Intelligent Design stasis

Researchers: Microbes have been “at an evolutionary standstill” for 175 million years

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The scientists themselves express genuine astonishment:

It’s like something out of science fiction. Research led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has revealed that a group of microbes, which feed off chemical reactions triggered by radioactivity, have been at an evolutionary standstill for millions of years. The discovery could have significant implications for biotechnology applications and scientific understanding of microbial evolution…

The microbe, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, was first discovered in 2008 by a team of scientists, led by Tullis Onstott, a co-author on the new study. Found in a South African gold mine almost two miles beneath the Earth’s surface, the microbes acquire the energy they need from chemical reactions caused by the natural radioactive decay in minerals. They inhabit water-filled cavities inside rocks in a completely independent ecosystem, free from reliance on sunlight or any other organisms…

Using advanced tools that allow scientists to read the genetic blueprints of individual cells, the researchers examined the genomes of 126 microbes obtained from three continents. Surprisingly, they all turned out to be almost identical.

“It was shocking,” Stepanauskas said. “They had the same makeup, and so we started scratching our heads.”

Scientists found no evidence that the microbes can travel long distances, survive on the surface, or live long in the presence of oxygen. So, once researchers determined that there was no possibility the samples were cross-contaminated during research, plausible explanations dwindled.

“The best explanation we have at the moment is that these microbes did not change much since their physical locations separated during the breakup of supercontinent Pangaea, about 175 million years ago,” Stepanauskas said. “They appear to be living fossils from those days. That sounds quite crazy and goes against the contemporary understanding of microbial evolution.”

What this means for the pace of microbial evolution, which often happens at a much more accelerated rate, is surprising. Many well-studied bacteria, such as E. coli, have been found to evolve in only a few years in response to environmental changes, such as exposure to antibiotics.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, “Living fossils: Microbe discovered in evolutionary stasis for millions of years” at ScienceDaily

If these findings hold up, this will be another paper that Darwinians will need to politely strangle and bury. All those confident pronouncements, and now…

The paper is open access.

See also: Günter Bechly: Paper says Cambrian Explosion took only 410,000 years From the paper’s media release: Moreover, the scientists’ data series reveal that the development of the fauna took place within a very short period. The transition from the “Ediacara biota” – multi-celled but very simply organisms – to the diverse Cambrian life forms occurred over less than 410,000 years.

5 Replies to “Researchers: Microbes have been “at an evolutionary standstill” for 175 million years”

  1. 1
    martin_r says:
    April 10, 2021 at 1:48 am

    from the article:

    ““It was shocking,” Stepanauskas said

    “did not change much since their physical locations separated during the breakup of supercontinent Pangaea, about 175 million years ago”

    “That sounds quite crazy and goes against the contemporary understanding of microbial evolution.”

    Darwinists are shocked and surprised again…
    So, Darwinists, perhaps there is something wrong with your Evolutionary theory …

  2. 2
    BobRyan says:
    April 10, 2021 at 2:30 am

    Martin_r

    Shocked and surprised comes up so often that it should be the official slogan for Darwinists.

  3. 3
    martin_r says:
    April 10, 2021 at 4:45 am

    BobRyan,

    it is so funny… one would expect, that with new findings, Darwinian theory of evolution gets confirmed, over and over…

    Instead of it, what we see every day – are surprised, shocked and confused Darwinists, using words like:

    “… it challenges a long-held theory…”
    “… it upends a common view…”
    “… it shakes up the dogma … ”
    “… it needs a rethink … ”
    “… the findings are surprising and unexpected …. ”
    “… earlier than thought…”
    “… younger than thought….”
    “… smarter than thought ….”
    “… more complex that thought ….”

  4. 4
    polistra says:
    April 10, 2021 at 6:19 am

    And then God said “Let there be life!”

    And God saw that it was good.

    And God said “If it ain’t broke, thou shalt not fix it.”

  5. 5
    bornagain77 says:
    April 10, 2021 at 12:56 pm

    Of related note:

    The Paradox of the “Ancient” (250 Million Year Old) Bacterium Which Contains “Modern” Protein-Coding Genes: Heather Maughan*, C. William Birky Jr., Wayne L. Nicholson, William D. Rosenzweig§ and Russell H. Vreeland ;
    “Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.”
    http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/...../19/9/1637

    Static evolution: is pond scum the same now as billions of years ago?
    Excerpt: But what intrigues (paleo-biologist) J. William Schopf most is lack of change. Schopf was struck 30 years ago by the apparent similarities between some 1-billion-year-old fossils of blue-green bacteria and their modern microbial counterparts. “They surprisingly looked exactly like modern species,” Schopf recalls. Now, after comparing data from throughout the world, Schopf and others have concluded that modern pond scum differs little from the ancient blue-greens. “This similarity in morphology is widespread among fossils of [varying] times,” says Schopf. As evidence, he cites the 3,000 such fossils found;
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/.....a014909330

    Scientists discover organism that hasn’t evolved in more than 2 billion years – February 3, 2015
    Excerpt: Using cutting-edge technology, they found that the bacteria look the same as bacteria of the same region from 2.3 billion years ago — and that both sets of ancient bacteria are indistinguishable from modern sulfur bacteria found in mud off of the coast of Chile.
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....104131.htm

    AMBER: THE LOOKING GLASS INTO THE PAST:
    Excerpt: These (fossilized bacteria) cells are actually very similar to present day cyanobacteria. This is not only true for an isolated case but many living genera of cyanobacteria can be linked to fossil cyanobacteria. The detail noted in the fossils of this group gives indication of extreme conservation of morphology, more extreme than in other organisms.
    http://bcb705.blogspot.com/200.....st_23.html

    Organisms Refusing to Evolve Over Millions of Years – January 15, 2016
    Excerpt: The team conducted multiple tests on the mats and the microbes found hidden under them, including bulk carbon and SEM analysis and Raman micro-spectroscopy and report that the microbes were shaped like rods, growing in train like filaments, similar to many bacteria alive today. They note also that the microbes were quite uniform in shape and that they were able to control their diameter and length as modern microbes do. The fossils are also approximately 500 million years older than any other previous fossil found in a habitat, and thus represent some of the earliest forms of life ever found (the very earliest date back to approximately 3.43 billion years ago.)
    http://crev.info/2016/01/refusing-to-evolve/

    Odd Geometry of Bacteria May Provide New Way to Study Earth’s Oldest Fossils – May 2010
    Excerpt: Known as stromatolites, the layered rock formations are considered to be the oldest fossils on Earth.,,,That the spacing pattern corresponds to the mats’ metabolic period — and is also seen in ancient rocks — shows that the same basic physical processes of diffusion and competition seen today were happening billions of years ago,,,
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....152520.htm

    Geobiologist Noffke Reports Signs of Life that Are 3.48 Billion Years Old – 11/11/13
    Excerpt: the mats woven of tiny microbes we see today covering tidal flats were also present as life was beginning on Earth. The mats, which are colonies of cyanobacteria, can cause unusual textures and formations in the sand beneath them. Noffke has identified 17 main groups of such textures caused by present-day microbial mats, and has found corresponding structures in geological formations dating back through the ages.
    http://www.odu.edu/about/odu-p...../topstory1

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