Evolution or Creation?
Living Fossils
Since 1822 thousands of previously unknown animals have been found, many of which are known as "living fossils" - animals that once known only by its fossilized bones and presumed to have been extinct for millions of years and used as "proof" of evolution. But then, to the embarrassment of scientists, these animals were later found to be alive in remote parts of the world.[48]
Charles Darwin, himself, coined this term. In the Origin of Species he called lungfish and other species whose form remained unchanged since its inception "anomalous forms" that "may almost be called living fossils."[46]
Living fossils
are living proof of the accuracy with which plants and animals reproduce themselves
and the fact that many are not changing at all.[49]
The Okapi was once thought to have been extinct until they
were found still living. These animals were once used as evidence that the horse
had evolved.[48]
Living Coelacanths
The Australian and African lungfish are . . . living fossils. They all look
"primitive" and have lobed fins. Obviously lungfish can't be our ancestors because
they have remain unchanged, again for 400 million years [ET*]. Another animal,
the horseshoe crab, would be a great candidate for our ancestor. It looks "primitive"
and leaves the ocean to spawn on dry land. However, it, too, is a living fossil,
appearing about 425 million years ago [ET*] in the Silurian period, and remaining
unchanged.[11]
Similarly, gars,
sturgeons, bowfins, and paddlefish all look "primitive" but are living
fossils. Yet they are doing nicely in today's environment.[11]
IN 1994. in Wollemi National Park (in the Blue Mountains) the New South Wales
National Parks and Wildlife Services found a pine tree once thought to be extinct.
They are close relations to plants only found in the so called "Jurassic
and Cretaceous" periods. (65-200 million years ago [ET*]). There are very
few of these trees left in an isolated area.[48]
The following aquatic animals alive today are also examples of creatures that
have not evolved since their fossil ancestors:- lobsters, crayfish and rays
(fossils found in Jurassic rock), lampshells, mussels oysters, thumb nail shells
(fossils found in Carboniferous rock), sharks (fossilized teeth found in Devonian
rock), mackerel, perch, herring, jelly fish, fogs, the nautilus etc.[49]
Of the 12,000 fossilized insects the majority are similar to living types of
insect found today.[49]
The fossils of bees, ants, cicadas, beetles, termites or cockroaches, and other
insects are always practically identical with (though often larger than) their
modern descendants. The same applies to the arachnids and myriapods.[64]
Other famous living fossils include the tuatara (supposedly extinct since the
Cretaceous Period until found still living in New Zealand), the Lepidocaris
crustacean (only found as fossils in Devonian rocks), the lingula brachiopod
("extinct" since the Ordovician), and even the trilobite (chief index
fossil of the even more ancient Cambrian Period).[64]
If all of these species have not evolved in 50 million [ET*], 100 million [ET*]
or even 200 million [ET*] years, then why should we believe that they (or anything)
have evolved? Some changes due to speciation have occurred, but not the large
scale changes that evolution supposes.[48]
The list goes on; example after example of no change from one type of animal to another in the fossil record. Darwin tried to cover over this embarrassment by saying the fossil record is incomplete, but it wasn't then and it's not now. What we know about living fossils, then and now, is a representative sample of the fossil record.[11]
Africa's Mokele-mbembe creature
An iguanodon in Papua New Guinea?
Did Pterosaurs Survive Extinction?
* Evolutionary time scale.