Improbable Fossils Defy Evolution

New fossil finds demonstrate how Darwinians adjust their story around surprises they didn’t predict.

Fish

“Fish fossil upends scientists’ view of jaw evolution,” shouts Nature in a piece captioned, “Specimen suggests that people and ancient fish have more in common than previously thought.” Anna Nowogrodski tries to make a fossil placoderm (an armored fish) into a transitional form, but there are problems. Evolutionists did not predict the traits in this fossil. In fact, they thought the opposite.

Scientists had thought that placoderm jaws were only very distantly related to the three-part jaw found in modern bony fish and land vertebrates, including people. This was because the bones in placoderm jaws generally sit further inside the animals’ mouths than do human jawbones, and they don’t contribute to the outer structure of the face, says Per Ahlberg, a palaeontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden and a co-author of the study.

But Qilinyu has bones halfway between an ancient placoderm jaw and a modern jaw. “They contribute to the face, but the bits inside the mouth look suspiciously like” placoderm jaw bones, says Ahlberg. This rewrites the previous understanding that placoderm jaws and modern jaws evolved completely independently.

It’s inconsistent to say that a fossil “upends scientists’ view of jaw evolution” and then turn around and claim it “has filled in a gaping hole in how researchers thought the vertebrate jaw evolved.”

Bird

Early Cretaceous birds were still evolving from dinosaurs in the common evolutionary story. They weren’t supposed to have advanced features like a two-chambered stomach and a gizzard. But now, Laura Geggel writes in Live Science, “Ancient Bird Coughed Up ‘Fishy’ Pellet 120 Million Years Ago.” Her article is accompanied by an artist conception of a very modern-looking feathered flyer that apparently ate fish. The evidence—a gizzard pellet from China embedded with fish bones—is dated by evolutionists at 150 million years old, the “oldest known” pellet yet found. Lead author Min Wang explains why this is surprising:

“The digestive system of living birds are characterized by a two chambered-stomach with a muscular gizzard capable of compacting indigestible matter into a cohesive pellet, and efficient antiperistalsis,” the process of “coughing up” the pellet, Wang said. “Our discovery suggests that all these features are present in some early Cretaceous birds … [and] thus key features of modern birds’ digestive system occurred earlier than we thought.”

Frog

Laura Geggel also reported in Live Science an even older fossil with soft tissue present: an extinct amphibian (like a frog) dated to the Ordovician and said to be 295 million years old. Though tiny (4 cm long), the creature was “immaculately preserved” in German stone. It was found 15 years ago, but was only recently was studied in detail by Johan Gren of Lund University and colleagues.

The upper half of the body of this 295-million-year-old amphibian was exceptionally well preserved, the researchers found. For instance, most of the skull and braincase are present, as are several vertebrae, one of its front limbs, part of its lower jaw and some of its soft tissues, including a blackish film within its left eye socket, Gren said….

High-powered microscopes revealed a preserved layer of soft tissues outlining the amphibian’s body, and computed tomography (CT) provided the scientists with a 3D image of the fossil, Gren said.

The unpublished find was announced Oct 26 at a meeting at Lund University. It’s not clear from the article if the “blackish film” and “layer of soft tissues” is original biological material, but what else could it be? If it is, the fossil adds to a growing list of soft tissue evidence that challenges long ages. Nothing biological should survive for one million years, let alone 295 million years.

Whale

“Exceptionally preserved delicate baleen microstructures” from a whale is described in Geology. Found in Peru, where many other whales have been uncovered en masse, this one had to be buried quickly. “A rapid formation of the concretion was fundamental for fossilization,” the authors say. The Miocene creature apparently had the same diet as modern whales. Here’s their story: “We suggest that the whale foundered in a soft sediment chemically favorable to rapid dolomite precipitation, allowing the preservation of delicate structures.” Does that happen anywhere today?

For 15 years now, we have shown often how the Darwinians repair their idol. Every time something appears out of order, they say it “evolved earlier than thought.” Every time their predictions fail, they turn the new findings into props for Charlie. Every time soft tissue turns up that cannot last long, they say, “Well gollllllly, I guess soft tissue can last 295 million years.” Darwin has more rescuers than swimmers. It’s impossible to falsify Darwin, because any time he sinks, the lifeguards swarm over the corpse and breathe into his gray mouth, pumping his chest to make it seem like his heart is still beating. His defenders are worse than Soviet communists. At least those totalitarians didn’t pretend the embalmed body of Lenin was still alive.