Evolutionists Call Example of Extreme Stasis “Evolution”

Evolution means nothing at all if it means an
organism can stay the same for 540 million years.

The notorious Cambrian explosion – a fossil fact that falsifies Darwinism – comes up in a press release from the University of Toronto that makes the Cambrian explosion look tame by comparison. A complex alga pops into existence and never changes. It looks the same as modern ones.

Three-dimensional fossil algae more than 541 million years old reveal modern-looking ancestry of the plant kingdom (University of Toronto via Phys.org, 20 Sept 2022).

This tiny fossil from China, half a millimeter in width, is causing a lot of excitement in Toronto, Canada. Evolutionists there see a new crystal ball in which to visualize Darwin’s hoary face.

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of algae called Protocodium sinense that predates the origin of land plants and modern animals and provides new insight into the early diversification of the plant kingdom.

The evolutionists say this tiny sphere dates to the Ediacaran period, over 540 million Darwin Years ago, when algae like this should not yet have “emerged” on the evolutionary scene. Well, if Darwinism is true, surely it must have changed a great deal in such vast a swath of time.

“Protocodium belongs to a known lineage of green algae and has a surprisingly modern architecture, showing that these algae were already well diversified before the end of the Ediacaran period,” says co-author Cédric Aria, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto and based at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). “Its discovery touches the origin of the entire plant kingdom and puts a familiar name on the organisms that preceded the Cambrian explosion over half a billion years ago, when the world’s first modern ecosystems emerged.”

Cedric omits the embarrassing details that some 18 animal phyla appeared in the Cambrian explosion without ancestors. Even accepting the evolutionary timeline, they “emerged” on the scene in a geological eye blink, comparable to 2 minutes on a 24-hour clock or one step on a football field.

Green algae, or chlorophytes, come in a wide variety, from single cells to filaments and colonies.

More Inconvenient Truths

This fossil creates another problem for evolution. It does away with an excuse for the lack of transitional forms. Some evolutionists had explained away the lack of transitional forms by postulating that the strata were unable to fossilize soft organisms before hard shells “emerged.” Well, here’s a soft little green alga with no hard shell, showing exquisite preservation in 3-D.

Protocodium fossils are small spheres half a millimeter wide, like large grains of pollen, covered by a multitude of smaller domes. Thanks to the 3D examination, the researchers determined the domed surface to be part of a complex, single cell that contains thin strands called siphons. This morphology is typical of certain modern single-celled seaweeds that contain many nuclei.

Can somebody explain where the evolution is? This little alga already had the machinery to convert light into food. That requires a host of irreducibly complex molecular machines, including the electron respiratory chain and ATP synthase, and all the genetic codes to build their parts and assemble them.

Green algae are photosynthetic organisms, which means they convert light and carbon dioxide into sugars and oxygen. They were therefore likely important foundations of Earth’s early ecosystems, and the study suggests green algae were already established in the world’s shallow waters as carbon dioxide recyclers and oxygen producers before the Cambrian explosion.

Apart from its smaller size, Protocodium appears surprisingly identical to the modern Codium, a type of green algae found in many seas worldwide.

Discoveries like this require modifications to the evolutionary timeline. When this happens, evolutionists simply stretch things and move them around. The timeline is extremely flexible. That makes it unfalsifiable. The secret is to adopt the “evolutionary perspective.”

From an evolutionary perspective, green algae like the ancient Protocodium and land plants share a common ancestor that was thought to be about one billion to one billion and a half years old, but now likely older—the assignment of Protocodium so close to a modern group pushes back in time the history of the entire plant kingdom.

So how do they explain this example of extreme stasis from “an evolutionary perspective”? Darwinians are never at a loss for a story to explain away falsifying anomalies. This alga found a comfortable little niche, and saw no need for further change.

“It’s very telling that such an organism has remained practically unchanged over at least 540 million years,” says Aria. “By the Ediacaran, evolution had driven it towards a stable adaptive zone—it’s been comfortable there since, and more than that, quite successful.

Picture this green algae lounging under an umbrella on the beach, comfortable and pampered. ‘What more need do I have of evolution?”, it thinks. Asteroids crash, volcanoes erupt, continents move, everything else evolves into dinosaurs, whales and people, but Protocodium sits there happy and comfortable for millions…zzzzzz of years…zzzzzzz.

Evolution drove it there and dropped it off into the Resort of Perpetual Stasis. Ahhh, the life.

What a scam these Darwinians have created. No matter what facts turn up, they can incorporate them into their tale. Anything that happens fits comfortably into the bin labeled “Stuff Happens.” It’s like the secretary who put every document in the file cabinet into one folder labeled, “Filed” or the Dodo bird in Malice in Blunderland who said, “Everybody wins, and all must have prizes.” With creationists excluded by fiat, the Kingdom of Darwin only has one category left: “It evolved.”

For some real science free from Darwinian assumptions, read Dr Margaret Helder’s explanation of problems with algae evolution (21 Feb 2020).