Diatoms can be as genetically different as humans and fish.
From “Diatom Evolution a Mystery” (Creation-Evolution Headlines, August 12, 2012), we learn
Michael Gross, a science writer at Oxford, wrote a feature story for Current Biology called, “The Mysteries of the Diatoms” (Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 15, R581-R585, 7 August 2012). Gross knows that diatoms are extremely successful and diverse, very important for the carbon cycle, and beautiful to look at, but said scientists still know little about them. One of the chief mysteries is their evolution:
“In a time span of less than 200 million years, diatoms have branched out into a multitude of species, which can be as genetically different as humans and fish.”
“While we might want to call diatoms ‘plantimals,’ these things are much more complex than we think,” Chris Bowler says.
Assumng all this is true, genetics isn’t what we think and neither is evolution.