Coelacanth: Fish defying the ages, a challenge to evolution
Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 4:12 pm
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Coelacanth: the world’s oldest fish?
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Evolutionary scientists used to think that amphibians evolved from a group of fishes that included the coelacanth, which was known only from fossils. But they dropped this idea when living coelacanths were found from 1938 showing no evidence of evolution from the oldest fossil coelacanths to the living examples. The evidence from the coelacanth is good evidence for creation, for it shows that DNA, the genetic code, has remained stable throughout time.
When a living coelacanth fish was found in 1938 it was hailed as the scientific sensation of the century. Until then, the coelacanth (pronounced SEE'-luh-canth) was known to science only from fossils. Scientists generally believed coelacanths had become extinct 60 or 70 million years ago. Since 1938 many more living coelacanths have been caught.
All coelacanths, living and fossil, are members of a group of fishes called Crossopterygians. It is this group that most evolutionists believe evolved into amphibians and all land vertebrates — including man.
Before the discovery of living coelacanths, evolutionists assumed that the fish's internal organs would be “part way” evolving from those of ordinary fish to those of amphibians. But the living coelacanths showed no evidence that their soft parts were starting to adapt for use on land. So it was conceded that the coelacanth was obviously not the ancestor of amphibians after all.
Did anything evolve?
So evolutionists looked for another type of fish that would fit their belief that fish evolved into the creatures that dwell both on land and in water — the amphibians. There was no strong evidence, but they decided that another member of the Crossopterygian group of fishes — the rhipidistian — might have evolved into an amphibian.
How did they decide that rhipidistian fishes could have evolved into amphibians? The idea grew out of their study of similarities in skeletons of rhipidistians and what they believe were “early” amphibians. But in reality there is a vast difference between rhipidistians and amphibians.
Using even the evolutionists' time scale, which some scientists dispute, the coelacanth is the same fish it supposedly was hundreds of millions of years ago. It is surely strange that the coelacanth could remain so stable all this time, both genetically and morphologically, while its cousin the rhipidistian was supposedly evolving the mind-boggling number of changes required to transform it eventually into a human.
The evidence from the coelacanth is good evidence for creation, for it shows that DNA, the genetic code, has remained stable throughout time. In other words, the coelacanth has reproduced after its kind just like the Bible's book of Genesis said fishes would!