Like any real history, evolution is not driven by a single force or idea. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria obviates the quest for an “ancestor” seaweed. Maybe there isn’t one.
stasis
Tiny 99 mya bird (?) skull trapped in amber raises many questions
But get this: Benson goes on to explain that one of the “bizarre” features of Oculudentavis is qualities present in lizards but neither in birds nor in dinosaurs. It is smaller than most hummingbirds but had over a hundred teeth… The more research we do, one suspects, the more of this type of thing we’ll find and the harder it would all be to explain to our old Darwinian schoolteacher.
Green plants discovered in China dated at a billion years ago
It’s not “land” vs. “sea” that’s really significant here. It’s how much time was available for the development of photosynthesis. If the claim is that photosynthesis developed via natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism), then it must have somehow randomly happened in that billion years. Was there enough time? becomes an unavoidable question.
World’s oldest scorpions show no change from 437 million years ago
It doesn’t sound as though they bothered with much evolution. How would we distinguish their origin from creation? At a certain point, does evolution become creation? Just wondering.
Ghost worms unchanged in form for 275 million years but show “highly distinct” genetics?
One wants to ask, how distinct ARE the genomes of these species that all look the same?
Would it be like mapping a cat’s genome and finding a German Shepherd’s GATTACA in there? What that level of distinction really tells us goes well beyond cats and German Shepherds. Or do the researchers really mean something less highly distinct? What? We search for analogies here.
Is this lizard fossil evidence of animal parental care over 300 mya?
“Even back then … these animals were probably doing a lot of the things that animals still do today.” Right. So when did Big Evolution happen?
Fossil forest update: “Pretty sophisticated” for nearly 400 million years ago
Researcher: “Based on what we know from the body fossil evidence of Archaeopteris prior to this, and now from the rooting evidence that we’ve added at Cairo, these plants are very modern compared to other Devonian plants.
Researcher: Horseshoe crab vision 400 mya was same as today
University of Cologne: “The eyes of the extinct sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenaniae have the same structure as the eyes of modern horseshoe crabs (Limulidae).” Sudden appearance. Long time. No big changes?
Humans knew how to master fire earlier than thought
Why does Daniel Adler assume that the Neanderthals are not human? There is no reasonable basis for this claim anymore.
Did the mega dinosaurs grow so big on a “living fossil” grass?
Equisetum, considered a “living fossil” is the only surviving member of a large family of spore-bearing vascular plants found as early as 150 mya. It’s still here. The giant sauropods not so much.
Rare insight into trilobite behavior 480 mya
Doubtless, maintaining orderly ranks helped the trilobites survive but at half a billion years ago, they did not have a long time to learn the behavior. Once again, the behavior seems to have been there from the beginning.
“Modern” eye pigment has been around over fifty million years
“‘We were surprised by what we found because we were not looking for, or expecting it,’ says Johan Lindgren, an Associate Professor at the Department of Geology, Lund University, and lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature.” Note that they are now wondering whether Cambrian arthropods’ eyes were really that different. Talk about stasis.
Culturing a tentacled archean in a lab shows eukaryote-like genes from 2 billion years ago
Also, here’s a 2017 Abstract from Nature, noting that “Our results expand the known repertoire of ‘eukaryote-specific’ proteins in Archaea, indicating that the archaeal host cell already contained many key components that govern eukaryotic cellular complexity.” Thus they had that complexity back then. Not so good for Darwinism unless Darwinism is magic.
Listen to the “symphony of genes” in animal evolution…
So if all this complexity got started in something like the twinkling of an eye, are we looking at an argument for creationism? Or what? What exactly is the source of all this very complex, very early information?
Researchers: Photosynthesis may be a billion years older than thought … But WAIT!
“Dr Cardona also suggests that this might mean oxygenic photosynthesis was not the product of a billion years of evolution from anoxygenic photosynthesis, but could have been a trait that evolved much sooner, if not first.” So when did the billions of years of Darwinian evolution that “gradually evolved” photosynthesis happen?