Evolution Impossible (13 page)

The fossil evidence that we have observed to date refutes the long-age uniformitarian model and powerfully supports the biblical and other catastrophic Flood narratives preserved in ancient traditions around the world. More fossil evidence that evolution has not occurred is discussed in the following chapter.

1
. C.O. Dunbar, “Fossil,”
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1960), Vol. 5, p. 473. See also, I.P. Tolmachoff, “The Carcasses of the Mammoth and Rhinoceros Found in the Frozen Ground of Siberia,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,
vol. 23 (1929): p. 11–74.

2
. I.T. Taylor,
In the Minds of Men
(Toronto, Canada: TFE Publishing, 1984), p. 66.

3
. James Ussher,
The Annals of the World,
1658, revised and updated by L. Pierce and M. Pierce (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2003), p. 22.

4
. C. Lyell,
Principles of Geology,
tenth edition (London: John Murray, 1867), Vol. 1, p. 361.

5
. Taylor,
In the Minds of Men,
p. 82–83.

6
. W.M. Tovell,
The Niagara River
(Toronto, Canada: Royal Ontario Museum Publication, 1979), p. 16.

7
. See
http://www.niagaraparks.com/media/geology-facts-figures.html
.

8
. J.L. Kulp, “Geological Time Scale,”
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology,
Vol. 6, p. 135.

9
. E.J. Tarbuck and F.K. Lutgens,
Earth Science,
12th edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, International, 2009), p. 10, 328.

10
. See, for example, E.P. Solomon, L.R. Berg, and D.W. Martin,
Biology,
seventh edition (Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2005), p. 389–401.

11
. A.A. Snelling,
Earth’s Catastrophic Past
(Dallas TX: Institute for Creation Research, 2009), Vol. 2, p. 487–577.

12
. Ibid., p. 571.

13
. Ibid., p. 543–544.

14
. W.A. Cobban, “Cretaceous,”
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology,
Vol. 3, p. 542.

15
. J.C. Avise, S.P. Hubbell, and F.J. Ayala, “In the Light of Evolution II: Biodiversity and Extinction,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
, vol. 105, suppl. 2008, p. 11453–11457. See:
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/suppl.1/11453
.

16
.
http://park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/extincmenu.html
.

17
. John Morris and Steven A. Austin,
Footprints in the Ash: The Explosive Story of Mount St. Helens
(Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2005), p. 52–53, 62, 74–76.

18
. R.K. Bambach, “Phanerozoic Biodiversity Mass Extinctions,”
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences,
vol. 34 (2006): p. 127–155.

19
.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8502076.stm
.

20
. I.T. Taylor,
In the Minds of Men
(Toronto, Canada: TFE Publishing, 1984), p. 88–89.

21
. M.H. Schweitzer, L. Chiappe, A.C. Garrido, et al., “Molecular Preservation in Late Cretaceous Sauropod Dinosaur Eggshells,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,
vol. 272, 2005, p. 775–784.

22
. C. Nielsen-Marsch, “Biomolecules in Fossil Remains, Multidisciplinary Approach to Endurance,”
The Biochemist
(June 2002): p. 12–14.

23
. E.M. Golenberg, D.E. Giannasi, M.T. Clegg, et al.,
Letters to Nature,
vol. 344 (April 12, 1990): p. 656–658.

24
. S. Kim, D.E. Soltis, P.S. Soltis, and Y. Suh, “DNA Sequences from Miocene Fossils: An
NDHF
Sequence and an
RBCL
Sequence of Persea Pseudocarolinesis (Lauraceae),”
American Journal of Botany
, vol. 9 (2004): p. 615–620.

25
. L.R. Gurley, J.G. Valdez, W.D. Spall, et al., “Proteins in the Fossil Bone of the Dinosaur, Seismosaurus,”
Journal of Protein Chemistry,
vol. 10 (February 1991): p.75–90.

26
. M.H. Schweitzer, M. Marshall, K. Carron, et al., “Heme Compounds in Dinosaur Trabecular Bone,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
, vol. 94, 1997, p. 6291–6296.

27
. M.H. Schweitzer, J.L. Wittmeyer, J.R. Horner, and J.K. Toporski, “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in
Tyrannosaurus rex,
”
Science,
vol. 307 (2005): p. 1952–1955; and M.H. Schweitzer, J.L. Wittmeyer, and J.R. Horner, “Soft Tissue and Cellular Preservation in Vertebrate Skeletal Elements from the Cretaceous to the Present,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society B
, vol. 274, 2007, p. 183–197.

28
. G. Embery, A.C. Milner, R.J. Waddington, et al., “Identification of Proteinaceous Material in the Bone of the Dinosaur Iguanodon,”
Connect Tissue Res,
vol. 44, suppl. 1 (2003): p. 41–46.

29
. M.H. Schweitzer, W. Zheng, C.L. Organ, et al., “Biomolecular Characterisation and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B.
Canadensis,
”
Science
, vol. 324 (May 1, 2009): p. 626–631.

30
. C. Walker and D. Ward,
Smithsonian Handbooks: Fossils
(New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2002), p. 44.

31
. Ibid., p. 56–65; see also:
http://www.palaeos.com/Invertebrates/Molluscs/Mollusca.htm
.

32
. W.C. Bell, “Cambrian,”
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology,
Vol. 2, p. 425.

33
. Ibid., p. 426.

34
. H. Mutvei, Y-B. Zhang, and E. Dunca, “Late Cambrian Plectronocerid Nautiloids and Their Role in Cephalopod Evolution,”
Palaeontology,
vol. 50, no. 6 (2007): p. 1327–1333.

35
. Carl Werner,
Living Fossils — Evolution: The Grand Experiment,
Vol. 2, (Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press, 2008). This work contains an extensive collection of photographs of fossils from the dinosaur era together with their living forms.

36
. University of Adelaide press release, December 10, 2009; see
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news37301.html
.

Chapter 6

The Missing Fossils of Evolutionary Intermediates — Evidence That Evolution Never Occurred

One of the important claims of the proponents of evolution is that the fossil record provides perhaps the most direct and extensive evidence documenting the occurrence of evolution.
¹
We are told that there are preserved remains of organisms that demonstrate the intermediate steps showing genetically simple ancient life forms slowly changing over time to form an increasing number of genetically more complex or genetically different organisms. For example, Dr. Richard Dawkins, in his latest book on the evidence for evolution, describes the evolutionary scenario that all life originated in the sea, then at various stages sea creatures evolved into land creatures, which eventually evolved into the reptiles, insects, birds, and mammals we see today. He claims, “Fortunately, the transitional stages of our exodus, as fish emerged on to the land, are beautifully documented in the fossil record.”
²
But are they, really? Let us consider the fossil evidence more closely.

The current university text
Evolution
reminds us that evolutionary processes are based on mutations, and that the key processes in evolution involve random genetic drift, the flow of genes from one place to another, and natural selection.
³
For a fish-type creature with gills and fins to evolve into a land-dwelling vertebrate (backbone)-type creature with lungs, legs, and feet and a weight-bearing shoulder and pelvic structure requires an enormous amount of new purposeful genetic information to be formed by chance mutations. That is, when the gamete cells of a male and female fish combine to form a new living fish embryo, that embryo has to have DNA carrying new extra genetic information that will produce a small mutation, giving it an advantage in survival. This is an essential requirement for progression toward the development of lungs or feet and so on. As we have noted in earlier chapters, not only is there no known mechanism for producing new meaningful genetic information, but also it has never been observed to occur.

Now the change from gills to lungs involves an enormous amount of new genetic code in the form of thousands and thousands of new information-encoding nucleotide bases. These new genes not only have to somehow be formed by mutations, but these random chemical events have to somehow fortuitously accumulate over time to eventually produce the first working lung. The evolution from gills has to involve genetic code for new physical structures and body cavities, new membranes, new muscles, new blood vessels, new nervous system pathways, and new blood chemistry with its associated new molecules and their required new enzyme pathways. The new code needed to produce these molecules is so complex that the best teams of scientists cannot write new code. In other words, the smartest human minds today could not write a code to produce a new type of working lung in a fish.

Simultaneously, in order for the evolved lungs to be put to advantage and to enable the creature to leave the sea and move about on land, the first weight-bearing pelvic structure and legs and feet have to evolve. This requires even more new genetic code to form as small step mutations of new code in each successive mutated embryo. Consequently, millions of random, undirected processes have to produce totally new combinations of millions of nucleotide bases that will encode for new bone structures, new joints, new muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, nerve pathways, and connections in the brain to be able to control these new appendages.

The usual evolutionary explanation for the rise of amphibians with legs indicates that fish who could use their fins to drag themselves from one swamp to another or from a drying up lake to another deeper one could survive droughts better and so on.
⁴
It is proposed that a series of fin mutations eventually produced fins that could enable the fish to propel itself along the ground and that further mutations over time developed leg and foot bones that could support the weight of the body of a fish. These sorts of mutations are not observed in fish today, and environmental changes and physical activity do not generate new genetic codes. Physical factors can up or down regulate existing genes, but they cannot produce the new genetic code to grow the new bones. Also, since the amount of new code required to produce the new bone structures and associated limb anatomy changes is very large and the evolutionary model says that this change occurred in many small steps, we should expect to find much fossil evidence of these small changes called transitional forms in the fossil-bearing strata. However, these theoretical transitional fossils have not been found, and even evolutionists admit that the absence of fossilized fish gradually becoming amphibians is a conspicuous gap in the fossil record.
⁵

Also, some of the transitions should be easy to spot in the fossils we find. For example, in bony skeleton fish, the head and shoulder girdle constitute a single mechanical unit that is firmly attached to the vertebral column. However, in amphibians the head is not connected to the shoulder girdle, which allows easier feeding and movement on land. Despite many fish and amphibian fossil finds, no fossil evidence of the incremental detachment of the head from the shoulder girdle has been found.
⁶

Sometimes it is claimed that the extinct amphibian
Ichthyostega
is an example of a transitional species between fish and amphibian vertebrate.
⁷
As I have mentioned, fish and amphibians are very different in their bone structures and many other features.
Ichthyostega
has some bone structures similar to an extinct type of bony skeleton fish called
Eusthenopteron
. But whereas these fish have fins with small bones embedded in muscle with no attachment to the backbone, the
Ichthyostega
has distinct feet and legs with its pelvic bones attached to the backbone. Also, it has a different shaped head and a long tail compared to the fish species. In fact,
Ichthyostega
is fully an amphibian vertebrate, not an intermediate transitional mutant.