Australian scientists announced in February the discovery of dozens of fossilized sea turtles that they say have exciting implications for evolution.1 However, the exciting implications seem rather to be against evolution!

The fossils are "believed" to be 110 millions years old. But contrary to evolutionary expectations, they look "basically the same as sea turtles do today."1

Evolutionists have no idea where the sea turtles came from or what they are related to. They just appear in the fossil record (the oldest, a single specimen found in Brazil in 1998, is "dated" at 115 million years), fully formed and fully recognizable. They have since "remained virtually unchanged for over 100 million years," Discovery reports.

How do the evolutionists explain this? The Australian researchers are quoted as saying that the "sea turtles have hit on the winning design … [and] cracked the winning code." Notice how the evolutionists describe the turtles-as if they are highly intelligent, creative, forward-looking engineers, which they are not, of course. Evolution is supposedly based on natural selection and mutations, which are mindless, directionless, blind natural processes.

Not only are these turtle fossils contrary to the theory of perpetual and gradual evolutionary change, they also simultaneously refute the notion of millions of years. It is simply unbelievable that these turtles could remain unchanged for over 100 million years, given that information-degrading mutations are known to accumulate in living things, generation after generation (a consequence of the Curse of Genesis 3).

But these are not the only living fossils that refute evolution and millions of years. Many examples could be cited. Regarding salamander fossils recently found in China, we learn that "Despite its Bathonian age, the new cryptobranchid [salamander] shows extraordinary morphological similarity to its living relatives. This similarity underscores the stasis [no change] within salamander anatomical evolution. Indeed, extant cryptobranchid salamanders can be regarded as living fossils whose structures have remained little changed for over 160 million years."2

Scientists have found from microscopic examination of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) fossils, dated to be 3.5 billion years old, that they are essentially identical to the blue-green algae that are still living today.3 Microscopic algae didn't change over 3.5 billion years of evolution? Who's kidding whom?

All this evidence fits perfectly with the Bible's teaching that these algae, along with the rest of the creation, are only at most about 6,000 years old.

Once again we see evolutionists digging up the evidence that, when removed from the restriction of having to be forced into an evolutionary framework, actually refutes their theories and confirms the truth of the Bible. Thanks, Australian evolutionists-and keep up the good work! http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2005/04/18/fossil-turtles-evolutionists

References

  1. animal.discovery.com/news/afp/20050221/seaturtles.html.
  2. Ke-Qin Gao & Neil H. Shubin, Earliest known crown-group salamanders, Nature 422:428, March 27, 2003.
  3. www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html. This is the website of the Museum of Paleontology at the Univ. of Calif., Berkeley.