Monkey Sea, Monkey Raft
In order to maintain Darwin Year orthodoxy, evolutionists imagine rafting across the Atlantic.
Rafting on a wide and wild ocean (Science Magazine). Mark Godinot writes,
Scientists first met with skepticism the notion that small mammals crossed large oceanic barriers to populate faraway lands. However, progress in phylogenetics during the 1980s forced researchers to admit that the excellent North American fossil record showed no relatives of South American caviomorph rodents or platyrrhine (New World) monkeys, and that their closest relatives lived on the Afro-Arabian landmass during the Eocene epoch (56 to 34 million years ago). Therefore, to reach South America, these animals would have had to cross the South Atlantic Ocean—which probably was more than 1500 to 2000 km wide during this period.
Monkey teeth fossils hint several extinct species crossed the Atlantic (The Conversation). They “must have been hardy creatures,” say two women defending the tale of rafting monkeys. But isn’t it exciting to try?
Most mammal fossils are visually unimpressive: a handful of teeth here and a fragment of bone there. Some are not even enough to identify the species they belonged to. But even a tiny fossil found in the right place can raise some really exciting questions about evolution….
Perhaps, like living lemurs, they were physiologically adaptable to harsh environments. Or perhaps they relied on the behavioural flexibility that is so characteristic of living monkeys. However they managed it, surviving a transatlantic crossing suggests these species would have been extremely interesting animals.
Exciting… interesting… dumb. You can’t have monkeys drinking salt water for days as they cross high swells and waves. Why did the currents even go that way? And why don’t we see modern monkeys rafting across the ocean?
Much more believable to consider land bridge dispersals after the Flood, when waters were low and slowly rose to cover the land bridges. This trapped the animals that migrated the farthest.