The Term Living Fossil Seems Offensive
Darwinists tend to get a mite riled when biblical creationists use the term living fossil. Probably because it reminds them of evolution's failure. (One reason I chose "Piltdown Superman" for this site is to remind molecules-to-machinist evolutionists of the Piltdown Man fraud that fooled many scientists for about 40 years.) So, isn't it the trend these days that if someone can't handle the truth, try to get them to stifle themselves about it?
Briefly stated, a living fossil is something that shows up in the fossil record, hasn't been seen, then is discovered alive and well. Embarrassing to evolutionists, and some invoke the spirit of stasis, a ridiculous attempt to say that things didn't change because they didn't have to, despite dramatic environmental changes over millions of Darwinspeak years. So, someone's offended, it appears, and wants the phrase dropped, and his "reasons" have some falsehoods. We ain't dropping the term, old son. People have to realize that evolution is false, and the evidence points to creation. I reckon that if some people have their way, facts against evolution and affirming special creation will be considered "hate speech" soon, since so many weak people are "offended" over every little thing.
The Wollemi pine is considered a living fossil Wollamia Nobilis, WikiComm / Fritz Geller-Grimm (CC BY-SA 2.5) |
Mark Carnall at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History recently wrote an article for the UK newspaper The Guardian. He argues that we should stop using the term "living fossil." What does his argument reveal about evolutionary thinking?To read the rest of this short article, click on "Should We Drop the Term 'Living Fossil'?"
Charles Darwin first used the phrase in the Origin of Species to describe life forms that look essentially the same today as their fossil versions, even though their fossils are absent from intervening rock layers.
Carnall called the coelacanth fish the "living fossil poster child." When early evolutionists first saw its fossils in Devonian rocks, they thought the creature represented a long-extinct missing link—the fish that might have crawled onto land on its way to evolving into the first amphibian. That all changed when a researcher happened to discover a freshly caught coelacanth in a fish market in 1938. Marine biologists have since identified two populations of the deep-water dwelling fish. So what's the problem with the term "living fossil"?