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One of my favorite falsifications of the global flood myth, which I first saw presented in detail by Frank Zindler,
http://atheists.org/bone.pit/kiwi.html
is biogeography. I thought I would post on it again since my original thread on this subject now runs to 21 pages, mostly with non answers or attempts to change the subject.
The Problem
According to the ark story marsupials and the other unique animals in Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea would have had to get there after coming off a boat, in pairs, in the Middle East into a flood devastated world along with representatives of all other land dwelling animals extinct and extant. Overall there are 13 families and about 180 unique species of marsupials in the area including kangaroos and kolas and marsupial mole like animals (of the Order Notoryctemorphia) that only live in sand. The only monotremes (egg laying mammals) in world, the platypus and 2 species of echidna are found in the Australia and New Guinea and nowhere else on earth. The Kiwi, a flightless bird, lives in New Zealand which has no native mammals of any kind. How is it that the marsupials and monotremes made it to Australia where they just happen to exist in fossil record while thousands of species of placental mammals that just happen not to exist in the Australian fossil record did not?
There is no evidence that modern marsupials or monotremes ever lived in Europe, Asia or Africa and the only marsupial fossils ever found on those continents are of very primitive marsupials. The only placental mammals either fossils or extant prior to the arrival of man found in Australia are bats, a couple species of rats and the teeth of a very primitive placental mammal.
How did marsupial mole like animals make it at all, let alone getting there ahead of all those placental mammals? These are animals that only live in sand. Of course this is far from being the only problem. The three-toed sloth can only drag itself slowly on the ground it can’t walk. It can't tolerate low temperatures and moves only about 1 mile a month. How did they make it to the Americas, where sloths just happen to exist in the fossil record? Where they of a fast moving, migrating, cold tolerating kind a few thousand years ago? Does this really make any sense? If they could get around so well why did they only get the Americas where sloths happen to have a fossil record??
The giant spiny anteater (one of the echidna species) is also a slow moving clumsy animal but is supposed to have made it to New Guinea ahead of all nearly all the placental mammals.
The koala only lives in Eucalyptus trees and travels very little if at all. Yet they supposedly came off an ark in the middle east and somehow got to Australia.
The kiwi is a chubby little flightless bird that somehow made it to New Zealand where it had fossil relatives, with no mammals of any kind for company.
How is it that Gila monsters got to the American Southwest and why did they not go to the much more convenient deserts around the Middle East instead? Did these desert reptiles cross an ice age land bridge? How did armadillos make it to the Americas while wildebeest, zebras and giraffe did not? The question is not only how these animals got where they were going but also why other animals equally well adapted for the destination and in many cases far more able and likely to travel did not.
YEC attempts to answer this problem that I have seen either address only a small part ignoring the whole or rely on absurdities such as people took them or they migrated there.
To avoid this post getting too long I will address YEC non answers further in my next post.
On the TrueOrigins ark defense page Jonathan Sarfati says
Migration patterns explain some of them, but another important factor is introduction by humans. That’s how the rabbit reached Australia, and the Australian marsupials could have arrived with post-Babel humans.
This does not really explain anything. Many of these animals are simply not migratory and many animals that are migratory did not end up in Australia. Do Kolas, sloth or marsupial moles migrate? No.
Post Babel Humans introduced them!? By them time of the supposed Tower of Babel incident many of the animals would have scattered and either established themselves where they are not present now or become extinct, since marsupials don't generally compete very well with modern placental mammals. You would certainly think that marsupials and placental mammals would have been well mixed by then.
Even so, how and why did migrating humans take these particular animals? Do you really think people took marsupial moles, kangaroos, echidna, kiwis, koalas, wombats, the platypus, Tasmania devils( a foul tempered bad smelling critter), bandicoots, Moas ( a giant predatory bird, now extinct), Cassowarys (a bad tempered bird that is the second largest now living in the world) and the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) to Australia and New Guinea along with all the other animals unique to the area? That would have been some interesting trips in dugout canoes.
How and why did they gather all these marsupials and leave only a few behind (such as the prolific possum which somehow got to North America without leaving any descendants in Europe and Asia and some others that got to Central and South America without leaving any descendants anywhere else) while taking no placental mammals except dogs? Did people bring Gila monsters to the American Southwest and sloth, armadillos, jaguars and rattlesnakes to the Americas?
Land Bridges.
The land bridge explanation also fails. First Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand are separated from Indonesia by the very deep water, the so-called Wallace line, so land bridges are highly unlikely even in the most extreme ice age. Most importantly, even if land bridges did exist they do not help. How could marsupial moles or other slow moving marsupials get from the Middle East and cross land bridges to Australia while faster moving placental mammals did not? Do you really think the tree sloth, which cannot survive low temperatures, move about 1 mile a month and only travel in trees and Gila monsters, which are desert reptiles crossed an ice age land bridge over the Bering Sea to get to their current habitats?
The time of Peleg
The other creationist answer is that these animals got where they were going by migrating or radiating to the area they live now before a single continent somehow split up post flood to make the current continents of the world. Aside from the geological impossibility of this rapid continent movement it does not solve the problem. How would marsupial moles and kiwis and koalas get to the southern part of the original giant continent to be a carried to Australia and New Zealand while virtually no placental mammals made it? Even with a single continent it is a long way from the Middle East to Australia.
Let’s look at this migration followed by continent separation scenario in a little more detail. We have marsupial and placental mammals and of course reptiles and dinosaurs coming off a boat in the Middle East two by two about 5000 years ago. The only two of each kind in whole world are right there. Now, just how did the marsupial and montreme mammals get to Australia? Consider the marsupial "mole", a small, blind or nearly blind, burrowing animal that lives in sand. It should be pretty happy with all the sand of the Arabian deserts close at had. Instead it goes to Australia. How does it radiate or migrate to Australia? Does it go across Iran and Pakistan to India? How and why would it cross India? Supposes it crossed India. I don’t think it would get across the Himalayan Mountains through Nepal. Maybe it crossed near Bangladesh. How did it get through the mountains of Burma and Northern Thailand? I have been in that part of the world. I didn’t see much sand for a sand-burrowing animal to live in. After that all it had to do was cross down along Thailand to Malaysia then down to Sumatra then to Indonesia, and then on the through New Guinea to Australia, assuming they were still connected by the time in got there. I suppose the Kangaroos hopped along, the platypus crawled or swam along. The Koalas followed a path of Eucalyptus trees that stretched along this route and the bandicoots, Tasmanian devils, wombats and thalcines(Tasmanian Tigers) walked along with them as did all those flightless birds, some of which moved on to New Zealand with no mammals of any kind for company. Meanwhile, no placental mammals came along except bats and a couple species of rat and none of the marsupials that were "radiating" or migrating along this path thousands of miles long left any evidence of their passing anywhere at all. Maybe someone has a better route. I don’t see one looking at a map. This is the shortest I could find. And this all is supposed have happened in a few thousand years or perhaps much less.
In fact, for those who believe that the continent splitting occurred in the time Peleg, all this radiation and migration has to occur in just over 100 years!
Animals in the Americas are also a problem for this scenario. Just how did slow moving sloth and armadillos get to the western part of the super continent to be carried to the Americas while no lions or wildebeest or zebras made it?
Swimming Kangaroos and more on the magnitude of the problem
The Kent Hovind non answer talks about Kangroos swimming well. However we don't just have kangaroos to deal with. There are kangaroos, tree kangaroos, playtypus, bush tailed possums, echinda, marsupial moles, Antechinus(marsupial mice), planigales, bilbies, wallabies, koalas, wombats, numbats, sugar gliders, dunnarts, ninauis, tasmanian tigers, tasmanian devils, phascogales, bandicoots, quols, potoroos and bettongs and other 180 species of Australian marsupials and the Australian flightless birds and the flightless birds of New Zealand, which has not native mamals of any kind.
Now supposedly all these animals came off the ark in the middle east with aardvarks, elephant shrews, tenrecs, hyraxes, elephants, dugongs, manatee, sloths, armadillos, anteaters, tree shrews, lemurs, bushbarbies, baboons, monkeys, apes, rabbits, pikas, beavers, squirrels, molerats, hamsters, mice, porcupines, guinea pigs, pangolins, lemurs, apes, moles, hedgehogs, dogs, cats, leopards, lions, tigers, cheeta, mongooses, otters, badgers, weasels, skunks, raccons, bears, muscrats, wolverines, genets, horses, donkeys, camels, rhinos, pigs, hippos, giraffes, deer, antelope, elk, wildebeest, bison, caribou, cape buffalo, peccaries, tapirs or at least the "kinds" placental mammals that gave rise to these animals and the 4,000 other species of placental mammals on earth and yet the marsupials and monotremes all ended up in Australia, where they have a fossil record, the kiwi ended up in New Zealand where it has a fossil record and the placental mamals, which got distributed all over Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America did not. Many of these placental animals are more mobile than most of the marsupials and monotremes and some are very mobile indeed.
There is no ecological niche occupied by marsupials or monotremes that is not occupied by at least several species of placental mammals. So how did the marsupials and monotremes just happen to be the ones that ended up in Australia where they have a fossil record?
Remember the question is not only how the unique species in various parts of the world got where they are but how other species, often much better able to travel, did not.
The mainstream explanation of marsupial biogeography According to mainstream science marsupials reached Australia when Australia was still connected to South America and Antarctica in the late Jurassic. By 45-50 million years ago the continents were separated and marsupials evolved in isolation until the appearance of man. Talk Origins has a page on this.
Fossil:
The close affinities between Australian and South American/Antarctic forms compared with European/Asian forms.
· The occurrence of Northophagus vegetation in Australia, Antarctica and South America at this time. (Important note: Northophagus seeds cannot tolerate prolonged immersion in sea water - they degrade rapidly, i.e. no transport by sea).
Note the discussion of Northophagus seeds, one of many plants that can’t survive long immersion in water.
The Bronze Age Middle Eastern peoples who first came up with the mythical story that included all the animals on earth being saved in a big boat had no idea of the numer of unique species in unique locations all around the world. They can be excused for their ignorance. The modern YEC has no such excuse.
Well, he would only have a place at which to drop them off after the water had receeded. And by that time, traveling from a mountain to all the continents of the world by boat would be exceedingly difficult.
I thought his answer was that noah dropped off all the animals at their respective continents.
Well, there's the slight problem in that this is completely un-Biblical.
14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.
15 And God spake unto Noah, saying,
16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.
17 Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.
18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him:
19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
It's pretty clear all the animals come out at the same time. No mention of various taxi stops around the world.
__________________ Creationism has not made a single contribution to agriculture, medicine, conservation, forestry, pathology, or any other applied area of biology. Creationism has yielded no classifications, no biogeographies, no underlying mechanisms, no unifying concepts with which to study organisms or life. - Botanical Society of America's Statement on Evolution
I thought his answer was that noah dropped off all the animals at their respective continents.
No he just says that Noah may have sailed around the world several times during the flood IIRC, but of course dropping the animals off at various locations is decidedly unBiblical as has been pointed out. I suppose that would lend relevance to kangaroos being good swimming since after Noah dropped them off they would have had to swim around until the water finally went down below the tops of the mountains .
the frumious Bandersnatch
Last edited by Frumious Bandersnatch; 3rd May 2004 at 05:26 AM.
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