[Note: I use some old books to document my case to show how long some of this information has been known and to show how long young-earth creationists have ignored it--grm]
The typical young-earth position propounds the idea that the
animals found in the fossil record are the remains of the preflood world,
and lived less than 5,000 years ago. This requires that the young-earth
creationist find ‘living fossils’, animals which are found in the fossil
record in identical form to those found alive today on earth. The interesting
thing is that there are very few candidates for the title living fossil.
Often the young-earth advocates will take paleontological headlines which
say a ‘living fossil’ was found and treat it as if the same animal was found
in ancient strata as lives today. But this is a logical equivocation.
What the paleontologists mean by ‘living fossil’ is not at all what
the anti-evolutionists believe.
When I was a young-earth creationist, I believed in living fossils. Then
I started looking at the details and found that I couldn’t find a single
‘living fossil’ which was actually identical to the ancient form.
These living fossils are "supposedly ancient and long extinct
creatures which have suddenly and unexpectedly turned up living in the modern
world."( Whitcomb and Morris, THE GENESIS FLOOD, p. 176.) As it turns out, there are no living fossils, if one defines
it as a living
plant or animal which is morphologically identical to its fossil counterpart. Many of the "living fossils" are quite dissimilar from the ancient forms.
Whitcomb and Morris cite several of these
cases such as Metasequoia, Coelecanth,
Tuatara and Lepidocaris. We will
examine these cases as well as some
of the other claimed living fossils
such as the horseshoe crab, the Port Jackson shark, Osmundas and Ligula.
Metasequoia milleri is a Metasequoia species found in Eocene deposits of
British Columbia. There are both
histological and pollen morphological differences between the fossil and
living species, M. glyptostroboides.( Thomas N. Taylor, PALEOBOTANY, (St. Louis:
McGraw‑Hill Book Co., 1980), p. 455.)
Ancient
coelacanths are NOT, NOT NOT identical to the modern Latimeria!!!!!!! The
coelecanth was dredged up in 1938 in the Indian Ocean. It is very different than
ancient coelacanths.
Note the size difference:
"Rhabdoderma, a smallish
coelacanth, the size of a large minnow, is quite common in coal deposits of both
Europe and North America. In the
Late Triassic the extremely abundant genus Diplurus mentioned above was
definitely living in freshwater lakes and rivers of North America.
Also, up to this time almost all fossil coelacanths had been small fishes
of less than eight to ten inches). But
one species of Diplurus was much bigger (to fifteen inches)." ~ Keith
Stewart Thompson, "Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth,"
(London: Hutchinson Radius, 1991), p. 87
The modern coelacanth,
Latimeria,
is 4.5 feet long. They are not identical. There is NO LIVING FOSSIL if by that
you mean an animal exactly like the fossil form!!!!!!
Note the difference with the
scales in the 'lung'.
"When Smith found a remnant
of the lung in Latimeria, he identified it by comparison to this median
structure in the fossils and by comparison of both to the median lunglike
structures of other fishes. It was
identical except that it lacked the scales." ~ Keith Stewart Thompson,
"Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth," (London: Hutchinson
Radius, 1991), p. 90
Some coelacanths have very
different fin arrangements:
In the Triassic of Greenland there
is a coelacanth genus Laugia that has a remarkable set of adaptation. Its hind
or pelvic fins have become moved all the way forward and connect with the
shoulder girdle; the pectoral fins accordingly have moved dorsally." ~
Keith Stewart Thompson, "Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth,"
(London: Hutchinson Radius, 1991), p. 88
Of the Tuatara, Lull wrote,
"In
many respects the most interesting relic of all is the tuatara (Hatteria)
resident on certain small islands bordering the mainland of New Zealand -- a Permian type although somewhat modified from its
Paleozoic ancestors."(94)
The Lepidocaris cited by
Whitcomb and Morris is not identical with its Devonian brethren.
The quotation from Ladd (The GENESIS FLOOD, p. 178) indicates that only
the nearest relatives are found in the Devonian.
Thus this creature is a living fossil only because it is similar to but
not identical with the fossil forms.
Ginkgoes
are often claimed to be living
fossils. They also are different.
Klotz writes:
"
The ginkgo, the sequoias, the living cycads, and the Gnetales have changed but
little since geological times." ~ John W. Klotz, Gene, Genesis and
Evolution, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1970), p. 199
But the leaves of those trees
assigned to Ginkgo are less and less like the modern variety the further one
digs into the earth.
"As mentioned above, many of
the fossil leaves assigned to the ginkgo group from the Mesozoic rocks are
rather deeply divided. In a general way this dissection becomes more prominent
the further back we go in the past." Henry N. Andrews, Ancient Plants,
Comstock Publishing, 1947, p. 166
This was the difference I was
referring to. I would not deny that Ginkgo is probably the slowest evolving of
the living fossils. But I would deny that there are no differences.
I would point you to Taylor,
Paleobotany, p. 413. The
ginkgophyte
leaves shown there are quite distinct from the modern variety. I would also note
that the fossil reproductive structures of these plants have not been described
in the literature very often. (p. 412)
Horseshoe
crab
“The
Horseshoe crab, Limulus, according to the geological time scale, dates back as a
genus to Triassic times.
Protolimulus, one of its ancestors, goes well down into
Middle Paleozoic times. Presumably Limulus ahs been unchanged for about 200
million years.” John W. Klotz, Gene, Genesis and Evolution, (St. Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1970), p.498
I
have put a picture of the modern, Jurassic and Permian horseshoe crabs on the
web. This is from Moore, Lalicker and Fischer, Invertebrate Paleontology,
(McGraw-Hill, 1952, p.554. http://home.entouch.net/dmd/crabs.jpg
Klotz
gives the wrong impression to his readers.
One would
gather from these statements that the same animal had been found in Jurassic and
Silurian rocks as those we use to
manure our fields. Unfortunately
this is not at all the case. The
picture cited above illustrates the morphological
characteristics of three horseshoe crabs. Top
left is the modern Xiposura polyphemus and is the
type form for the limulida group. Top
center shows the structure of X. walchi Desm. from the Jurassic of Germany.
The differences are significant to the point that one must wonder about
the use of the term living fossil. Top right is of a fossil named Palaeolimulus.
Of this creature Moore, Lalicker and Fischer state that
he is "A Paleozoic member of the Limulida which is closely similar
to modern Xiphosura."
Palaeolimulus
is similar to Xiphosura if one is
using a horse as a comparative but among horseshoe crabs, this similarity is
much less. This illustrates that
one must be very careful when accepting a statement concerning the similarity of
fossil and living creatures.
The
Port Jackson shark is often claimed to be a living fossil.
Of the
Port Jackson shark, Lull states,
"The ancient Port Jackson shark, Cestracion, has persisted
since the Jurassic and members of its family are found in lower Carboniferous
rocks” R. S. Lull, ORGANIC
EVOLUTION, (New York: MacMillan Co., 1925), p. 219.
This too is not a case of a truly living fossil for there are structural
differences in the jaw between the living and
fossil specimens.( Romer, VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, p. 100.)
The Osmundas have been cited by Andrews as a case of a living fossil.
The Osmundas are ferns some of which
are found in rocks they believe are over 100 million years old.( .Henry
N. Andrews, STUDIES IN PALEOBOTANY, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1961), p.
113.) Once again, however, the term Osmunda refers
to a genus not a species. In
what sense can it be said that a genus lives?
A genus does not breed as members of a
species do. A genus is
nothing more than a product of man's classification system.
The
Lingula are brachiopods which are certainly mentioned as being living fossils
but one must be careful.
Lingula is also a genus and the species found living today are not quite
the same as those found in the Silurian.
Beerbower illustrates this by showing a reconstruction of a Silurian
Lingulid L. munsteri side by side with
L. anatina a modern species.( Beerbower, SEARCH FOR THE PAST, p. 171.)
There are slight morphological differences. Besides the lingula are brachiopods and Moore, Lalicker and
Fischer note,
Cretaceous pines have twenty-five needles coming out of the
same fascicle, today all pines have only two.(See Andrews, Ibid., p.
172). While evolutionists may not be able to explain HOW life changed, the fact
is that life has changed significantly.
The implication for Christianity is this. If God created life in the manner advocated by historic
Christianity, where life was created and didn't change, then why does the fossil
record display only altered life forms. If
stability of morphological form was the standard then how do Christians explain
the total lack of modern forms in the fossil record?
To turn the question on its
Thus we may conclude that there are really no examples of living fossils
that are truly identical with their fossil counterparts. This leads to the realization that the extent of
morphological change is complete across both
plant and animal kingdoms. And
following this, we must also conclude that the morphological change must
be explained.