Spiders have followed their traditional ways for a surprisingly long time. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Recently, BBC News reported on spider webs encased in amber. Found in East Sussex, GB, they are assumed to be 140 million years old. Professor Martin Brasier, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford, published a study of the discovery in the Journal of the Geological Society.
According to professor Brasier, the discovery is the oldest known spider web. He says that the creature that spun it is related to modern garden spiders.
Evolution is often defined as change. However, it seems that spiders have hardly changed their habits in 140 million years.
According to the Darwinian story, dinosaurs became birds and the early four-footed mammals became humans in roughly the same time, but squid have remained squid, Coelacanths have remained Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs have remained horseshoe crabs and tuataras have remained tuataras throughout this time.
After its kind seems to be a principle that is still not outdated. We should keep in mind, however, that the Genesis concept ’kind’ (baramin) has a wider meaning than the term ’species’ used in modern biology.
Source:
Spider web confirmed as 'oldest' . BBC News 31 October. 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/sussex/8335719.stm
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