danstribe, seems like USincognito is replying back with some sort of living fossil argument.
Sorry if my point wasn't clear. What I was trying to convey was that jellyfish have no brain, but they have been tremendously successful for almost 600,000,000 years. Conversely humans have only been around for about 200,000 years.
Despite the argument that time coupled with mutations, and the normal pressures of evolutionary change should have been more than enough to introduce major morphological change into the living fossils. Considering the above, the event surrounding the K/T boundary and the massive change to the earth and the insignificant changes to the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs make the likelihood of living fossils impossible and unfounded.
According to the old earth uniformitarian theory the whole world was upset in an iridium nightmare when a big time major world wide ecological “niche” changing event happened after a meteorite slammed into the earth, ...but, some how, species such as the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs apparently weren't effected at all by the catastrophic event.
Despite this catastrophic event it is amazing that the evolutionist still claim that these living fossils conformed to their very own particular ecological niche. Some how they were able to pass through this world wide niche changing catastrophic event at the K/T boundary. It was at this time, 65 million years ago, that the evolutionist claim that 75% or so of all species from a wide range of taxonomic groupings on the land, in the skies and under the seas were wiped out forever.
It’s interesting to note that each of the above mentioned living fossils are claimed to have pre-dated this catastrophic event by tens of million years with virtually no change prior to or after the catastrophic event.
Coelacanth.........340 million years old
Tuatara.........200 million years old
Ginko tree.........125 million years old
Wollemi Pine.........150 million years old
Crocodiles.........140 million years old
Horseshoe crab.........200 million years old
Certainly after an event such as the supposed mass extinction mentioned above, the changed environment, disappearing food chains on land and in the seas, tsunamis crashing into continents, fire scorched landscapes, sun blocked “winters” and their temperature changes would have caused the tempo of evolution to increase all over the surface of the globe, in the air and under the seas. This increased evolutionary tempo would have allowed for the selection of new beneficial mutations while scrambling to create new dramatically varied species that thrived in the new environmental biomes created on the land, in the air and under the seas.
To perplex the issue even more, besides the mutational/natural selective changes mentioned above that should have occurred during the last 65 million years there is yet another mechanism that the evolutionist claim introduces major morphological changes into animals. This mechanism is Genetic Drift. Apparently in the last 65 + million years this process also produced no significant change where according to their theories a considerable change should have occurred to the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs as their niches were upset.
The evolutionist say that change does happen. Shortly after the catastrophic event that supposably happened 65 million years ago at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary (KT), in a period of less than 50 million years a four legged wolf like animal Andrewsarchus (or what ever the latest evolution scenario is) is claimed to have evolved into a sleek sea creature. In this time period Andrewsarchus lost its legs as they turned into flippers, developed a spout with a new breathing system that contained special valves for shutting the nostrils, echo location system, blubber and other whale like features.....all while the living fossil Crocodile watched from the swamp as the Tuatara peeped his head out of his borrow under the shade of a the Ginko tree and Wollemi Pine. Meanwhile, the Horseshoe crabs scurried along the bay floors and the Coelacanth swam by in the oceans and didn't change outside of their normal genetic variations ...despite the morphological mutations and genetic drift that would have occurred over the millions upon millions of years as the species felt the massive environmental change to the fauna in it’s biome at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary that the evolutionist tell us happened 15 million years prior.
Living fossils such as the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs do an enormous amount of damage to the evolutionary theories. These currently living species appear almost identical to their fossil counterparts. The question is, how did these “living fossils”...animals and plants ...survive the many millions upon millions of years with virtually no change? Perhaps they could last a few hundred thousand years unchanged, but according to evolutionary theories certainly not millions upon millions of years.
Some evolutionist will argue that these species found a special “ecological niche” and despite the enormous amount of mutations that they say would have occurred naturally in those millions of years they were somehow not exposed to the pressures presented by normal evolutionary change. The above shows why they are wrong.
The existence of the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Wollemi Pine, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs are great example of creation. It shows that animals reproduce after their “kind” and don’t really change in the fashion in which the evolutionist claim. It seem as if the DNA and genetic code for the Coelacanth, Tuatara, Ginko tree, Crocodiles and Horseshoe crabs has been resistant to change through out it’s history....as expected.
It is just one more indication that scientist should view the geological column and the animals trapped in the fossil record as contemporaneous rather than separated by long time frames.
