http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=2374
Complex Jellies Jump 200 Million Years
| by | Kyle Butt, M.Div. |
New finds surface every day in the scientific community that remind us of the inadequacy of evolutionary explanations about the natural world. A recent discovery of fossilized jellyfish is just such a find. Until a few months ago, the oldest fossilized jellyfish were supposed to be about 300 million years old [NOTE: The millions-of-years scenario is false, cannot be verified, and is based on faulty assumptions. I am referring to it, not to suggest that it is valid, but to show how dramatically evolutionists themselves must adjust it.]
In October, 2007, Paulyn Cartwright and her team of researchers reported finding and studying several fossilized jellyfish, which they dated to be about 505 million years old (2007). In a news release discussing the research, Jen Humphrey stated: “Cartwright said the jellyfish described in the article are also unique because they push the known occurrence of definitive jellyfish back from 300 million to 505 million years, a huge jump, and show more detail than anything previously described that is younger” (2007).
Notice that with a single fossil discovery, the alleged age of jellyfish jumps a gargantuan 200 million years. Does it not throw serious doubt on geological time that the time can be adjusted so quickly, with such little evidence? And where are all the jellyfish fossils from the alleged period of 300-500 millions years ago? Obviously, they were alive and thriving, but a record of their existence in the rocks is absent.
What is more, Cartwright and her team mentioned the detail that was preserved in the “old” jellies. What does the detail show? The detail shows that the jellyfish that are supposedly 500 million years old look like jellyfish that are five years old. They have hardly changed at all in “500 million years.” Cartwright and colleagues stated: “Further, some of these fossils share commonalities with modern cnidarian orders and families...” (2007, emp. added). Jen Humphrey, breaking Cartwright’s research down to a popular level of understanding, wrote:
[T]he researchers said that there is enough detail to assert that the types can be related to the modern orders and families of jellyfish. The specimens show the same complexity. That means that either the complexity of modern jellyfish developed rapidly roughly 500 million years ago, or that the group is even older and existed long before then (2007, emp. added).Isn’t evolutionary theory grand? On the one hand, it purports to explain how things evolve so quickly that they leave no fossils. On the other hand, it alleges that jelly fish were so well adapted that they did not change for 500 million years. In truth, that which explains too much, explains nothing.
Do evolutionists really expect us to believe that humans evolved from an ape-like creature to our present state of complexity in about 10 million years, but that jelly fish remained virtually unchanged for 500 million years? Why do evolutionists suggest that the fossilized jellies are millions of years old if they look just like modern jellies? The only reason is that the jellies were found in falsely dated rock. It is time that we demand that reason be applied to evolutionary dating methods and allegations about animal antiquity. If evolution really does what evolutionists claim, jellies would have evolved to such a level of complexity in 500 million years that they could build submarines and launch torpedoes at their prey. But, alas, they are still just jelly fish.
“Old” jellyfish look like “modern” jellyfish for a very simple reason that has nothing to do with evolution. When God spoke the world into existence, He instructed plants and animals to multiply “after their kind” (Genesis 1:21,24). Jellyfish have been faithfully doing just that since the beginning of Creation.
REFERENCES
Humphrey, Jen (2007), “Fossil Record Reveals Elusive Jellyfish More Than 500 Million Years Old,” [On-line], URL: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/plos-frr103007.php.