X-Nilo Files, 1(6), April-July 1999

The Fossil Record

• 95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates, particularly shellfish.
• Of the remaining 5%, 95% are algae and plant fossils (4.75%).
• 95% of the remaining 0.25% consists of the other invertebrates, including insects (0.2375%).
• The remaining 0.0125% includes all vertebrates, mostly fish.
• 95% of the very few land vertebrates found consist of less than one bone. (For example, only about 1,200 dinosaur skeletons have been found.)
• 95% of the mammal fossils were deposited during the Ice Age.

The fossil record is best understood as the result of a marine cataclysm that utterly annihilated the continents and land dwellers (Genesis 7:18-24; II Peter 3:6).

The Fossil Record

To most people, fossils speak of slow and gradual formation–'millions of years.' But many fossil specimens show otherwise!

When one finds a fossil of an isolated bone or tooth, it's not possible to say how quickly or slowly it formed. However, there are countless examples of fossils which clearly show that long time spans could not have been involved. For instance, the photo below [not available on-line] shows a miner's hat that is now rock hard. It was found in a mine in Tasmania, Australia where it had been covered with water for more than 50 years. Over that time the chemicals in the water precipitated within the open structure of the felt material of the soft hat, turning it into stone through a process called 'permineralization.' Calcium carbonate has permeated the original felt material of the hat.

This quickly forming 'stone' hat adds weight to the claim of creation scientists who say that thousands or millions of years are not needed to form rocks and to fossilize animals and plants. Furthermore, the level of detailed preservation in many fossils shows that they must have formed quickly, before decay could occur.

When you accept the Bible as the truthful Word of the Creator, and read in Genesis (Chapters 6-8) of the account of God's judgment on man's wickedness through a world-wide Flood, you would expect to see evidence that fossil formation is generally a rapid, catastrophic process.

Do fossils take millions of years to form? No! Just the right conditions: lots of water to create muddy sediments, along with rapid burial, which is evidence of the Flood of Noah's day!

What's Happened to the Horse?

by Peter Hastie

Excerpt from:
Creation 17(4):14-16,
Sept.-Nov. 1995.

A couple of youngsters in our church recently asked me a question on evolution and the Bible:

'How can the Bible be true if life has evolved over millions of years? Evolution is a fact. Look what’s happened to the horse.'

'What has happened to the horse?' I asked.

'Well, over a period of 60 million years it’s grown from being a small fox-like animal only 61 centimetres tall to the modern-day horse that stands more than two metres high. And it’s lost all its toes too.'

'Really?' I said. 'That’s a spectacular change. Can you show me your text-book?'

When the textbook finally arrived, this is what it said:

'The horse did not always look like it does today. The diagrams below show how the horse has changed. It took about 60 million years for the horse to develop. Here’s a surprise. The earliest horse was only about 61 centimetres [two feet] tall.''

At the bottom of the page was this fascinating piece of logic:

'A tiger eats only meat. A tiger’s teeth are mainly pointed. The earliest horse had pointed teeth. What does this tell us about what it ate?'

My young friend had filled in the answer: 'Meat. It was a carnivore.'

Research

I was staggered. Could this really be true? I decided to get to the bottom of it for the sake of my young friend, and so I set off to the library. This is what I discovered after digging around on the shelves.

1. In 1841, the earliest so-called 'horse' fossil was discovered in clay around London. The scientist who unearthed it, Richard Owen, found a complete skull that looked like a fox’s head with multiple back-teeth as in hoofed animals. He called it Hyracotherium. He saw no connection between it and the modern-day horse.

2. In 1874, another scientist, Kovalevsky, attempted to establish a link between this small fox-like creature, which he thought was 70 million years old, and the modern horse.

3. In 1879, an American fossil expert, O. C. Marsh, and famous evolutionist Thomas Huxley, collaborated for a public lecture which Huxley gave in New York. Marsh produced a schematic diagram which attempted to show the so-called development of the front and back feet, the legs, and the teeth of the various stages of the horse. He published his evolutionary diagram in the American Journal of Science in 1879, and it found its way into many other publications and textbooks. The scheme hasn’t changed. It shows a beautiful gradational sequence in 'the evolution' of the horse, unbroken by any abrupt changes. This is what we see in school textbooks.

The question is: 'Is the scheme proposed by Huxley and Marsh true?' The simple answer is 'No.' While it is a clever arrangement of the fossils on an evolutionary assumption, even leading evolutionists such as George Gaylord Simpson backed away from it. He said it was misleading.

So what’s the difficulty for the horse with the theory of evolution?

1. If it were true, you would expect to find the earliest horse fossils in the lowest rock strata. But you don’t. In fact, bones of the supposed 'earliest' horses have been found at or near the surface. Sometimes they are found right next to modern horse fossils! O. C. Marsh commented on living horses with multiple toes, and said there were cases in the American Southwest where 'both fore and hind feet may each have two extra digits fairly developed, and all of nearly equal size, thus corresponding to the feet of the extinct Protohippus.' In National Geographic (January 1981, p. 74), there is a picture of the foot of a so-called early horse, Pliohippus, and one of the modern Equus that were found at the same volcanic site in Nebraska. The writer says: 'Dozens of hoofed species lived on the American plains.' Doesn’t this suggest two different species, rather than the evolutionary progression of one?

2. There is no one site in the world where the evolutionary succession of the horse can be seen. Rather, the fossil fragments have been gathered from several continents on the assumption of evolutionary progress, and then used to support the assumption. This is circular reasoning, and does not qualify as objective science.

3. The theory of horse evolution has very serious genetic problems to overcome. How do we explain the variations in the numbers of ribs and lumbar vertebrae within the imagined evolutionary progression? For example, the number of ribs in the supposedly 'intermediate' stages of the horse varies from 15 to 19 and then finally settles at 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also allegedly swings from six to eight and then returns to six again.

4. Finally, when evolutionists assume that the horse has grown progressively in size over millions of years, what they forget is that modern horses vary enormously in size. The largest horse today is the Clydesdale; the smallest is the Fallabella, which stands at 17 inches tall. Both are members of the same species, and neither has evolved from the other.

Conclusion

My research had left me troubled. Why do science textbooks continue to use the horse as a prime example of evolution, when the whole schema is demonstrably false? Why do they continue to teach our kids something that is not scientific? Dr Niles Eldredge, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, has said:

'I admit that an awful lot of that (imaginary stories) has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable ... .'

I agree.

References

1. O. C. Marsh, 'Recent Polydactyle Horses,' American Journal of Science 43, 1892, pp. 339-354 - as quoted in Creation Research Society Quarterly correspondence, Vol. 30, December 1993, p. 125.
2. Niles Eldredge, as quoted in: Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, fourth edition (revised and expanded), Master Book Publishers, Santee (California),1988, p. 78.

Polystrate Fossils

Q. What are polystrate fossils, and how are they a problem for evolution?

A. Evolutionists believe that most of the layers of sedimentary rock on the Earth’s surface were laid down slowly over millions of years. Most of these layers contain fossils of plants and animals.

Here’s the problem for evolutionists! There are a number of places on the Earth where fossils actually penetrate more than one layer of rock. These are called ‘polystrate fossils.’

For example, at The Joggins, in Nova Scotia, there are many erect fossil trees that are scattered throughout 2500 feet of layers. You can actually see these fossil trees, beautifully preserved, penetrate through layers that were supposed have been laid down over millions of years.

The fact is, the trees had to be buried faster than it took them to decay. In other words, there’s NO WAY these layers could have been laid down slowly over millions of years. The trees would’ve rotted well before then and not fossilized.

Genesis gives a better explanation – Noah’s Flood, which occurred a few thousand years ago. Just more evidence that fits with the Bible.

—Excerpt from Answers … with Ken Ham radio program, December 23, 1998

The ‘missing link’ to school violence!

by Ken Ham

The teaching of evolution in public schools has fostered an environment that leads many students to believe that there is little or no meaning to life. Evolutionary indoctrination declares that we are only animals in the struggle for survival. This has created a mindset in many of our young people that life lacks purpose.

While the bankrupt theory of evolution does not directly lead to horrible school violence like Littleton, I would argue that if students were told instead that there is a Creator, who has a purpose and a meaning for His Creation, then this cannot help but give young people some meaning to their lives. It’s not surprising that teen suicide, for example, has grown proportionately to the increased teaching of evolution.

Unfortunately, many church leaders have found it difficult to respond with answers as to why tragedies like school violence and teen suicide occur. Last year, after a school shooting in Oregon, a pastor was quoted as saying 'I don’t have answers and I can’t find them in the Bible, but I do know that God has not moved out of Springfield.' Although the pastor emphasized God’s love, much more needs to be said about such tragedies, and the Bible does provide answers.

Sin is the ultimate cause of these tragedies (Romans 3:23). Until people are prepared to accept the literal event of Adam’s fall, they will not understand why we see so much evil around us. You see, if students were simply told that God is a God of love, then they can’t reconcile why He would allow such terrible violence. To understand that sin is the ultimate cause of the problem is also to understand that the blame lies with you and me – with everyone. We all sin in Adam (Romans 5) – that’s why there is death and violence in the world. Collectively, it is our fault!

The same public education system that is looking for answers to such tragedies is teaching students that they are just evolved animals, and that there is no absolute authority and no such thing as sin. Some students – who are brainwashed in evolution – believe that life is all about death, violence, and bloodshed because, after all, these are the processes by which they evolved.

Until our nation allows God to be the absolute authority, and accepts the Bible as truth (beginning with its teaching of Adam’s fall in Genesis), then violence, suicide, murder, and all manner of evil will continue to proliferate in our school systems.