| Evolution in the News - October 2017 |
| by Do-While Jones |
It’s what the evolutionists said, not us!
Usually it is a new DNA analysis that contradicts what evolutionists used to believe. This time it is a fossil that is causing them trouble.
The title of the printed version of the article said,
|
Rethink Fossils shake up fish family tree 1 |
The on-line version of the article says,
|
3-D scans of fossils suggest new fish family tree Analysis of specimens from China implies ray-finned fishes are younger than previously thought 2 |
Regardless of the title, both versions of the article say,
|
Polypterus, today found only in Africa, and its close kin have generally been considered some of the most primitive ray-finned fishes alive, thanks in part to skeletal features that resemble those on some ancient fish. Now a new analysis of fish fossils of an early polypterid relative called Fukangichthys unearthed in China suggests that those features aren’t so old. The finding shakes up the evolutionary tree of ray-finned fishes, making the group as a whole about 20 million to 40 million years younger than thought, researchers propose online August 30 in Nature. 3 |
Why did it shake up the evolutionary tree?
|
One of the largest extinction events in Earth’s history marks the boundary between the Devonian and Carboniferous. “We know that many groups of backboned animals were hard hit by the event,” Friedman says. But after the massive die-off, ray-finned fishes popped up and, according to previous fossil evidence, their diversity exploded. The new finding “brings the origin of the modern ray-finned fish group in line with this conspicuous pattern that we see in the fossil record,” Friedman says. It suggests these vertebrates didn’t survive the event. They came after, then flourished. 4 |
They don’t KNOW many animals were “hard hit” by this large extinction event. In fact, they don’t even know the extinction event happened. It is just the consensus of opinions.
Those opinions are based on speculation about why the fossil record looks like it does. There was no scientific observation of ray-finned fishes actually evolving. There is simply unjustified assumption of ancestry based upon similarity of appearance and the kind of rocks where the fossils were discovered.
The fossil record doesn’t contain the graduation of fossils Darwin predicted would be found, so evolutionists change the “prediction” based on what they have found. Every time they find something different, opinions change because they are based on philosophy, not science.
Since academics never use a 4-letter word when a 13-letter word will do, when they realized what this fossil does to their previous belief about fish evolution, they said, “Fukangichthys!”
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Footnotes:
1
Science News, September 30, 2017, “Fossils shake up fish family tree”, page 5
2
Viviane Callier, 18 September, 2017, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/3-d-scans-fossils-suggest-new-fish-family-tree
3
ibid., apparently referring to Sam Giles, et al., Nature, 30 August 2017, “Early members of ‘living fossil’ lineage imply later origin of modern ray-finned fishes”, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23654 and/or Coates, Nature, 14 September 2017, “Plenty of fish in the tree”, https://www.nature.com/articles/549167a
4
ibid.