Doug Velting
What is a “living fossil”? On the surface, such a thing doesn’t make sense. How could fossils be living? But the answer is pretty straightforward.
Living fossils are the name we give to any organism that is still found alive today and also found as fossils. These fossils are recognizably the same types of creatures, showing little difference from the plants and animals today.
The careful study of plants and animals living today that also occur in the fossil record has implications for both evolutionary and biblical creation beliefs of earth’s history. Creationists recognize that the worldwide flood of Noah’s day produced most of the fossils we see today. Creationists expect to see that some creatures to have managed to survive that catacysm and have living representitives today.
Do living fossils support the theory of evolution?
In 1859 Charles Darwin published the first edition of Origins of Species. Darwin pictured all life as a single evolutionary “tree” of plants and animals that were connected by countless transitional forms. He assumed that the changes in environmental and climate conditions would change plants and animals over time as they adapted or perished.
At the time of the publishing of Origin of Species the science of paleontology was just getting off the ground so no one was too concerned that the available fossils did not support Darwin’s theory. He confidently predicted that many fossils would be found demonstrating numerous intermediate links to prove he was correct. Darwin did not predict that the fossil record would instead show the opposite! The fossil record, including living fossils, shows very few, if any, changes over time. And none at all making the jump from one type of creature to another.
There are hundreds of examples of living fossils that demonstrate many plants and animals failing to change over time, and that is troubling to evolutionists who are honest with what they see.
How do they respond?
Some claim that the environment for these organisms didn’t change over millions of years, so the plants and animals didn’t need to change either. But that’s hard to align with the evidence of all kinds of climatic upheaval in the geological record. These include glaciation, mass extinctions, massive volcano eruptions, and sea level changes.These are the very things they point to as catalysts for the evolution of other organisms during what they believe was the same time frame. You can’t have it both ways: living fossils show that plants and animals don’t change over time and that evolution demands change over time.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. (Colossians 2:8)
