Evolutionary Big Bang: Information Explosions

The mystery concerns flowering plants, whose species, LiveScience notes, are as “diverse as they are numerous.” The question for evolutionists is, how did all of these species arrive in what they consider the blink of an eye?

How did all of these species arrive in what they consider the blink of an eye?

"One of the reasons why it’s been hard to understand evolutionary relationships among the major groups of flowering plants is because they diversified over such a short time frame,” explains biologist Robert Jansen of the University of Texas–Austin. The short time frame Jansen references is less than five million years, according to Florida Museum of Natural History curator Pam Soltis.

Soltis, working with University of Florida colleague Doug Soltis, analyzed genes from 45 plant species, while a team led by Jansen looked at genes from 64 species. The teams focused on chloroplast genomes, arranging and diagramming the gene sequences to try to re-create (or re-evolve, they might say) the plants’ evolutionary relationships. Their studies, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, resulted in the conclusion that “stunning diversification occurred within a period of 5 million years just after the plants first appeared on the scene and gave rise to today's five major lineages of flowering plants”—what the scientists are referring to as an evolutionary “big bang,” much like the famous Cambrian Explosion.

Such sudden rise and diversification has no evolutionary explanation—a “floral mystery,” LiveScience calls it. While the researchers throw out some guesses, such a “big bang” would have to generate copious amounts of genetic information in a fraction of the time span evolutionists speculate for the rise of life. And the bigger problem is that such “explosions” of life and diversity occur throughout the fossil record and completely contradict the traditional evolutionary explanation of the rise of life.

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