Evolutionists Explain Living Fossils

Here’s an old “evolutionary puzzle” to challenge your local Darwinist: explain living fossils. Many living animals and plants were known only from the fossil record, thought to have gone extinct many millions of years ago, only to turn up in a local meat market or remote forest. Science Daily tackled this question in the Nov. 17 issue.¹

Perkins told the story of three famous cases of “Lazarus” species that came forth from the dead: coelacanth, Laotian rock rat, and Wollemi pine. Sifting away the extraneous facts, what was the kernel of evolutionary explanation for these organisms, some of which supposedly spent up to 93 million years of evolutionary time alive and well, without leaving a trace in the rocks? Here are the three leading suggestions:

Many scientists contend that the simultaneous reappearance of so many Lazarus taxa indicates that the fossil record from that era can’t be trusted, says [Margaret] Fraiser [U of Michigan–Milwaukee]. Others suggest that the missing creatures simply became so rare that they weren’t captured in the fossil record. Yet others propose that the creatures survived only in small areas and that their fossils haven’t yet been discovered.

Fraiser and her colleagues put these ideas to the test by surveying fossil counts before and after the Permian extinction. They concluded that the fossil record is trustworthy. Richard Twitchett, a paleoecologist from U of Plymouth, concluded, “These Lazarus taxa must have been somewhere, maybe in [rocks] that paleontologists haven’t sampled yet. Or maybe their fossils have been misidentified or overlooked.”

Perkins did not discuss a related evolutionary puzzle. Why did the living forms look identical to the ancient forms after so many tens of millions of years of evolution?

1.  Sid Perkins, “Back from the Dead?  ‘Resurrections’ of long-missing species lead to revelations,” Science News, Week of Nov. 17, 2007; Vol. 172, No. 20, p. 312.

This is not science; it is religion masquerading as science. They did not even consider the possibility that living fossils falsify long ages and evolutionary theory. But if they want to play the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” game, creationists can, too. If an evolutionist asks you to show you a Precambrian rabbit or Silurian human, show them this story. Of course, we know what the Darwin Party would do if they did find a Precambrian rabbit: they would say, “Well, what do you know? We were wrong!  This rock isn’t Precambrian, it’s Pleistocene!” (cf. 09/19/2007). Have faith, brother, and you will see miracles: Lazarus species rising from the dead.