But wait! They are supposed to be so primitive!
Lichens — a combo of fungus and algae — can grow on bare rocks, so scientists thought that lichens were some of the first organisms to make their way onto land from the water, changing the planet’s atmosphere and paving the way for modern plants. But a closer look at the DNA of the algae and fungi that form lichens shows that lichens likely evolved millions of years after plants.
We are talking roughly 485 million years ago: “Unearthing the age of lichens makes it clear that the pattern of modern lichens showing up on rocks before plants doesn’t mean that lichens evolved before plants.” Did they devolve then, as in Darwin Devolves?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkw_VF5zDT0
Wouldn’t you just hate to be the school board trustee tasked with fronting hard-core Darwinism in these times? You wouldn’t just have to pretend to be stupid. You could only survive happily by being genuinely stupid.