What conditions, specifically, killed off the Pyrenean Ibex, or the Carolina Parakeet, or any other now extinct animal I can list. Hunting? Environmental factors? Both? Something else? Animals die...
The Dodo bird
In 1681, the last dodo bird on the planet breathed its last. Some 300 years later, botanists noticed that a certain species of tree was rapidly dying off.
Tambalacoque trees had historically grown in abun-
dance. But by the 1970s some botanists said only 13 remained.—and they were all thought to be around 300 years old.
They made a fascinating discovery: When the dodos were still alive, they ate tambalacoque’s fruit. And only after the seeds had journeyed through their digestive tract could they successfully germinate.
“The tree’s seeds are encased in a thick-walled protective coat, but the dodo’s stone-filled gizzard was able to exert a powerful crushing pressure on them.
The bird’s gizzard (a second stomach for grinding food) would pound away at the seed’s coat, weakening it and cracking it a little, but not enough to damage the seed inside. When eventually deposited by the dodo, the seed was able to germinate.”
So they imported some American turkeys to Mauritius. Their digestive process was similar enough
to that of the dodos to be able to activate the
tambalacoque seeds.
Thanks to Stanley Temple and the turkeys,
the tambalacoque lives on to this day.
The dodo went extinct back in 1681, but 300 years later, it delivered a posthumous message: For the tambalacoque tree to survive, it likely had to have come into existence at the same time as the dodo bird.
This supports the biblical account of creation.
Genesis 1 records that when God renewed the Earth, He made plants and trees on the third day, and on the fifth day, He made animals, including birds (Genesis 1:11-23).
The Bible’s account of creation matches the existence of a tree that relies on—and has always relied on—a bird for its survival.
Many species heavily depend on others for their survival. Many more organisms are mutually dependent: e.g., the calimyrna fig and the blastophaga wasp, the catalpa worm and the braconid, the yucca plant and the pronuba moth, and many more.
The findings presented problems for evolutionists who say large trees evolved some 360 million years ago, while the ancestors of today’s birds only about 65 million years ago.
That would have presumably left the tambalacoque with no way to germinate its seeds for some
300 million years.
The foremost evolutionists wield impressive intellects.
They have found ways to explain many aspects of the universe within the framework of their hypothesis. But the foundation of that hypothesis—a creation without a Creator—is false.
