is inconceivable that a related series of numerous traits (i.e. a module) could re-appear in a concerted manner, at least to an extent sufficient to cause the development of incorrect phylogenies.’ Oh no? Consider the microorganisms, in which there is such a chimeric overlap of essential genomic components among and between the Bacteria, Eukarya, and Archaea, that an extensive ancient set of genetic exchanges is postulated. 7 Among marine invertebrates, the extinct cephalopods show such a bewildering assortment of chimeric conch morphologies that it is often difficult to distinguish presumed shared ancestry from convergence.8 What’s more, these real-life chimeras also make it difficult to classify cephalopods according to higher taxonomic categories.When convergence of traits is extensive, we often hear evolutionists speak of ‘the mosaic nature of evolution’. As an example of this, the mammal-like reptiles are much more chimeric than ‘transitional’ creatures. 9 Rather than a progression to ‘mammalness’, we observe an assortment of unmistakable reptilian traits and unmistakable mammalian traits.Let us now consider an example of chimeric creatures among land mammals. Hystricomorphy, a unique muskoskeletal pattern involving the jaw, enables the mouth to be opened in a large gape. Hystricomorphy is characteristic of the hystricomorph rodents, but has also now been found in the extinct saber-toothed Barbourofelis. Although it is believed that a highly-detailed phylogenetic analysis should spot the independent acquisition of the two complexes of traits, it is acknowledged that supposedly-unique character complexes could arise through convergence and ‘fool’ the evolutionist into believing that they had arisen from common ancestry.10 Figure 2. A generalized pedigree of supposed whale evolution. While not strictly indicative of inferred ancestordescendant relationships, each of the fossil organisms is supposed to be a ‘signpost’ indicative of the progressive appearance of ‘whaleness’.

The nature of alleged transitional forms Two recently described pakicetids, Ichthyolestes pinfoldi and Pakicetus attocki11 (Figure 212) are supposedly transitional to true cetaceans.13 Ironically, were this true, it would only support the common scientific-creationist contention about the rarity of ‘transitional forms’:‘Thewissen et al.’s discovery of these terrestrial cetaceans is one of the most important events in the past century of vertebrate palaeontology. Only a very few fossils, such as these, reveal a link between two groups of vertebrates that are hugely different in terms of evolution … . But the new fossils superbly document the link between modern whales and their land-based forebears, and should take their place among other famous “intermediates”, such as the most primitive bird, Archaeopteryx, and the early hominid Australopithecus (emphasis added).’14 That (half-convincing) evolutionary transitional forms number a mere handful only repeats what creationist scientists (for example, Duane T. Gish15) have been saying for decades, and squarely refutes the anti-creationists who adamantly insist that transitional forms are common.Let us analyze what usually passes for ‘transitions’ in discussions surrounding the evolution of whales. To illustrate this, I have constructed a mock character-trait matrix (Table 1), and thence a cladogram (Figure 3) to show the gradual ‘evolution’ of a unicycle into an 18-wheeled truck. 16 Note that the apparent progression seems, at first, to be somewhat convincing.17 However, a closer look reveals that the ‘step-by-step’ transition-filled progression is actually quite superficial,18 as it is full of discontinuities. (The pointing out of discontinuities is sometimes dismissed as an exercise in futility: of having two gaps whereas before there was one. As elaborated elsewhere, 19 however, it is the magnitude of the gap or gaps which is/are important and not the number(s) of alleged gap-filling organisms!) Even more serious is what is not presented in the character matrix (Table 1) or cladogram (Figure 3)—namely specializations, 20 and the outright reversal of traits.21 The latter are very much part of the unmentioned story of ‘whale evolution’, as described below. Heavy Light 3-wheel 2-wheel Automobile Bicycle Unicycle truck truck motorcycle motorcycle Horn

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

Manual steering

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

Multiple wheels

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

3 ln number wheels 9

7

4

3

2

2

0

Thick tyres

1

1

1

1

1

0

0

Motorization

1

1

1

1

1

0

0

Self stability

1

1

1

1

0

0

0

Backrest seating

1

1

1

1

0

0

0

Ln cargo capacity

5

3

1

0

0

0

0

Enclosed cabin

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

Steering wheel

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

Upward exhaust

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

Double wheels

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

Interior partition

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

Detachable units

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

Table 1. Mock character-trait matrix of wheeled vehicles. Most traits are polarized: 0-Absent and 1-Present. The number of wheels is indicated by three times the natural logarithm of the actual number of wheels, rounded off to the nearest whole number. The cargo space is denoted by the ratios of natural logarithms of the cargo volume relative to that of the automobile, based on a guesstimate. Do ‘fossil whales’ generate a chain of transitional forms?

Earlier claims of ‘transitional fossil whales’ had been found wanting. 22 A recent National Geographic article23 calls the reader’s attention to a number of supposed trends24 in cetacean evolution. These are towards: 1) Greater aquatic specialization,25 2) Underwater hearing,26 3) Reductions in size of the hindlimbs, 27 and 4) Migration of the nares (nostrils) towards the posterior of the skull’s dorsal (upper) surface. 28 The alleged trend towards underwater hearing merits some attention, and is discussed in some detail below. The remaining three trends fail immediately because they are superficial in nature, and are not corroborated by detailed anatomical analyses, as elaborated below. Moroever, a close look at the relative positions of the nares in the skulls of just the five protocetid genera 29 while showing a slight trend towards more posterior placement with supposed time, also reveals the fact that this meager trend is completely overshadowed by the considerable differences in cranial geometry between the five genera. On this basis, any ‘trend’ towards increasingly posterior placement of the nares within protocetids, let alone within the entire Order Cetacea, is all but meaningless. It is literally like comparing apples and oranges, and making something out of the fact that one can arrange these fruits into a sequence showing progressively larger pores. The three-member ‘Nasal

Drift’ sequence28 in the National Geographic article is, in my opinion, disingenuous to the point of bordering on intellectual dishonesty—doubly so in view of the fact that most readers of that magazine are unsuspecting laypersons. Figure 3. A mock cladogram of wheeled vehicles, showing ‘transitional’ changes leading to the ‘evolutionary’ emergence of 18-wheeled trucks. Using this as an analogy, but adhering to evolutionistic reasoning, the pakicetids are walking whales in the same way that unicycles are primitive trucks.The remaining trends are little better. The progressive reduction of hindlimbs is of dubious significance, if only because of the wide range of hindlimb sizes in the creatures involved. Moreover, modern whales sometimes sprout ‘hindlimbs’ of appreciable size (larger than those of ‘ancestors’, and thereby contrary to the trend in hindlimb reduction). Finally, even greatly reduced hindlimbs lack any necessary evolutionary connotation.30 Let us now consider the forelimbs. Although different cladograms contradict each other, they are unanimous in grouping Pakicetus with Ambulocetus as sister groups.31 One can therefore appreciate the ironic fact that, in terms of forelimb anatomy, there is no actual trend but, to the contrary, a sharp discontinuity between the pakicetids and the ‘next successively-more cetacean-like creatures’, the ambulocetids (Figure 2): ‘Ambulocetus probably swam using its hind limbs as the main propulsor, and its robust feet may be an adaptation for forcefully displacing water during swimming. Pakicetids, on the other hand, had the slender metapodials of running animals.’32The National Geographic conspicuously fails to mention this sharp discontinuity in its slick portrayal of the ‘Back to the Sea’ parade25 of creatures. This only aggravates the borderline-deceptive practice of picturing both Pakicetus and Ambulocetus as having more aquatic-adapted appendages (fin-like legs, etc.) than could possibly be justified by fossil evidence.33 To top it all off, the leading researcher in whale evolution, as quoted in National Geographic, engages in a crass misrepresentation of scientific creationists.34It is not only the limbs, but also the tail, which supposedly underwent extensive modifications in order to convert a terrestrial creature into an aquatic one. Entirely omitted in the National Geographic article is the fact that, owing partly to preservation problems, there is a lack of intermediates between tails and flukes: ‘Despite recent discoveries of early cetaceans, such as Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, and Rodhocetus, there still remains a paucity of tangible physical evidence on the evolution of the flukes. Tail vertebrae in these fossils are lacking or incomplete, especially for the most terminal portions. To this add that (1) modern cetacean species exhibit the highly derived thunniform swimming mode and design, (2) no series of intermediate fluke designs exist, and (3) they are phylogenetically disjunct from their closest living relative (i.e., ungulates), which have specialized for terrestrial locomotion; thus little direct information is available to answer the evolutionary questions regarding the transition to flukes.’ 35We would never actually consider the bicycle as ancestral to the motor vehicles (Table 1, Figure 3) in spite of its ‘structurally intermediate’ character between the unicycle and the automobile. Why not free ourselves from the mental boxes of evolutionary thinking and give living things the same benefit? Note that, in contrast to the locomotion of the terrestrial pakicetids, that of the ambulocetids and rodhocetids is described as resembling the locomotion of modern sea lions, eared seals, and otters.36 In fact, these creatures are actually endowed with lutrine (like an otter) and phocid (like a seal) relative limb proportions. 37 Why then not view these extinct creatures as little more than ecological counterparts of extant seals, otters, etc., and forget all of the evolutionary tales that have them transformed to whales? Are pakicetids transitional forms? To what extent are pakicetids intermediate in structure between the ‘generic’ artiodactyls on one hand and true cetaceans on the other? Gingerich38 has surveyed changes in four anatomical features (body mass, tooth length, bullar length, and femur length), over the supposed time interval of 37–50 million years ago, for fossil mammals which include six of the reputed cetacean genera39 shown here in Figure 2. With the exception of the inferred change in femur length (especially when body sizes are normalized), none of the remaining three features show even a self-consistent, unidirectional change with time! 40 What about the recently described pakicetid genera? 11 The vast majority of the skeletal traits found in the complete skeletons are consistently unlike those of true cetaceans (ancient or modern). By no stretch of the imagination do we observe anything resembling a gradational trend of changes to true cetaceans: ‘Aquatic postcranial adaptations are pronounced in late Eocene basilosaurids and dorudontids, the oldest obligate aquatic cetaceans for which the entire skeleton is known, and therefore can be used to evaluate pakicetid morphology. Aquatic adaptations of basilosaurids and dorudontids include … [nine features are listed]. Pakicetids display none of these features.’41As if all this were not enough, the few pakicetid traits once believed unambiguously indicative of an aquatic or semi-aquatic transitional lifestyle, are no longer necessarily considered thus.42 Consequently, the already borderlinedeceptive practice33 of sketching Pakicetus as a semiaquatic-adapted creature, in a very recent issue of National Geographic magazine,43 is all the more inexcusable. And it is creationists who are supposed to be the purveyors of inaccurate and outdated information!The editors of National Geographic magazine would do well to communicate, very carefully to their lay audiences, the following sobering facts about the reconstruction of soft parts being unempirical (with very few exceptions), and in fact belief-driven: ‘Traditionally, Ambulocetus, an early cetacean, has been constructed with hair (bottom). As discussed by John Gatesy and Maureen O’Leary on pp. 562–570, hypotheses of phylogeny, however, determine how soft tissues, such as skin, are reconstructed in fossils. Recent cladistic studies suggest Ambulocetus was nearly hairless (top) [emphasis added].’44 Emerging ‘whaleness’: unsupported by anatomical details Up to now, the anatomical changes in the alleged land-animal-to-modern-whale progression have been followed only in response to the cursory and superficial ‘trends’ cited by evolutionists. As was the case with the mammal-like reptiles, 9 what is needed is a comprehensive survey of all of the relevant traits of this supposed transformation. Unfortunately, much data is lacking, making it all but impossible to meaningfully compute the relative numbers of progressive and nonprogressive anatomical traits,45 as had been done for mammal-like reptiles. 9 It cannot be stressed enough that, from an evolutionary point of view, organisms situated at the point of trait reversal are chimeras consisting of ‘primitive’ and ‘derived’ features, and they will not fit any nested hierarchy. In spite of the problems with missing data in cetacean evolution, one can arrive at an extremely conservative46 estimate of the relative proportion of non-progressive traits. In order to minimize the possibility of artifacts caused by incomplete information, we can compare several cladistic analyses by different authors, each of which use different anatomical traits, different outgroups for comparison, and different constituent taxa. Let us consider one analysis47 of basicranial, cranial, dental, postcranial, and live-tissue data (from living cetaceans). I trace the changes in character polarity which take place through all of the organisms listed in Figure 2, with modern whales represented by Baleonoptera and Tursiops. Out of the 123 anatomical characters evaluated by the cited authors, only 33 have data for at least 7 of the 8 taxa, and are considered further. Out of these 33, fully 24% reverse themselves at least once, and are therefore nonprogressive. To show that this is no fluke (pardon the pun), let us now focus on another cladistic analysis, which consists of 67 skeletal traits48 in a comparable range of fossil to modern cetaceans (Figure 2). Although 30% (183 of 603 data points) are missing, an astonishing 31% (21 out of the 67) traits are nonprogressive. He who has an ear, let him hear Let us evaluate, in some detail, the much-discussed evolution of the cetacean ear. It turns out that there is only one (one!) unambiguous bullar synapomorphy linking Pakicetus to the cetaceans, and simultaneously absent in all noncetacean

animals.49 What about the numerous other auditory features supposedly involved in cetacean evolution? A detailed analysis of 64 aural and other basicranial traits,50 spanning the entire scope of cetacean evolution (and thus consisting of precetaceans, Archaeocetes, Odontocetes, and Mysticetes), has been performed. In this particular study, only 17% of the 1472 possible data points are missing. Almost half (44%) of the traits are nonprogressive! The situation gets even worse, from the ‘evolutionary progression’ point of view, if we focus our attention primarily on modern whales and their immediate (extinct) relatives. Using one archaeocete cetacean as the outgroup, and omitting one of the 28 traits which has more than half its data missing, one can examine the ‘intermediate stages’ involved. It is sobering to realize that two-thirds (17 of 27) of the traits reverse themselves.51 As noted earlier about the National Geographic article, a handful of traits supposedly showing a trend in cetacean-ear evolution had been selectively highlighted. 26 Not mentioned are the large bodies of contrary evidence, consisting of numerous anatomical details that show no consistent trend towards ‘whaleness’. There is a whole suite of features, found in archaeocete whales, which are believed to have become (conveniently) ‘secondarily lost’ (or ‘reversed’) in the Odontocetes and Mysticetes. 52 Keeping in mind the extremely conservative nature of all of the above estimates, it is plain to see that any connotation of ‘cetacean lineage’ (e.g., Figure 2) is totally artificial. The supposedly progressive character of cetacean evolution (aural as well as non-aural) is completely unwarranted. Furthermore, rather than being the crown group of cetacean evolution (Figure 2), the extant mysticete and odontocete whales stand out as chimeras consisting of mostly derived but also many primitive features. Believe it or not, the hoary and long-discredited53 embryonicrecapitulation theory is dusted off and employed by some whale-evolution specialists 54 to infer the supposed fine stages of cetacean ear evolution. The fact that evolutionists feel the need to fall back on the recapitulation theory in order to infer alleged evolutionary changes is itself mute testimony to the fact that detailed structural intermediates illustrative of alleged cetacean aural evolution are lacking. Walking whales or walking chimeras? The pakicetids are an interesting set of chimeric creatures, consisting of an artiodactyl-like ankle and a somewhat truecetacean-like inner ear residing in a body that is otherwise hardly distinguishable from that of a typical extinct land-dwelling artiodactyl!: ‘The newly found fossils include several skulls and postcranial bones from two early pakicetid species—which it seems, had the head of a primitive cetacean (as indicated by the ear region) and the body of an artiodactyl. All of the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and it is likely that they would have been thought of as some primitive terrestrial artiodactyls if they had been found without their skulls.’9 The evolutionary ‘successor’ to Pakicetus is hardly better in this regard: ‘Ambulocetus is recognized as a whale because of characters of its teeth and skull that it shares with other whales, and demonstrates that derived cetacean cranial characteristics were present in an organism with legs resembling those of modern terrestrial mammals.’55While certainly not as dramatic as the would-be discovery of a genuine mermaid, the chimeric structure of the pakicetids and ambulocetids could hardly be described in a more lucid manner. It is difficult to imagine how, by any stretch of the imagination, the pakicetids are supposed to qualify as gap-fillers between the terrestrial artiodactyls and aquatic true cetaceans. The fact that serious evolutionary scholars make such claims14 only goes on to show the poverty of evidence for evolution, and the concomitant desperate lengths to which evolutionists will go to recruit some extinct creature as a transitional form. The recent finding of certain whale-like (actually seal-like) protocetids 56 does nothing significant to close the huge chasm between pakicetids and true cetaceans. With the exception of possessing the artiodactyl-like ‘double-pulleyed’ astralagus (heel), these newly described protocetids are highly specialized, fully aquatic creatures, and not indicative of any compelling ancestral connections to the pakicetids or the ambulocetids.Let us now put ‘cetacean’ features into a broader context. It is hardly surprising that, as more fossils are discovered, our concept of the anatomical diversity of certain groups must expand: certain anatomical traits thought to be unique to particular mammalian orders turn up as chimeric assortments in other orders. Rather than demonstrating evolution, the chimeric cooccurrence of cetacean and non-cetacean features in extinct mammals only shows that certain features thought to be essentially cetacean (because they occur only in modern cetaceans and not in any other extant mammal) are not exclusively cetacean after all. It does not warrant the re-definition of cetaceans to absurd extremes, to encompass all of these chimeras, as is currently done by evolutionists.57 Figure 4. Mesonychians as the sister group of the Cetaceans. The chimeric mammalian orders, and failed nested hierarchy, are subject to either (or both) secondary-loss rationalizations (left), or convergent-evolution rationalizations (right). Cetacean relatives? The chimeric trichotomy Is it the Artiodactyls or is it the Mesonychians58 that are the closest relatives to the Cetaceans? Until recently, the extinct Order Mesonychia was largely accepted by evolutionists as the sister group of Order Cetacea (Figure 4). A recent analysis59 has demonstrated that the respective dental complexes of mesonychids and cetaceans stand out in uniting the two groups into a clade. This is supported by a variety of other mesonychid-cetacean synapomorphies. 60When the pakicetids were discovered along with a host of other finds,61 the artiodactyls began to displace the mesonychids as the closest known relatives of cetaceans (Figure 5). The ‘double-pulleyed’ astralagus now appears to be an unambiguous component of both the pakicetid and protocetid skeletons. This synapomorphy (shared form) links artiodactyls and cetaceans as sister groups, to the exclusion of mesonychians, which do not possess this kind of specialized heel. 11 The three mammalian orders are clearly chimeras. Once again, the evolutionary nested hierarchies have been turned upside down, as chimeric creatures are incompatible with any sort of nested hierarchy, and only create headaches for evolutionists. The evidence places the evolutionist in a particularly unenviable position. Notions of ‘stratomorphic intermediates’ are of no help to him, as the stratigraphic order of fossils themselves does not show a clear-cut preference for one phylogeny over another. 62 So which anatomical traits is he to reckon as phylogenetically informative, and which is he to reject and explain away? Having made his arbitrary decision, he is forced to make another one. Which rationalization is he to invoke—the one which supposes

‘backward evolution’ and character loss (Figure 4, left, and Figure 5, left), or the one which imagines that lookalike complex anatomical structures can independently arise in different lineages (Figure 4, right, and Figure 5, right)? How much more parsimonious to recognize an Intelligent Designer who used the same anatomical modulus in otherwise-different mammalian orders?Since rationalistic preconceptions won’t, of course, allow the evolutionist to consider the latter possibility, he is forced to stumble along in his imaginations and rationalizations. For some evolutionists, 63,64 the secondary ‘de-volution’ of the specialized artiodactyl heel is considered possible (Figure 4, left). Others 65 speculate that the ‘double-pulleyed’ heel is homoplasic. According to this thinking, the ‘double-pulleyed’ astralagus must have arisen twice independently (convergently) in artiodactyls and mesonychians (Figure 5, right). Conversely, if pakicetids are to be accepted as the closest known relatives of cetaceans, as the ruling paradigm dictates, all of the foregoing rationalizations must be placed in reverse. The evolutionist must now contemplate the ‘reverse evolution’ of artiodactyl teeth back towards a less-derived state (Figure 5, left). A recent study11 actually contemplates this evolutionary flip-flop. Alternatively, the cetaceanlike teeth of mesonychians must be the product of convergent evolution (Figure 5, right). The latter rationalization, in fact, is the one that appears widely accepted by evolutionists.11,14,36,66 Such thinking constitutes a revolution of sorts in mammalian paleontology. Prior to the recent turn of events, teeth had been used for construction of mammalian phylogenies, more or less uncritically, for over a century. All this time, dental features had been generally considered too detailed to be capable of being duplicated independently via convergent evolution. 66There is yet another set of rationalizations invoked for the conflicting phylogenies shown in Figures 4 and 5. It would have us believe that the most basal cetaceans, artiodactyls, and mesonychians have not been discovered, and these postulated fossils hold the key to our understanding of the correct evolutionary branching order.67 Apart from being ad hoc, this hypothesis is self-defeating because it invokes large gaps in the fossil records of the mammalian orders, and thereby implicitly repudiates the claim that fossil cetaceans qualify as a transition-filled sequence! It invokes nonexistent fossils to resolve problems in known ones. Figure 5. Artiodactyls as the sister group b of the Cetaceans. Although the players are reversed, the evolutionary game is the same: the chimeric mammalian orders, and failed nested hierarchy, are subject to either (or both) secondary-loss rationalizations (left), or convergent-evolution rationalizations (right). Conclusions In answer to the questions posed by the title of this report, the answers are: 1). No, walking whales do not exist. Just because pakicetids have somewhat cetacean-like middle ears and cetartiodactyla-type double-pulleyed heel bones, this does not yet make them whales—unless of course one is willing to entertain the most ludicrously-strained definition of a whale. Perhaps pakicetids are walking whales just as firetrucks are tomatoes on wheels (since both firetrucks and tomatoes are red, and both are filled with water). 2). Owing to widespread so-called evolutionary convergence, a nested hierarchy of living things exists only in part. The more detailed the anatomical analysis, the more the nested hierarchy breaks down. While full-bodied chimeric creatures, such as mermaids and mermen, do not exist, somewhat lesser examples of chimeric creatures, of which pakicetids and mesonychids are notable examples, definitely exist.Whenever evolutionists make assertions about the limits of convergence, they do so on an after-the-fact basis. 68 As ever-more-detailed examples of convergence are found, evolutionists are forced to backpedal, thus ‘moving the goalpost’ of conceivable convergence. For a long time, evolutionists had tacitly supposed that detailed convergences of clusters of traits (modules), such as the independent acquisition of cetacean-like teeth in mesonychids and cetaceans (Figure 5, right), were a virtual impossibility. What is there to stop the evolutionists from saying, in case of the discovery of a mermaid-like chimeric creature, that even more pronounced convergence of modular units can occur than previously supposed? Evolutionary theory is so plastic that any observation could be fitted into it. The apparent absence of extremely-chimeric creatures cannot, by any standard of reasoning, be accepted as evidence for evolution. To the contrary, the existence of less-extreme chimeric creatures, notably ‘fossil whales’, argues strongly against a common evolutionary ancestry of living things. DAILY ARTICLES Tasmania’s fossil bluff by Andrew Snelling Fossil Bluff, Wynyard, Tasmania Large signposts in the town of Wynyard on Tasmania’s windy north west coast point the way to a picturesque headland known as Fossil Bluff. Nearby the prominent but extinct volcano of Table Cape stands, a silent reminder of volcanic activity that once devastated the area and produced extensive lava flows which covered the fossil-rich rocks of the Bluff. These rocks with their abundance of preserved animals and plants bear silent testimony to another awesome devastation.The explorer Strzelecki, in 1845, was the first to notice what he called “raised shell beds”1 at Fossil Bluff.These rock layers have received much attention from Australian geologists since that time because they contain so many fossils. They are also easy to approach and have a very striking appearance. Most of the geological studies of the area were done in the last half of the 1800s and the early years of the 20th century. During this period, Darwin’s theory of evolution had become the guiding philosophy of geologists and, accordingly, Fossil Bluff was

interpreted in evolutionary terms. Since 1905 there have been few studies done on the area and such works usually refer back to those done a century ago. Rocks and fossils The rock layers which can be seen in the cliff face at Fossil Bluff have been subdivided by geologists into two units known as the Freestone Cove sandstone and the Fossil Bluff sandstone.2However, this division is quite arbitrary and misleading. Careful observation reveals no obvious break in the fossil record at the Bluff. 2,3What can be seen in the rocks is a series of fossil beds which have a large number of different fossils at the base of the cliff. As you proceed up the cliff the fossil beds contain fewer types of fossils and gradually merge into rocks which contain none.3,4The Freestone Cove sandstone is richest in fossils.3 It is a layer of sandstone up to 1.2 metres (4 feet) thick composed of coarse sand and broken shells.5 Fossil Bluff close up showing bands of fossils. Technically it is described as a breccia or a rock made up of coarse jagged and broken fragments. The shells in the sandstone are held together by iron-rich mud which contains rounded pebbles of yellowish quartz.4 At the base of the cliff (near the high-tide mark) the sandstone rests on top of a rock which contains variously sized pebbles and boulders bound together by a fine blue-grey hardened mud. This boulder-rich rock is known as a conglomerate or a tillite. The actual surface where the sandstone sits on the conglomerate shows much evidence of violent erosion. Its surface has been scoured by currents, and fragments have been broken off and washed up into the sandstone. 6Some of the fossils near the bottom of the sandstone have also been broken and rolled over.7The Freestone Cove sandstone is full of fossils. Well over 300 species have been identified. 2 The list includes algae, forams (single-celled marine animals with tiny shells), corals (solitary and colonial), lace corals (bryozoans), lamp shells (brachiopods), snails (gastropods), barnacles, sea urchins (echinoids) and shark’s teeth. 2,8Some decomposed wood has also been found.2The Fossil Bluff sandstone containing fewer fossils sits on top of the Freestone Cove sandstone. But since they merge into one another, the boundary is somewhat arbitrary. It is this 24 metre (80 foot) thick Fossil Bluff sandstone that forms the bulk of the cliff face. It has been described as a white or grey lime-rich sandstone with some hard bands of impure limestone. 2,6In this sandstone several beds rich in one particular fossil species of lace corals (bryozoans) can be found.2The geologists, Tate and Dennant3 have stated that all species in the Fossil Bluff sandstone occur in the sandstone below it (the Freestone Cove sandstone) except for the sea urchins (echinoids). They also pointed out that there was a reduction in the number of species upwards through the sandstone and that close to the top there were no fossils. Stephens 5 was the first to notice leaf impressions and fragments of brown coal in the Fossil Bluff sandstone. A few years later, Johnston9 reported finding several different plant fossils. This sandstone was originally called the Turritella sandstone because it contains an abundance of fossil snails from the genus Turritella. These have a distinctive tapering coiled shell. Note large numbers of broken shells and upside-down coral in sandstone. The Fossil Bluff sandstone contains corals in some bands as well as snails and bivalves (pelecypods) but brachiopods and cephalopods are rare. The latter is represented by only one species which is similar to the modern cephalopod known as nautilus. Several species of sea urchins (echinoids) are also characteristic of the Fossil Bluff sandstone. Perhaps the most significant fossils found in the sandstone were the remains of a toothed whale and a possum-like marsupial (Prosquabodon davidi and Wynyardia bassiana respectively). 2,6From a distance the most striking feature of Fossil Bluff is the distinct bands of fossils that are consistent laterally for up to 1 km (3,200 feet). At the top of the cliff the sandstones are covered by a weathered, dark, volcanic rock (basalt). On nearby hilltops this basalt lava flow with its associated volcanic ash (tuffs)4 is about 24 metres (80 feet) thick. It seems likely that this basalt flowed as lava from a volcano less than 2 km (1.25 miles) away. The nearby Table Cape is the volcanic plug or remnant core of that volcano. Even though the volcanic rock sits directly on top of the sandstone, the Fossil Bluff rocks do not appear to have even been slightly altered by the heat of lava flowing over them, 4 quite an amazing feature if the lava was as hot as flowing lavas are today. An explanation What does all this mean? And why all the interest in a few fossil beds exposed in a Tasmanian cliff? Geologists such as Tate and Dennant, and those who have followed since that time who believe that the bulk of the earth’s sedimentary strata are the result of generally slow processes over millions of years, have problems with Fossil Bluff! Why? Simply because they cannot explain how a land dwelling possum-like marsupial and a deep ocean dwelling whale could be preserved as fossils in the same rock! Since they believe that fossils were formed as animals and plants died and were buried together as sediments filled up their habitats and ecological niches, their view does not usually allow animals which have never lived together, and in fact come from widely separated areas such as land and deep ocean, to be found buried together. All the geologists who have studied the rocks at Fossil Bluff have unanimously concluded the rocks were deposited in an ocean environment.2,9 So what are a whale and a land dwelling marsupial doing together in the rocks at Fossil Bluff? Tate and Dennant vaguely commented ‘the study of … this unique fossil does not permit an explanation of its occurrence other than of its embedment in original soft sediment.’3 That is simply another way of saying ‘we don’t know how it got there’.There is a better explanation! A watery catastrophe overwhelmed, washed, sorted and buried all these animals and plants together. This is the only explanation which makes sense of all the facts at Fossil Bluff. Such a catastrophe would explain why one sandstone merges into another, i.e. they were not laid down at separate times. The whole sandstone sequence exposed in the Fossil Bluff cliff face would have resulted from one rapid and violent depositional event. The conglomerate beneath the sandstone

would probably have been already deposited in an earlier phase of the same watery catastrophe. The scouring and erosion of the surface of this conglomerate is also evidence that this regional watery catastrophe swept across both ocean and land. Its turbulence eroded the surface of the already settling rock layers beneath the violent current. Note that fossils are sorted into bands. The jumbled assortment of types of fossils also indicates that the water currents had to be extremely swift and wide ranging to pick up such a varied load as pebbles, mud, large shellfish, sharks, whales and marsupials! Furthermore, water currents are known by observation and experiment to be excellent sorters of the particles and objects they carry along. Once currents are slowed or stopped, the load carried is deposited in layers according to size, weight, and shape of the carried matter. Such an explanation even makes sense of the details observed by geologists at Fossil Bluff. The bottom layer of sandstone consists of large shells, broken and rolled shells, pebbles and coarse sand, absolutely crammed and thrown together. This layer represents the earliest phase of deposition from the swift and violent water currents. This would have been followed by slower settling out of sediments and fossils as the currents continued to slow down. Thus the fact that the sandstones merge from coarse-grained into fine-grained and the number of fossils species they contain diminishes from a large number at the base to zero at the top is accounted for. The layering (or stratification) of both sediments and fossils is a result of this settling out process that can be experimentally demonstrated in any laboratory with just a simple water tank. This mechanism adequately explains the layers of limey sandstone high up in the cliff sequence that are distinguished by particular fossils of the same shape, size and floatability, be they the snails, Turritella or the lace corals, sea urchins or plant fossils.The scope and devastation of this watery catastrophe is underlined by the sheer numbers, not only of species but also individuals that are found fossilised in the rocks at Fossil Bluff. Tate and Dennant in 1896 3 listed some 303 fossil species from Fossil Bluff, a list which did not include the numerous forams and lace corals. A total of 267 species of molluscs are in their list but they went on to note that of those 267 species only 6 were found still to be living. That’s an extinction rate of almost 98%, a very significant catastrophe! The range of environments the fossilised species came from also indicates they were overwhelmed and swept away by a very wide-spread catastrophe. It encompassed a full range of environments from land dwelling creatures through shallow water to deep ocean creatures. While the bulk of fossils are representative of today’s shallow marine environments, the decomposed wood, the brown coal fragments, the fossilised leaves, the fossilised tooth whale and the remains of a possum-like marsupial are indicators of both the scope and the thorough mixing of the waters of this catastrophe. They also indicate that the entire sandstone sequence must have resulted from one rapid depositional event.But when did this happen? Regretfully neither the fossils nor their rocky graveyard provide us with any definitive or unequivocal answer. The evolutionists (who weren’t there at the time) claim that the sediments of Fossil Bluff were deposited slowly many millions of years ago. Their arguments as to the slow deposition simply do not work. They are poor science indeed.Such a catastrophe, or its after effects as the earth restabilised from such massive devastation, could easily have produced the rock layers at Fossil Bluff (including the tillite or conglomerate beneath the sandstones) and the nearby Table Cape remnant volcano. While deposition of sandstones and fossils may well have taken less than a day under such catastrophic conditions, both sediments and fossils could well have been carried, mixed and sorted by water currents for considerably longer beforehand.After deposition, the lava flowed equally rapidly, capped off the still wet sediments and cooled before the dissipated heat could alter the hardening sandstones beneath. The retreating flood waters shaped the present topography and at the eroding coastline the bounds were set for the waters now resident in the seas.Thus Fossil Bluff stands not as a record of slow evolutionary progress in once living communities fossilised over aeons of time, but as a reminder of the catastrophic death and fossilisation that began with the Flood. Fossil jellyfish from the Pilbara, Western Australia by Philip Worts In past decades a number of fossil-like features, termed ‘medusoid impressions’, were found in the Precambrian Hamersley Basin of Western Australia. Due to their assigned ‘age’ the fossils were not regarded as jellyfish but interpreted to have formed by abiogenic processes. More recently, new impressions have been found in the Hamersley Basin’s Dales Gorge Member at Wittenoom. The jellyfish features preserved have greater clarity than many other poorly preserved fossils in sedimentary strata of ‘younger’ ages that have been accepted as jellyfish. The preservation of complex jellyfish fossils within the Hamersley Basin impacts our understanding of how this extensive basin formed, including its speed of deposition. Figure 1. A Wittenoom specimen (DGW001) of fossil jellyfish exposed along a bedding plane in the Dale Gorge Member (Banded Iron Formation). The variation in body exposure is due to slight variation in burial (e.g. settling in the gel sediment) and/or stage of the jellyfish pulsing at time of entombment. The small, light-brown inclusions (or voids) within individual fossils is a limonite pseudomorph of a pyrite crystal (formed from the stomach contents). Specimen courtesy: R.A. (Alan) Nelson.In 2007, biologist Paulyn Cartwright (University of Kansas) and team reported their findings of relatively wellpreserved jellyfish fossils from the Marjum Formation, Middle Cambrian, the Sponge Gully Locality, Utah. The team ‘dated’ these fossils to about 505 Ma, according to the arbitrary evolution geological timescale in which they believe. The specimens reported so far are very small (<1 cm in diameter) but are certainly well enough preserved to enable positive jellyfish identification.1 As Blake de Pastino reported on this research in the online National Geographic News: “They didn’t have any bones to leave behind, but ten fossilized jellyfish recently discovered in Utah have made an impression in more ways than one. At half a billion years old, the fossils represent the oldest jellyfish ever found and push back the known existence of jellies 205 million years, scientists say. “‘The fossil record is full of circular-shaped blobs, some of which are jellyfish,’ Paulyn Cartwright, a University of Kansas biologist who was on the research team, said in a press statement. “‘That’s one of the reasons the fossils we describe are so interesting, because you can see a distinct bell shape, tentacles, muscle scars, and possibly even the gonads.’”2 But are these the oldest fossil jellyfish in the geological record based on the theory of evolution and its geological column (thought to represent the order, and hence ages, of the deposition of sediments and other rock layers)? Precambrian medusoid impressions

In 1964, H.S. Edgell3 reported ‘medusoid impressions’ exposed in various rocks from the Precambrian (on the arbitrary evolution geological timescale) Brockman Iron Formation, in the Hamersley Range region of the north-west of Western Australia: “Most of the apparent medusoid forms examined are from the lower part of the Brockman Iron Formation, in the Hamersley Group, where they are preserved on exposed bedding planes in finely-stratified, hematite-chert rocks.”3 The specimens examined in his report had been collected by geologists during the extensive geological surveys of that region, which were being undertaken by the government and by mining exploration companies. This area in the N.W. of Western Australia, known as the Pilbara, has since become the location of many very large iron ore mines, with their associated towns and mining infrastructure.

Figure 2. This side view of specimen DGW001 shows a fossil jellyfish at about 4 cm above the main exposed layer (white arrow). This indicates burial at different levels in the Figure 3. This specimen (DGW002) clearly shows a near-central, same vicinity. Remember we are viewing inverted fresh pyrite crystal in each individual. This pyrite represents the specimens, hence looking down at aboral views in chemical reaction between the organic contents of the jellyfish general. stomach (gastrovascular cavity) and the iron-rich entombing sediment. Edgell writes, under the section titled “Medusae Incertae Sedis”: “In the Hamersley Range, Precambrian sequence certain bedding planes show definite, flat, circular structures, mostly with conspicuous concentric grooves. In view of their regularity, symmetry and morphology they appear to be medusoid impressions, or external casts of ancient medusae. “Several of the forms observed show a strong similarity to those described as Medusoid Problematica by Sprigg (1947, 1949) from the Precambrian at Ediacara, South Australia. The acceptability of the latter as medusoid forms is supported by their resemblance to better preserved, younger, fossil medusae, such as Rhizostomites admirandus Haeckel from the Jurassic (vide Glaessner 1962). “There is, as yet, insufficient evidence for the assignment of Western Australian Precambrian medusoid forms to definite Orders and Sub-classes of the Coelenterata. However, tetramerous symmetry is shown in the distribution of probable oral arms in the exumbrellar cast (Plate 1, fig.2.). This suggests reference to the Class Scyphoza.”3 It seems clear from Edgell’s appraisal, these impressions belonged to far more complex organisms than those ‘simple’ organisms that formed the various stromatolites he also describes in this report.It seems clear from Edgell’s appraisal, these impressions belonged to far more complex organisms than those ‘simple’ organisms that formed the various stromatolites he also describes in this report. He goes on to describe in greater detail the main specimens pictured within his report, suggesting two species and two undesignated medusoid forms. However, he rightly cautions: “In the absence of more extensive material and field observation it should be cautioned that an inorganic origin is also possible for some types particularly those consisting merely of a series of regularly, raised concentric ridges on bedding planes.”3 Fossil jellyfish or not? Trendall and Blockley also mentioned these ‘medusoid impressions’. However, they described them as pseudofossils: “Edgell also described medusoid impressions and concentrically ridged structures, one of which was later figured by Halligan and Daniels (1964, plate 24). During the course of our studies a reassessment of Edgell’s material, in light of further collection, was carried out from a palaeontological viewpoint. We concur with the conclusions of this work (M. Walter, University of Adelaide, unpublished manuscript, 1968) that none of the forms described by Edgell from the Brockman Iron Formation are of organic origin.”4,5 So in spite of Edgell’s good descriptions indicating that several specimens were most likely “casts of ancient medusae”, or some possibly hydrozoan, it seems the general consenus at the time was that all were of inorganic origin. This consensus seems to have been mainly drawn from the studies of Malcolm Ross Walter for his 1970 Ph.D. thesis at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. Walter writes: Figure 4. Specimen DGW002 rotated 180° from figure 3 to give ‘proud’ view to better visualize specimens, depending on how one’s eyes view the shadows. “Glaessner (1962, 1966) has discussed the problems of distinguishing Precambrian fossils from pseudofossils, particularly those resulting from colloidal processes. The examination of supposed fossils from ironformations highlights these problems because, as is shown below, colloidal processes were of great importance during the diagenesis of these rocks.

“Structures are considered abiogenic if at least one of the following criteria was satisfied: (1) Abiogenic processes necessary to form a structure were shown to have happened in the iron-formation. (2) An appropriate physical or chemical process by which such a structure could form is known. (3) Morphology made biogenesis unlikely. “It might be thought that these conditions would exclude some true fossils; this possibility was always considered and in some cases it was with reluctance that possibilities of biogenesis were finally abandoned.”6 Walter proposed the cyclic precipitation of minerals, known as Liesegang rings, as a means of explaining some of the medusoid impressions (and other fossil-like features). Differential weathering between a fine-grained sediment and Liesegang ring precipitate zones would supposedly produce a series of distinct concentric rings of differing relief on exposed surfaces and may indeed be the explanation of some structures such as the small-sized example pictured in Edgell’s report 3 on his plate 1, figure 6. A large example is pictured in the Halligan and Daniels report 5 on their plate 24, figure 1. On page 40 they write “concentric ripples (pseudofossils) are a moderately common feature of the Brockman Iron Formation.” Their >1m-diameter example is indeed impressive. However, the mechanics of the Liesegang ring formation are poorly understood. 7 Moreover, the most medusoid-looking specimens seem difficult to explain by Liesegang rings or to explain satisfactorily by other known abiogenic means. So can Walter’s explanation hold up for all the ‘medusoid impressions’ found by Edgell? The case for fossil jellyfish casts in Dales Gorge Member Banded Iron Formation Further ‘medusoid impressions’ have since literally come to light from the Dales Gorge Member, Brockman Iron Formation, Hamersley Group in the Pilbara Region of the North-west of Western Australia (figures 1–4), ‘dated’ to around 2.5 Ga. 8 They appear to represent fossil jellyfish species yet to be described in scientific literature. These specimens had been exposed during the mining of blue asbestos (Crocidolite) in the Wittenoom Gorge. These specimens were collected by the author and Mr Alan Nelson in the early 1980s. The largest of these impressions viewed thus far by the author is about 45 mm in diameter and about 12 mm deep (in relief). An indistinct fringe can be seen around well-exposed, individual impressions which take the impression diameter out a further 10 mm. Obviously, if these ‘medusoid impressions’ are indeed genuine fossil jellyfish, it would mean that fully functioning jellyfish and their planktonic foods existed nearly 2 Ga before the previously oldest arbitrarily evolutionary dated jellyfish fossils. Bedding plane occurrence Certain bedding planes in the host banded iron formation preferentially fractured to expose the often dense numbers of these ‘medusoid impressions’—see specimen DGW001 (figures 1 and 2). Along such bedding planes there seems to have been less fusing of the silica-rich sediment, or precipitate, which could be explained by the localized geochemical change caused by decaying organic remains. Change in pH and solution salt content is well known to control the various forms of silica—colloidal silica, silica gel and silica precipitate. Certainly their form and orientation indicates the burial of physical objects, such as jellyfish bodies, rather than their being inorganic features like Liesegang rings. Figure 5. Moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), Crawley Bay, Swan River, Perth, Western Australia. Concentric ridged rings Some of the best exposed impressions have several distinct concentric rings of varying relief, just as would be expected if a jellyfish such as the still commonly occurring moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) was fossilized (figure 5). The variation in number of rings corresponds to the variation in body exposure during burial (e.g. settling in the gel sediment and/or stage of the jellyfish pulsing at time of entombment). The ridging (relief) evident in larger (or better exposed) impressions, corresponds with the outer bell of Aureliatype jellyfish, which is distinct from the thicker inner bell (main body), hence forming the two main ‘rings’ of the impressions. The relative scale and ratios between the rings and the ridges in these ‘medusoid impressions’ are consistent with those of the moon jellyfish that still inhabit the waters of Western Australia’s coast. The indistinct fringe mentioned above may reflect the delicate tentacles that fringe moon jellyfish bodies, although most such jellyfish washed up on beaches observed by the author seem to have their delicate tentacles contracted up under their bodies. This may be a defensive or stress response, so the fine-tapering in impression relief may also just be formed by entombing sediment contraction as the bodies become fossilized. Body structures It is clear from figures 1–4 that some individuals show significant features other than merely the concentric rings, which would be expected depending on whether fracturing exposed the aboral view (with a smooth upper bell surface) or the oral view (under-body, with much body structure). The features preserved on the inner bell are similar to the gonad structures (typically four) of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) (figure 6), and perhaps some of the tentacle and feeding structures (oral arms) are also represented (figure 7). Compare the ‘medusoid impressions’ with the photos of moon jellyfish that were washed up on the beach at Crawley Bay, Swan River, Perth, Western Australia (figure 5). Hagadorn et al. found similar body structures in their ‘medusoid impressions’ (figure 8).9 Photo: Dante Alighieri Photo: Luc Viatour

Figure 6. Aboral view of a moon jellyfish (Aurelia labiata). Note the four distinct gonad structures arranged symmetrically, radial canals, and fine fringing tentacles.

Figure 7. Living examples of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). Note the four strap-like tentacles, or oral arms, which seem be preserved in some of the oral

surface exposures of fossil jellyfish specimens from the Pilbara. Interestingly, when examining Edgell’s specimens titled ‘medusae incertae sedis’, Walter noted four nodes (in pairs): “The four nodes are grouped two on each of the parallel ridges. The ridges extend almost to the edge of the medusiform structure.”10 “The structure of the nodes indicates they were formed during diagenesis; this does not preclude biogenesis for the medusiform structures as it is feasible that the overlying bed was competent enough to retain a mould during diagenesis”.11 Though the Wittenoom specimens being described are different forms (species) of medusoid impression, these nodes could well represent gonad structures as observed in the moon jellyfish. As body parts such as these dissolved they may have been pseudomorphed by the migration of colloidal silica.The migration of colloidal silica within water-saturated, unconsolidated sediments is a well-known mode of fossil formation (by silicification, by the infilling of the pores and/or voids or by the pseudomorphing of the entombed animal or plant). The author has observed many central cavities of over-turned sea-sponges filled by the migration of silica within the fossil-rich spongolites and siltstones of the S.W. of Western Australia.

Figure 9. An example of one of the ‘medusoid impressions’ discussed in Edgell’s report.3 These impressions could well be oral surface exposures of Figure 8. These accepted fossils compare well with the new Wittenoom moon jellyfish with gonad and oral arm structures specimens (from Hagadorn et al., ref. 8, p. 149). being preserved. The somewhat irregular peripheral rings recording the death-throe pulsations of the outer bell in the entombing sediment or gel. Certainly some of Edgell’s3 specimens (and any further specimens collected since) need to be re-examined in the light of these new specimens from Wittenoom. Among those pictured by Edgell, the specimens in figures 1 and 2 on plate 1 are most intriguing (figure 9). The outer preserved features could well represent the death-throe pulsations of jellyfish preserved in the entombing sediment/gel; the central features being the casts of the oral arms (tentacles). Further specimens from the vicinity of these Edgell specimens may give aboral exposures similar to the Wittenoom specimens. One can only conclude from the evidence outlined above that the ‘medusoid impressions’ of the Dales Gorge Member exposed at Wittenoom are indeed fossil jellyfish. Organic ‘remains’ A small, light-brown inclusion of limonite (or a void where an inclusion was) can be seen within the ‘medusoid impressions’ (figure 5) and is typical of all specimens viewed by the author thus far. The identity of these inclusions is revealed in specimen DGW002 (figures 3 and 4) where a distinct and fresh pyrite crystal occurs near the centre of each impression. So, some of these crystals are still fresh in some specimens, whereas others have the pyrite oxidized into limonite/goethite pseudomorphs. This further confirms that these ‘medusoid impressions’ were formed by jellyfish bodies, and not by inorganic means, where the presence of a pyrite crystal represents the reaction between the hydrogen sulphide of the stomach contents and the iron-rich burial gels. The chemical reaction that grew these crystals occurred in the reducing conditions caused by the rapid entombment of these sea creatures and/or by deep-sea-floor conditions. Conclusion One can only conclude from the evidence outlined above that the ‘medusoid impressions’ of the Dales Gorge Member exposed at Wittenoom are indeed fossil jellyfish. The preserved features, body scale and ratios and the organically derived pyrite crystals represent evidences of greater clarity than many other poorly preserved fossils or trace fossils that have been accepted in sedimentary strata of ‘younger’ ages. A preconceived geological chronology should not be the reason for ignoring such fossils. Giant compound eyes, half a billion years ago? by Jonathan Sarfati We have already reported on the intriguing extinct giant invertebrate predator called Anomalocaris.1 This was a bit like a huge shrimp about 1-metre (3-foot) long (and it could grow to twice that), with spiked arms and a donut-shaped mouth full of tooth-like serrations. The previous report showed that it upset the prevailing evolutionary ‘date’ for this creature, and also noted how it was amazing that such a soft-bodied creature—lacking even a hard exoskeleton—could fossilize at all. Darwin himself wrote that “No organism wholly soft can be preserved,” 2 because

of his belief in exclusively slow-and-gradual processes, and his rejection of the Flood.Now we see how well it was fossilized. A specimen from Emu Bay Shale in South Australia, ‘dated’ at about 515 million years old, was found to have compound eyes on stalks. Each eye was about 2–3 cm (about an inch) across, and had about 16,000 hexagonal facets, compared to a house fly that has only 3,000. (Only dragonflies have more, about 28,000. Evolutionists consider them to be ‘primitive’ flying insects, although human engineers are modelling flapping micro air vehicles on them! 3)The researchers inferred that the Anomalocaris must have had acute vision, but this posed problems for their evolutionary dogma. One report explained that the team leader, Dr John Paterson of the University of New England, said that: “ … there was no evidence for eyes in organisms that lived before the Cambrian Explosion—a rapid increase in the diversity of life that began about 540 million years ago. The latest find showed sophisticated vision had evolved very rapidly. It came with a bang, in a geological blink of an eye.”4 Actually, this means there is no evidence that the eye evolved at all. I.e. it seems that the eyes appeared abruptly and fully formed. And evolutionists can’t appeal to long ages to help, since they appeared so suddenly. Indeed, the “Cambrian explosion” in general, with abrupt appearance of all the major groups, including vertebrates, has been a huge problem for evolution ever since Darwin.5 So have compound eyes in general; according to earlier research on other creatures: “These results illustrate exactly why arthropod compound eye evolution has remained controversial, because one of two seemingly very unlikely evolutionary histories must be true. Either compound eyes with detailed similarities evolved multiple times in different arthropod groups or compound eyes have been lost in a seemingly inordinate number of arthropod lineages.”6 Modern birds found with dinosaurs Are museums misleading the public? by Don Batten The theory of evolution states that all living creatures arose from a single cell by natural processes over eons of time, and designer of the universe had nothing to do with this process. According to the theory each animal arose from a different kind of animal over ‘millions of years’. E.g. most evolutionists assert that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs. Finding fossils of modern birds with those of dinosaurs, not just above them, contradicts this idea.Dr Carl Werner’s book and DVD, Living Fossils, reveals that fossil researchers have found many modern bird remains with dinosaurs, yet museums do not display these fossils, thus keeping this information from the public. By keeping this information hidden, children and adults are indoctrinated with the false idea that animals changed over time (since the time of the dinosaurs), and that evolution is true. In order to test evolution, Dr Werner visited 60 natural history museums and ten dinosaur dig sites in seven different countries. When he asked paleontologists if they had any personal knowledge of modern birds found with dinosaurs, he was in for quite a surprise. “I interviewed a scientist at the Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley who discussed a parrot fossil they had found in Cretaceous layers (‘dinosaur rock’). But the parrot fossil was not on display in the museum.” With each interview, more modern birds that had been found with dinosaurs were added to his list, including: parrots, penguins, owls, sandpipers, albatross, flamingos, loons, ducks, cormorants and avocets. Carl assembled this list from interviews he did with various paleontologists, as well as from articles by evolutionist scientists and a textbook (the details of the sources can be found inLiving Fossils).It was not long before Dr. Werner noted an important discrepancy: museums were not displaying what the scientists were revealing in their one-on-one interviews. In fact, the natural history museums contradicted reality and were suggesting the opposite. Of the 60 museums he visited, he did not see one single fossil of a modern bird that had been found in a dinosaur rock layer and only one museum out of 60 displayed a modern bird model with a dinosaur: the Milwaukee Museum. In an out-ofthe-way corner, the museum had a reconstructed avocet that had been found at Hell Creek (Montana) dinosaur dig site (see photo of avocet reconstruction below)—this is clearly an avocet. Sign at the American Museum of Natural History, 2011. Contrary to the sign, Dr Werner discovered that many types of birds have been found with dinosaurs including ducks, loons, flamingos, albatross, owls, penguins, sandpipers, parrots, cormorants, avocets, as well as extinct birds such as Archaeopteryx and Hesperornis. While these extinct birds did have teeth, many other modern types of birds without teeth have been found. By leaving this fact out, the museum display misleads the public.Dr Werner: “Museums do not show you these modern bird fossils nor do they put modern birds fleshed out with feathers in their dinosaur dioramas. This is wrong. Essentially, every time you see a T. rex or a Triceratops in a museum display, you should also see ducks, loons, flamingos or some of these other modern birds that have been found in the same rock layers as these dinosaurs, but this is not the case. I have never seen a duck with a dinosaur at a natural history museum, have you? An owl? A parrot?” An avocet in the dinosaur exhibit at Milwaukee Museum (top) - a rare example of a modern bird (bottom) in such displays.

“Not only do they not display birds, but the prestigious American Museum of Natural History suggests the opposite in their dinosaur-to-bird placard. This display is extremely misleading and again does not mention modern birds with dinosaurs.” (See sign above)Are the museum displays just out of date, or are they purposely withholding information? Two years after the release of Dr Werner’s book, the Carnegie Museum, the Smithsonian Museum and the American Museum of Natural History have still not corrected these discrepancies.From Dr Werner’s global investigations, this is a worldwide phenomenon with the museums; only one museum gave any hint that modern birds have been found with dinosaurs.It should be noted that modern birds were not found in all dinosaur layers, only Cretaceous layers (not in Jurassic or Triassic rocks). Evolutionist paleontologist Dr Bill Clemens told Carl that the Cretaceous bird fossils were found when they went looking for modern animals in the Cretaceous layers to provide evidence that the asteroid impact hypothesis was wrong 1 (this is the idea that an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs ‘at the end of the Cretaceous’). The researchers were trying to establish continuity between the fossils in the rocks above the Cretaceous with those in the Cretaceous; so they were looking for modern creatures. Who knows what they would find if they looked hard in the other layers?On CMI’s documentary, Darwin—the Voyage that Shook the World, Professor Phil Currie, palaeontologist at the University of Alberta, Canada, spoke about how a researcher’s ‘search image’ can affect what is discovered. “In spite of the fact that you think you have an open mind, very often your perceptions of what things should be, or your search image, or your cultural beliefs in some cases, will actually be working on your mind so that your eyes are open but they are not really open; they are missing something that could take you in an entirely new direction.”When researchers are looking for dinosaurs they tend to not even notice the remains of other creatures and plants. And when they are found, they tend to be put aside as uninteresting. Finding a new ‘exotic’ dinosaur is much more exciting and publicity-worthy than finding a bird or a mammal that everyone is familiar with. And of course funding agencies are after exciting finds of a lost world, not ‘boring’ fossils of modern creatures that also subtly suggest that animals did not evolve.In spite of all these factors, more and more modern animals and plants are being found in rocks where they should not be, according to the evolutionary view. There are so many examples (such as those discussed in Living Fossils), that it amounts to a strong confirmation that animals did not change significantly over time Frozen in stone … in just decades by Jonathan O’Brien Cape Leeuwin is a wild, beautiful and windy place, the most southwesterly point of mainland Australia. A famous lighthouse stands there, made of a limestone that glows a brilliant white on sunny days.Attracted by the awesome coastal beauty and the impressive lighthouse, visitors are often just as amazed to also find there an old wooden waterwheel which has been completely encased in solid limestone.In 1895, when the lighthouse was being built, the stonemasons lived in nearby cottages, and a large wooden waterwheel and aqueduct were constructed to supply them with fresh water from a natural spring. The flow from the spring turned the wheel, which in turn operated a pump which piped water to the cottages.1 There are caves in limestone rock in the area, and the water which flows over the wheel has a high mineral content. It didn’t take long for the minerals to precipitate out of the water and begin to form limestone. Eventually the wheel stopped turning, and became trapped in rock, in just a few short decades. Today, the spring still flows, and the waterwheel stands as a testimony to the rapid formation of limestone. Natural formations whose ages are not known may lead some to believe that they have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. Given the right chemical environment, the thousands of years since the Flood are actually a vast amount of time adequate to explain the sorts of geological features we have grown up to believe speak of millions of years.2 The next time you hear or read about limestone taking eons of time to form you can remember the famous waterwheel at Cape Leeuwin, still standing there for all to see, which ‘turned to stone’ within living memory.

Dinosaur fairy tales Remove the hype and discover a different story about the dinosaur family tree By Tas Walker

Fossil bones of Omeisaurus tianfuensis—a large sauropod dinosaur named after the mountain in Sichuan where the original material was found. This brilliantly artistic reconstruction is almost completely imaginative. Given the titleSinosauropteryx prima, the small dinosaur fossil on which it is based gives no concrete evidence of a feather-covered reptile.Giant Chinese dinosaurs have been touring Australia after appearances in Japan and New Zealand. No, it’s not Jurassic Park. It is an exhibition featuring many well-preserved dinosaur skeletons, like the massive 23-metre sauropod Mamenchisaurus, with its 9-metre-long neck.1 The exhibit, called Chinese Dinosaurs, also includes fossils of dinosaur eggs, claws and teeth, as well as marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and turtles. It is truly an awe-inspiring display.Naturally, fossils cannot speak for themselves. Instead, people interpret fossils according to their beliefs. It is clear that the organizers believe that life evolved on Earth over millions of years because they provide copious signs, labels, lectures, videos and books to encourage visitors to interpret the fossils this way.One particular diagram that vividly makes this point is a dinosaur ‘family tree’, which they placed prominently alongside every exhibit.1According to this diagram (see figure 1), all dinosaurs (and birds) descended from a common dinosaurian ancestor that lived some 240 million years ago, during the early Triassic period. The diagram clearly shows the ancestor-descendent relationships leading from this single ancestor to each of the different kinds of dinosaurs. Figure 1. Dinosaurs have become the latest showpiece in evolutionary spin doctoring. Following the successful Jurassic Park movies, which popularized the idea of dinosaurs turning into birds, recent finds in China have led to more displays aimed at convincing the public. A travelling exhibit of the Chinese fossils features a ‘dinosaur family tree’ (above), portrayed as a fact. But stripped of the story-telling, the evidence better fits the creation account of history.

For example, the diagram suggests that the group of ceratopsian dinosaurs at the top are directly related to the group immediately underneath, the pachycephalosaurs. The diagram indicates that the two groups separated from a common ancestor that lived about 140 million years ago (during the early Cretaceous period). Furthermore, both of these groups of dinosaurs are supposedly related to the next group, called the ornithopods. They allegedly separated from their common ancestor about 200 million years ago (during the early Jurassic period).Most people would not realize that this dinosaur family tree does not present observed scientific fact. Rather, it presents assumptions, hypotheses and beliefs as if they are observed facts. Biologist Jonathan Wells claims such diagrams misrepresent the truth and calls them ‘icons’—symbols of an idea—not factual evidence.2 Let’s see why.First, no evidence exists for any of the common ancestors indicated on the diagram. At Chinese Dinosaurs, the position of each fossil animal on the family tree is marked on an adjacent sign. Every fossil sits on one of the branches of the tree (the thick, horizontal lines). The exhibition does not present one example of the supposed common ancestors required by its own diagram. That’s because evidence for these common ancestors does not exist.Then, the dates on the diagram (from 65 million to 245 million years) are not scientifically measured facts. It’s obvious that when palaeontologists dig up dinosaur bones, they do not find a label attached with the age written on it. The dates are

interpretations based on conjectures designed to give results consistent with evolutionary beliefs. Both radiometric dating and index fossil comparisons are based on assumptions about the past—assumptions that cannot be tested in the present. So, to present the actual scientific evidence (rather than evolutionary beliefs) on the diagram, we would remove all the hypothetical common ancestors and the imaginary family links. We would also remove the ages of millions of years. Instead of ‘millions of years ago’, we would write something like ‘relative depth’. At the ‘245-million-year’ end we would put ‘deep’ and at the ‘65-million-year’ end we would put ‘shallow’.Thus, if we amended the diagram to represent the evidence based on the facts, it would no longer look like a family tree (see diagram left). Sinosauropteryx prima is known from a fossil (below left), which seems to show some evidence of hair-like structures along its back and tail. Although there is no clear evidence of feathers, evolutionists have seized upon this fossil to promote the idea of dinosaurs turning into birds. At face value, what does the evidence at theChinese Dinosaurs exhibition point toward? Firstly, there are all sorts of different animals buried in sedimentary rock layers. They include land animals (dinosaurs), marine animals (plesiosaurs), and birds (such as Archaeopteryx). The huge animals were buried at different depths in sediment, which was laid down by water.Furthermore, the sediment covered their bodies quickly, before they rotted away or could be scavenged.In addition, fossils of the different kinds of animals appear suddenly in the strata and don’t change much from the deepest to the shallowest rocks. In other words, there is no clue that any kind of animal evolved from a different kind of ancestor, or that any kind of animals evolved into other kinds after they first appeared in the deepest rocks.So when we clear away the evolutionary story telling, we can see that a different story fits the evidence better. The evidence is consistent with creation account, that different kinds of animals were created suddenly at the beginning during Creation, and that they reproduced after their kind. The fossil deposits are best explained by the global Flood—the catastrophe that devastated the land, the sea and the atmosphere about 4,500 years ago.3

Fossil insect ears—deaf to evolution by David Coppedge Evolutionary story-telling is usually tacked onto a report after the facts are in. But sometimes, evolutionary thinking leads to predictions as to what should be found in the fossil record. In one recent case, two evolutionists studying insect fossils found that the record did not match with the expectations of most Darwinists.According to the evolutionary timeline, insects evolved many millions of years before echolocating bats. Thinking that the arrival of flying mammals equipped with sonar would spur the evolution of ears in the insect prey, the scientists expected that earlier insects would have lessdeveloped ears, or none at all. Then they went searching through the museum shelves for insect fossils from the Green River formation in Wyoming, allegedly around 48 million years old (48 Ma). The results, published in the Journal of Paleontology, showed no evolution had occurred: Darwinism has no foresight. “Tympanal drum ears in insects are important for both intraspecific communication and for the detection of nocturnal predators … . Here we describe and document the exceptionally well preserved tympanal ears found in crickets and katydids from the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado, which are virtually identical to those seen in modern representatives of these groups.”1 According to the summary on PhysOrg, co-author Roy Plotnick from the University of Illinois did not predict this. “The big evolutionary trigger for the appearance of hearing in many insects is thought to be the appearance of bats,” he said. “Prior to the evolution of bats we would expect to find ears in relatively few insects, but after that we should see ears in more insect groups.”2PhysOrg tried hard to spin this into a positive statement for evolution: “50 million year old cricket and katydid fossils hint at the origins of insect hearing.” But further down, the article admitted, “The fossil ears measured half a millimeter in length, and were virtually identical in size, shape, and position to their modern counterparts.”2 In the face of this falsifying evidence, PhysOrg did its best: “The findings suggest that this group of insects evolved their supersensitive hearing long before bat predators came to be, the researchers say.” Dena Smith (University of Colorado), the other co-author of the paper, imagined that “Their bat-detecting abilities may have simply become apparent later.”2

Stephanie Pappas at Live Science kept her evolutionary faith in spite of the evidence: “Now, a new examination of 50million-year-old cricket and katydid fossils finds that these odd ears evolved before even the appearance of the predators that these ears can hear.”3 Darwinism has no foresight. There is no way insects would become equipped with complex organs for something they would only need millions of years later. Their explanation, therefore, makes no sense—even within evolutionary theory.The preservation of detail in these fossils was remarkable. “You can see every tiny feature down to the veins in their wings and the hairs on their legs,” Smith said. The evidence indicates not only that the insects were equipped with hearing from the beginning, but that these specimens in the Green River Formation were buried rapidly in the recent past—not millions of years ago.4,5 Dinosaur disarray Evidence for the Flood at Dinosaur National Monument, USA by Jonathan O’Brien At Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, a confused tangle of bones juts from a ridge of sandstone, chock-full of dinosaur fossils. The sandstone is part of the Morrison Formation, a body of sedimentary rock extending from New Mexico to Saskatchewan in the north and covering more than 1 million square kilometres (400,000 square miles) of the western US and Canada. Eleven different species of dinosaur have been dug from the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument, including one of the largest and most complete skeletons of a giant Apatosaurus ever found. The dinosaur bones are concentrated in an extensive lens-shaped bed of rock and are an outstanding example of a ‘mass burial’ deposit.1,2 Dinosaur National Monument has been called “the greatest dinosaur quarry ever discovered”, and is the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. 3 For decades, visitors to this spectacular site were told that the fossils represent generations of dinosaurs that lived and died within a peaceful swamp environment some 150 million years ago.4 But geologists now realise that the remains did not accumulate that way. So how did the bones get there, and what do they tell us? The slow-and-gradual explanation The prevalent belief among secular geologists is that the geological processes we observe in nature today are responsible for many of the geologic formations we see in the ancient rock record. It’s called uniformitarianism, or “the present is the key to the past”. This belief results in the view that, on the current slow-and-gradual rates of sedimentation, you would expect millions of years to elapse while the observed depth of sediments accumulated in a low-energy environment. Uniformitarians started with the assumption of slow-and-gradual geologic processes, born of their philosophy which, from its beginnings, sought to “free the science from Moses”.5Having abandoned a peaceful interpretation for Dinosaur National Monument, yet committed to rejecting the historical Flood, uniformitarian geologists stayed true to their worldview and retained an interpretation that needed millions of years of slow deposition. They now say that the dinosaurs were overwhelmed and buried by a series of floods. Not by the global Flood, but by much smaller local floods separated by long time periods. They believe that every time an area flooded, the dinosaur remains were deposited in the same location, slowly building up the sizable collection.3 Alternatively, some scientists speculate that the fossils represent the cumulative result of many droughts as the dinosaurs congregated and died around ever-diminishing waterholes. 6But this scenario also requires flooding to try to explain the subsequent burial. Green River Canyon in Dinosaur National Monument The plot thickens: volcanic activity associated with rapid watery burial The idea of many local floods might at first seem a possibility. However, a notable feature of the water-worked sandstone in which the dinosaur bones are entombed complicates the picture for uniformitarians—these rocks contain abundant grains of a rock called ‘tuff’. Tuff forms from the solidification of hot ash ejected from volcanoes. This, and layers of volcanic ash elsewhere in the formation,7 indicate that an explosive volcanic eruption occurred at much the same time as all the dinosaur remains were buried by flooding. No volcano is known in the vicinity of the deposit, and geologists have placed the nearest source for the tuff to vents in southern California or Nevada. 4 Ash clouds depositing over such considerable distances point to an extremely catastrophic volcanic event.The coincidence of floods and eruptions happening together on multiple occasions, over vast spans of time, stretches the credibility of the uniformitarian ‘just so’ story. Also, if millions of years had indeed gone by as the uniformitarians assert, the geomorphology or ‘shape’ of the land surface would have changed in all that time. We know that rivers can alter their position and shape over the centuries, as their banks are eroded and sediment is deposited. For the multiple-flood/multiple-drought scenarios to be true it would mean that the drainage pattern over a very wide area would remain unchanged over eons of time, such that animal remains were accumulated in exactly the same location over and over again. This is unlikely. Allosaurus jimmadseni fossil, Dinosaur National Monument Added to this, the fact that fossilization occurred at all indicates that the animals were quickly and deeply buried in sediment infused with mineralrich fluids, either during death or not long afterwards.8 The bodies of dinosaurs that had drowned in localized floods would be scavenged and rot, bones and all, long before a sufficient thickness of sediment had covered them. After all, we do not today find the accumulated bones of herd animals such as cattle slowly fossilizing under the mud of river banks and floodplains emplaced by local floods. We do not even find small animals fossilizing. Fossilization today is a rare event, requiring special conditions.

Complete skeletons mixed in with bits and pieces The evidence gets even more problematic for uniformitarians. Some of the fossils at Dinosaur National Monument are found as nearly-complete skeletons, fully articulated, and still in the opisthotonic or ‘dead dinosaur’ posture.9 Others are found in a disarticulated (dismembered) state.4 The presence of near-perfect whole remains further detracts from the long-ages multiple-flood theory, as the chance of unfossilized dinosaur skeletons surviving in articulated condition over eons of time, while awaiting deep burial, is vanishingly small. Soft connective tissue joining bone to bone rapidly breaks down once rotting of the carcass begins.The alternative long-age drought scenario also involves, by definition, long periods of time between events. The enduring image of drought—broken-down animal skeletons baking in the sun—is common knowledge. It is wellknown that degradation of the carcass begins just days after death, as scavengers, microbes, and full exposure to the heat and the elements take their toll. The accumulation of the degraded skeletal remains by later flood waters would further ‘mix’ things. And, as in the multiple flood interpretation, we do not observe drought remains fossilizing today.The evidence indicates that the dinosaur remains were quickly and deeply entombed in sediments deposited by water. It is highly unlikely that either the multiple-flood or the multiple-drought interpretation would result in dinosaurs being fossilized in rock as we find them at Dinosaur National Monument. On the other hand, a global-scale flood, such as the Flood, with its associated volcanic activity, is a likely candidate. But under this scenario, how can the dismembered remains mixed up with whole, articulated skeletons be explained? Likely effects of a single, enormous flood The Flood probably began in many places as a series of powerful, chaotic surges or tsunamis across land areas, bigger than modern-day tsunamis.10 While many animals would have perished immediately, the higher hills would have allowed a few animals to survive the very beginnings of the Flood. Dinosaurs in lower areas that somehow managed to survive the first surges would have swum around until they found refuge on temporary sandbar type deposits and piled-up debris. Tectonic uplift and folding and faulting may also have provided temporary higher areas. In such cases, patches of shallow water and even dry land would have formed briefly from newly-deposited sediments. 11The time between increasingly deeper surges may have been prolonged in some areas, extending into many days or weeks depending on local tectonic factors. This was enough time for animals that died in the initial onslaught to rot. The remains may then have been ‘reworked’ (buried, eroded, and re-buried), possibly several times if multiple surges occurred, being abraded and jumbled-up in the process. Impact with uprooted trees would also break up the bodies. The surviving dinosaurs would eventually succumb as still-higher flood surges arrived. With the water level totally overwhelming even the highest areas, dismembered, rotted carcasses and whole dinosaurs would be swept along together in strong currents and buried under sediment. Vast volumes of moving water would have a powerful sorting effect on the different types and sizes of debris. Still deeper amounts of sediment would then be deposited over the top as the continental mass continued to subside. 12The dinosaur bones are found with other fossils, including wooden logs, which have the appearance of having been sorted by water. A few of the dinosaurs appear to have “drowned and been buried on the spot”, 3 while many of the dismembered remains look as if they have been “churned up”.13 The texture of the sandstone ‘matrix’ (the surrounding rock) in which the dinosaur bones are found suggests the sorts of catastrophic floods and mudflows that were observed on a much smaller scale during the Mount St. Helens eruption of May 1980. There is also a distinct rarity of fossil plants and soil preserved within the deposits. All of this evidence suggests that the remains were part of a mass-assemblage transported and sorted by water.4 Moses was right, all along The new uniformitarian views entail belief in many local floods emplacing animals in the same location each time, with identical volcanic eruptions of exceptionally violent extent ‘just so happening’ to occur each time the fossil remains were being deposited. They also require belief in animals fossilizing in situations where they are not observed to fossilize today. Further complicating such interpretations is the presence of whole, articulated skeletons. A more sensible and elegant interpretation, one that makes sense of all the evidence, is that the animals at Dinosaur National Monument were killed and buried by massive water action operating as a single, yet multi-stage, event.The Morrison Formation, covering several states of North America, and of which Dinosaur National Monument is a part, reveals an enormous magnitude of watery deposition. It represents just another piece in the geological puzzle that, together with many others all around the world, comes together to spell: global Flood. Hadrosaur skin found by David Catchpoole Published: 23 July 2013 (GMT+10) University of Regina researcher Mauricio Barbi holds a hadrosaur skin sample that he and his colleagues hope will still contain melanosomes, the cellular organelles that contain pigments that control skin colour. “If we are able to observe the melanosomes and their shape, it will be the first time pigments have been identified in the skin of a dinosaur,” he said. “We have no real idea [yet] what the skin looks like. Is it green, blue, orange …”1 Such is the power of the dinosaurs-died-out-millions-of-years-ago paradigm, that it not only limits what scientists expect to find, but also bizarrely affects how they view ‘unexpected’ evidence when they do find it.The discovery of hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) skin near Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada, is a classic example. University of Regina researcher Mauricio Barbi recounts: “As we excavated the fossil, I thought we were looking at a skin impression. Then I noticed a piece came off and I realized this is not ordinary—this is real skin. Everyone involved with the excavation was incredibly excited ….”2Their excitement is understandable. Everybody is taught that dinosaurs became extinct millions of years ago yet here is a piece of real skin. No wonder they didn’t expect to find it, and initially thought it must have been only a skin impression. The basic question arising from the discovery ought now to have been, “Why is it that we’ve been taught these fossils are millions of years old, when here quite plainly is evidence to the contrary?”Instead, Mauricio Barbi and colleagues are trying to answer theirquestion: “how the fossil remained intact for around 70 million years.”They plan to use the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to look at melanosomes—the cellular organelles that contain pigments that control the colour of an animal’s skin.

Mauricio Barbi and colleagues are trying to answer their question: ‘how the fossil remained intact for around 70 million years.’ “If we are able to observe the melanosomes and their shape, it will be the first time pigments have been identified in the skin of a dinosaur,” said Barbi. That will determine if the hadrosaur skin was green or grey like most dinosaurs are currently portrayed, or a completely different colour.CLS scientist Tim May is also amazed: “It is astonishing that we can get information like this from such an old sample.”And Barbi further mused: “What’s not clear is what happened to this dinosaur and how it died. There is something special about this fossil and the area where it was found, and I am going to find out what it is.”3If only these researchers could look at the world’s geological and fossil evidence through the creation framework of a 6,000-years-ago Creation and 4,500-years-ago Flood timeline, they would be way less incredulous. Dino skin “glossy and black, unlike anything I had ever seen in the field before” The photo at left shows part of the hadrosaur skin sample found in a remote area of northwestern Alberta known as the Wapiti formation. It was found by paleontologist Philip Bell, who trawls the dry riverbeds there every summer, looking to see if the spring runoff has exposed any fossils.Sure enough, in June 2012 he and his team came upon a cliff that had collapsed, revealing dinosaur remains. “I first picked up a bit with skin impressions, and I thought, great, there should be more in there,” he said. “We immediately changed our approach to make sure everything was kept in pristine condition. Soon, we hit upon a section of skin that was glossy and black, unlike anything I had ever seen in the field before. We looked at it closely, and realized that it had a three-dimensional structure.” 4Now, does Dr Bell consider that the standard textbook slow-and-gradual processes were at work to preserve this skin so exquisitely? Despite believing in millions-of-years and evolution, he says: “Obviously skin is something that decays rapidly, so the fossilization must have been incredibly fast.” Mummified trees millions of years old—not by Jonathan O’Brien Researchers recently announced the discovery of mummified wood and other plant material in Quttinirpaaq National Park in the Canadian Arctic. The area is barren and icy, less than 8º south of the geographic North Pole. Local temperatures fall to −50ºC (−58ºF).Acting on a tip-off from a local ranger, Ohio State University Earth scientist Joel Barker found “exquisitely preserved” broken tree trunks and branches “and even leaves”, that had emerged from underneath a glacier.1He and his team said that the pine, spruce and birch trees had originally been buried in a landslide. Despite the amazingly fresh condition of the wood, Barker, a believer in long ages, recently announced the trees were somewhere between 2 and 12 million years old.2 The wood is still wood Surprisingly, given such an old age being assigned to it, the wood is still completely woody, and readily burns. It has not been petrified (turned to stone). Even the most delicate structures such as leaves have been perfectly preserved. Now that it is exposed to the elements, the wood is beginning to rot.Robert Blanchette, plant biologist with the University of Minnesota, was clearly impressed by the supposed age of the material. “Finding wood that is millions of years old in such good condition—almost as if you just picked it up from the forest floor … .” 3 And as Barker puts it, “The dead trees look just like the dried-out dead wood lying outside now.” How the wood was dated How did Barker arrive at such a date? He began with the presupposition that the earth is billions of years old. He then used the following reasoning: Because pollen that disappeared about 12 million years ago (according to the long-ages time scale) is absent, the trees are probably no more than 12 million years old. And because ocean cores indicate that forests disappeared from the Arctic 2 million years ago (again, according to long-age assumptions), Barker believes that the wood is at least as old as that. Pretty simple conclusion? But there’s a terrible blind spot there to reality. Difficult to believe How can one believe that wood and leaves could survive in such a fresh state in a near-surface environment for even one million years, let alone up to 12 million years, even if surrounded by ice? Beautifully preserved, unaltered organic material such as this suggests a maximum age measured in hundreds or thousands of years at the most.Barker said, “When we started pulling leaves out of the soil, that was surreal, to know that it’s millions of years old and that you can hold it in your hand.” Yes, surreal is a good word to describe it: as in unreal, and fantastic. The millions of years are held in his head, not in his hands. Claimed ‘oldest-ever’ amber fossil—millions-of-years mighty mites? by Shane Cessna Published: 16 May 2013 (GMT+10) Science Daily’s caption to the above photos read: These photomicrographs are of the two new species of ancient gall mites in 230-million-year-old amber droplets from northeastern Italy, taken at 1000x magnification. The gall mites were named (left) Triasacarus fedelei and (right) Ampezzoa triassica. But are these mites so ‘mighty’ in amber that they could really remain intact for the claimed 230 million years? We most definitely think not, as our article explains.Amber1 (or fossilized tree resin) has been known to entomb many things including ants,2 ‘Gladiator’ 3 insects, crustaceans, water beetles, barnacles, oysters, clams and water striders.4 Evolutionists sometimes express surprise at how amber can preserve its contents and remain intact for millions of years. 5 This is especially true of a recent find.Amber droplets excavated from outcrops high in the Alps of northeastern Italy rocked evolutionary scientists by revealing a pair of gall mites (arthropods) supposedly 100 million years older than any other arthropod encased in amber ever found (the oldest prior arthropod found is dated at 130 million years). 6If

these tiny creatures evolved from some common arthropod ancestor, then one would surely reasonably expect that the fossil record should show a variety of transitional forms from that arthropod ancestor to today’s gall mites. However, when scientists recently described some of the earliest gall mites from these fossils, they found the contrary. The ancient gall mites look just like modern ones. Study lead author David Grimaldi said, “they’re dead ringers for (modern) gall mites.” 7So, for the duration of the claimed 230 million years, there have been no significant changes in these organisms. This is the classic ‘living fossil’ syndrome, highlighting the problem of ‘evolutionary stasis’. Does this mean that these evolutionary scientists are going to dismiss the ‘millions of years’ paradigm?Not at all. Grimaldi stated, “Amber is an extremely valuable tool for paleontologists because it preserves specimens with microscopic fidelity, allowing uniquely accurate estimates of the amount of evolutionary change over millions of years.” Or in this case, no evolutionary change. “And that’s surprising because the world has changed a lot from when these bugs were alive.”6 ‘They’re dead ringers for (modern) gall mites’—researcher David Grimaldi It may be surprising to those who imagine millions of years of evolution. However, this is not surprising at all to creationists who expect mites to produce mites. Uprooted trees, smashing against each other in the swirling currents and waves, would lose their bark and release copious quantities of tree resin. While still fluid, the resin would have enveloped organisms displaced from their usual habitat by the floodwaters. Also, heat is said to have been a likely factor in promoting resin flow from wood. Perhaps the Flood waters—heated in places by the ‘fountains of the great—provided ideal conditions for large quantities of liquid amber to ooze from mats of floating logs, enveloping the likes of these mites, and other flood debris, before hardening. Twice as wrong—and more Fossilized eukaryote cells and giant anomalocaridids force dramatic revisions of the evolutionary timeline by David Catchpoole The discovery of fossilized cells1 in north-west Scotland has forced a dramatic rewrite of the supposed evolutionary history of life on Earth.2 That’s because the fossil organisms were said to have lived infreshwater lakes and were ‘dated’ as being one billion years old. That is in stark contrast to previous claims that life didn’t begin its landward migration from its evolutionary starting-point in the oceans until half a billion years ago.So these newly found fossil cells, says New Scientist, suggest that “the primitive relatives of all animals, plants and fungi had left the oceans and moved into terrestrial waters twice as long ago as thought.”3Twice as long? No. The ‘date’ is now twice as wrongas it was before. The fossils actually date from the Flood, about 4,500 years ago. The researchers noted the “exceptionally detailed three-dimensional preservation” of the fossils.2 This, in common with many other fossils found worldwide, is right in line with what one would logically expect from the global Flood.Another recent example was the discovery of “extraordinarily well-preserved” fossils in Morocco.4,5 These were giant (length 1 metre, or 3 ft) shrimp-like creatures with soft bodies preserved along with “thousands of [other] examples of soft-bodied marine fauna” there. 4 How so? They “were trapped by sediment clouds that buried them and preserved their soft bodies”. 4 Note that the researchers were forced to substantially revise their timeline. They were ‘trapped’ by the evolutionary mindset that sedimentary rock layers with embedded fossils represent the order of evolution and extinction over millions of years rather than the order of burial during the Noachian Flood. They now say that “these animals existed for 30 million years longer than previously realized”.4 And the researchers also mentioned an earlier dramatic modification of the evolutionary story about these creatures. The discovery of complete specimens in the Burgess Shale showed that fossils that had been thought to be a multiplicity of different creatures actually “all belong to a single kind of animal”. 5,6These two dramatic revisions of the evolutionary timeline —500 million years and 30 million years respectively—are the latest in a long procession of spectacular rewrites of the evolution story. Nor are they likely to be the last. That’s because speculation about the past is not in the same category as a true eyewitness account of what really happened Taxonomic manipulations likely common by Michael J. Oard Figure 1. Torosaurus from the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, US.When looking at evolutionary biostratigraphic or taxonomic schemes, one cannot help but be impressed with the detail and presumed precision of many of them. Charts show the change of each species, often just a small change from a similar ‘species’, over time. Many of these fossils are used as index fossils to date sedimentary rocks. Such precision in taxonomic schemes has an aura of accuracy and truth and has persuaded many people to believe these schemes and/or to believe in molecules-to-man evolution. But a closer look reveals that there is much that is wrong in these fossil charts. The examples of cephalopods and foraminifera Minute changes in cephalopods have been used to date Mesozoic strata. But there is evidence that many defined species are time-transgressive (i.e. varying in age in different areas, or cutting across time planes), so cannot be used to define a certain, exact time period in the geological timescale.1 Undoubtedly, the defined species are subject to taxonomic manipulations, since it is very difficult to define a species today and impossible with just bones or shells since hybridization tests cannot be performed.One would think the difficulties of setting up a biostratigraphic scheme would be even more apparent with microorganisms, because of their small size and the many unknowns associated with them. For instance, it may be almost impossible to define a true species of microorganism and classify a type of extinct microfossil because of such factors as the unknown variations with a species, size differences between males and females and ontological differences.2Moreover, many microorganisms are easily reworked and dissolved.Tammy Tosk reported on multiple manipulations of foraminifera, a common index fossil for evolutionary dating. 3 She points out that only a very small fraction of the sedimentary rocks have been sampled so that the true distribution and abundance of foraminifera is really unknown. We really do not know the three-dimensional distribution of fossils,4 and surprises occur almost every week, some of which I

have been reporting.5Tosk also notes that the same or a similar foraminifera will be given a different name if found in a layer of different age: “Another problem with using published descriptions and stratigraphic data is that fossils are often placed in different taxa, even in different superfamilies, if they are found at different levels, even though they might be placed in the same genus or species if found together. It is therefore difficult to recognize potentially equivalent species in the geological column.”6 Such a procedure is a huge fudge factor to make fossil charts show a nice ‘change with time’. It is known that foraminifera of the same species can vary significantly in their morphology, i.e. their overall form and structure: “Within a single species the foraminifers may have thick ornamented walls under normal oxygen concentrations, and thin, less-ornamented walls under low oxygen conditions. … Because of the many examples of variation in living and fossil forms, foraminifers are considered to be extraordinarily plastic (Kennett 1976). A foraminifer may contain enough genetic information to express many different forms, depending on the conditions.”7And in classifying such microorganisms, it is all too easy to define very slight changes as different species or genera.Therefore, many of the claimed species in these biostratigraphic schemes probably should be put in the same species, indicating that the defined species are surely oversplit: “Many of the so-called species in the fossil record were probably not separate biological species. A species is defined as a potentially interbreeding group. Fossil species can only be defined on the characteristics of the preserved remains.”8 So, when considering all the above problems, these nice, ‘precise’ charts of microfossil changes with time, used to date rocks and other fossils, are way beyond the state of the art. We should not take these charges as verbatim and use them in dating within a Flood model. Such taxonomic manipulations and the difficulty of even defining a fossil species are two of many reasons why I do not take the geological column as a precise order for creation earth history, but more of a general order.9,10Although we could expect microfossils to be difficult to classify and place in a biostratigraphic dating scheme, larger animals could perhaps be much easier. However, this is not the case. I have found numerous problems, manipulations, and circular reasoning in dinosaur classification and biostratigraphy.11One of the most blatant examples of circular reasoning is the claim that dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic (very late Cretaceous). However, Glenn Jepsen admitted that this timing is based on circular reasoning, because paleontologists simply define the end of the Mesozoic as the time the dinosaurs went extinct: “Geologists themselves must take much of the responsibility for the dissemination of this concept [that the dinosaurs went extinct in a few days or a few thousand years] because they have often defined the end of the Age of Reptiles or Mesozoic Era [about 65 million years ago] as the exact time that dinosaurs became extinct. Ergo, reasoning in a tight circle, dinosaurs became extinct at the end of Mesozoic time.”12I have documented many examples of claimed Cenozoic dinosaur discoveries from the literature that were ‘redated’ or somehow shoved back into the Mesozoic by various means, especially by the claim of ‘reworking’.13I believe such examples with dinosaurs are just the extreme tip of the iceberg in what goes on in evolutionary taxonomy. Such manipulation is how I believe so much of the ‘precision’ in the geological column and biostratigraphy is achieved. Recent developments with ceratopsians Recent developments with ceratopsian dinosaurs reinforce these problems. Ceratopsians display a fair amount of variability in their head frills and horns. It is easy for evolutionists to classify them into various species and genera based on the head characteristics. However, it is quite possible that all the ceratopsians dinosaurs are all one kind in the creation worldview, and the variation is just an example of pre-Flood natural selection or simple variety within a kind. Figure 2. Adult Triceratops from the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, US. Just recently, paleontologists have realized that two claimed species of ceratopsians are actually the same species.14Torosaurus had a huge head frill with two holes in it (figure 1), while Triceratops had a smaller head frill with no holes in it (figure 2). These two ceratopsians had been considered distinct genera for over a century! But now they are considered thesame species with the Torosaurus being an older Triceratops. This example shows how important it is to understand ontogeny (growth) in any fossil animal: “The radical changes in cranial morphology that occur throughout ceratopsid ontogeny … entail that an understanding of ontogenetic development is critical to studies of their paleoecology and systematics.”15 Such knowledge of ontogeny is impossible with just a few scraps of bone or teeth; numerous fossil individuals are required. And even when whole skeletons are available, many mistakes can be made in classification. Similar discoveries of oversplitting in the past are being discovered with tyrannosaurs and pachycephalosaurs. 16Another recent development with ceratopsians is that they are being found over a wider area of the world, which reinforces the problem that there are still a huge number of fossils ready to be discovered, some of which will bring surprises to the ‘precise’ evolutionary taxonomic schemes. It had always been thought that ceratopsians were denizens of western North America and central and eastern Asia. However, ceratopsians are now found in Europe, in the Late Cretaceous from Hungary and possibly from Sweden and Belgium.17,18 The identification of ceratopsians in Sweden and Belgium is based mainly on the teeth, but this could be problematic because of so-called convergent evolution: “The identification of ceratopsians based on isolated teeth must be treated with caution because ornithischian dinosaur dentition is well-documented as highly homoplastic, with particularly striking evolutionary convergences observed between ceratopsian and ornithopod ornithischians.”19 Convergent evolution should be nearly impossible within the evolutionary paradigm, because no two environments remain the same for long periods to ‘evolve’ similar structures in very different animals.The identification of true ceratopsians from at least Hungary brings up a slight problem in plate tectonics, since the fossils are found in the western Tethyan Archipelago, which means they are isolated from Asian and North American ceratopsians. So, it is suggested that the ceratopsians arrived in Europe by “an early Late Cretaceous dispersal event from Asia, possibly by island-hopping across the Tethys Ocean”.20 The incredible plasticity of evolutionary/uniformitarian history is evident. Thus, the new Hungarian ceratopsians add complexity to a simple evolutionary scheme: “Ajkaceratops kozzmai [the Hungarian ceratopsian] thus adds new complexity to our understanding of late Cretaceous dinosaur faunas and demonstrates the need for reevaluation of current biogeographical hypotheses.”20 Splitting of dinosaurs and other organisms common

This example shows that dinosaurs have been oversplit, with a host of names for the same species or kind of dinosaur. Another recent article shows that dinosaur species splitting, or giving different names to the same dinosaur, has been common, especially with prolific authors from years past, such as Othniel Marsh and Edward Cope. 21 The paper revealed that there really are no rules for naming a new species: “There are no rules for determining the level at which varieties, subspecies, species, and genera ought to be discriminated, and such debates are even trickier in dealing with fossil species, where generally the only evidence is characters of hard tissues of skeletons or shells.”22 So, it is especially difficult in determining even a genera for a living organism, not to mention a fossil organisms. The subjectivity of taxonomy should caution us to not believe those ‘precise’ schemes. On another issue, if one cannot even demonstrate what a species is, how can evolutionists make claims about ‘speciation’? Therefore, many names of dinosaurs are invalid, possibly more than half. This is also the case with other organisms: “Many current debates about biodiversity and large-scale evolution have identified the need for comprehensive species inventories. Such species lists may be incomplete because more collecting is needed, or because of errors by systematists [classifiers]. Empirical studies show that error rates are high, as much as 30-50% of many living and fossil groups.”23 Summary When we observe those nice, precise biostratigraphic schemes, we need to remember that a lot of evolutionary bias, taxonomic manipulation, and unknown information on classification has gone into these dating schemes. One large unknown is that the fossil record is far from complete: “Reconstructing the historical distribution of Earth’s fauna and flora is a challenging task, not least because of the incomplete, often poorly dated, nature of the fossil record.”24 So, new discoveries in the future will broaden the time range of many organisms in the geological column. The current precise-seeming, fossil species distributions over time, sometimes used to date rocks and other organisms, should not be taken seriously. Oil not always a ‘fossil fuel’ by Carl Wieland It is well known that oil can form from buried animal matter, and that coal (which is buried vegetation) is in some instances being turned into oil underground. For some time now, a number of researchers have speculated that oil can also form from non-living sources, such as methane from deep in the earth. E.g. Cornell University’s Dr Thomas Gold (1920–2004) argued that oil is a “renewable primordial soup continually manufactured by the earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”1 Crude oil and natural gas [can in many instances be] generated without the involvement of fossils—Vladimir Kutcherov, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Vladimir Kutcherov, of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, says that his research team has now conclusively demonstrated that “crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils.”2 The researchers simulated the environment deep underground in order to show how such organic substances would be generated from non-organic minerals by heat and pressure.3The controversial research has huge potential implications. For one thing, it neutralizes the challenge from the creation’s critics that there could not have been enough creatures alive on Earth at the time of the Flood to explain all the oil and gas. It confronts the idea that we are running out of oil. It also confronts the idea that we are running out of oil, suggesting instead that by drilling deeper and in different host rocks, much more oil will be found.The year before this announcement, Kutcherov pointed out that there were some oil fields, such as in Vietnam, pumping the black gold from rocks such as granite. 4 If oil forms only from buried creatures, the host rocks should be sedimentary (laid down by water), not igneous like granite. Ghosts in the rocks by Shaun Doyle and Paul Nethercott Published: 14 July 2011(GMT+10) Contradictions between evolutionary fossil dating and the dating implied by evolutionary cladistic analyses are common. Therefore, one dating scheme must take precedence over the other. The vagaries of fossilization are well-known, with fossil ranges commonly being extended by tens and hundreds of millions of years by new discoveries.1 Consequently the ‘evolutionary history’ deduced from cladistics analyses takes precedence over fossils. This means many taxa are inferred to be much older than the evolutionary fossil dating indicates. To accommodate this, evolutionists have invented ‘ghost lineages’, which are lineages that have no fossil evidence. The irony is that this auxiliary hypothesis (a hypothesis needed to explain some first-look contradiction to a core theory, such as evolution) is needed to plug a hole inanother auxiliary hypothesis—cladistics. Cladistics was designed to support evolution despite the striking paucity of clear-cut lineages in the fossil record, which Darwin originally recognised but predicted would be filled with new finds. Because these dating discrepancies are common, ghost lineages are commonly invoked:“The sequence of branching events in a morphological cladistic hypothesis is often harmonized with the fossil record of the ingroup through the creation of ‘ghost lineages’, artificial extensions of a taxon’s range beyond its observed first appearance in the fossil record (Norell 1993). This approach essentially erases any discrepancy between the

observed order of appearance events and the order implied by the hypothesis. Insofar as ghost lineages explain away discrepancies between (stratigraphic) observation and (cladistic) hypothesis, they may be considered appeals to ad hoc support, analogous to the way homoplasy is invoked to explain away morphological data that are incongruent with a cladistic hypothesis”.2 Some examples include: Ordovician/Silurian trilobites: “Phylogenetic work in progress, however (Adrain, unpublished data), suggests that a substantial number of Silurian ‘rebound’ genera had Ordovician sister taxa—many ghost lineages (Norell 1992), undetected and undetectable by taxic paleobiology, survived the event, and the taxic description of extinction is at best an overestimate.”3 sauropod dinosaurs: “The early Middle Jurassic low point matches a particularly poor part of the sauropod fossil record according to Upchurch and Barrett (2005), who noted that ghost ranges are high relative to observed lineages for this time interval.”4 “In each case, ichnofossil and body fossil character and temporal distributions were non-overlapping, so hypotheses of character transformation required ad hoc hypotheses of character change (homoplasy) or of stratigraphic intervals in which taxa were not sampled (ghost lineages).”5 birds: The minimum ghost lineage separating birds from their nearest dinosaurian relative is short. Based on the presence of dromaeosaurids in the Barremian (Kirkland et al., 1993), the minimum ghost lineage is only 20.9 my long”.6 and whales: “Ghost lineages necessitated by the phylogenetic hypothesis extend the stratigraphic range of Cetacea into the middle Paleocene (Torrejonian), ten million years earlier than the oldest cetacean fossil currently known.” 7 Long-lived ghosts Severely out-of-place fossils are sometimes cited as evidence that would falsify evolution. But ghost lineages were invented to explain this very problem! So, is the issue the size of the age discrepancy? This raises the rather obvious question of what exactly constitutes a ‘large’ gap, since ‘large’ is a relative term. How about 25 million years? “Captorhinus laticeps (the earliest member of the Saurorictus sister group) is Leonardian in age (Heaton, 1979), the Tatarian age of the Karoo captorhinid is suggestive of an extensive (approximately 25 million year long) ghost lineage for Saurorictus.”8 Still not long enough? What about 50 million years? “It is not surprising that the relationships of post-Jurassic plesiosaurs cannot be better resolved considering the large gap in the Lower Cretaceous record (almost 50 million years), indicating a long ghost lineage leading to the Callawayasaurus, Libonectes, Hydrotherosaurus, and Aristonectes clade”.9 Or 60 million years for the supposed ‘dinobird’ fossil Mahakala omnogovae: “The extant fossils for Mahakala are ‘dated’ at 80 Ma, but the split between dramaeosauridae and paraves supposedly occurred about 140 Ma. Moreover, there are many dramaeosaurs that fill in that chronological gap, but they are all ‘more advanced’ in their morphology than Mahakala. This is a ghost lineage 60 million years in the making!” 10These changes span numerous geologic ‘epochs’, while some even span times longer than whole geological periods! It seems that the scope of ghost lineages to explain time gaps is almost limitless. Ghosts of ghosts Usually, a ghost lineage is assumed to have undergone ‘evolutionary stasis’ during the period for which there is no fossil evidence for its existence. But evolutionary stasis is itself a vacuous oxymoron seemingly designed just to keep people thinking that evolution explains all change, including no change.11Sometimes, however, some gaps are so large that filling it with one species is not enough. Though the concept of ‘ghost lineages’ is kept, the ‘evolutionary stasis’ assumption is thrown out. This constitutes inventing a whole ghost cladogram of unobserved species out of thin air when evolutionists think it is necessary: “Short of extending the stratigraphic range of T. neglectus across this stretch of time, it is more likely that the gap represents a ghost lineage partitioned by successive, but yet undiscovered species. Given the species longevity values calculated by Dodson (1990) it is clear that there must be considerable species diversity masked by the ghost lineage leading to T. neglectus, perhaps much more than the known diversity of the entire hypsilophodontid clade as presently recognized [emphasis added]!”12 They seem to call not just for evidence of a taxa extending back millions of years, but the wholesale invention of species that supposedly lived and died that never left a trace in the fossil record. This shows that there need be little restraint on the use of ghost lineages to make cladistics analyses fit the stratigraphic record. As Geiger, et al said: “Any cladogram can be placed in a temporal framework that agrees with the stratigraphic record if sufficient ghost lineages are invoked [emphases added].”13 Auxiliary hypotheses and the need for evidence Auxiliary hypotheses, a concept coined by philosopher of science Imre Lakatos, are an integral part of almost any core theory, such as evolution.14 They are used to explain evidence that at first blush appears contradictory to the core theory. Evolution, as a core theory, relies on many such auxiliary hypotheses to maintain its validity. This is not necessarily a problem, but one needs to look at the evidential validity of the auxiliary hypotheses to see if the core theory can survive the claim of contradiction. Fossil patterns can’t give a history because they offer no description of themselves. Ghost lineages (that is, lack of fossil evidence for lineages that evolutionists believe existed) are typically explained as resulting from the vagaries of fossilization and evolutionary stasis. Nobody denies that fossilization is fickle, and the fossils may create more gaps in our understanding of biology than they close. But we’ve seen that ghost lineages can be applied to essentially any discrepancy between the cladistics and stratigraphic ‘timelines’. Therefore, it is not an explanation per se; it is inherently an argument from silence—if there was evidence, ghost lineages wouldn’t need to be invoked. ‘Ghost lineages’ are nothing more than an ad hoc band-aid designed to deflect criticism of evolution. Conclusions Paleontology seeks to describe the distribution pattern of fossils observed in the rocks, both spatially and temporally. The spatial relationships can be described directly—it is observational science. However, the temporal distribution of fossils is inescapably tied up with the presuppositions one brings to the historical investigation. One’s axioms determine what types of evidence are relevant and thus admissible to the paleontological discussion. Fossil patterns can’t give a history because they offer no description of themselves.15 Within paleontology, molecules-to-man evolution is not a scientific theory but an axiom that guides and therefore constrains investigation. It’s not that evolution does explain everything; it’s that it can explain anything because the axiom dictates that it must. It is the only game allowed.

‘Ghost lineages’ are one of the more blatant examples of this problem. They are an ad hoc attempt to resolve incongruities between fossil dates and dates for evolutionary events derived from cladistics analyses. They explain away the problems by positing evolutionary stasis (yet another auxiliary hypothesis) for which they have no positive evidence. No single ghost lineage can be falsified as such, but it emphasizes how, in ReMine’s poignant words, evolution “adapts to data like a fog adapts to landscape.”16 Pollen Paradox Evolutionists have ‘allergic’ reaction to Precambrian pollen–South American fossils more than a billion years ‘out of date’ by Emil Silvestru and Carl Wieland England’s Sir Walter Raleigh, who introduced tobacco and potatoes to Europe, is best known for having supposedly used his expensive cloak to cover a mud puddle to protect the feet of Queen Elizabeth 1. He was beheaded by her successor, James I in 1618, but not before he had become the first European to discover South America’s Mount Roraima. Its peak, some 2,810 m (9,219 ft) above sea level, is in Venezuela. 1 The area was also the setting for Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous novel The Lost World.Mount Roraima is one of a group of table-top mountains (or mesas), known locally as tepuis, made of quartz arenite sandstone. This is believed to be the remains of a large sandstone plateau.By all orthodox geological methods, including radiometric ‘dating’, this rock is supposed to have been laid down no less than 1.7 (most say 1.8) billion years ago.On the standard evolutionary geological column (Fig. 1), this was the Precambrian, well before there was supposed to be any multi-cellular life on Earth—only bacteria and algae. It is certainly long, long before there were supposed to be any plants on Earth capable of producing spores or pollen. The very earliest that evolutionists would countenance anything even remotely like a seed-bearing plant is the late Devonian, around 380 million years ago. Fossils in the ‘wrong’ era Yet fossils of spores and pollen have been found in the Roraima formation, as reported in a 1966 article in the prestigious journal Nature.2That means they are at least 1,300 million, or 1.3 billion years ‘out of date’. The discovery was made in 1963, when a palynologist 3 from an oil company tested samples collected from the area by a botanist. The abovementioned paper in Nature was by Dr R.M. Stainforth,4 a geologist regarded as somewhat of an authority on the region’s stratigraphy and micropaleontology. It was such a baffling find (for long-age belief) that in 1964, a special expedition of qualified geologists was sent to verify the facts. They took more samples, trying to avoid areas where pollen from outside could enter the rocks (like cleavage planes). Then three palynologists independently tested the samples—and found more of the same fossil pollen and spores. Could the rocks have been wrongly dated? A 1964 letter to Nature cited studies reported in the same journal the previous year that confirmed that the Roraima rock definitely had to be assigned that vast age in the evolutionary system. 5In his notes accompanying a weblisting of many of his papers, Stainforth, himself accepting of evolution’s long-ages, stated about this find: “The rocks concerned are unquestionably ancient (Precambrian) and are so altered that no organic matter should be recognizable in them. Also they are physically dense, with no obvious routes (such as natural permeability/porosity or crack systems) through which solid particles might enter them. Yet standard palynological techniques recovered wellpreserved fossil pollen from the samples!!!”6 [Triple exclamation in original.] The species responsible for the fossil pollen and spores are hard to assign with certainty, but definitely do not represent the sorts of species in the area nowadays. As stated, they can be no older than ‘Devonian’. Most reports suggest types of plants which evolutionary reasoning puts into the Tertiary period, some 60 million years ago. This makes the evolutionary discordance over 300 million years worse than the 1.3 billion years stated earlier. Coping with conundrum In his original article in Nature, Stainforth reports how opinions on this evolutionary paradox basically fall into two camps (both long-age, of course). The first camp says, in effect, that the radiometric dating shows the rock must be that old. But by evolutionary reasoning, having plants living at a time more than a billion years before they emerged is impossible. So therefore the pollen must represent some sort of secondary contamination.In support of their contention, they state that the rock shows significant alteration by metamorphism, 7 making it unlikely that fossil pollen could have survived.The second camp responds that no-one has ever tested the belief that fossil pollen cannot survive metamorphism. (This was true then, but not now: a 2007 paper described “remarkably preserved” fossil spores in rock in the French Alps that had undergone high-grade metamorphism. 8 One of us—ES—is also familiar with fossil spores in Romanian metamorphic rock.) The second camp also points out that the rock’s altered (hardened) nature is evidence for their belief that: “ … by no conceivable physical means could the pollen (and spores) have entered the metamorphosed sediments from the outside. They are dense impermeable rocks compressed by an overburden of hundreds of feet … [and] the face which was sampled must have been deep within the formation until quite recent times.”9 Stainforth’s last paragraph states: “we offer no solution to the paradox.” It ends by calling this “a highly intriguing geological problem.” The rules of the game It has long been clear that the evolutionary/long-age framework of understanding is a powerful philosophical paradigm that resists falsification. Evolutionists have protested that it would be ‘easy’ to falsify evolution and its associated long-age system—just produce a substantially out-of-place fossil, e.g. rabbits in the Cambrian.There have in fact been many instances where fossils have been found where they have not been expected. However, these only serve to demonstrate the strategies available to long-agers for coping with such unexpected discoveries. They can, for instance, extend the known

range of the species to incorporate the new information.Or they can assume that the fossil is an example of ‘reworking’. I.e. fossils from ‘age’ A have somehow entered a layer of ‘age’ B. Sometimes there is evidence that such ‘intrusive burial’ has happened. But as we see from the position of the first camp regarding the Roraima pollen, it can be (and often is) held in defiance of the physical evidence.Simply put, the Roraima pollen ‘can’t be’ the same age as the rock—or else the whole long-age geological system, with its evolutionary progression, collapses. The only reasonable alternative would be (recent) creation.So these fossils simply ‘have to’ be from a much later era, somehow having become mysteriously emplaced into the rock countless hundreds of millions of years after it formed and hardened (according to the evolutionary story). What if all such attempts at explanation fail, and the physical evidence is faced squarely—as for the second camp above? Well, one just puts it on the shelf as an unsolved mystery. That’s the way it’s been for the Roraima evidence for around half a century. Either way, it’s like a game with loaded dice—the ‘house’ (long-age belief) wins every time. Fast octopus fossils reveal no evolution by Garry Graham Five octopus fossils, supposedly 95 million years old, were recently discovered in Lebanon, catching scientists by surprise.1First, they were surprised that the octopuses were even fossilized. Unlike animals with hard shells or bony skeletons, cephalopods, like the octopus and squid, have no hard parts (other than the mouth2). One report said that fossilizing an octopus was as unlikely as capturing a “fossil sneeze”.The fossils were exquisitely preserved. All eight arms were visible for each animal, as well as traces of muscle and rows of suckers. Remarkably, a few of the fossils even showed internal gills and remnants of ink.Scientists try to explain the past by looking at what they see happening today. When an octopus dies today, it decomposes into a slimy blob and disappears within a few days. For an octopus to be fossilized it would need to sink to the ocean floor without being eaten, and remain there without decomposing or being consumed by bacteria while being buried by sediment. How could such a process be possible for an octopus at all? Lead author of the report, Dr Dirk Fuchs of the Freie University, Berlin, said, “The luck was that the corpse landed untouched on the sea floor. The sea floor was free of oxygen and therefore free of scavengers.” But lack of oxygen is no preservative—experiments with fish carcasses show that even in the absence of oxygen they still disintegrate on the ocean bottom. 3 Other scientists have published research showing that the ocean floor is actually teeming with bacterial life. 4 So these scientists have not explained the remarkably preserved fossils at all.The second surprise was that the specimens look very much like modern species of octopus: “These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species.” Evolutionary thinking predicts that an octopus as old as these should look much more “primitive”, since evolution requires increasing complexity over time.5 Evolutionists had always assumed that the ancient octopus would show “primitive” features,6 but this discovery, “pushes back the origins of the modern octopus by tens of millions of years …”. Fossil photo and diagram from D. Fuchs, G. Bracchi and R. Weis, ref. 1. Fossil octopus remarkably preserved in Lebanon reveals details of the eight arms, suckers, ink, gills, mouth, eye capsule and more.However, the creation model easily explains this amazing octopus discovery.First, it explains the special conditions needed for soft-bodied animals like the octopus to fossilize.7 Specifically, the animal must be buried rapidly (while still alive or soon after death) under metres of sediment in order to exclude oxygen and prevent any further scavenging or decay.Such conditions would certainly have been present in the ocean during the global Flood. No miraculous stroke of luck is called for. In fact, creationists would expect the existence of such well-preserved fossil octopuses. And of course, there are many examples of soft-bodied organisms in the fossil record.6,7,8,9,10What’s more, this particular fossil octopus is enclosed in limestone. Long-age geologists have thought that limestone takes long periods of time to form—hence this octopus fossil, being entombed in limestone, presents an additional challenge to evolutionary thinking. But for creationists there is no mystery, as conditions during the global Flood would have been suitable for rapid limestone formation.11 What about the similarity of the fossil octopus to modern species? Once again, the creation model predicts that species similar to modern varieties would exist in the fossil record. After all, the fossils were formed only a few thousand years ago, and all the species alive today are descended from animals that were alive before the Flood.12Evolutionary scientists scratch their heads in surprise at their own discoveries because they don’t expect such evidence within their evolutionary philosophy. They are continually forced to invent new stories to account for their surprises.On the other hand, creationists can enjoy these discoveries and marvel at the wonderful confirmation scientific evidence provides for the record of Earth history.

Darwin fossil hyper-hype by Don Batten Published: 23 May 2009(GMT+10) This is the pre-publication version which was subsequently revised to appear in Creation 32(1):44–46. The well-preserved fossil of Darwinius masillae, the subject of an orchestrated media campaign of hype. The length, with the tail, is about 90 cm (3 feet).The orchestrated multimedia blitz over this fossil is almost unbelievable. The paleontologists even got Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, to officiate at the public “launch” of Ida (the cute nickname for the fossil), when it was unveiled—like a new sculpture by a famous artist—to the assembled journalists.Within days of the publication of the science journal paper, they have announced a book (The Link), a special website (The Link) devoted to the story and a featurelength documentary by Atlantic Productions (The Link). Sir David Attenborough wrote and narrated a special version for the BBC.1 They scheduled all these for broadcast/release within days of the publication of the paper. And it is all aimed at laymen; the general public.Attenborough said, “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all mammals. The link they would have said until now is missing … it is no longer missing.”2 But note his careful wording. The layman, including most reporters, hears “they have found the link between humans and apes”, but Attenborough meant a possible link between primates and the rest of the animal kingdom. This duplicitous approach seems to be rather deliberate, and not just with Attenborough. The repeated emphasis on “The Link”, in all the marketing hoopla, reinforces this. This is the same sort of deceitful debating tactic as saying evolution means change, change occurs in organisms (example of loss of eyes in a cave fish, for example), therefore evolution (molecules to mankind) is a fact—see Don’t fall for the bait and switch.And just to cap it off, in this “year of Darwin”, they named the creature after the atheists’ hero, Charles Darwin:Darwinius masillae. (One wonders what Charles Darwin would say now, if only he could.) AsRichard Dawkins said, Darwin enabled him to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist”. That is the reason for all the hoopla over Darwin, which seems to be at fever pitch in this “Year of Darwin”.I don’t think I have ever seen such blatantly over-stated claims on a fossil find, and I have seen a few, including one by a major co-author of this paper: Philip Gingerich’s claims for Pakicetus back in 1983. Gingerich had a couple of scraps of a skull of a mammal from Pakistan and claimed it as the evolutionary precursor of whales. He embellished the story with an artist’s drawing of what Pakicetus(“whale from Pakistan”) looked like, with legs becoming flippers, a tail fluke developing and the imaginary creature diving for fish. Cute. Gingerich claimed it was “perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales”. With such a strong, confident claim from the fossil expert, who could doubt that evolution was true? Seven years later, other paleontologists published a paper describing the rest of Pakicetus and the now almost complete fossil showed that Gingerich’s imagination had really run away with him and the animal was not the missing link he thought it was. See: Not at all like a whale.Apparently many paleontologists appreciate this sort of over-the-top, publicityseeking behaviour in support of evolutionary story-telling, because they recently elected Gingerich the president of the American Paleontological Association.Gingerich likened finding Ida to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in archaeology (which finally enabled the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics)! His collaborators on this paper are willingly joining in the hyping. In a televised meet-the-press, co-author Dr Jørn Hurum said, “It’s really, really hard to pinpoint exactly who gave rise to humans at that point, but this is as good as it gets, really.” According toScienceNews, Hurum said, “This is the first link to all humans … truly a fossil that links world heritage.” 2 And, “It is the scientific equivalent of the Holy Grail. This fossil will probably be the one that will be pictured in all textbooks for the next 100 years.” 3Hurum has a reputation in his own right in Scandinavia for frequent appearances on television and radio to promote his views of evolution and paleontology. 4 At the press conference with the researchers, a journalist asked about the appropriateness of all the hype over a supposedly scientific discovery and Hurum told The New York Times, “Any pop band is doing the same. We have to start thinking the same way in science.” Hurum also likened the find to discovering the “lost ark of archaeology” 5 while co-author Jens Franzen hailed it as “the eighth wonder of the world.”3 Wow! The claims An article in the New York Daily News summarized the claims as follows [numbering added]:3 “… the long-sought missing link between humans and apes. “… the fossil of the lemur-like creature dubbed Ida shows it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws. “… hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright—a breakthrough that could finally confirm Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.” Comments: To be fair, the paleontologists did not actually say it was a link between humans and apes, but it is understandable that journalists might interpret what they said in this way.6 They were claiming that Ida might shed some light on what might have been the connection between mankind’s supposed evolutionary ancestry, as a primate, and non-primates. Dr Jens Franzen said at the press conference at the celebratory “launch” in New York, “We are not dealing with our grand-grandgrandmother, but perhaps with our grand-grand-grandaunt.” Note that Franzen here admits that the creature is not an ancestor of humans, so Ida is not a link between humans and anything, not even with the hypothetical precursors of primates in general.Lemurs have opposable thumbs (hallux) and fingernails instead of claws too, but almost no-one has considered them to have anything to do with man’s ancestry. Furthermore, like other primates, but not humans, they have them on their feet, which is good for grabbing onto branches, but makes walking upright rather difficult.Note the careful wording. The authors imagined some hint of characteristics that might be relevant to walking upright tens of millions of evolutionary years later. I could find nothing in the published paper that substantiated this conjecture. 7 And note that this “could finally confirm Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.” This tacitly admits that it has not yet been confirmed, contrary to many other hyped-up fossil finds that have been paraded as “proof” of evolution (the story of human evolution has been a very adaptable, ever-changing story—see Anthropology and apemen Q&A).

What did they find? The scientific paper8 does not contain any hint of the over-the-top statements (above) that we have been hearing in the media blitz. The paper describes an exceptionally well preserved fossil of a lemur-like creature (95% complete), which is unusual for primate fossils.The authors of the paper did not find the fossil; Dr Jørn Hurum convinced the University of Oslo to purchase the main part from private collectors (it cost a million dollars!). That means that the taphonomy (the exact location/situation) of the fossil is not known with certainty, although it apparently came from the Messel Pit in Germany, which has been well-studied. When collected in 1983, the collectors split it into two pieces and sold them separately. The lesser half ended up at a private museum in Wyoming, USA, and had been studied by Jens Janzen (a co-author of this current paper) in the early 1990s. He recognized that there had been some doctoring of it to make it look as complete as possible. The researchers brought the two parts together for study. They used X-radiography to distinguish the real fossil from doctored parts.With such a complete fossil, the detailed description took a large part of the paper. The fossil has a basic body pattern and toe and finger nails like lemurs, but lacks two features that are peculiar to lemurs: a toilet claw on a toe and grooming teeth (a row of fused teeth), both used for grooming, so it is not “just a lemur”.There is nothing in the paper that substantiates the outlandish statements made to the lay public. The only relevant section includes a table and discussion that claims that the creature has more similarities to the Primate suborder Haplorrhini (which includes tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans) than the other suborder, Strepsirrhini (which includes lemurs, lorises, etc.). However, the authors classified Darwinius as belonging to the Strepsirrhini and said they are not advocating otherwise. Strange. Maybe they said this to get it through the referees, because a proposal to shift the group that includes Darwinius (Infraorder Adapiformes) from one suborder of the primates to the other would certainly have been controversial, as well as very difficult to justify. With the public media fest orchestrated, a delay in the publication of the paper would have been embarrassing. Nevertheless, the claim that Ida is at all relevant to the evolutionary story of human origins depends on the authors establishing what they expressly disavowed in their paper.Furthermore, there are absolutely no other fossils connecting Darwinius, or its kin, to humans or even to any of the claimed evolutionary ancestors of man. There is a gap of some 40 million evolutionary years! Reconstruction of what Darwinius masillaecould have looked like. Commissioned by the paleontologists, it does not support the media hype about its relevance to human evolution; it is so similar to creatures living today. Looking at the fossil and the artist’s reconstruction, it strikes me as absolutely unremarkable in appearance. If you saw this creature in the jungle, you would think “lemur” or similar. It should be of concern to evolutionists that something they say is 47 million years old is so similar to modern primates like lemurs. Evolutionist skeptics of the hype Interestingly, a number of evolutionists are criticizing the over-hyping of this fossil. Ann Gibbons, in a commentary on ScienceNow9 gave air to some criticism: “‘It’s an extraordinarily complete, wonderful specimen, but it’s not telling us too much that we didn’t know before,’ says paleoanthropologist Elwyn Simons of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “‘This is the first link to all humans,’ said Hurum at the press conference. “Many paleontologists are unconvinced. They point out that Hurum and Gingerich’s analysis compared 30 traits in the new fossil with primitive and higher primates when standard practice is to analyze 200 to 400 traits and to include anthropoids from Egypt and the newer fossils of Eosimias from Asia, both of which were missing from the analysis in the paper. ‘There is no phylogenetic analysis to support the claims, and the data is cherrypicked,’ says paleontologist Richard Kay, also of Duke University. Callum Ross, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois agrees: ‘Their claim that this specimen should be classified as haplorhine is unsupportable in light of modern methods of classification.’” [Note added: Brian Switek, science writer, in The Times online 26 May criticized the hyping of Ida. Following mention of other hyped discoveries (a mammoth and a marine reptile), he wrote, “Frozen mammoths and giant marine reptiles are fascinating, but they do not strike at the heart of the evolution/creationism culture war in the way that a potential human ancestor does. This is why I wish more care had been taken in promoting Ida. ... Likening Ida to the Holy Grail and the Lost Ark only compounds the problem; creationists will undoubtedly argue that these metaphors reveal that evolution is a religion with its own holy relics.” Preservation in shale? The fossil is embedded in shale. The Messel shale has yielded many other interesting and very well-preserved fossils. The shale is supposed to have formed in a lake bed created by volcanic activity. This lake bed, “filled with water, which seemingly, one way or another, accumulated gases that poisoned the animals individually, episodically, or periodically [refs]. The result is a diverse fauna of exceptionally preserved insects, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals [refs].”8 [my emphasis]. It stretches the imagination to think what gas could have killed such a wide range of creatures in repeated episodes. ScienceNews reported, “The scientists believe she was overcome by carbon dioxide gas whilst drinking from the Messel lake: the still waters of the lake were often covered by a low lying blanket of the gas as a result of the volcanic forces that formed the lake and which were still active. Hampered by her broken wrist, Ida slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years.”2 There is a mixture of fossils of terrestrial and aquatic creatures. Did carbon dioxide gas kill fish as well? It would have to be a prolonged period of carbon dioxide blanketing to de-oxygenate the water for the fish to be killed. And such fish would bloat and float, which is not conducive to being buried and preserved/fossilized.Also, how could the creatures then get preserved with such detail, with the slow accumulation of sediment in the lake, as per the deep-time evolutionary approach to the geology? Even the soft body outline of Ida is preserved, and remnants of her last meal (fruit and leaves). Wikipedia commons

A fossil from the Messel oil shale of a bat that is very similar to today’s microbats. This could be yet another example of catastrophic burial associated with the Flood. Recent studies have shown how finegrained rocks like shale can form very quickly, contrary to longstanding evolutionary notions. See: Mud experiments overturn long held geological beliefs. Stasis Many other interesting and well-preserved fossils have been found in the Messel bed. Some of the best preserved are clearly recognizable, such as a bat, which is clearly a bat—a microbat that probably had echolocation. Fish found include bowfin, perch, gar and eel. Reptiles include crocodiles, alligators, turtles and a snake. And there are quite a few birds and mammals. Considering the supposed 47 million years of time, the similarity of so many of these creatures to today’s survivors speaks of stasis—creatures reproducing “after their kind”, not evolution. Summary Sadly, the gullible will be further convinced with all the bravado that evolution explains our origins and they therefore have no need for a designer. But this is much ado about almost nothing other than a nicely preserved fossil for which they had paid a lot of money. And in the Year of Darwin, evolutionists, and especially atheists, are keen to milk it for what it is worth to push evolution to the public. If this is the best they have, creationists have nothing to fear. Evidence for turtle evolution by Jerry Bergman and Wayne Frair The fossil record is rich with many well-preserved turtle shells and a wide variety of turtles ‘dating back’ to before the dinosaurs in the Triassic. Phylogenetic analysis of turtles has resulted in much controversy and conflicting results that vary depending on the techniques used. Molecular evidence also contradicts previous evolutionary classifications based on gross morphological comparisons. The extant evidence shows that turtles appear in the fossil record fully formed. An artist’s conception of Proganochelys based on fossil evidence. Note the distinct mountains and valleys in the top shell. The top shell and other features are very similar to the modern alligator turtle.Turtles are ideal animals for testing evolutionary ideas because some of their most unique structures, such as their hard shells, preserve extremely well in the fossil record. What also makes turtles perfect candidates for studying evolution is that their body plan is unique among tetrapods, and would require ‘some remarkable changes in the skeleton and internal organs’ as they evolved from a typical tetrapod to a carapace-plastron clad turtle.1,2 An example is that the scapula of vertebrates is outside the rib cage, but in turtles the scapula, the humerus and several other bones are all inside of the rib cage. 3 Moreover, breathing is very different compared with other reptiles because the turtle chest is not distensible.4 Therefore, if turtle evolution were true, we would expect the fossil record to provide a better record of intermediate morphologies than for many other vertebrates. However, the evidence for such ‘missing links’ is still missing. The fossil record With Proganochelys [the ‘oldest’ known turtle], our trail into the past runs cold. We do not know from whence it came.— evolutionary turtle expert R. Orenstein. Extensive fossil turtle deposits extending back to the Triassic 5 have been found throughout the world, including Germany, India, Thailand, South Africa, North America and China.6 The earliest known turtle, named Proganochelys and discovered in Germany in the 1880s, was dated by evolutionists to 210–220 million years ago. The specimens had a shell consisting of 60 plates of various sizes, and a carapace up to 1 m long. Its skeleton was ‘characteristic of turtles—carapace, plastron, scapular girdle inside the rib cage (unique among vertebrates).’ 7This primarily aquatic turtle possessed ‘cervical vertebrae with well developed acuminate, spiny apophyses—making it impossible for the turtle to retract its head’ to protect itself.8 Most known modern turtles can retract their heads (a major exception are sea turtles). No intermediate forms between these first turtles ‘and any other reptile, living or extinct’ has ever been found: ‘With Proganochelys, our trail into the past runs cold. We do not know from whence it came. We may be not be much closer to knowing today than we were more than a century ago, in the 1880s, when Proganochelys was first discovered … the possible choices for the original turtle span almost the entire range of reptiles, living and extinct.’ 9Proganochelys ‘literally pops into the fossil record as a completely formed turtle.’ 10 Furthermore the whole chelonian body plan ‘appears in the fossil record without intermediates, and the relationship of turtles to other amniote groups is not certain.’ 11 Gilbert et al. concluded that the ‘absence of intermediates or transitional forms in the fossil record’, especially when the fossil record is coupled with the developmental and anatomical novelties exhibited by turtles, argues that turtles arose saltationally.12 The late well-known paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson emphasized a well known fact that the fossil record of most taxa, including turtles,‘ … appear abruptly. … A great many sequences of two or a few temporally intergrading species are known, but even at this level most species appear without known immediate ancestors, and really long, perfectly complete sequences of numerous species are exceedingly rare.13The abundant turtle fossil record supports the conclusion that turtles have remained ‘unchanged for at least 150 million years.’ 14 Flank concludes that ‘Turtle fossils are found more often than other animals of similar size, and the evolutionary history of the modern turtle is fairly well known’ except the earliest turtle ancestors and, as a result, ‘the exact ancestry of living turtles is disputed among paleontologists.’15

Monophyletic or polyphyletic evolution Another question evolutionists are unable to answer is: did the various families of chelonians evolve from some common ancestor or by parallel or convergent evolution? One theory is that sea turtles evolved from land turtles, requiring significant evolutionary changes to adapt to the sea. For example, sea turtles filter salt from sea water by producing large salty tears. Feet must evolve into flippers, requiring extremely elongated phalanges. Yet not one transitional sea turtle fossil has been found.16,17 However, the consensus among herpetologists is that ‘ … the evolutionary position of turtles with the amniote phylogeny has eluded evolutionary biologists for more than a century. This phylogenetic problem has remained unsolved partly because turtles have such a unique morphology that only few characters can be used to link them with any other group of amniotes.’18 Proganochelys ‘literally pops into the fossil record as a completely formed turtle.’—J.R. Spotila Another hypothesis postulates that modern turtles evolved from the Chelidae, a ‘primitive’ side necked turtle unique to Australia and South America.19 Other herpetologists argue for a placodont ancestor, especially a Henodus because of its turtle-like appearance. Since there are many phylogenic problems of postulating turtle evolution from a Henodus, others speculate that the similarity of turtles and Henodus is explained by convergent evolution.20 As Rieppel and Reisz conclude, ‘Turtle relationships remain labile, and further investigations of their relationships are required.’20 Many evolutionary trees exist, all based largely on speculation rather than fossil evidence. So far, no convincing evidence exists for any view. Evolution of the turtle shell [The] problem for an evolutionary biologist is to explain these transformations in the context of a gradualistic process.—O. Rieppel, who supports a ‘hopeful monster’ explanation Because of the lack of fossil intermediates, evolutionists have to resort to speculative hypotheses to rescue to fit turtles into evolution. One hypothesis is that the turtle carapace gradually evolved from ‘elements of the primitive reptilian integument.’21 Reptile expert Olivier Rieppel argued that a big ‘problem for an evolutionary biologist is to explain these transformations in the context of a gradualistic process.’3Rieppel argues that turtles could not evolve by a gradual process, and concluded that they may be an example of ‘hopeful monsters’. 3More recently Gilbert and his associates 22 have proposed a theoretical embryological model involving movement of the ribs into the dermal layer leading to the evolution of a turtle shell. This modeling, although useful, cannot replace the need for paleontological evidence.23 Turtle teeth It is also theorized that ancient turtles possessed teeth but lost them. A good example is thatProganochelys had midpalatal homodont ‘teeth’ which were actually small denticles formed by the development of a tough covering over some of the bones of the palate (which modern turtles lack), yet was otherwise similar to modern turtles. The evolution of teeth is the problem evolutionists have to deal with and. A mutation could easily have occurred in one of the ‘tooth’ development genes in turtles that disabled tooth maturation but still allowed the animal to survive. If it proved beneficial for its specific feeding habits, it may even be selected for as a result. Loss of teeth has evidently occurred several times in history in animals, including possibly some birds, and certain monotremes such as the platypus.Moreover, this provides no solace for evolutionists because such a process results in a loss of genetic information, not the addition of completely new information that the evolution of turtles from their putative ancestors requires. Because of their genetic constitution turtles have produced a great range of morphologies. Their wide genetic variation allows the creation of variety both through careful breeding and by various natural mechanisms. Moreover, fossilized turtles prove that far greater chelonian diversity existed in the past than is found today.24 Biochemical comparisons Researchers, disappointed with the lack of progress in understanding turtle evolution, have increasingly looked to molecular and physiological studies to solve this evolutionary enigma.25 However, comparisons of turtles have conflicted with the hypothesized phylogenies based on gross morphological comparisons.26Hedges and Poling assembled all of the known genetic data available in order to resolve the controversy. According to their analysis of the largest available collection of reptile genes, turtles have been found by genetic studies to be the closest relatives of, not birds as once believed, but rather of crocodiles and alligators. They concluded that ‘The results provide strong evidence that the turtle is the crocodile’s closest living relative.’27 ‘The study’s conclusions contradict decades of research based on anatomical and fossil studies, which had firmly positioned birds as the reptile group most closely related to crocodiles and alligators, a group known as crocodilians.’27 Other researchers have concluded that molecular data favours the view that archosaurs (crocodiles and birds) are ‘ … the living sister group of turtles, whereas morphological studies support lepidosaurs (tuatara, lizards, and snakes) as the closest living relatives of turtles. Accepting these hypotheses implies that turtles cannot be viewed any longer as primitive reptiles, and that they might have lost the temporal holes in the skull secondarily rather than never having had them.’18 After a study of nuclear DNA-coded proteins, Iwabe, et al. (2005) also concluded that turtles belong to a monophyletic cluster including birds and crocodiles. They emphatically stated that, ‘All other possible tree topologies were significantly rejected.’28 In summary, the molecular research has, so far, provided evidence to support the conclusion that ‘the molecular data conflict with paleontological data … and it will be a challenge not only to paleontologists … but also to molecular systematists to resolve these conflicts.’29Increasing research has tended to uncover more conflicts between molecular and gross morphological data as time passes. Conclusions Turtles are an ideal life form for evaluating the evidence for evolution, not only because their shells are readily preserved but also because of the abundance of turtles in the fossil record. Yet no evidence ever has been found in support of the evolution of turtles from a non-turtle ancestor in spite of over a century of extensive fossil explorations and the identification of many thousands of fossils. ‘Turtles are so different from any other reptile that their peculiarities are practically useless as a guide for distinguishing among potential ancestors, and the origin of turtles remains one of the great unanswered questions of evolutionary biology … the possible choices for the original turtle span almost the entire range of reptiles, living and extinct.’9 The origin of turtles has long been, and continues to be, a major evolutionary enigma. The oldest known turtles clearly were turtles. Since turtles appear abruptly in the fossil record, the current data are consistent with a creation event followed by considerable diversification coupled with degeneration.

Tiktaalik—sticking its head out of water? by Shaun Doyle 12 December 2008 Once again, Tiktaalik roseae has come into the spotlight. More of the cranium has been unearthed, allowing for a fresh examination of Tiktaalik’s head.1,2 This has been touted as further evidence that Tiktaalik is the prime ‘missing link’ fossil between fish and land animals. How not to get ahead A number of features of the cranium and gill architecture are said to be intermediate between fish and tetrapods, or are tetrapod-like. However, many of the traits are still fish-like: ‘The plesiomorphies3 retained by T. roseae reinforce the suggestion that significant changes to the braincase occurred relatively late in the transition to the tetrapod condition.’4 Many features needed for terrestrial existence are simply not present in Tiktaalik. Because of this, the most important changes in the braincase are pushed to another link that is truly missing. Moreover, it could not have been preparing for the transition to land becauseevolution is blind; it cannot foresee what will evolve in the future—especially when the raw material for evolutionary change is supposed to come from random mutations. Mosaic, not transitional What Tiktaalik represents is a mixture of traits that together make a viable creature. Many of the traits of its head are still clearly fish-like, some are unique, such as the hyomandibula, 5 and some are tetrapod-like. What this represents is a mosaic of traits (See Tiktaalik—a fishy missing link), which in an evolutionary framework are all at different stages of evolution. However, natural selection can only work on organisms; therefore a new trait cannot be selected for outside of the context of the whole organism. Moreover, mosaic evolution does not identify an evolutionary lineage; they have only identified traits that seem to change in complex, independent and contradictory ways in an evolutionary framework.Rather, the mix of traits combined in Tiktaalik suggests a fully functional cranial system. In fact, the uniqueness of the head may make it somewhat like lungfish (though still with differences): ‘The expanded gular [front throat] plates and robust branchial [gill] elements could have provided the mechanical basis for buccal [cheek] pumping for lungs as well as gills.’6 Conclusion Once again, the tempest of Tiktaalik is reduced to a teacup. The cranial features of Tiktaalik identify it as fundamentally a fish, though some of its unique features may mean that it was able to breathe air, like the lungfish. So the answer to the question posed in the title is a tentative yes, but in a completely non-evolutionary sense. Tiktaalikrepresents a mosaic form that was fully functional, and hence evolution is not required to explain this creature’s origin. Dancing Dinosaurs? Stony footprints point to something more serious by Michael J. Oard Published: 28 October 2008(GMT+10) Figure 1. University of Utah geologist Winston Seiler walks among hundreds of dinosaur footprints in a ‘trample surface’ Geologists from the University of Utah recently announced finding a remarkable array of dinosaur footprints on the Arizona-Utah border in the USA (figure 1).1 They described their find as ‘a dinosaur dance floor’ and said it was located alongside an oasis in a sandy desert 190 million years ago. Dinosaur tracks in sedimentary rocks are no longer unusual. They are found all over the world, 2 especially in the Rocky Mountains and High Plains of the western United States. Millions of tracks are now known, some of them forming large areas with a huge amount of tracks. In some cases, there are so many tracks, that the strata are greatly mixed up or ‘dinoturbated’. Circular impressions interpreted as dinosaur tracks Once in a while a new find will have some unusual features. This new dinosaur track site, actually a new interpretation of an old site, displays a few unusual features. Pothole-like impressions in the Navajo Sandstone had previous been interpreted as weathering pits. Now, it is believed the circular depressions were made by dinosaurs.3 The impressions are located within the Navajo Sandstone of the Paria Plateau of the USA at the Utah/Arizona border.The impressions, which range in size from 3 cm to 50 cm, do look like simple holes in the ground, but they have features that lend themselves to having been formed by walking vertebrates, assumed to be dinosaurs. For instance, there are claw and toe impressions with rare tail drag marks (there are fewer than a dozen tail drag marks in the world). One of the most conclusive evidences is that the tracks line up to form straight trackways—practically all moving in a west-southwest direction. The holes are of the correct size and are concentrated on one bedding plane at about 12 impressions per square metre. There are probably a few thousand impressions all together. Because of the number of tracks, the authors referred to the surface as a ‘dinosaur dance floor’. The dinosaurs would thus be ‘dancing dinosaurs’, an obvious flight of imagination given the straight trackways. But, the case is strong that the impressions are modified dinosaur tracks, although one anonymous review of the Palaios paper still believed that the holes are erosional features.1 Interesting dinosaur features Besides the strongly preferred orientation and the rare tail drag marks, a few other features are worthy of note. It is claimed that there were four types of dinosaurs including carnivores and herbivores. It is interesting that such enemies traveled the same path at probably near the same time. Also, the small tracks are interpreted to be the tracks of babies, a most unusual discovery, if the small impressions are really tracks, since tracks of babies are very rare.Also of interest is the author’s

contradictory interpretation. The tracks are in the Navajo Sandstone, interpreted to be desert sand that lithified (hardened) into rock. So, they postulate a ‘desert oasis’ or watering hole. If this were the case, why are practically all the tracks going in the same direction? Animals usually mill around a watering hole, making tracks in multiple directions. What are dinosaurs doing in a monstrous desert? Figure 2. Navajo Sandstone up to 600 m high above Kayenta Formation in Zion National Park, Utah, as seen from the top of Angels Landing.The most contradictory feature is that the tracks are found in what is believed to have been a monstrous desert. The Navajo Sandstone and its equivalent deposits occupy an area greater than 265,000 km2 and may have once been two and a half times as large before erosion. The Navajo Sandstone is up to about 600 m thick in south central Utah (figure 2). That makes this desert larger than the Sahara Desert! What are dinosaurs doing in a huge desert, even at an oasis? Desert oases are normally small and could hardly sustain dinosaurs in such large numbers.Moreover, there are 60 other track sites in the Navajo Sandstone, mostly of carnivorous dinosaurs. Just as mysterious from a uniformitarian point of view4 is that hardly any bones are found in the Navajo Sandstone. One would think that with shifting sands, a huge number of dinosaurs would easily be covered up, which is the first step in fossilization. The Navajo Sandstone is not a desert deposit The thousands if not millions of dinosaur tracks just in the Navajo Sandstone should be a big hint to uniformitarian scientists that this Sandstone is not from a desert environment. As we see with the Coconino Sandstone from Grand Canyon, 5 there are several obvious features that strongly suggest a water-laid deposit. First, the sandstone is flat or nearly flat at both its lower and upper contacts. How many desert sands have such a property? 6 To make matters worse, the overlying Carmel Formation is a marine formation7 that should have torn up the top of the Jurassic Sandstone (as well as the thin desert Temple Cap Formation), but the contact is very flat. Figure 3. Navajo Sandstone with cross beds and multiple truncating planation surfaces near Checkerboard Mesa, Zion National park, United States.Second, within the thick Navajo Sandstone, the cross beds are truncated by flat planation surfaces that can sometimes be traced for kilometers. Dozens of these planation surfaces can be seen in tall vertical exposures of the Navajo Sandstone (figure 3). What sort of desert process shears off sand dunes? Although uniformitarian scientists have attempted to explain such anomalous features, the lack of any close modern analog shows that they are grasping at straws.Third, the sand grains that are well-rounded and frosted, providing evidence for the desert interpretation, show that the frosting was not by wind abrasion. Scanning electron micrographs show that the frosted surface is actually etched.8 In other words, the grains have been chemically frosted, probably after deposition by water moving under pressure through the spaces between grains.Fourth, the direction of transport of the sand is the same as the general transport of practically all the supposed eolian sandstones on the Colorado Plateau. 9 The direction is from the north to the northwest. A further problem is that the transport direction must be maintained for hundreds if not thousands of kilometers, since there is no source for the sand immediately to the north of the Colorado Plateau. Such consistent directions over a supposedly 100-million-year period make little sense. In all that time, why wouldn’t a significant change in wind direction, from the south for instance, deposit some dunes with a different orientation? What really happened? These unusual dinosaur tracks and their strongly preferred orientation provide more evidence for the ‘briefly exposed Flood sediment hypothesis’.10–12 Tracks, as well as dinosaur eggs, were made by dinosaurs during the Flood while they were still alive, as the waters were rising. They would have perished later on, at least by Day 150, when the entire earth was covered by water and every lving thing perished. Based on many unusual features of dinosaur tracks, eggs, and bonebeds, freshlylaid Flood sediments must have become briefly exposed during the first half of the Flood as the waters were rising. Such an exposure can easily be accomplished after heavy sedimentation and a brief drop in ‘sea level’ (and there are at least four mechanisms that could cause this). Dinosaurs coming ashore onto this ‘land’ would of course make tracks and lay eggs. Their death en masse would produce large bonebeds as found in other parts of the fossil record, graveyards that sometimes contain thousands of dinosaur remains. Dino dung overturns objection by Tas Walker ‘How is it possible that among the thousands upon thousands of plant fossils from the age of dinosaurs, there has not been found even a single blade of grass?’ That is the way a sceptic once challenged me about the Flood. It was conventionally taught that grass only evolved about 55 million years ago, after the dinosaurs went extinct, and that it diversified into different types of grasses over tens of millions of years.In this sceptic’s thinking, grass fossils had not been found ‘earlier’ because grass had not yet evolved. He argued that the Flood could not have produced that arrangement of fossils. If grass existed in the pre-Flood world, how could the Flood have delayed burying any trace of it until towards the end?Of course, there are many possible answers, including different environments being buried at different times, and different sorting pressures on all the vegetable matter and dead (and dying) animals in the water.But, even though ,we can only speculate about many of the

details because we did not see it.But as more fossils are discovered we are finding that the evolutionary stories are not as clear-cut as my friend imagined.Recently it was announced that scientists in India discovered grass inside some fossilized dinosaur dung, found near the remains of a titanosaur sauropod dinosaur.1This was astonishing to evolutionists because how could dinosaurs have eaten something that wasn’t supposed to have existed yet? 2Evolutionists were also surprised to find at least five types of grasses—i.e. from their perspective grass had ‘already diversified’. Some were just like grasses we find living today.The long ages claimed by evolutionists for the fossils are imaginary. The estimated age ranges are continually being revised. The fact that certain fossils have not been found together does not mean that the animals or plants did not exist together. We simply may not have discovered the fossil yet, or the way the waters flowed during the Flood may have prevented it being buried.My sceptic friend’s objection that the Flood couldn’t explain the fossils because no grass fossils had been found with dinosaurs has been ruined by a piece of (fossilized) dung! Ediacaran ‘explosion’ Another thumping headache for evolutionists by Shaun Doyle Published: 5 March 2008(GMT+10) One of the most famous features of the fossil record that evolutionists have a hard time explaining is the ‘Cambrian explosion’. Most extant basic animal bodyplans simply appear in the fossil record in the Lower Cambrian rocks with next to no antecedent evidence of their existence in the rocks. 1 Therefore, the major bodyplans of animals all had to evolve very quickly, which is stretching the bounds of plausibility. However, paleontologists have recently identified another ‘explosion’ in the fossil record in the Ediacaran ‘period’, which they dubbed the ‘Avalon Explosion’ (‘dated’ 635–542 Ma ago).2The Ediacaran biota is a group of fossils of multicellular organisms that are found directly below the Cambrian (‘dated’ 542–488 Ma), and they consist of a wide range of morphologies. However, both their origin and relationship to Cambrian animals is a complete mystery to evolutionists. They are typically divided up into three major fossil assemblages: the Avalon (575–565 Ma), White Sea (560–550 Ma) and Nama (550–542 Ma) assemblages.3 All these assemblages display an incredibly wide array of morphology, and there is no trace of them in the fossil record above the Ediacaran period.Shen et al. point out that though there is a wide variety of morphology in the Ediacaran biota, all the different fossil assemblages have a similar range of morphology. Since they believe these different assemblages represent different time periods within the Ediacaran period, they believe that there is little evolution shown in the Ediacaran fossils. As Shen et al. report: ‘A comprehensive quantitative analysis of these fossils indicates that the oldest Ediacara assemblage—the Avalon assemblage (575 to 565 Ma)—already encompassed the full range of Ediacara morphospace.’4 Therefore, they conclude that the rise of the Ediacara mirrors the Cambrian explosion, with all its attendant problems for evolution. So now evolutionists have got not one but two ‘big bangs in biology’ 5 to deal with within 50 million years of each other!The Cambrian and Ediacaran explosions present a massive problem for evolution because each records a wide variety of morphologies that come onto the scene practically immediately according to the fossils, with no identifiable ancestors. Darwinian evolution, on the other hand, would expect such widely disparate body plans to emerge only after a long geological history.6 No known or accepted mechanism can account for such rapid evolution. What’s worse is that the Cambrian and Ediacaran explosions bear no relationship at all to one another. Therefore, this sort of ‘evolutionary explosion’ had to happen twice. Once stretches credulity to breaking point—twice blows it out of the water completely.The sudden appearance of this diverse assemblage of Ediacaran biota, of course, provides no problem for a creationist understanding of the fossils. They are simply another grouping of organisms that were overwhelmed and fossilized by the Flood.7,8 The slow rise of dinosaurs New fossil finds cause evolutionists to revise dino evolution theories by Shaun Doyle Dromomeron romeri was one of the dinosaur ‘precursors’ found buried with true dinosaurs by Irmiset al.2Paleontologists have recently discovered fossils in a quarry in New Mexico that challenges standing theories of dinosaur evolution.1Evolutionists believe dinosaurs appeared in the Middle Triassic about 235 million years ago (Ma). It was originally thought that when they first evolved dinosaurs quickly replaced their ancestors. They apparently either out-competed their precursors and caused them to go extinct, or were the evolutionarily-lucky beneficiaries of a sudden catastrophe that caused the extinction of their ancestors but not them. According to a recent Science article,2 this original answer has now been ruled wrong.The researchers have found fossils of true dinosaurs mixed in with their supposed precursors in Hayden Quarry (HQ), where the layers are assigned to the Late Triassic and ‘dated’ to roughly 215 Ma. Irmis et al. note: ‘The age range of the HQ fossils and our assessment of other assemblages and their ages in North American museum collections imply that these dinosaurs and non-dinosaurian dinosauromorphs coexisted for at least 15 to 20 million years.’3 These finds demonstrate that evolution is not considered a falsifiable theory when evolutionary paleontologists approach the fossil evidence; rather it is the assumption they work from (see Slow fish in China). Evolutionists didn’t expect these taxa to be found buried together, but they were. 4 This has caused evolutionists to modify their speculations on how and why dinosaurs evolved in the first place because their previous speculations can’t accommodate the latest evidence. The problem isn’t that accommodation happens; the problem is that it happens with practically every new fossil find (see Seeing

the pattern)!5 There is no predictive power to when and what sort of creatures would arise because evolution by definition is open to any possibility. As ReMine commented: ‘Evolutionary theory predicts nothing, not even a nested hierarchy. Rather, the theory adapts to data like a fog adapts to landscape.’ 6 Therefore, evolution is a completely meaningless concept for explaining patterns in the fossil record.It also raises some questions for dinosaur evolution. What caused the dinosaurs’ ‘ancestors’ to die out while the dinosaurs remained, if it wasn’t the dinosaurs? What selective pressures were available to certain dinosaurian ancestors that made them become true dinosaurs and eventually win the long struggle for dominance? No doubt evolutionists will conjure up new answers to these questions that have been remoulded to the latest evidence.From a creation perspective, there is no need for accommodation here because we don’t have to worry about reading millions of years of evolution into the fossils. A global Flood, while allowing for a general pattern of fossilisation that would expect marine bottom-feeders to be buried before land animals, does not have to be highly discriminatory regarding the inundation of dinosaur ‘ancestors’ and dinosaurs. These fossils, which were buried together rapidly in underwater conditions,7 like countless other fossils around the globe, testify to the global Flood. A lousy story by David Catchpoole This ‘exceptionally well-preserved specimen’ (fig. A) found near Manderscheid, Germany, bears a startling resemblance to present-day lice (fig. D) that live among the plumage of aquatic birds. 1 These lice chew on their host’s feathers for sustenance.2As did the fossil louse—it is so well preserved that photographic enlargement of its foregut (fig. B) reveals feather barbules inside! (Examples are highlighted with arrows in fig. C.) These look just like the feather barbules (fig. F) found nowadays in the foregut (fig. E) of Holomenopon brevithoracicum (fig. D) from a swan. Click here for larger view. So, it’s a bird louse fossil. But it’s extraordinary that its last meal should be so well preserved. As one of the researchers remarked, ‘It’s very rare that you have evidence of the last meal of an ancient [i.e. dated at 44 million years old] insect.’3But this fossil louse is ‘almost identical’ to lice today—has there been no evolution in all that time?And how do the researchers explain the excellent preservation of this fossil, along with 30,000 other fossils with ‘perfect preservation’ recovered from the same site? ‘Rapid sedimentation over a 250,000 year period’, they say, combined with alkaline conditions and no oxygen.Huh? How can sediment be deposited rapidly over a quarter of a million years?!But there’s more to their story yet. Based on this fossil and the earlier discovery in Brazil of fossil eggs (probably of mites) on a fossilized feather ‘dated’ to 120 million years, 4 the researchers say the original host for parasitic lice may not have been a bird or mammal. ‘If the age of lice predates that for birds, because the group as a whole are parasitic, the original host must have been a dinosaur.’3 What sort of dinosaur? ‘[A]n early-feathered dinosaur’!1 That’s quite a story. But it relies on the dino-to-bird evolution story being true, which evolutionists themselves don’t agree on,5 and which has always struggled to get off the ground. 6–8 In short, it’s a lousy story.Let’s go back to the facts of this case—a louse and its stomach contents beautifully preserved in sedimentary rock, virtually identical to lice on aquatic birds today. Does this make sense in the light of the creation account of history? Sure does: Creatures were created to reproduce ‘after their kind’. So, it’s no wonder that fossil and living lice are essentially the same. Massive numbers of organisms buried rapidly under layers of water-borne sediment (sufficient to shut out scavengers and oxygen) requires rushing water, consistent with the Flood around 4,500 years ago. 9Originally, in the ‘very good’ world ,lice may not have been parasitic ‘freeloaders’, but might have helped their hosts by cleaning up sloughed-off layers of skin, hair, etc. Old Bee, Young Creation by Daniel Anderson 8 December 2006 This bee is allegedly 100 m years old, but is still recognizably a bee Scientists have discovered the oldest known bee fossil in a Burma mine. Preserved in amber, the bee is dated at 100 million years old on the evolutionary timeline. So what’s all the buzz about?The LiveScience article states, “The discovery of the oldest bee fossil supports the theory that bees evolved from wasps….”1 Apparently, this ancient bee has narrower hind legs than modern bees (wasps have narrower hind legs than bees). In the evolutionary model, shared anatomical characteristics are seen as evidence of a common ancestor. However, a more critical analysis of the discovery reveals much stronger evidence for the creation model. A bee is just a bee Lead author, George Poinar, had this to say about the fossil, “This is the oldest known bee we’ve ever been able to identify….” He goes on to say, “…overall it’s more bee than wasp….”1 It is also significant that this supposedly 100 million year old bee fossil sports branched hairs on its legs. This is a characteristic found in modern bees for collecting pollen. This particular fossil bee is a male, and hence it is hard to compare its pollencollecting features with modern bees, since only females actually collect the pollen.Nevertheless, despite being male, it is still recognizably ‘bee’. If this is so after ‘100 million years’, how is this evidence of evolution? In fact, it is strong, empirical evidence against evolution and positive evidence for creation.Bees are rapidly-reproducing insects. Given 100 million years to reproduce billions of offspring, the sheer number of genetic mutations should have altered bee morphology to a considerable, even overwhelming, degree—even though such an accumulated change would be degenerative overall (ignoring the likelihood of extinction due to such accumulating mutational ‘load’). However, the fact that bee morphology has not changed in any major way strongly suggests that bees have not existed for 100 million years.

There simply hasn’t been enough time, enough mutations, or enough generations to effect substantial anatomical change.Evolutionists may respond that some organisms demonstrate very little morphological change because they live in highly specialized environments. In other words, because the environment has remained virtually unchanged, natural selection would preserve the status quo in creature morphology. The problem is that bees live on almost every continent, and in almost every type of climate. And since ‘environment’ refers to not just things like the weather in one’s surroundings, for instance, but to predators, prey, food sources and so on, it seems totally inconceivable to have no significant environmental change in such an incredibly long time period.The fossil evidence paints a much clearer picture. The lack of great morphological change supports the creation model in which bees were created only about 6,000 years ago. Bees have always been bees. Within the bee ‘kind’, there is a considerable amount of variation, but they are still easily identifiable as bees. Some bees have narrower legs than others, but this does not indicate that they shared a common ancestor with wasps! Common Design In the creation model, many unrelated organisms share common design features due to a common Designer. For example, moles have keeled sternums and wrist bones that are quite similar to birds, 2 yet no evolutionist would ever suggest that they share a close evolutionary relationship. Therefore, it is not surprising that bees and wasps would share some common anatomy. Although different insect ‘kinds’, they are both small flying insects and they share a common designer. Living Fossils Bees are not the only ‘living fossils’. Countless other living organisms, such as marine invertebrates, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals look very similar to their oldest known fossils. Again, this is strong biological evidence for a recent creation. Creatures were made to reproduce after their own kind, and this is what the fossil record reveals. Amber and a global Flood Ironically, the way in which this bee was fossilized may also point to a massive flood. Entombment in amber (fossilized tree resin) is a rare fossilization event, but there are areas containing large deposits of amber. The formation of such copious amounts of resin, and the circumstances in which such fossils are found, suggests large numbers of broken tree trunks and branches, rapid water transport, wet sediments of clay and sand, and heat. 3 It is plausible that the flood, heated in some locations by mineral-rich ‘fountains of the great deep’3 , provided the necessary geological conditions to entomb this bee in amber around 4,500 years ago. Killer Kangaroos and Demon Ducks? by Peter Sparrow 1 September 2006 Recent media reports claim that carnivorous ‘Killer Kangaroos’ powerful enough to ‘rip your arms off’ and huge flesh-eating birds dubbed ‘Demon Ducks of Doom’, 1 have been discovered in the Riversleigh (Australia) fossil dig. While such creatures may indeed have existed, we need to remember that information concerning their habitats and lifestyles (as well as much of their physiology) remains largely hidden in the past, unable to be revealed by fossils alone. And more than that, the language used to describe them is mostly sensationalism designed to conjure up images in our minds which both excite and repulse us. They really are just a little bit of fact wrapped in a whole lot of story.It’s important to learn to separate fact from interpretation. We can then see more clearly how those facts might fit our creation worldview.Genetic information can easily be lost by chance but cannot be increased (or regained) by chance, it stands to reason that the genetic information in each kind today is likely less than it was at Creation. Remember, too, that each ‘species’is not the same as a created kind but rather an arbitrary human construct for convenience of classification/identification; andin virtually all cases is merely carrying a subset of the genetic information of the original kind from which it is descended. This means that the ‘structure and function boundaries’ of the various kinds were much broader at Creation than their descendant ‘species’ are now.For instance, the originally-created finch kind—the ancestors of today’s finches—were obviously less specialized, but, thanks to in-built genetic variety, their descendants have been able to occupy a staggering diversity of ecological niches. And it hasn’t just been the finches in the Galapagos, but also finches in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. The incredible variety in beak size and shape has seen some finches become seed-eating specialists, while others with Image from www.lostkingdoms.com longer, slender beaks use them to probe for insects. While many finches are still vegetarian (as they were originally, the sharp-beaked ground finch of the Galapagos has learnt to use its sharp beak to peck the backs of seabirds until the flesh bleeds. It is now Lurid descriptions and media known as the ‘Vampire Finch’, feeding as it does on the blood of masked boobies and redimages like this are not likely to footed boobies.2,3A similar scenario applies to bears, too. All bears have sharp teeth and be an accurate source of data claws, but of the various types around the world today, all are largely herbivores (except about creatures like this giant the Polar Bear) despite each of them possessing the digestive system of, and being thunder bird,Bullockornis. They classified as, a ‘carnivore’. Polar Bears, though almost exclusively meat-eating, do were possibly hunted to include some plant food in their diet when available. In the pre-Fall world, no bears would extinction by the early humans have exhibited carnivory—see ‘Bears Across the World’. The same could have been true arriving post-Babel in Australia. for kangaroos, for example. Original kangaroo kind could easly have given a potential dietary spectrum which included the capacity for eating meat (obviously latent until after the Fall). Naturally, this would also have included the genetic information for any physical implements (claws and teeth etc.) and behavioural strategies (hunting etc.) needed to fulfil this attribute. 4The Riversleigh deposit is almost certainly not just post-Fall, but post-Flood. The animals it reveals, like today’s tigers, are substantially removed from the Edenic world of their ancestors, the original kinds.

Bizarre beasts? We are all familiar with the adage that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. Suppose our world included only small cats and someone found a fossil of a tiger. In their description of the creature they would possibly include: huge size, daggerlike teeth, needle-sharp claws and the ability to rip your arms off. Our unfamiliarity would make such a creature both unusual and grotesque in our imaginations. Earlier this year, I watched the tigers at an outdoor zoo (in Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia) for some time. I was fascinated by their movements, awed by their size, aware of their teeth and claws, convinced of their ability to rip my arms off and much comforted by the fence and the wide, water-filled moat between us. But at no time did I regard them as either unusual or grotesque. I am sure that if meat-eating kangaroos were a part of our everyday experience we would not find them unusual or grotesque either.Killer Kangaroos and Demon Ducks of Doom? Maybe! Carnivorous, even man-eaters? Maybe! But how I would love to have been around to see them ‘in the flesh’ rather than the imaginative polystyrene and fibreglass imitations we have today. Australian croc rolls evolutionary story 16 June 2006 Australian palaeontologists announced a new fossil find which they claim overturns previous ideas about crocodile evolution and puts Australia in the ‘box seat’.Making the announcement, Dr Steve Salisbury from the University of Queensland said ‘We've always assumed that modern crocodilians originated in North America or Europe. But this discovery in Australia of the most primitive member of that group indicates their origin probably took place in Gondwana or perhaps in Australia.’Geologist Dr Tasman Walker of Creation Ministries International (Australia) said, ‘This announcement illustrates how ideas about evolution keep changing. The fossil information is so incomplete. One new find in a remote area of another continent can overturn the neat evolutionary stories that were presented so confidently as fact.’ Ian Duncan, the former mayor of Isisford, a town in far western Queensland, found the first skeleton, less its head, in the mid 1990s. It was named Isisfordia duncani after him.Subsequent scientific explorations to the remote site, 700 km from the nearest ocean, uncovered the remaining bones plus the skull in a dried-up creek bed. The international team of palaeontologists claims the fossils represent the world's ‘most primitive’ modern crocodile. According to Dr Walker the term ‘primitive’ is just subjective opinion assuming evolution is a fact, ‘From a creationist perspective, virtually all the fossils are about the same age, buried during the global Flood catastrophe some 4,500 years ago. We have a better idea now about when in this catastrophe these animals were buried. ’ Dr Salisbury’s team have now recovered the complete skull from the football-sized rock enclosing it. They estimate the skull to be between 95 million and 98 million years old. ‘The dates they quote are quite flimsy,’ Dr Walker said. ‘They reflect their personal beliefs about what they think happened in the past. Their entire framework of thinking ignores the historical data of the global catastrophe of the Flood. When we take that evidence seriously, we find a different interpretation for these fossils.’ At 95 to 98 million years, the researchers say that Isisfordia predates modern crocodiles by about 20 million years. ‘This is another example of the so-called fossil ranges expanding as more fossils are discovered,’ Dr Walker said. ‘Evolutionary progression is becoming more and more blurred. This trend means the data fits better with the creationist framework of thinking.’ Isisfordia was smaller than an American alligator and had a flatter and longer snout. It was only a metre long and weighed around three or four kilograms. ‘It’s a nice gesture to give the fossil a new name’, Dr Walker said, ‘but how could anyone be certain that the Queensland crocodile was indeed a different species from the ones found in North America or Europe? We can’t do breeding experiments.’ Walker claims the variation in skeletal shape is likely just variation within the same kind, the same sort of variation seen today in dogs, and in bears—and in cats such as lions, tigers, which can interbreed, all descended from the one group . ‘The crocodile find shows that even within their own frame of reference, evolution must have been stationary for 100 million of these assumed years,’ Walker said. ‘Evolutionists call the problem “stasis”,’ he said, ‘but stasis is not a problem for creation—it supports it.’ ‘The floodwaters were still rising on the earth when these animals perished,’ Dr Walker said. ‘We find trackways throughout the strata in western Queensland. At Lark Quarry near Winton they all tend to run in the same direction, all fleeing from the same disaster.’

Walker said that the fossils from these sediments throughout Queensland include terrestrial, amphibian and marine animals and plants. ‘They point to a catastrophe that affected the land, the coast and the ocean. This new crocodile fossil should prompt us to rethink our ideas about the past, and how they shape our understanding of who we are.’ Dino dinner hard to swallow? A preliminary analysis by Ryan McClay January 21, 2005 A recent fossil discovery in China has evolutionists scratching their heads over a mammal’s last meal.The fossilized remains of a small dinosaur (psittacosaur) have been found in the belly of a dog-like mammal namedRepenomamus robustus. Researchers have also found a second fossil that they have named Repenomamus giganticus. This second fossil has been described as “breathtaking” and “about the size of a modern dog.” 1 This is a real surprise for evolutionists because evolutionary assumptions say that mammals living during the so-called “age of the dinosaurs” couldn’t possibly have been that big; rather, they had to be small to better avoid the huge reptiles. It has some evolutionary scientists quite concerned, for it challenges what they have believed for years.While the discovery is a particular shock (from an evolutionary standpoint) because one part of the evolution model may need to be drastically changed, it isn’t shocking for creationists. Creationists believe that man, mammals and dinosaurs originally lived at the same time.The fossils of these mammals found in “Lower Cretaceous” rock helps confirm the creationist assertion that even some mammals were buried quickly in lower depths of the fossil record; mammals are usually found higher in the fossil record (i.e. many mammals and humans would have retreated to higher ground during the beginning of the global catastrophe of the Flood—see Where are all the human fossils?).Comments regarding this find in China such as “It dispels the conventional wisdom” and “articulated threedimensional skeletons of vertebrates, suggesting a single, catastrophic, mass mortality event probably induced by volcanic activities”2 excite creationists. They are statements of what we would expect from the Flood.While it is encouraging to hear evolutionists admit discoveries like this which challenge their way of thinking, the photos of the fossils and the description given in articles raise a caution flag. The dinosaur bones may only appear to be in the stomach of the dog-like creature when they really may just illustrate how the Flood waters would have buried one on top of the other.Already, speculation is rampant that this find supports the dino-to-bird stories of animal evolution. The statement by Duke University paleontologist Anne Weil that “Maybe small dinosaurs got larger—or got off the ground—to avoid rapacious mammals” shows how the evolutionary bias drives their interpretation of the evidence. 3 So, expect a rash of articles both popular and scientific which hail this discovery as evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds because of hunting pressures from mammals.Such a find in the fossil record, regardless of the cautionary flag raised with this discovery, still provides an excellent confirmation of the creation model of a global catastrophe, which left billions of fossils in the rock layers all over the world. EVIDENCES FROM THE FOSSILS THAT SHOW RAPID AND CATASTROPHIC BURIAL Ichthyosaurs: evidence for a recent global flood by Jonathan Sarfati Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that looked amazingly like dolphins, which, though resembling fish, are mammals. The name comes from the Greek ichthys, ‘fish’ and sauros, ‘lizard’. This clear case of shape similarity in fish, ichthyosaurs, and dolphins can’t be attributed to inheriting this shape from a common ancestor. Although evolutionists call this ‘convergent evolution’, a better explanation is common design.1 According to the evolutionary story, ichthyosaurs lived at about the same time as the dinosaurs. In particular, they appeared suddenly 250 Ma (million years ago)2 with no trace of non-ichthyosaur ancestry, and died out 90 Ma, before the last dinosaur (65 Ma).Ichthyosaur fossils were first discovered by the Anning family in Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England in the early 19th century. A number of varieties have since been discovered, averaging about 2–4 m (6– 13 feet) long. One average-sized ichthyosaur was called Ophthalmosaurus, meaning ‘eye lizard’, because of its enormous eyes—10 cm (4 inches) in diameter. But some ichthyosaurs were much larger, e.g. Shonisaurus (‘lizard from the Shoshone Mountains’ in Nevada) measured 15 metres (50 ft) long, and Shastasaurus(‘lizard from Mt Shasta’, California) was even more gigantic at 21m (70 ft) long.There are no ichthyosaurs alive today. As air-breathers, they could not stay under water indefinitely, so would surely have been discovered if they were still alive. But their extinction is a mystery for evolutionists, since they seem very well adapted to marine life. A likely creationists explanation is that they were mostly or totally wiped out by the Flood, like other large marine reptiles such as pliosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs. Even if some of these reptiles survived the Flood itself, the

drastic temperature changes in the ocean may have been especially harmful to large marine reptiles because they were cold-blooded, unlike whales and dolphins. Mother ichthyosaur Fossil of ichthyosaur mother with three embryos. Colour coding: Maternal—black, vertebral column; blue, pelvis and hind flipper; green, ribs and gastralia. Embryos 1 & 2 orange and yellow, respectively; newborn red. Scale bar: 1 cm. Image: Motani, R. et al., ref. 3.Recently, palaeontologists uncovered an ichthyosaur known as a Chaohusaurus in China, preserved at the moment of giving birth to the second of triplets, ‘dated’ to 248 Ma.3,4 Because the specimen shows a baby inside its mother, another leaving her pelvis and a third nearby, the researchers speculated that the mother may have died during a difficult labour. However, the exquisite preservation of the fossils indicates rapid burial. If the ichthyosaur died giving birth, that in itself would not explain the fossilization. Furthermore, it would not explain the fossilization of the baby already born, or any connection to the birthing mother. Instead, these facts suggest rapid burial in massive mud flows, as would be expected during the Flood.This fossil challenges evolutionary ideas about reptiles, and the aquatic reptiles in particular. Live birthing in reptiles (in which egg-laying is rather the ‘norm’) was already a problem for evolutionists, who say it “seems to have evolved more than a hundred times in history”. (Actually, even once defies evolutionary explanation, let alone 100 times!5) According to one report, “Amazingly, not only the bones have been preserved but also some soft tissue on a number of the fossils.” Actually, it’s only ‘amazing’ because they were found in ‘lower Cretaceous’ rocks, ‘dated’ to about 130–140 Ma, but not so amazing if they were buried in the Flood about 4,500 years ago, as the evidence supports. Surprisingly, the second of these ichthyosaur triplets is being born head-first(a characteristic of land animals), rather than tail-first as in most marine animals, such as dolphins and whales. This has confused evolutionary notions about where ichthyosaurian live-birthing originated. Lead author Ryosuke Motani of the University of California observed, “[So] live bearing did not evolve in water as scientists thought. Our assumption was wrong.” This entails the supposed evolutionary ancestors of ichthyosaurs being land creatures, so here we have yet another story of land creatures changing back into sea creatures.However, there are other fossils that show the expected tail-first births in ichthyosaurs, as CMI speakers often show (see above), and which have featured in this magazine. 6 This sort of tail-first birth, shared by dolphins, is a good design feature for aquatic air-breathing creatures. A head-first birth might lead to the baby trying to breathe under water, leading to drowning. The tail-first birth means that the head is last out of the birth canal, and it is ready to swim to the surface to breathe air. Thus the new fossil of a head-first birth may well have been pathological, perhaps the trauma of being buried causing premature birth from the wrong position. Ichthyosaur graveyard with soft tissue Meanwhile, in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, a huge fossil graveyard of almost 50 entire ichthyosaurs, comprising both adults (including pregnant females) and juveniles, has been found.7 The researchers said they were killed by turbidity currents, i.e. underwater mudflows.According to one report, “Amazingly, not only the bones have been preserved but also some soft tissue on a number of the fossils.” 8 Actually, it’s only ‘amazing’ because they were found in ‘lower Cretaceous’ rocks, ‘dated’ to about 130–140 Ma, but not so amazing if they were buried in the Flood about 4,500 years ago (4.5 ka), as the evidence supports. And this is hardly the only example of soft tissue allegedly millions of years past its survive-by date. Over the last two decades, scientists have recovered soft tissue, proteins, and DNA from dinosaur bones. 9Further, just this year, scientists have found soft tissue, preserved down to electron-microscopic detail, in marine worms ‘dated’ to 551 Ma.10 Such finds should be causing a re-think about the reality of the Flood as well as the time-frame in which ichthyosaurs lived. Massive graveyard of parrot-beaked dinosaurs in Mongolia Paleontologists puzzle about the cause of death but miss the obvious clue by Tas Walker Published: 26 October 2007(GMT+10) How do you fossilize 187 parrot-beaked dinosaurs? Bury them quickly, of course. Of course. And that creates a puzzle for the paleontologists who recently excavated a fossil site in Mongolia and reported 187 fossils of Psittacosaurus.1 It has the name ‘parrot lizard’ because its muzzle resembles a parrot’s beak. All found within an area of several square kilometers, the paleontologists are convinced there are many more fossils to be found at the site.Jack Horner, the curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University, has brought back over 80 skeletons from the site, which is a two days’ drive from Ulan Bator, the capital.The paleontologists have been puzzling about why the dinosaurs died. But that is only part of the story. There is a far more important question that needs to be answered.According to the Discovery News report of Horner’s dinosaur find, ‘It is possible the animals died at once from poisoning, disease or some kind of natural disaster.’Poisoning? How feasible is the idea that 187 dinosaurs poisoned themselves all at the same time. That sort of thing happens to animals regularly—not.But even if they were all poisoned together, that does not answer the other tricky question. How was it that all those dinosaurs werefossilized together—in sediment laid down by water? For how many years did the dead animals lie around the countryside waiting to be gradually covered by sediment? The Psittacosaurus was not the largest dinosaur but it was not tiny either. It grew up to 2 metres (6.5 feet) long and weighed more than 30 kilograms (66 pounds). At that size it would take a lot of sediment to bury them all quickly so as to limit decay.Disease? Now, that is a possibility. Microbes could conceivably kill 187 dinosaurs. But again, that does not explain how they were all buried. Without rapid burial of their remains then they would rot away until there was nothing left. No, the disease theory does not explain the dinosaur

graveyard.Natural disaster? That could be a better idea. I followed the link in the article to another item on the Discovery website and found a story about an asteroid impact.2 ‘Around 65 million years ago, a six-mile piece crunched into Earth, unleashing a firestorm and kicking up clouds of dust that filtered out sunlight.’3The asteroid gives us fire and dust which could definitely kill the dinosaurs, but fire and dust would not explain their burial. In fact, as I read the article, I discovered that fire and dust are not even considered the primary cause of death:‘In this enduring winter, much vegetation was wiped out and the species that depended on them also became extinct. Only those animals that could cope with the new challenge, or exploit an environmental niche, survived.’ … the global flood is the logical explanation for why they died So, it was starvation. In this scenario all 187 dinosaurs died because the vegetation became extinct. But once again, starvation does not explain how they were all buried, and why they starved in the same place.It seems that this dinosaur graveyard has more evidence to explain.And while we are at it, we might like to think about the red blood cells and soft bone tissue that Mary Schweitzer (a former student of Jack Horner) found inside some T. Rex leg bones.4 How could those soft organic materials be preserved for 65 million years and still look fresh today? (See Schweitzer’s dangerous discovery.) Perhaps the evidence is pointing to a different answer.When you think about it, there is a simple explanation for the demise of the dinosaurs, and their rapid burial—Global Flood. If we just accept the eyewitness account of the un-natural disaster that engulfed the globe, we can see that it elegantly explains what wiped them out—provided we throw out the million-year dates.To me the global flood is the logical explanation for why they died. It also explains how they were buried quickly in strata obviously laid down by fast flowing water. And it makes more sense of finding soft tissue and blood cells within their bones. Swedish fossil fern preserves chromosome detail, pointing to catastrophic burial A casualty of the global Flood by Tas Walker Published: 28 October 2014 (GMT+10) Internal structure of the fossilized fern. Researchers from Lund University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History have described a fossil fern so well preserved that cell nuclei and individual chromosomes could be identified.1 A farmer Gustav Andersson collected the fossil near Korsaröd in central Skåne, Sweden, in the 1960s, and donated it to the museum.Recently the fossil came to the attention of researchers Vivi Vajda, Benjamin Bomfleur, and Stephen McLoughlin, who studied the fern using different microscopic techniques, X-rays and geochemical analysis. They published their findings in the journal Science.2 This fossil displays a number of amazing features that provide spectacular confirmation of, and insight into, the global Flood catastrophe. On the other side of the coin, these features dramatically contradict the scenario of evolution over millions of years. Instantaneous burial Researchers said the fern was from the early Jurassic Period, and quoted its age as 180 million years. They did not use radioactive dating techniques to decide the age. Rather they said they studied the pollen and spores in the surrounding rocks and so they would have matched these to the geologic stage they thought fitted best. They then would have looked up the age for that stage on the standard stratigraphic chart.3 However, their analysis of the fern does not comfortably fit such a long age.Their examinations revealed that the plant was “preserved instantaneously”, before it had started to decompose. They concluded that it was buried abruptly under a “volcanic lava flow”. The fern was buried so quickly that the sensitive components of its cells were preserved. The researchers found “cell nuclei, cell membranes and even individual chromosomes.” Viv Vajda, Professor of Geology at Lund University, said, “The preservation happened so quickly that some cells have even been preserved during different stages of cell division”. To be so well preserved during volcanic burial abundant water would have been present to prevent the fern from burning.Sudden and instantaneous burial means that the enclosing sediments did not take long to accumulate. Such evidence of sudden deposition is not consistent with the quoted ‘age’ of 180 million years for the fern, which comes from the assumption that the sediments accumulated at a rate of only millimetres per millennium.4 No evolution According to the report: “ … the fern belonged to the family Osmundaceae, Royal Ferns. In modern times, royal ferns grow in the wild in Sweden and are also a common garden plant. Living representatives of this family are very similar in appearance to the Jurassic fossil, which suggests that only limited evolutionary change has taken place over the millennia. By comparing the size of the cell nuclei in the fossilised plant with its living relatives, the researchers have been able to show that the royal ferns have outstanding evolutionary stability.” Vivi Vajda said, “Royal Ferns look essentially the same now as they did during the Jurassic Period, and are therefore an excellent example of what we call a living fossil”. “Outstanding evolutionary stability” is code for no evolution. Another term used is ‘evolutionary stasis’—which again is code for no evolution. This fern was described as “a paramount example of evolutionary stasis.”5 Note that a third term is one that Vivi Vajda used above, viz., ‘living fossil’—again, note no evolutionary change. These terms have come into common usage because there are so many examples of non-evolution. Evolutionary stasis wipes away millions of years Not only does the evidence of no-change mean no evolution, but it also means that the quoted times of ‘millions of years’ do not exist.How is it possible that there could be no change for such a long time? Evolutionists say, “once nature comes up with an architecture that works, it’s prone to stick with it—even for millions of years.” 4Yet that makes no sense because mutations are continually accumulating in the genome of every living thing. Random changes accumulating in a precision machine mean that eventually it will stop working. The implications of this phenomenon have recently been described and dubbed as ‘genetic entropy’. This is leading living organisms rapidly to extinction.6In other words, ‘living fossils’ are evidence that they have existed only for thousands of years, not millions.

Whole environments were affected The researchers found that the spores from royal ferns, as well as pollen from coniferous trees, including cypress and cycad, were present in large quantities in the volcanic rock. This is evidence of varied vegetation and a hot, humid climate, and represents the sort of climate that the vegetation was growing in before it was uprooted. The fern was buried in volcanic ash and lava indicating “disastrous volcanic eruptions” occurring at the time. Furthermore, Jurassic rocks are famous for fossils of dinosaurs. This gives an insight into the sort of conditions that were involved in the global Flood—vegetation being uprooted, volcanoes erupting, and dinosaurs being overwhelmed and buried. Telling a better story These days, when researchers report their scientific findings to the public they include graphic stories that come from the big-picture evolutionary worldview. It’s these stories that change dry, scientific details into a lively narrative that captures peoples’ imaginations. But the researchers have not personally observed the stories they tell about times before they were born. For this particular fern, part of the attention-grabbing press release read as follows: "The plant lived around 180 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, when Skåne was a tropical region where the fauna was dominated by dinosaurs, and volcanoes were a common feature of the landscape." That sounds interesting, but we have seen that the evidence is not a good fit with the long-age evolutionary story. It harmonises with the Flood catastrophe much better. We should tell a different story and place the results within the Flood perspective. Then it would read like this: “The fern was growing around 4500 years ago in forests that existed before the Flood. When the Flood catastrophe came upon the earth, these ferns, as well as the cypress and cycad plants and the rest of the landscape were uprooted, carried along by floodwater, sorted and separated, and buried with other creatures that are typically found fossilized in places like the Jura Mountains. Animals, including dinosaurs, and plants that today grow in tropical climates were washed into the area and buried by volcanic ash and sediment as the waters of the Flood were rising and inundating the earth.7 Volcanoes were common and violent during the cataclysm that engulfed the earth during the Flood.”8 The remarkable fossil fern found in Sweden displays amazing features pointing to it being created and young, and opening a window onto the global Flood catastrophe. Precambrian rocks by Andrew Snelling Creationists have long argued that ‘Precambrian’ rocks (which evolutionists regard as the Earth’s oldest rocks) were formed before the Flood. They have taken this approach because few fossils had been reported from Precambrian rocks.Since fossils came from the Flood and onwards it was commonly argued non–fossiliferous rocks must have formed before the Flood. But this argument can no longer be applied to the Precambrian. Discoveries have shown there are many fossils in the Precambrian. In Australia these ‘oldest’ fossils are remarkably diverse, abundant and well preserved.For example, algae fossils (stromatolites) are very widespread in rocks dated as Precambrian.Microscopic fossils and traces of fossils are found throughout Australian Precambrian rocks, and new finds of fossil soft–bodied animals are regularly being made. In the USA, Canada, Mexico, China, Russia, Africa and India the story is the same. Furthermore, many Precambrian rocks that do not contain recognisable fossils nonetheless contain fossil remains usually in the form of graphite. Such graphite rocks are common in Australian Precambrian rocks.The clear implication of these fossils and abundant organic matter in Precambrian rocks is that these sediments were laid down during the Flood.Consequently, creationist geologists need to completely abandon the evolutionists’ geological column and its associated terminology, and start again. Using the presence of fossils or organic matter as one criterion, we then have the enormous task of re–examining rocks area by area to re–build our understanding of geological history within the creationist framework. Here are the technical details The assumption of uniformity of natural processes was used by early evolutionist scientists to construct the geological timescale and the geological column. They postulated that over long periods of time (billions of years), the slow geological processes we observe today laid down the rocks of the Earth’s crust in an ordered sequence which now corresponds to the evolutionists’ view of the development of life by chance natural processes. Thus the geological column and the geological timescale are inseparably linked, the former being divided into rock strata corresponding to the time periods of the latter, based on the contained fossils.On the other hand, creationists interpret the majority of fossiliferous sedimentary rocks of the Earth’s crust as testimony to the Global Flood, which occurred approximately 4300 years ago,. Creationists do this because they regard the creation record as implying there was no rain before the Flood, therefore no major erosion, and hence no significant sedimentation or fossilization.However the Flood was global, erosional, and its purpose was destruction. Therefore the first major fossilization commenced at this time, and the majority of the fossils are regarded as having been rapidly formed during this event. Creationists therefore regard sedimentary strata as needing to be classified into those formed during the creation, pre–Flood, Flood (early, middle, and late) and post–Flood, and recent. Because they hold completely different principles for explanation of much of the rock strata of the geological column, creationist geologists have to re–interpret the geological evidence. As Joseph Dillow rightly says of the geological column.1

Fig. 1. Location of Australian Precambrian sedimentary basins with formations that are fossiliferous. The North Pole locality (not shown) is near the Hammersley Basin.11 “It should be obvious that if the earth is only 6,000 years old, then all the geological designations are meaningless within that framework, and it is deceptive to continue to use them. If, as many creationist geologists believe, the majority of the geological column represents Flood sediments and post–Flood geophysical activity, then the mammoth, the dinosaur, and human beings all existed simultaneously … some limited attempts have been made by creationist geologists to reclassify the entire geological column within this framework, but the task is immense.” What Dillow is also suggesting is that the evolutionists’ geological column and their terminology should be completely scrapped, and then creationist geologists should start again. However, having said that, Dillow, in his bookThe Waters Above, presents his “Reclassification of geological strata along the lines of Flood geology”2 in which he lumps together as pre–Flood strata much of what historical evolutionists geology terms Precambrian, and only considers the Cambrian–Recent as Flood strata. In so doing Dillow has merely followed in the footsteps of other creationists, e.g. Harold G. Coffin. 3 It is my contention that those who do this have failed to study carefully the evidence for the Flood deposition of many Precambrian strata and have therefore unwittingly fallen into the trap of lumping together the Precambrian strata to the creation. The usual reason for doing this is that the evolutionists regard the Precambrian as so different, so devoid of life in comparison with other rocks that creationists have simply borrowed their description.I believe that to be consistent, we must completely start anew, and assign all strata that show evidence of deposition in the Flood to the Flood period within the creationists’ geological time framework, irrespective of the strata’s evolutionary age or designation. Precambrian and the Flood What then is the evidence that many Precambrian rocks are the result of the Flood? The answer is simple. They are either rich in fossils or they commonly contain abundant organic matter which is the remains of fossils. Precambrian fossils Whitcomb and Morris4 suggested that the main criterion for recognition of Precambrian rocks is that they be non–fossil–bearing. This criterion can no longer be maintained as there is now abundant evidence that rocks which evolutionist geologists classify as Precambrian do in fact contain a variety of fossils. In any case this criterion cannot be rigidly applied since many so–called Cambrian–Recent strata are also non–fossil bearing. Fig. 2. Atomic hydrogen/carbon versus oxygen/carbon, showing average values for the precursors of sedimentary organic matter, and lines of increasing diagenesis/metamorphism for

coal macerals (i.e. coal constituents).12The most significant of these Precambrian fossils are microscopic algae and megascopic stromatolites, the layered structures formed as the result of the accretion of fine grains of sediment by matted colonies of micro–organisms, principally algae. That this is what stromatolites are has been verified by the study of living stromatolites found thriving today in the shallow waters of Shark Bay near Carnarvon on the Western Australian coast 5 and in Spencer Gulf on the South Australian coast6, and in shallow pools fed by springs in the Northern Great Sandy Desert of inland northern Western Australia.7 At all three localities, and others overseas 5, cyanobacteria (the photosynthesizing bacteria formerly called blue–green algae) are today building stromatolites identical to those found in the fossil record, even as far back as about 3,000 X 106 A.G. Yr (arbitrary geological years) ago in Precambrian sediments. It goes without comment that evolutionists should be puzzled as to how these so–called ‘primitive’ micro–organisms have survived so long in the fossil record, unchanged, unevolving, and not prone to extinction.Fossil stromatolites have now been identified in rocks from all evolutionary time periods in the geological column, including the Precambrian. A significant ‘find’ of fossil stromatolites in rocks believed to be 3,500 million A.G.Yr old at a place called North Pole in the Pilbara area of Western Australia8,9,10 received wide publicity. Here stromatolites have been found in a chert–barite unit about 30 m thick with a sequence of pillow basalts, with minor intercalated sandstones, mudstones and evaporites. (It should be noted that pillow basalts are the result of underwater extrusion of lava, while chert, a rock composed of microscopic grains of silica, and barite, dominantly barium sulphate, are both regarded here as water–deposited chemical sediments or ‘evaporites’, the latter term denoting their presumed precipitation via evaporation.) The rocks have been dated by radioisotope methods to give an arbitrary geological age of between 3400 and 3500 x 106 years. 8,9 Two things about the fossils at this locality are clear—they are in water–deposited sediments and volcanic, and their ‘age’ has been determined by radiometric dating within their broad geological setting. Australian Precambrian Historically, the first known Australian Precambrian fossils are the “organically preserved algal microfossils from the Ringwood evaporite deposit in the Gillen member of the Bitter Springs Formation (Late Precambrian of Central Australia)”11,12, 100 km east of Alice Springs. Glaessner and Walter 12 wrote that “the rich and varied Precambrian fossil record of Australia is now being elaborated at an increasing rate. During the last 10 years the number of known microfossiliferous formations has increased from 1 to 16 (see fig. 1). Stromatolites are almost ubiquitous, microfossils and trace fossils are widespread, and new finds of fossil soft–bodied invertebrates are being made”. They concluded: “the Precambrian fossils of Australia are remarkably diverse, abundant and well preserved”. And further: “the micro–organisms and early animals did not live independently of each other or of their environment. Stromatolites are to be seen not only as potential biostratigraphic tools, but as the sedimentary record of microbil communities, the repository of otherwise unavailable physiological information on the constructing micro–organisms, and not least, a source of food and shelter (and perhaps oxygen) for the earliest metazoans”. On the world scene “stromatolites are being used in Precambrian stratigraphy not only in the traditional areas of Russia, Africa, Australia and India, but also in Canada, the USA, Mexico and especially China” 13. Bertrand–Sarfati and Walter13 go on to discuss the stromatolites of the Proterozoic era throughout the world and state that “none of the 53 forms (of stromatolites) now known from the Early Proterozoic are also reported from younger rocks.” It is thus no longer feasible or possible for creationists to argue that Precambrian rocks are non–fossiliferous. Precambrian organic matter The main reason more fossils are not found in the so–called Precambrian rocks is that many of these rocks have been altered, particularly by burial and tectonic pressure, and temperature (that is, they have been metamorphosed), and so the contained fossils have been destroyed. But these same rocks often contain graphite. Whereas most Cambrian–Recent graphite deposits occur in readily identifiable metamorphosed coal–bearing sedimentary rocks, Precambrian graphite deposits are commonly found in medium to high–grade regionally metamorphosed schists and gneisses “of controversial origin”.14 Mancuso and Seavoy14 claim that there is no “good geologic and chemical evidence that the graphite found in all grades of Precambrian metamorphic rocks have the same source” and “that source is organic carbon”. They go on to show that “sufficient organic carbon of high concentration and purity is available in Precambrian sediments as coal or anthraxolite (a name suggested for black, combustible, coal–like solid material found in Precambrian rocks that resembles anthracite coal but occurs in cross–cutting veins and fissures) to account for the graphite deposits which occur in Precambrian schists and gneisses.” To back up this claim they mention occurrences of coal and anthraxolite reported and described in the Precambrian rocks of Michigan, Ontario, the Northwest Territories and Northern Minnesota. In Australia no similar occurrences of Precambrian ‘coal’ appear to have been reported so far. However, a very abundant rock type amongst Australian Precambrian strata are black (carbonaceous or graphitic) shales and graphitic schists (their metamorphic equivalents). For example, in the Kalgoorlie area the 3,000 m thick Black Flag Beds include units of black shales up to, and greater than 100 m thick and tens of kilometres in strike length. In the Pine Creek basin, south and east of Darwin, several thick units of black shales and carbonaceous schists can be correlated across the basin over a distance of about 200 km. Furthermore, these rock types are often associated, to a greater or lesser degree, with Precambrian ore deposits, for example, Broken Hill, Mount Isa, Kambalda, McArthur River, Koongarra, Jabiluka.Saxby15 lists five basic mechanisms by which organic matter can become part of a sediment: direct supply of organisms, absorption of dissolved organic molecules, precipitation, detrital supply, and hydrocarbon migration. With increasing temperature and depth of burial this organic material undergoes changes analogous to coalification or to the maturation of oil shales and petroleum source rocks.12 Fig. 2 shows diagrammatically how the chemical compositions of coal macerals (i.e. organic materials) are progressively altered during metamorphism. Saxby15 analysed the insoluble organic matter isolated from a variety of Australian and overseas ores and ore–related black shales, and these results are plotted in Fig. 3. He concluded that in the Precambrian ores, bacterial and algal remains constitute the main biological precursor to the organic material remaining in the analysed samples. The graphite now present in the ores and shales has been produced by “post–depositional metamorphism and weathering”.

Fig. 3. Atomic hydrogen/carbon versus oxygen/carbon for organic matter isolated from metalliferous ores and associated carbonaceous rocks.15 Implications and discussion The numerous fossils and abundant organic matter found in these Precambrian rocks is clear testimony to the creationist geologist that these sediments were laid down during the Flood year along with most of the so–called Cambrian–Recent strata.A further implication of the above data is that since fossils and organic matter in shales and schists are associated with mineral deposits, e.g. the Broken Hill and Mount Isa lead–zinc–silver ore bodies, then these ores must also be either Flood deposited, late–Flood, or post–Flood, depending on whether the mineralisation was deposited with the enclosing sediments or was emplaced after independent deposition of the enclosing sediments. In the case of Broken Hill and Mount Isa, abundant other evidence (Snelling, in prep.) supports the conclusion that these lead–zinc–silver ore bodies were deposited with the enclosing sediments, and therefore during the Flood.This discussion leads us back to Dillow’s original conclusion1 that the evolutionists’ geological column and their terminology must be completely scrapped and creationist geologists start again from basics. Before this can be done we must decide the criteria for reclassifying rocks and ores as either Creation, pre–Flood, Flood (early, middle or late) or post–Flood. What I am contending here is that fossils, whether they be microscopic or macroscopic, plant or animal, and the fossil counterpart of organic matter, along with its metamorphosed equivalent graphite, are the primary evidence which should distinguish Flood rocks from pre–Flood rocks, regardless of the evolutionary ‘age’. Post–Flood rocks Other criteria will be necessary to distinguish the various stages of the Flood or any post–Flood localized catastrophe. This will have to be the subject of future papers. Thus, ultimately, we have the enormous task before us to re–examine area by area, the geology and ore deposits of Australia, the USA then the world(!); to reclassify the rocks and ores; and then to rebuild our understanding of geological history within the creation framework. But the purpose of this will not just be theoretical or theological. A better interpretation of the rock strata should produce a better tool for the discovery and usage of economic deposits, and more efficient ways for man to exercise his dominion over this earth. The meaning of porous dinosaur eggs laid on flat bedding planes by Michael J. Oard Figure 1. Lambeosaurine duckbill dinosaur egg clutch from north-central Montana displayed in the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, USA.Most reptiles bury their eggs in the ground or place vegetation on top.1 In this way the eggs stay in an environment of controlled high humidity, high CO2, and low O2. Most birds, on the other hand, lay and nurture their eggs in the open air. These differences exist because reptile eggs are porous while bird eggs are only slightly porous. The eggs of those few reptiles that do not bury their eggs are more similar to those of birds; they have low gas conductance through the egg shell. The only viable conclusion is that the dinosaurs laid their eggs in haste.

Hundreds of thousands of dinosaur eggs are now found in the rocks from all over the world. 2,3 Sometimes they come in clutches of a dozen or more. The pores and gas conductance can be determined by a microscopic examination of the egg shells, and an examination of dinosaur eggs has shown that the egg shells are very porous, 4,5 generally like those of reptiles. This means dinosaur nests had to be in high humidity, high CO2, and low O2 environments, so they should have been buried or covered by vegetation. A recent analysis of eggs from Argentina reinforces the need for burial A recent analysis of gas conductance in dinosaur eggs from Argentina reinforced the conclusion that the eggs are very porous and need to be protected from the air.6 Conductance was about 24 times that of bird eggs. 7 Jackson et al. previously demonstrated low conductance for the same eggs at Auca Mahueva, Argentina, 8 but the new conductance analysis shows Jackson et al. grossly underestimated the pore density and conductance.9 Grellet-Tinner et al. conclude: “As such this internal pore network and its geometry would enhance a greater G H20, GO2, and GCO2 [G is the symbol for gas conductance] through the shell to facilitate embryonic development in completely or semi-buried nests with high moisture content, as hypothesized by Deeming (2006). Considering our hypothesis and reexamination of the values express in Table 4, our interpretation is that the Auca Mahuevo clutches were incubated in substantially higher moisture conditions (Garrido, 2010b) than previously indicated. … Deeming (2006) concluded that dinosaur eggs were incubated in buried nests.”10 Deeming reinforces this conclusion: “The physics of gas diffusion are irrefutable and so the morphology of eggshells provides a valuable insight into part of the reproductive biology of dinosaurs. High-porosity eggshells indicate that the incubation environment is low in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide and that these shells need to be incubated in an environment saturated with humidity.”11 Nest structures and evidence for vegetation are rare Some researchers define a nest as the existence of egg shells or a clutch. However, this is a gross extrapolation; nest structures with raised rims surrounding a pit are rare.12 Chiappe et al. admit this: “Despite the relative abundance of dinosaur eggs in the fossil record (Carpenter et al., 2004: Carpenter, 1999),trace-fossil evidence of dinosaur nest construction is extremely rare. The existence of nests is typically inferredby the presence of an egg clutch and usually it is not accompanied by physical evidence of nest architecture [emphasis added].”13 They believed they had found six nest structures at Auca Mahuevo, but these bowl shaped structures have turned out to be dinosaur tracks and the eggs probably floated into the tracks,10 That reduces the number of nest structures in the rock record to probably less than a dozen.In rare instances, the eggs in clutches are stacked, and this has been interpreted as evidence for burial,14 although there is no evidence of a dug out hole or a raised rim. However, these situations can also be explained by the dinosaurs laying their eggs during a sedimentation event. 15If the eggs were not buried, then surely there should be evidence of vegetation associated with the nests, but this evidence is also rare. Researchers have found carbon remains, presumably of plants,16associated with some of the depressions at Auca Mahuevo, but since these depressions are now interpreted as dinosaur tracks, these carbon remains cannot be associated with egg clutches. Kenneth Carpenter admits: “The suggestion that some dinosaurs may have nested in vegetation or vegetation-mud mounds similar to those of megapode birds or alligators seems to be a popular idea … but how can this be proven when all traces of vegetation have rotted away? Or how can we determine if vegetation was even used at all?”17 The idea that the vegetation simply rotted away makes no sense since the preservation of dinosaur eggs, egg shells, and rare embryos requires rapid burial and fossilization. Besides, traces of organic carbon, pollen, or fossilized imprints of leaves and branches should be preserved with the eggs. The evidence stacks up that the dinosaurs did not add vegetation to the eggs. Dinosaur eggs hastily laid on BEDS early in the Flood Very rare nest structures and almost complete lack of evidence for vegetation means that dinosaur eggs have been laid on flat bedding planes. The embryo inside the egg would quickly dry out. This situation contradicts the environmental deduction of the porous eggs.The only viable conclusion is that the dinosaurs laid their eggs in haste. They did not have time to dig a hole or add vegetation, possibly because there was no vegetation to be found. This means the eggs were laid in an unnatural environment and on flat sediment surfaces with subsequent rapid burial by watery flows—worldwide. In fact, the Argentina eggs are interpreted as resulting from multiple and successive flooding events. 10Dinosaur eggs thus provide strong evidence for the BEDS (Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments) hypothesis—in which Flood sediments are briefly exposed during a local drop in the Flood water.2 This had to happen in the first part of the Flood since eggs and tracks indicate the actions of live dinosaurs, whereas by Day 150 all the dinosaurs would have been dead. Dinosaurs either swimming, clinging to log mats, or on higher land nearby could have embarked on the exposed sediments. They could make tracks, quickly lay eggs, and scavenge dead dinosaurs. A subsequent rapid rise in the muddy water of the Flood would then have covered up the dinosaur material and preserve it to this day. Further creationist considerations Creationists have lots of challenges in the earth sciences, but there are still many unknowns, and I believe we lack an enormous amount of knowledge about the Flood. Often uniformitarian interpretations are made without enough data. We need to be careful of such interpretations. In regard to the existence of dinosaur eggs and tracks, some earlier interpretations were not correct, such as: egg shells or clutches automatically define a nest; the eggs at Auca Mahuevo were not all that porous; six depressions were dinosaur nests (which turned out to be dinosaur tracks); and the evidence for carbon associated with those tracks was a sign of vegetation piled on the ‘nest’. Although there are still challenges, the data on eggs and tracks is adding up to the BEDS hypothesis early in the Flood.2The challenge of dinosaur eggs, tracks, and scavenged bone beds is an example of how we can approach these other earth science challenges. We must first gather the raw data and watch out for uniformitarian interpretations, realizing that these interpretations come from a naturalistic worldview. That does not automatically mean they are wrong, but they should be examined closely. Moreover, we must read the literature or go out into the field in order to find newer data and interpretations that result in a different view of the data. With time, we should be able to construct an alternative explanation within Flood geology. Moulting arthropod fossilized in a flash! by David Catchpoole An information board for visitors to the Burgess Shale site. An outcrop of broken shale at the Burgess site. Have you ever seen an arthropod (e.g. lobster, scorpion, cockroach) shedding its ‘skin’? You’ve got to be in the right place at exactly the right time—it’s all over in minutes. (When an arthropod grows, its exoskeleton coat does not, so the animal

has to shed it while making a bigger one.)So you can imagine paleontologists’ excitement on finding a fossil of the arthropod Marrella splendens, fossilized at the exact moment of moulting! 1 ‘It’s basically an astounding specimen’, said paleontologist Derek Briggs of Yale University.2 ‘The likelihood of capturing such an event is so astronomically small’, said Desmond Collins, a senior scientist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, and one of the researchers who reported the find. ‘The discovery of an arthropod in the act of moulting was exciting because it was so unexpected.’3 Until now, only moulted skins had been found in the fossil record. Dr Collins said that some of those skins even look like they had been shed just moments before being buried and fossilized. But he explained that it’s highly unlikely that a softbodied animal such as Marrella splendens would be buried—and then fossilized—during those few minutes of moulting.Another reason this find is important, said Dr Collins, is that it confirms what paleontologists had suspected; namely, that early arthropods moulted during growth, just as they do today.This fossil was found in the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale (conventionally dated to 505 million years ago) in the Canadian Rockies—an area famous for its ‘exquisitely preserved’ fossils of soft-bodied animals.More than 25,000 specimens of Marrella splendens (not in the act of moulting) have already been collected from here. Obviously, the environmental conditions were just right for quickly burying, killing and fossilizing these creatures—leaving us a beautifully preserved ‘window’ on the past.4–6 Tiny pterosaur’s untimely end by David Catchpoole This fossil egg (at left) of a pterosaur (flying reptile) is 53 mm (2.08 in) long and 41 mm (1.61 in) across. The pterosaur’s folded wings, tucked compactly inside the egg, give the embryo a wingspan of 27 cm (10½ in). Had it lived, researchers say that the embryo would have grown into a ‘mediumto-large pterosaur’, i.e. with a likely wingspan between three and six metres (10–20 ft). Credit: Fossil egg part and counterpart photos provided by Xiao-Lin Wang and Zhong-He Zhou.Although fossilized dinosaur embryos are found all over the world, no-one had ever reported finding a pterosaur embryo … until now. A recent report in Nature describes a fossil embryo that is ‘unambiguously a pterosaur … enjoying its last few days in the egg’.1Unearthed in Liaoning, China, the fossil shows details of the ‘exquisitely preserved’ embryonic skeleton in its egg, thus confirming that pterosaurs were indeed egg-layers. Incredibly, wing membrane fibres and large patches of skin imprints are also preserved. Unambiguously a pterosaur … enjoying its last few days in the egg ‘Preservation of such delicate tissues with the skeleton and eggshell probably indicates the embryo was killed and deposited quickly as a result of a natural disaster, such as a volcanic eruption’, say the researchers. Artist’s concept provided by Xiao-Lin Wang and Zhong-He Zhou But which disaster? Surely the global Flood would explain why we find mass deposits of fossils, many ‘exquisitely preserved’, indicating rapid burial, right around the world.

Flood Fossils A stunning new book with family friendly, groundbreaking creationist research will excite many by Gary Bates Published: 17 July 2014 (GMT+10) CMI is pleased to carry the second book produced by Canadian creationist Vance Nelson in his Untold Secrets of Planet Earth series. In his first book, Dire Dragons, Vance revealed lots of new evidence of dinosaurs and humans living together via pictures of tapestries, carvings, ornaments and paintings. It was a stunning collation and is one of the more popular books that CMI carries. In this second book, Flood Fossils (CMI’s Dr Tas Walker was one of the contributing science editors), Vance has amassed dozens of examples of rapid fossilization of artifacts that must have been buried quickly to ensure their preservation. These include ephemeral fossils such as sand ripples, fossilized footprints of birds and even trilobites. Also contained are pictures of modern artifacts preserved in stone such as a spark plug, coins and even a US one dollar bill! Flood Fossils also contains great examples of rapidly fossilized fish, but even more stunning is evidence of them being buried alongside mammals and preserved in the same Wood from Oligocene rock still contained 14C. (Fig. 147, Vance portion of rock (pp. 114–115). How did water-dwelling Nelson) creatures and land animals end up being buried together? The evidence points to the global Flood of Noah’s day.Original research provides bad news for evolution’s millions of yearsHowever, the wood was sent to the University of Georgia in the US for carbon-14 dating and came back with an age of 48,160 years. That’s a 600% error ratio.Much of the alleged ‘science’ behind prescribing a ‘millions of years’ date to fossils comes from the presumed age of the rocks that fossils are found in. However, fossilized wood was extracted from Oligocene rock formations alleged to be c. 30 million 30 million year old wood still burns? (Fig. 148, Vance Nelson) years old (myo). Yet the wood appeared fresh, and indeed would still easily burn, as demonstrated in the pages of this book. In another example, wood was extracted from a tree buried in Permian (pre-dinosaur) layers presumed to be around 290 myo. If the tree was buried in layers that surrounded it, and the layers were dated to 290 myo then the tree would logically be the same date. However, the wood was sent to the University of Georgia in the US for carbon-14 dating and came back with an age of 48,160 years. They can’t both be right, because they differ by a factor of ~6,000. This does not mean the wood is tens of thousands of years old. All radiometric dating methods, including carbon-14 dating, are not infallible methods, and they are often used in an attempt to falsify dates of creation. But here we have an example using the evolutionists’ own cherished methods that falsify their own various belief systems. It demonstrates the massive historical assumptions applied to the operational science of simply measuring radioisotopes in a sample. Indeed, in recent years carbon-14 has become the creationist’s best friend. This is because carbon-14 has been found in coal and diamond samples that are supposed be hundreds of millions and even billions of years old. In addition, a fossilized toe bone from an Edmontosaurus dinosaur (conventionally presumed to tens of millions of years old) was sent to the same university for carbon-14 dating and produced results of 32,420 years. The lab reports are reproduced in the book.

Fig. 152, Vance Nelson

Fig. 153, Vance Nelson

Fossilized fruit still has chemical residues in it In one interesting experiment revealed in Flood Fossils, Vance sent samples of fossilized fruit (presumed to be dates) that were found in Miocene (up to 23 mya) brown coal seams in Germany, to a laboratory for chemical analysis. The lab report pictured in the book revealed the fruit still contained the same chemical esters (“observed to have fruit-like odors”) you would find in fruit sitting in your local supermarket shelves. Obviously these fossils cannot be millions of years old. Fig. 155, Vance Nelson Fig. 154, Vance Nelson

Fossilized fruit and the lab report showing it still contained chemical esters—the same as found in fresh fruit.

Gilding the (sea) lily—Evolutionists’ absurd defense of their long-age story as Mississippian crinoids yield organic molecules For a hundred years, this evidence of rapid burial in recent history has been right under evolutionists’ noses—yet even now they still claim these crinoid fossils are 350 million years old by David Catchpoole Published: 19 March 2013 (GMT+10) The photograph at right appeared in an Ohio State University press release, with the following caption: “Different species of the sea animals known as crinoids display different colors in these 350-million-year-old fossils. Ohio State University researchers have found organic compounds sealed within the pores of these fossilized animals’ skeletons. Photo by William Ausich, courtesy of Ohio State University.”1 Now, there’s a major problem with that caption. Can you spot it? The problem is not that it says the sea animals are crinoids. They are indeed crinoids—also known as ‘sea lilies’.2

The problem is not that the caption says they’re different species. ‘Species’ is a human construct, for convenience of classification and communication between biological and other scientists, so it’s surely quite legitimate to refer to them here as different species in this case. (We mention in passing here that ‘species’ is not the same thing as the biblical ‘kind’.) The problem is not that the different species show different colours. The different colours are indeed evident in the photograph, thanks to the sea lily fossils being so beautifully preserved.Nor is there a problem with the caption’s referring to the recent discovery of “organic compounds sealed within the pores of these fossilized animals’ skeletons”—for that is indeed what a recent Geology paper3 reports. The photographer of the above picture, paleontologist William Ausich of Ohio State University, was one of the authors of that paper, along with his PhD student and lead author Christina O’Malley (who completed this work to earn her doctoral degree), and chemist Yu-Ping Chin. Some readers at this point will remember that Professor Ausich was the lead signatory to a letter of protest to the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, demanding the removal of the creationist book Grand Canyon: A different view from bookstores in the park. His complaint centred on the book’s statements concerning “the age of the rocks” and its challenge to “broadly accepted interpretations of the geologic history of the Grand Canyon”. 4 Which brings us to the problem in the caption to the photograph above.The problem is the claim that these sea lily fossils are 350 million years old, rather than the much more logical conclusion that they are a legacy of the global Flood, around 4,500 years ago.Consider this. With crinoids in the world’s oceans today, after death, the head of the creature almost immediately disintegrates. So when one finds fossil sea lilies as beautifully preserved as in the photograph above, it indicatesvery rapid burial of the live creatures. Crinoids which died and then lay on the ocean floor waiting to be slowly covered over would not look like this.And indeed, to give credit where it’s due, the researchers can see that the sea lilies must have been “buried quickly and isolated from the water above by layers of fine-grained sediment”.However, they say it happened when the sea lilies “appear to have been buried alive in storms during the Carboniferous Period”; specifically, the Mississippian Sub-period. But to label strata as belonging to ‘periods’ or ‘sub-periods’ millions-of-years long ignores worldwide evidence that these and other extensive strata were laid down quickly, on top of each other, without long periods of hiatus between or within them.And it also ignores their own notable findings, reported in their research paper. Although these fossils have been known of for a century or so, this latest study was triggered when lead author O’Malley noticed “something strange” about these crinoid species that had perished side-by-side and became preserved in the same piece of rock. Namely, that the different species were preserved in different colours, as the caption to the above photograph mentions.For example, one rock sample she studied had a light bluish-grey sea lily, a darker grey one, and a third which was creamy white. “People noticed the color differences 100 years ago, but no-one ever investigated it,” she explained. But with the armoury of sophisticated analytical tools now available to her generation of scientists, O’Malley and her colleagues were able to extract molecules directly from the different fossilized sea lily species in the rock. And they were able to determine that different species contained different molecules.The molecules were organic—specifically, aromatic compounds called quinones, just the same as those found in sea lilies living today. Quinones are known to sometimes function as pigments. So the researchers are quite excited to have found these ‘biomarkers’, i.e. species-specific organic molecules. In fact, in their paper the researchers proclaim they have found “the oldest examples of biomarker molecules extracted directly from fossilized remains.”But not so fast. This ought to be a bombshell to anyone still thinking these fossils could be millions of years old. As the Ohio State University press release said in its introduction, “scientists have long believed that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive fossilization”—i.e. that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive for millions of years. Yet, bizarrely, researchers O’Malley, Ausich and Chin choose instead to not even question the 350-million-year supposed ‘age’ of their fossils. Rather they blithely say that their results suggest that “the preservation of diagnostic organic molecules is much more common than previously realized”.The millions-of-years paradigm is wrong, wrong, wrong. These beautifully preserved sea lilies, containingintact species-specific complex organic molecule biomarkers, give testimony to fast processes, not millions of years of slow burial. If only the researchers had stuck to the facts (their own eyewitness testimony), rather than feeling the need to go ‘gilding the (sea) lily’ with 350 million years worth of evolutionary fairy tale. Now some might ask how I know that the real age of the sea lily fossils is only around 4,500 years old? Well, let me make a candid admission. In my own strength, I’m pretty sure that I would never in a million years have been able to arrive at that

figure. But I’m not writing this in my own strength. The fossil crinoid Anthedon [or Antedon] pictured at the bottom was found in the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone of western Germany. It is ‘dated’ by evolutionists as supposedly being around 150 million years old. Yet the modern-day livingAnthedon is virtually identical—showing no evolution has taken place. No wonder evolutionists refer to this, and many other modern creatures with supposedly millions-of-years-old fossil counterparts, as ‘living fossils’. But they’re actually a powerful argument for creation.Such an understanding is available to Christina O’Malley, William Ausich, and Yu-Ping Chin, too, who could then try to undo the damage they’ve done through having gilded the sea lily story—if they’re game. I say ‘game’, because for them the academic consequences of proclaiming a thousands-of-years-not-millions timeline in their line of work would likely be fearful indeed.Witness Expelled and Slaughter of the Dissidents—when even just a hint of apossibility of a Designer is even enough to get evolutionist PhD scientists sacked, it’s easy to imagine that any challenge on their ‘hero’ time would render them apoplectic! It’s their line-in-the-sand, the proverbial ‘hill’ they’re willing to die for. Dinosaur stumble preserved in trackways, Utah, USA by Tas Walker Scientists have described a trackway of a theropod dinosaur beautifully preserved in soft mud, now turned to stone, within Lower Jurassic strata at St George in south-western Utah, USA (figure 1). 1 As well as leaving a trail of footprints, they report the dinosaur left intermittent tail drags, and in one place sat in the mud and left impressions of both of its hands, its feet, its tail, and its buttocks.2 The tracks were found in the Whitmore Point Member of the Moenave Formation at the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, St George. Illustration after Milner et al., ref. 2 Figure 1: Location of the St George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm (star) in southwestern Utah. (View larger image)The report focused on connecting the dinosaur traces with the anatomy, posture and behaviour of birds, citing as evidence the rotation of the dinosaur’s forearm and the way it sat in the mud. However, in their preoccupation with the unsubstantiated speculation of birds evolving from dinosaurs the authors overlooked the obvious evidence of huge watery catastrophe recorded by the fossils and the rocks.The Whitmore Point Member is a 20-m-thick deposit of mudstone, shale and sandstone strata, and has abundant horizons containing dinosaur trackways (figure 2), including tracks of theropods that were larger and smaller than the ones described in the report.3 The strata also contain clawmark tracks, indicating times when the animals were swimming in deep water and just managing to scratch their claws along the sand on the bottom.4 The sediment beds are also packed with body fossils including megaplants, sharks, lungfish, coelacanths, ray-finned fish, crustaceans, clams and dinosaur remains. To preserve such an abundance of body fossils and footprints requires rapid sedimentation in order to prevent the degradation processes that would normally destroy them.The paper documents other features within the strata that point to rapid sedimentation in association with moving water, including ripples, tool marks, flute marks, rill marks and load casts. 5 Many different kinds of ripples were present including current ripples, symmetrical ripples, wind-driven ripples, interference ripples, wave-formed ripples and mega ripples. Tool marks are formed on the surface of sedimentary beds by objects being dragged along by the water. They are often prominent as casts protruding on the underside of the overlying bed. Tool marks can be continuous as a result of the object being continually dragged by the current, or they can be intermittent because the object is repeatedly picked up by the current and bounced along the bottom. Flute casts are bulges that look like a spoon or flute on the bottom of sandstone beds. They form when sediment fills a scoop-shaped depression on the underlying surface; a depression caused by fast-flowing turbulent flow. Rill marks are dendritic channels that form on the downstream side of objects sitting on the surface in the presence of flowing water. Load casts are rounded blobs of sand that have oozed into the finer sediment in the underlying bed, showing that both beds were soft and unconsolidated, and indicating rapid sedimentation. Illustration from Milner et al., ref. 2

Figure 2: Stratigraphic section of the Moenave Formation at the St George Dinosaur Site. The resting trace and trackway is in the top surface of the Main Track-Bearing Sandstone Bed indicated by an arrow toward the base of the Whitmore Point Member. (View larger image)As well as rapid deposition in flowing water, the sedimentary formation points to waters rising in the area at the time. The Whitmore Point Member is part of the 100-mthick Moenave Formation, and for such a thickness of strata to have been preserved requires the water level to have been continually rising with respect to the land surface by the same amount. The increasing depth was needed to accommodate the sediment and prevent it being eroded and transported out of the area. Within a creation geological context, trackways provide a significant classification criteria to help decide when the sediments were deposited.6 To make trackways the animals needed to have been alive. This means the tracks were either made before the waters of the Flood covered the earth, or after the flood by the animals and repopulated the earth. The tracks could not have been made during the Recessive stage of the Flood because by that time every airbreathing, land-dwelling animal had perished. The sedimentary deposits at St George are of such an immense size, both vertically and geographically, that they could not have been deposited after the Flood—that would have required too large a catastrophe. In other words, the trackways point to their being formed during the Flood as the waters were rising on the earth—the Inundatory stage. They preserve the frantic efforts of the animals trying to flee from the rising waters, running, stumbling and falling in the mud as they fled; even occasionally swimming in a situation of rapid sedimentation and highly variable water levels. Death throes by David Catchpoole This Struthiomimus dinosaur died in the classic ‘dead dino posture’—head back, tail extended, with hind limbs bent.Dinosaur and pterosaur skeletons are often found in this characteristic posture: head thrown back, hind limbs bent, tail extended. The “dead dinosaur posture” is found in other fossils too—the best known being the fossil bird Archaeopteryx shown here. There are so many fossils found in this posture that a recent article in New Scientist said there are “Too many, in fact, to be a coincidence.”1This is not news to paleontologists. The question of why so many fossils exhibit this posture “has troubled paleontologists for more than a century”.1 In his 1927 book on taphonomy (i.e. how dead organisms are thought to have been buried and fossilized), German geologist Yohannes Weigelt suggested that the “dead dinosaur posture” was caused by the contraction of the tendons as the dead animal dries out. Others have proposed “diving into mud and becoming stuck”, dying while asleep, rigor mortis, dehydration in salt water, and being dragged into position by moving water.But to paleontologist Cynthia Marshall Faux, of the Museum of the Rockies in Montana, USA, none of these ideas rang true. Marshall Faux had spent many hours as a volunteer veterinarian at the Montana Raptor Conservation Center, working to save the lives of injured birds of prey. Not all of the injured birds survived, which meant that Marshall Faux had lots of hands-on dealings with dead and dying birds—something that other paleontologists had not experienced for themselves. So she could see that the paleontology fraternity’s attempts to explain the widespread “dead dinosaur posture” did not fit with reality. “I’d read in the literature about rigor mortis, tendons drying out and all, but it didn’t mesh with what I know from my experience as a vet. Dead bodies moving? That didn’t make sense.” Instead, Marshall Faux knew that animals dying from being poisoned or hit by a car often adopt the posture while still (barely) alive.

A recent article in New Scientist said of an Archaeopteryx fossil: “It can’t be a coincidence that so many dead animals look like this.”1 Reality check Marshall Faux decided to put the various deathpose theories to rigorous testing.She observed freshly dead birds going into rigor mortis and out of it again—but “never once” did they move. She tried drying out carcasses to see if their withering muscles, tendons and ligaments contorted their limbs. The carcasses dried out— but no movement at all.After an experiment where rapidly-dried tendons did not contract at all, Marshall Faux said that if a drying tendon cannot even dislodge a small pin from a Styrofoam sheet, it’s hard to picture it moving a dinosaur’s head! To test the “dehydration by salt water” theory, Marshall Faux put quail carcasses in buckets of salt water. The dead quails “steadfastly refused to sink”2 and had not changed their posture by the time that the buckets had accumulated “excessive bacterial overgrowth” and had to be thrown out. ‘Dead bodies moving? That didn’t make sense.’—Cynthia Marshall Faux, palaeontologist, Museum of the Rockies, Montana, USA As for the other theories, Marshall Faux and her paleontologist colleague Kevin Padian of the University of California ruled out dying while asleep, as “no known animal sleeps in that posture”. 1,3 And the suggestion that carcasses were dragged into that position by moving water doesn’t fit with certain fossils having a death pose with neck and limbs pointing in opposite directions—unlikely in fast-moving currents. Further, Padian and Marshall Faux wonder how plausible is it that creatures around the world dived into mud and became stuck?So for Marshall Faux there’s only one possible explanation: death throes. She and other vets affirm that animals go into the “opisthotonic posture” shortly before they die (not after) because of muscle spasms resulting from severe malfunction of the central nervous system. In short, a shortage of oxygen. So, what might have caused the asphyxiation of the many fossilized creatures beautifully preserved in the “dead dinosaur posture”? A world drowned No known animal sleeps in that posture. Although Marshall Faux and Padian might not want to acknowledge it.The Flood was utterly devastating. Amber needed water (and lots of it) by David Catchpoole

Fossil amber (tree resin) has been found all over the world, containing well-preserved insects (and even identifiable microbes in the insect’s gut1), flowers, moss, snails, lizards, bird feathers and mammal hair.Among secular scientists, who date amber fossils as mostly being from 15 million years up to 220 million years old (see ‘Dating by decree’), there has been considerable uncertainty (and disagreement) as to how amber’s contents came to be so entombed.Most researchers had the view that resin exuded by the tree solidified at the tree bark, with organisms then getting stuck at the resin surface and

subsequently enclosed by successive resin outflows.But one problem with that scenario is that it doesn’t account for the abundant aquatic organisms found in amber, such as crustaceans, water beetles, barnacles, oysters, clams, water striders, algae and bacteria. How could aquatic creatures—both freshwater and marine—have become trapped in sticky tree sap? Lace bugs by Joachim Scheven, LEBENDIGE VORWELT MuseumLace bugs (Tingidae) alive today in Europe (top) are just the same as those found in Caribbean amber (bottom) dated as being millions of years old. These and other ‘living fossils’ present a conundrum to evolutionists. Why no evolution in all that (supposed) time? Alexander Schmidt of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Germany, and David Dilcher from the University of Florida, USA, now believe they have the answer.2 After using a handsaw to cut bark from trees in a Florida swamp, they observed that the resulting resin flowing into the water trapped small crustaceans, water beetles, mites, aquatic bacteria and fungi. 3 Therefore their research is reported to have shown that ‘aquatic insects can be trapped in resin without leaving their aquatic world. Thus the presence of aquatic organisms in amber is the result of a simple natural process.’ 4Actually, cutting bark with a handsaw in a swamp is hardly an everyday ‘simple natural process’. But the results of the researchers’ ingenious field study is great news for creationists, many of whom have long mooted that amber fossils worldwide are a legacy of the Flood. 5Although Schmidt and Dilcher are staunch evolutionists, consider how their own observations and conclusions indicate that for the abundant worldwide amber fossils to have formed, conditions provided by a global catastrophic Flood were needed:Water delays the process of solidification and ‘amberisation’ that is normally driven by oxygen in air. Thus the resin stays stickier for longer under water, and is more likely to trap insects and other organisms. As New Scientist reported,6 resin in water is probably more of a hazard to insects than resin on tree bark.In Schmidt and Dilcher’s field study, the tree resin did not solidify—but they say it might have turned to solid amber if the pond water level fell and, ‘given enough protection by layers of sediment, the amber could survive intact for millions of years.’ 2But layers of sediment need to be carried in somehow, e.g. by rushing water. And indeed, Schmidt and Dilcher’s suggested scenario for amber fossil formation does invoke a flood. In their own words, once aquatic insects are trapped in the tree resin: ‘The pond then dries out in the summer, and a flood brings sediment to cover the forest floor, so the resin piece becomes well conserved [later turning into amber].’2 And of course the catastrophic global Flood would have vastly multiplied the effect of Schmidt and Dilcher’s handsaw. For example, you would expect that uprooted trees, smashing against each other in the swirling currents and waves, would lose their bark and release copious quantities of tree resin. While still fluid, the resin would have enveloped both aquatic and terrestrial organisms displaced from their usual habitat by the floodwaters. When you consider the myriad amber fossils found worldwide, 7 isn’t it obvious that lots of water was needed, right around the world—a very big flood, in other words. No wonder then that many amber fossils even contain ‘whole drops of water’ 2 and ‘bubbles’7,8 of air!9

Fossil termites (genus Mastotermes) found in amber, allegedly 20 million years old, are so well preserved that researchers could identify that the bacteria in the termites’ digestive system are just the same sorts of bacteria as those found inside Mastotermes termites living today. Generations aplenty—yet no evolution. Dating by decree You could be forgiven for thinking that the dates assigned to amber fossils are a ‘done deal’ given the authoritative-sounding statements in media reports and science journals. Here are some samples from secular references cited in the main text: ‘We are looking back into the amber forest, 40 million years ago … ’.1 ‘ … he found a barnacle, water tubeworms, an oyster and a clam in amber dating to 15–20 million years ago … ’.1 ‘Schmidt says the oldest amber containing any signs of life dates to 220 million years ago … ’.1 ‘The fossils are at least 4 million years old, they [the researchers, including University of New South Wales paleontologist Henk Godthelp] say, possibly much older.’2 However, occasionally the media will let slip a statement from the paleontologists that dating amber washed up on beaches (which is where the vast majority of amber fossils have been found) is not a ‘done deal’ at all: ‘Godthelp says it is difficult to date amber directly and the researchers are searching for the original rock deposits that would have contained the amber to date it.’2 So how would they date the ‘original rock deposits’? Sedimentary rock is ‘dated’ according to the presence of so-called ‘index fossils’ for which the age is ‘known’. But in fact, the age is not known but assumed—on the basis of an evolutionary timeline as to when those creatures first evolved and when they became extinct. Volcanic rock (which would not contain amber fossils but which might be in the same strata as amber-bearing sedimentary rock) is supposedly ‘dated’ according to radioactive dating methods. But in fact, the dating methods do not lead, but follow— they are always selected to agree with the ‘lead’ ideas as to the suspected (i.e. desired) age of the rocks/fossils in question. In other words, dating by decree, not objective measure.3

Dinosaur herd buried in the Global Flood in Inner Mongolia, China by Tas Walker Published: 14 April 2009(GMT+10)

Figure 1. Location of the fossil site in Inner Mongolia, China An international team of scientists have uncovered graphic evidence of the deadly terror unleashed on a herd of dinosaurs as they were buried under sediment by the rising waters of the Flood in western Inner Mongolia (figure 1).1Dinosaur bones were first discovered at the site, located at the base of a small hill in the Gobi Desert, in 1978 by a Chinese geologist. After about 20 years, a team of Chinese and Japanese scientists recovered the first skeletons, which they named Sinornithomimus, meaning “Chinese bird mimic”.A few years later in 2001, the international team excavated the remains of more than 25 dinosaurs, creating a large quarry in the process as they as they followed the skeletons into the base of the hill. Remarkable excavation As the team carefully mapped the location of the bones and strata that contained them (figure 2), it became clear that the dinosaurs were all within the same layer of mudstone (i.e. the same bedding plane), generally facing the same direction and remarkably well preserved.2 Image from Varricchio et al., ref. 2 Figure 2. Map of some dinosaur remains at the site in Inner Mongolia. Note the skeletal parts have generally remained together indicating that the animals were buried before their remains disintegrated.Most of the dinosaurs were buried in a life-like crouching posture and, even more surprisingly, the limbs of the dinosaurs were plunging down into the underlying mud as deep as 40 cm (figure 3).3 Their hind legs were often still bent indicating that they were struggling to escape. Two of the skeletons were found one right over the other where they apparently fell. This fossil find captures in stone how the dinosaurs perished when they became mired in the mud.The thick layer of mud in which the animals were trapped displayed bedding that was twisted and convoluted4 indicating that the sediment was only recently deposited from flowing water and still soft when it was disturbed. There was an absence of bioturbation (such as burrowing by worms or crustaceans) in the underlying mud,5which also indicated that the mud was only recently deposited.Not only was the thick under layer of sediment recently deposited, but the overlying sediments were deposited soon after the animals were trapped, burying the animals before their soft parts had a chance to rot away. Nearly all the fossil bones were surrounded by a drab, blue-gray halo indicating how far the soft tissue extended (figure 3), and that the carcasses had decomposed after being buried, not before. In addition, gastroliths (stomach stones) were found in the fossilized ribcages of some animals, as well as carbonized stomach contents (figure 3).6 So promptly were the animals buried that the delicate bones in the eye (sclerotic rings) of some animals were preserved. The team interpreted the site as a “catastrophic miring of an immature herd”. Image from Varricchio et al., ref. 2 Figure 3. Fossil skeletons 3 and 4 (see figure 2) recovered from site. Note the bluish-gray halo surrounding all the bones indicating the skeletons were buried with the soft parts in tact. A: Plan view of the two skeletons. Note how they overlap. B: Snout and unusual neck curvature likely indicating death throes. C: Pelvis almost all preserved. D: Gastrolith (stomach stone) mass and carbonized stomach contents within rib cage indicating rapid burial. E:Cross-section of rear leg mired deep in mud and in bent position and F: cross section of foreleg deep in the mud, both indicating catastrophic entrapment. White scale bars are 10 cm.

Noah’s Flood? When I read of such a large herd of animals being frantically trapped in thick mud that was only recently deposited and then rapidly buried by more sediment I immediately think of the Global Flood. The fossil evidence is exactly the sort of thing that you would expect as a result of the global catastrophe. “The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. ” However, the Flood is not an explanation that came to the minds of the paleontologists who excavated the dinosaurs in Inner Mongolia. Consequently, they struggled to explain what they found. Their main problem was that they were looking for a modern environment that corresponds with the evidence but the Flood was a unique event.7 There has been no geological disaster in the last 4,500 years that has come anywhere close to what happened during the Flood. A herd of juveniles Lead author, David Varricchio, assistant professor of paleontology at Montana State University, USA, indicated his surprise at what the team uncovered and alluded to their inability to explain it with a modern environment. “Finding a mired herd is exceedingly rare among living animals”, he said.One problem that the paleontologists encountered is that according to uniformitarianism the fossils layers preserve a living environment that existed at that time. Therefore, the team was surprised that the dinosaurs consisted only of juveniles without any adults or hatchlings present. However, that is perfectly understandable in the Flood catastrophe when animals were fleeing. You would expect the hatchlings to have already perished and the adults to have fled and abandoned the youngsters.In scientific circles these sorts of anomalies are never reported as a problem. Rather, the paleontologists reported this unexpected result as a “new discovery”. They said it was evidence of “distinctive dinosaur sociality” where the immature dinosaurs were left to fend for themselves in juvenile herds while the mature adults were occupied elsewhere with parental care of eggs and hatchlings. What an amazing story. All that mud Another problem for the team was the thickness of the mud in which the dinosaurs were trapped. They suggested the area was a low energy lake environment, which is the standard interpretation that uniformitarians invoke to explain muddy sediments. “The lamination and very thin beds of the intervening unit represent slow deposition under quiet, low-energy conditions and an absence of significant invertebrate or vertebrate bioturbation.” However, recent laboratory experiments have shown that such an automatic interpretation is almost certainly incorrect because mud readily deposits from flowing water.8In order to account for the depth of mud in an area where the animals could be trapped the team claimed the water level of the lake was lowering as a result of drought. That could account for the mud depth in a limited region close to the shore. But it is hard to imagine how, under normal conditions, so many animals could have become trapped together so suddenly in a small area of mud at the edge of a lake. ‘Finding a mired herd is exceedingly rare among living animals’—David Varricchio, assistant professor of paleontology at Montana State University, USA It is also hard to account for the absence of bioturbation in the mud. If you say that worms and crustaceans had not colonized the sediment because the mud had only been recently deposited then you would have to explain what sort of process would deposit half a metre of mud so quickly. And, how could such a thick deposit have been laid down at the edge of a lake? The authors opted to say that the unbioturbated laminae suggested the mud was situated in deeper water. But deeper water would help the animals escape because water would help to support their body weight.Another problem is that the team found mudcracks on the mud, which they also interpreted as indicators of drought. Mudcracks form when mud emerges from the water and has dried for a day or so. How could the mudcracks form on the mud surface if it was in deeper water?This array of evidence that conflicted with their expectations puzzled the team and they once again presented the results as an “exceptional” discovery. However, the thick mud deposit, rapid sedimentation and catastrophic entrapment of the animals are easily explained by the Flood catastrophe. And mud does not need to be exposed above water for mud cracks to form. Shrinkage cracks will form in situ once the overlying sediments have been deposited and the water within the mud is expelled and the mud contracts.9 A desert? These dinosaur fossils were found in the Cretaceous sediments of Inner Mongolia that were interpreted as being deposited on the continent. More specifically they were found in the Ulansuhai Formation of the Upper Cretaceous, which is interpreted as being a desert environment. “Through this period the region experienced an increase in overall aridity and a shift from lacustrine [lake] and fluvial [river] Lower Cretaceous facies [rocks] to predominantly aeolian [desert] dune and associated interdune facies in the Upper Cretaceous.”10 What were these herds of dinosaurs doing in a desert? Where did they get the food then needed? How was such a large herd trapped in mud so quickly in a desert? And how were they buried so quickly in a desert, before the soft flesh had time to rot away and before the skeletons had disintegrated? The fact that sediment was able to accumulate to such a depth over the animals (now at the base of a small hill) indicates that the depth of the water was rising on the continent to provide the necessary accommodation, not falling.So, it was not a desert. Uniformitarian geologists invoke a desert interpretation in an attempt to explain the large thickness of the sandstone strata and the huge sand dunes within the beds. They say it was a desert to hold onto their uniformitarian philosophy that it was like a modern environment and thus try to avoid acknowledging the huge volume of water that must have been necessary, as indicated by the obvious signs of catastrophe within the sand. So they are prepared to propose an explanation where lakes and rivers turn into deserts full of dinosaur herds that become trapped in thick mud and are buried quickly. One wrong interpretation leads to another. Take off the blinkers Blinkers change the way a horse sees the world and the uniformitarian paradigm has a similar effect on scientists. Even though they carefully excavate and document the fossil dinosaurs buried around the world the philosophy of uniformitarianism biases the way they look at the evidence, stops them exploring all the options and controls the sort of explanations they promote.Here in Inner Mongolia in the middle of Asia the historical reality of the Flood explains the new dinosaur finds elegantly. The herd of dinosaurs was a casualty of the enormous watery catastrophe that engulfed the region during the Flood. They were overwhelmed during the first half of the catastrophe as the waters were rising on the earth, while air-breathing, land-dwelling animals were still alive. Sediment continued to accumulate on the continent during this Inundatory stage as the waters continued to rise. Then, when the waters receded from the continents they eroded some of

the overlying material, shaping the landscape, and leaving occasional erosional remnants, such as the small hill where the geologists were able to excavate this dinosaur graveyard. More evidence of the Global Flood, this time from Mongolia by Tas Walker Published: 30 July 2008(GMT+10) Fossilized skeleton of young dinosaur excavated from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia in August, 2006. Head thrown back and tail arched up is typical of death throes. The blue and white scale is 10 cm long. Scientists from the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences in Japan announced that they have successfully recovered an almost complete dinosaur skeleton from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.1 It is a theropod dinosaur called Tarbosaurus (terrifying lizard), which is similar to Tyrannosaurus rex. There is some debate in paleontological circles about whether the Asian Tarbosaurus really is different or whether it should be assigned to the same genus as T. rex.The fossil was about 2 metres (7 ft) long and is interpreted as being a young animal, about five years old. Adults of the species are believed to grow up to 12 metres (40 ft) long and weigh up to a tonne. The skeleton was buried in sandstone, and a huge chunk containing the skeleton was excavated in August 2006 and returned to the museum. Subsequent work revealed that the skeleton was remarkably complete with only neck bones and the tip of the tail missing.Takuji Yokoyama, one of the organizers of project and a member of the museum, said the animal was exceptionally well preserved. ‘We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to be a complete set of all the important parts.’Well preserved fossils are considered remarkable today because when animals die they quickly disintegrate, either by decay or predators or both.This fossil was preserved in anything but a natural position. In fact, it is frozen in the classic opisthotonic posture (see figure), with its head thrown back and its tail arched up. This is considered to be the result of traumatic muscle spasms as the animal was dying —its death throes.2 What happened to the young, strong dinosaur? Couldn’t it swim? What happened to the young, strong dinosaur? Couldn’t it swim? The scientists from the museum did not offer any speculation about the cause of this animal’s death or the environment in which it lived.Tarbosaurus is typically described as living in a humid floodplain, criss-crossed by river channels.3 The reason for this interpretation is that their fossils are found in strata that point to an energetic depositional environment (e.g. cross bedded sandstone—see figure) that cover extensive areas of the continent. These strata usually contain abundant vegetation as well as marine and terrestrial fossils. It’s the same story all over the world. AP/Hayashibara Museum of National Sciences, HO Scientists excavate skeleton of dinosaur buried quickly in sandstone sediment in Mongolia during the Flood about 4,500 years ago.The problem paleontologists have with trying to account for these dinosaur fossils is that they are trained to look at the evidence from only one particular worldview, called uniformitarianism. In that worldview the past is assumed to have been similar to the present, i.e. that the geologic processes and environments in the past were similar to today’s.That is why the scientists said the dinosaur was in a geological layer deposited about 70 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period. The idea of millions of years comes directly from theassumption of uniformitarianism—slow-and-gradual deposition.However, the evidence points to the animals being overwhelmed and buried quickly. Quickly means it did not take much time. So the evidence itself washes away the idea of millions of years. The Japanese paleontologists don’t appear to have considered that their dinosaur was buried in a global watery catastrophe—the Global Flood just 4,500 years ago. However, I think they would be pleasantly surprised if they did try interpreting the evidence through a non-western worldview—like their ancient Chinese one for example. Even the pictographs that make up their ancient scripts are filled with clues that their ancestors were familiar with the Flood. (See Noah’s Ark hidden in the ancient Chinese characters and The sixteen grandsons of Noah). And they were familiar with dinosaurs too, except that they called them dragons, naming one-year-in-12 in their honour. Watery catastrophe deduced from huge Ceratopsian dinosaur graveyard by Michael J. Oard Ceratopsia (from Greek, keras, kerat-=horn, opsis=face) is the suborder of large horned ornithischian (‘bird-hipped’) dinosaurs of which Triceratops is the largest, commonest and most famous. Evolutionary paleontologists ‘date’ ceratopsians to the Creataceous period. Their remains are common in Alberta, Canada. They are sometimes found abundantly in bone beds, defined as a stratigraphically and geographically constrained bed that contains more than one individual. Occasionally, bone beds contain hundreds

of dinosaurs. Centrosaurus is one of the main types of ceratopsian dinosaurs with more than two dozen bone beds known in southern Alberta. (The taxonomic history ofCentrosaurus, as well as other ceratopsians, is convoluted.1 It is possible that ceratopsians represent one or very few kinds with a significant amount of variety.) Figure 1. One large Centrosaurus bone bed, called BB43, is located along the Red Deer River of Dinosaur Provincial Park, about 50 km north of Brooks, Alberta. One large Centrosaurus bone bed, called BB43 has been known for a long time. The bed is located in the badlands along the Red Deer River of Dinosaur Provincial Park, about 50 km north of Brooks, Alberta. An early investigation of BB43 surmised that at least 38 Centrosaurus dinosaurs were killed in a ‘yet-to-be-explained disaster’. It’s believed likely that they were caught in a flood while trying to cross a river. 2This bone bed has been extensively studied over the years, and a recent paper in the journal Palaios adds much more detail.3 Catastrophic death by drowning About 93% of the BB43 fossils are Centrosaurus ceratopsian dinosaurs. In other words, the bone bed is almost monospecific.4 An analysis of the bones further indicates that the dinosaurs died elsewhere and were later transported into their final resting place. Much taphonomic information supports this deduction (taphonomy, from Greektaphos=death, is the study of how an organism or part thereof became a fossil). For instance, the fossils are typically concentrated along bedding planes and/or erosional unconformities with the suggestion of a 5-metre deep by 60-metre wide channel. The long bones are current aligned. Most of the remains are fragmentary, broken and fractured. The material represents a lag deposit with most small and light skeletal elements missing and being primarily composed of portions of large adult-sized skeletal elements. Carnivorous dinosaur teeth, especially from the theropod Albertosaurus, and very rare tooth marks on the bones have been found in the bone bed. Thus, the condition of the bones indicates modification by an external force, probably in a high-energy watery flow as the sedimentology of the contained sandstone indicates. The particular bone bed under discussion is found in water-laid sandstone with east-southeast directed paleocurrent indicators.There is no evidence for prolonged weathering in the form of desiccation of the bones. No bacterial or fungal degradation nor insect borings have been found. Evidence for disease and drought are absent.5 Death, transport and burial seems to be very rapid. Transport was not far as bone abrasion by water was light. The authors suggest mass death by drowning upstream with subsequent reworking: ‘The sedimentological evidence and taphonomic interpretations presented here indicate that the bonebed 43 fossil assemblage was reworked from an, as yet, unknown upstream position and facies. Although the initial and subsequent emplacement of the bones was rapid (taking place during the waning flood phase), the depositional context indicates a multi-phase reworking history for all the fossils.’4 The idea of a waning flood phase is deduced from the fining upward sequence from the lag of dinosaur bones to fine sandstone.The most amazing character of the bone bed is that it is very extensive. Based on the small portions excavated, it is likely the concentration of dinosaurs in the ground between excavation sites is evenly distributed. This suggests hundreds to thousands of dinosaurs in BB43. If another bone bed discovered 400 m upstream is included, the number of Centrosaurus dinosaurs in this area is estimated at tens of thousands!4 This dinosaur graveyard represents a huge watery catastrophe that rapidly buried tens of thousands of large dinosaurs: ‘The data presented in this study support a catastrophic death for the original Centrosaurus assemblage … a catastrophic death by drowning for the centrosaurs preserved in BB43 is a likely scenario.’5 Figure 2. Postulated area of briefly exposed Flood sediments in western North America based on dinosaur eggs, tracks and bonebeds.The authors add that other bonebeds in southern Alberta show the same pattern of preservation as BB43, indicating a number of large watery catastrophes. Large dinosaur graveyards in Montana, Wyoming, and other areas of the Earth also provide evidence for either a watery catastrophe or a waterborne mass flow.6 One exception to this conclusion was the Mongolian dinosaurs that were claimed to have died and been buried in a sand storm. On further analysis, these dinosaurs were likely buried in a waterborne mass flow.7 Uniformitarian scientists predictably interpret all these dinosaur graveyards as evidence of river flood processes. But the number of dinosaurs, the state of preservation indicating rapid burial, reworking and fossilization; the monospecific nature of many bone beds; and the lack of babies or young juveniles in practically all bone beds indicate a watery catastrophe larger than river floods. Consistent with the Flood The evidence is more consistent with the Flood in which the catastrophe would cause dinosaurs of the same kind or species to herd up, like elk when the weather turns cold, and then to be killed together during the onslaught of the Flood. These bone beds, generally found in the same geographical region as dinosaur eggs and tracks on thousands of feet of previously laid Flood sediments, imply areas of temporarily exposed sediments during the early Flood. Figure 2 shows the generalized area of exposed sediments or a series of shoals that contain many dinosaur bone beds plus the evidence of live dinosaurs in the form of eggs and tracks. 8,9 Flood sediments could easily be exposed for relatively short periods by at least four mechanisms that would be operating during the Flood: 1) tides, sometimes with large amplitude; 2) tsunamis; 3) upward vertical tectonics after rapid deposition of sediments, and 4) the dynamics of ocean currents on shallow continents in a globally flooded Earth. 10 The dead dinosaurs on this exposed sediment could be scavenged by carnivorous dinosaurs, since their teeth are often found in the bone beds of western North America. Other dinosaurs would lay eggs on these temporarily exposed Flood sediments. Dinosaur tracks would be expected also.As the floodwaters returned, the dead dinosaurs would be catastrophically reworked into the bone beds we discover today. The lack of babies or young juveniles, except in nesting areas, can be explained by dinosaurs fleeing the encroaching floodwaters and abandoning their young. Water current winnowing could explain the lack of young dinosaurs, as postulated in the Centrosaurus bone bed described in this article, but one would expect that the products of the winnowing would be found buried somewhere, but apparently no such bone bed has been found. If it were a river flood, there are always slackwater areas and eddies where the bones of young dinosaurs should have been deposited. It is more

likely there were few if any young dinosaurs in the original death assemblage. Since fossilization, especially of a large dinosaur, not to speak of thousands of them in a bone bed, is a very rare event, 4 the Flood provides a plausible mechanism for rapid fossilization.

Can’t see the Flood for the sediment by Tas Walker National Geographic News has just announced another massive dinosaur fossil find in Spain.1 Their report reminded me of a children’s picture book I was looking at the other day. Various objects were hidden in each picture and we were supposed to find them. Sometimes it was easy. But sometimes you could look for ages and still not see the object. In fact, you could be looking right at it but still not recognize it.The report reminds me of that book. The fossil ‘graveyard’ in eastern Spain preserves a vivid story of a watery catastrophe but the scientists don’t seem to see the implications. It speaks of animals buried by an unusual, largescale flood. But although the report describes the devastation in graphic detail, the earth-shattering significance seems to waft over their heads. The paleontologists don’t register a spark of recognition.The fossil site was first uncovered in June 2007 by workmen building a high-speed rail link through Lo Hueco, near the city of Cuenca. So, what is significant as far as the Flood is concerned?First, according to the experts excavating the site, they have recovered some 8,000 fossils to date. Of course, a fossil may represent only part of the animal, such as a limb, a rib or a skull. But 8,000 fossils is a huge number to be buried in one location. That is why the report describes the site as ‘spectacular’, ‘massive’ and a ‘graveyard’.Second, the remains represent a huge variety of different animals. They include eight different species of dinosaur, including three types of long-necked sauropods called titanosaurs. Paleontologist Darren Naish from the University of Portsmouth in the UK said, ‘Having so many dinosaurs together at the same site is a big deal.’The bulk of the other animals buried were turtles and crocodiles. There were also many smaller fossils such as freshwater clams, individual teeth, bony plates called osteoderms, and fish scales.Third, some of the animals buried were large. One titanosaur was described as ‘massive’. A two-legged dromaeosaur was said to be 1.8 metres (6 ft) long.Fourth, all the fossils were found grouped together in clay and silt sediments. Sediment speaks of water, of course. Further, to have so manyanimals fossilized would mean that they would have to die at about the same time. What killed them all? And to have them all buried in the same place would mean that they would have to be collected together from wherever they died. What collected them? José Luis Sanz, paleontologist from Autonomous University in Madrid, who was in charge of the dig, said, ‘Flooding maybe was responsible for the accumulation of the carcasses.’That sounds like some flood! How often do turtles and crocodiles drown in a flood? Sanz did not seem to register any sort of a hint that anything unusual had happened at this fossil site.I think their unquestioning belief in millions of years blinds researchers to the obvious. It’s a cultural blind-spot. They imagine these dinosaurs are 70 million years old, so how could their burial have any connection to the Flood? But who measured that age? What observable, repeatable time standard was the measurement calibrated against? And if the fossils were so well preserved and so quickly buried, how could the episode have taken millions of years?These reports of dinosaur graveyards and other fossil evidence that shout ‘watery catastrophe’ are becoming so regular. (See for example: Massive graveyard of parrot-beaked dinosaurs in Mongolia andTerrible lizards trapped by terrible Flood.) But like the children’s picture book, the reports predictably don’t mention the significance of what they are describing. Not only can’t they see it but they are not even looking. Terrible lizards trapped by terrible Flood by Tas Walker Published: 5 June 2007 (GMT+10) This is the pre-publication version which was subsequently revised to appear in Creation 30(2):16–17. Theropod dinosaur A trail of fossilized claw marks found in northern Spain reveals the desperation of animals struggling to escape drowning in the Flood.Ruben Ezquerra and four other researchers describe in the journalGeology a large theropod dinosaur battling against a strong current in deep water, trying to maintain its course.1 They reported a trackway of 12 footprints preserved in sandstone. The series of S-shaped scratch marks picture a beast clawing at the sand on the bottom as it

pushed through water about 3 m (10 ft) deep. It only left claw marks because its weight was mostly supported by the water as it struggled to swim against the flow. Ripple marks preserved around the tracks confirm the direction of the current and the depth of the water. From Ezquerra, et al, Ref. 1 The 12 claw prints. Those from the left foot align with the track way but those of the right foot are pushing to the side as the dinosaur fought against the current. Each footprint had two or three long, slender grooves cut by the dinosaur’s rear claws as it thrashed on tip-toe (figure). Its left foot was pushing forward, scratching grooves in the direction of its movement. Its right foot was pushing sideways as it fought against the current, leaving marks at an angle to its movement. These tracks add to the hordes of dinosaur footprints already found in the Cameros Basin (La Rioja, Spain). Of the 10,000 prints most belong to theropods although many are by sauropods. Dinosaur trackways are found all over the world and they almost always run in straight lines, like these ones in Spain. Fossil trackways are distinctively different from the meandering tracks left by animals when grazing, and they indicate the animals were fleeing from a common threat in the same direction (see In the footsteps of giants). That the footprints were preserved at all indicates the dinosaurs were engulfed by abnormal conditions. Today footprints are quickly obliterated, especially on a beach or in a strong current. But in the sandstone in Spain even the delicate features of the scratches were preserved, which means that sediment covered the tracks (and the ripple marks) soon after the dinosaur struggled past. Ripple marks frozen in time The flowing water was laden with sand and silt at the time, and this was deposited in layers as the water level rose. There are more than 2.5 m of sandstone strata in the immediate area, and, as well as the footprints, they contain current ripple marks and underwater sand dunes.All this evidence for catastrophe contradicts the age assigned to the fossil in the report. The date of 125 million years assumes the sediment was laid down at an unimaginably slow rate. However, rapid sedimentation in deep flowing water is more consistent with the global Flood that occurred 4,500 years ago—especially when we consider what eventually happened to the animals scrambling from the area.The stampeding animals did not reach safety but perished as the floodwaters continued rising. The remains of many dinosaurs have been found buried in the north of Spain in waterlaid sediments, now hardened into rock.For example, Science journal described in December 2006 a new sauropod dinosaur called Turiasaurus riodevensus,2 named after the area and village where its fossilized remains were found. Up to 38 metres long and 48 tons in weight, it’s estimated to be the largest dinosaur yet found in Europe. Altogether some 70 fossil pieces were recovered, representing about a quarter of its skeleton. It was buried quickly, preventing it from being scavenged. And it was not the only animal that perished that way. There were other sauropods, as well as theropods, fish, turtles and crocodile-like reptiles, all fossilized in the area. They were victims of the humongous watery catastrophe that affected both land and sea, and inundated the entire globe.