Soft and Extremely Tiny Cambrian Creature Defies Belief in Millions of Years

Spinoloricus (Loricifera). Image courtesy of Roberto Danovaro, Antonio Dell'Anno, Antonio Pusceddu, Cristina Gambi, Iben Heiner & Reinhardt Mobjerg Kristensen, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).




Joel Kontinen

Researchers have recently witnessed a miracle of sorts: they found an extremely tiny Cambrian fossil in western Canada.

The “exceptionally well-preserved” loriciferan is less than a millimetre long. Scientists think that it was far too small to have been fossilised.

Dr Tom Harvey (Department of Geology, University of Leicester) co-discoverer of the fossil explains why the discovery is important:

“Loriciferans lack hard parts (they have no shell), so no-one expected them ever to be found as fossils -- but here they are! The fossils represent a new genus and species, which we name Eolorica deadwoodensis, loosely meaning the ‘ancient corset-animal from rocks of the Deadwood Formation.’ "

The discovery defies belief in millions of years. It should definitely not be possible for soft animals to retain their shape for half a billion years.

For Darwinists, the assumed Cambrian Era is a real headache:

Tardigrades or water bears (that still live in our day), compound eyes and complex brains have been found in Cambrian strata.

Source:

University of Leicester. 2017. Discovery of new fossil from half billion years ago sheds light on life on Earth: Scientists find 'unfossilizable' creature. Science Daily. (30 January).

Earth Had Water at the Very Beginning, New Research Suggests

There’s water almost everywhere on Earth.




Joel Kontinen

New research published in Nature suggests that Earth had water at a very early stage.

Mario Fisher-Gödde and Thorsten Kleine at the University of Münster, Germany examined meteorites that fell in British Columbia in January 2000.

They found that the ruthenium isotopes in them did not match those found in the Earth’s mantle. This suggests that meteorites are not the earliest source of our planets water, which had to be present at the very beginning.

Just like Moses said in Genesis.

The research puts the emergence of water at 4,5 billion years – far too back in history since secular dates tend to be inflated.

We also know that Earth had a magnetic field from the beginning and that life began early.

Two other studies have also suggested that Earth was blue and had water from the beginning.

Source:

Whyte, Chelsea. 2017. Earth’s water must have arrived here earlier than we thought. New Scientist (25 January).

Limpets are “Busy Little Construction Workers of the Seashore”

Image courtesy of Tango22, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

Limpets or marine snails might not look very brainy but a recent report issued by Trinity College Dublin describes them as “busy little construction workers of the seashore.”

The brief report goes on to say:

“Limpets frequently suffer damage at the apex of their conical shells, but rather than drying out due to dehydration or getting picked off like sitting ducks by dinner-hungry predators such as seagulls, the hard-working creatures quickly patch over small holes with new biological building material from within.

Incredibly, these repaired shells turned out to be just as strong as the originals when subjected to impacts from rocks.”

There is a huge distinction between the Darwinian world with its blind watchmaker and the real world where intelligent design is evident in most if not all details.


Source:

Trinity College Dublin. 2017. ‘Marine repairmen’ – little limpets are construction workers of the seashore (19 January).

The Amazing Power of the Seed

Desert flowers can be colourful.


Joel Kontinen

Seeds are amazing things. They seem to be programmed to produce certain kinds of plants at the very earliest time this is possible.

In a desert environment, this might entail a long waiting time, perhaps even two or three years. A miracle occurs just a few hours after a heavy rain: the ground that hitherto had been brown or yellow becomes alive with green grasses and flowers of a variety colours – blue, white, yellow, red etc.

And all the genetic information for producing this beauty is packed into a tiny seed.

No wonder the Lord Jesus compared faith to a mustard seed. It is tiny but can do great deeds.

Ants Defy Naturalistic Expectations with their Impressive Navigation Skills

Image courtesy of Dawidi, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen


Ants have recently made headlines in science publications.

They have been lauded for their farming skills, their engineering acumen, their innovation and even their mathematical skills.

A recent paper published in the journal Current Biology found another amazing skill. BBC News gives us the gist of their almost incredible ability:

“Ants are even more impressive at navigating than we thought.

Scientists say they can follow a compass route, regardless of the direction in which they are facing.

It is the equivalent of trying to find your way home while walking backwards or even spinning round and round.

Experiments suggest ants keep to the right path by plotting the Sun's position in the sky which they combine with visual information about their surroundings.”

Engineers are hoping to use ant technology to build robots that are able to navigate in forests.

Tiny ants remind us of our big Creator God.

Source:

Briggs, Helen. 2017. Ants use Sun and memories to navigate. BBC News (19 January).

Our Smart Eyes Defy Dawkinsian Explanations

Image courtesy of Paul Savage, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).




Joel Kontinen

Richard Dawkins’ view of the human eye is badly outdated.

And it seems that each new discovery makes his case less credible.

The backward wired retina is actually an example of clever design.

Many experts will say that bad design is no longer a viable option.

Research shows us that our eyes are amazing. Superb design would be an apt description.

The design of our eyes has inspired engineers to develop more efficient cameras.

A new study published online in the journal Current Biology found an intelligent reason for why we blink.

It shows that blinking “prompts eye muscles to keep our vision in line.”

An article in Science Daily gives us some details:

“Every few seconds, our eyelids automatically shutter and our eyeballs roll back in their sockets. So why doesn't blinking plunge us into intermittent darkness and light? New research led by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the brain works extra hard to stabilize our vision despite our fluttering eyes.

Scientists at UC Berkeley, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Université Paris Descartes and Dartmouth College have found that blinking does more than lubricate dry eyes and protect them from irritants.”

Science Daily discloses what else happens:

“Our brain repositions our eyeballs so we can stay focused on what we're viewing…

When our eyeballs roll back in their sockets during a blink, they don't always return to the same spot when we reopen our eyes. This misalignment prompts the brain to activate the eye muscles to realign our vision, said study lead author Gerrit Maus, an assistant professor of psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.”

Everything is done for a purpose. Intelligent communication prompts our eyes to make the necessary corrections so we continue seeing.

Without this “powerful oculomotor mechanism … our surroundings would appear shadowy, erratic and jittery.”

They don’t. This is powerful evidence for intelligent design.

Source:

University of California - Berkeley. 2017. Why the lights don't dim when we blink: Blinking prompts eye muscles to keep our vision in line. Science Daily. (19 January).

Intelligent Design: Seals Use Their Whiskers to Detect Fish Hidden in Sand

These whiskers were made to detect fish. Image courtesy of Marcel Burkhard, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 DE).




Joel Kontinen

New research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology suggests that seals use their whiskers to detect fish hidden beneath sand.

An article in New Scientist states:

“Harbour seals use their whiskers to follow underwater vibrations rippling away from gills of fish so they can home in on prey.”

They can do this even when their meal is covered with sand.

This discovery has prompted engineers to build a device for detecting underwater disturbances. Collen Reichmuth, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explains:

“It has a variety of purposes, but the most obvious one is related to military defence, being able to detect and track moving objects underwater and being able to do it potentially quietly without using active sonar.”

This is not the first time that whiskers have made headlines. In 2014, Wired published an article entitled Tactile electronic cat whiskers could help robots 'feel' their surroundings.

Hi-tech whiskers don’t just appear out of thin air. They have to be designed. And that is something the Darwinian blind watchmaker cannot do.

Researchers have also drawn inspiration for robots from butterfly wings, octopuses, fruit flies and dragonflies, for instance.

Source:

Whyte, Chelsea. 2017. Seals hunt down hidden fish by sensing their breath in the sand. New Scientist (18 January).

Clever Ant Farmers Harvest Seeds

Pogonomyrmex barbatus is a close relative of P. badius. Image courtesy of Steve Jurvetson, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).





Joel Kontinen

According to the Darwinian story, chimps and other big mammals should certainly be much smarter that tiny ants who have a minuscule brain.

However, ants seem to defy this dogma at almost every turn. Even evolutionists believe that they created an elaborate farming system some “25 million years” ago.

Ants are living fossils that haven’t changed in “100 million years".

Today’s ants seem to know basic mathematics, and are able to build impromptu bridges and living rafts, for instance.

New research discloses yet another surprise. As New Scientist puts it,

“Florida harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex badius, have developed a clever farming strategy to do so – they plant seeds, wait for them to germinate and then eat the soft spoils.”

The article goes on to explain just how clever the ants are. While they cannot crack up the hard seeds, they have found a way to get at the nutritious food:

“Germination … splits the tough husk, making the seed contents available as food for the ants. A single large seed may have nutritional value of 15 smaller seeds, so it makes sense to collect it and wait for it to crack open. Seeds from various species germinate at different times, which may give the ants a steady supply of their ‘crop’ ”.

The Bible describes ants as very industrious creatures and it definitely is true.

Source

Simičević, Vedrana. 2017. Harvester ants farm by planting seeds to eat once they germinate. New Scientist (13 January).

Bats Use Smart Sat-Nav Neurons to Find Their Way

Image courtesy of Arpingstone, public domain.




Joel Kontinen

Fruit bats have a smart navigation system that tells them where to go. They have brain cells that give them “their distance and angle to a location,” as a Nature news article puts it.

The article goes on to say:

“Egyptian fruit bats navigate their angle and distance of flight to specific destinations using special vector neurons.

Bats have brain cells that keep track of their angle and distance to a target, researchers have discovered. The neurons, called ‘vector cells’, are a key piece of the mammalian’s brain complex navigation system.”

Many animals, such as monarch butterflies, jellyfish, turtles, pigeons, bumblebees and robins, have amazingly smart navigation skills.

And bats can fly really fast.

What do these skills tell us? They should remind us of the Creator:

“For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20, NIV).

Source:

Abbott, Alison. 2017. Sat-nav neurons tell bats where to go. Nature news (12 January).

Tiny Sea Dragon Is No Darwinian Icon

Phyllopteryx dewysea. Image courtesy of Gaynor Dolman, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).




Joel Kontinen

Fish come in all sizes and shapes. Some of them look more or less weird and might choose to walk instead of swim.

But bizarre traits do not make them into the transitional forms Darwinian evolution desperately needs, or into any other types of in-betweens.

Just like the seahorse, the ruby seadragon (Phyllopteryx dewysea) is a fish. It lives in deep waters off the west coast of Australia and is rarely seen.

Now, however, scientists have filmed it in action 55 metres below the surface.

Unlike some other sea creatures, they have no need of camouflage:

“Instead, their colour helps them hide. Red is the first colour seawater absorbs from sunlight, so at that depth, no red light will bounce off these seadragons, making it hard for predators to see them,” New Scientist explains.

Like another miniature dragon – the flying lizard Draco volans – this tiny fish seem to be intelligently designed to thrive in its habitat.

Source:

Whyte, Chelsea. 2017. First ever video of an elusive new ruby seadragon filmed in wild. New Scientist (13 January).

The Elephant’s Trunk: An Elegant Multi-Purpose Tool

The elephant's trunk is an elegant multi-purpose tool.




Joel Kontinen

The elephant’s trunk is an elegant multi-purpose tool. It can move and pick up both huge objects and tiny ones and anything in between as well.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta featuring a captive African elephant called Kelly shows just how effective this tool is.

They offered Kelly four different kinds of food, of different sizes – powdered bran, cubed bran, cubed swede and cubed celery – and noticed that the elephant was able to change the shape of her trunk and exert just the force needed to pick up the food.

New Scientist gives us some details:

“Kelly’s secret, it turns out, was her ability to create a kink at any point along her 2-metre-long trunk that would provide exactly the right downward force to grip each size of food item.

The kink acted like a joint that subdivided her trunk into two sections: a long section that supported the weight of the trunk and a short tip pointing vertically downwards for dexterous gripping.”

Intelligent solutions do not appear out of thin air. They have to be designed.

And the elephant’s trunk seems to be designed amazingly well:

“Kelly could reduce the downward force for particularly delicate object handling by making the vertical part of her trunk shorter – and increase the force by making the vertical section longer.

In other words, Kelly had the ability to fine-tune how much force to apply by altering the position of the ‘kink’ in her trunk.”

Many other features in animals bear the hallmarks of intelligent design. A recent study looked at the zebra’s tail, which is also a very effective tool.

Other examples include the Saiga antelope’s air-conditioning nose, the penguin’s anti-free feathers and an anti-crash system in birds, to mention just a few.

Source:

Coghlan, Andy. 2017. The trunk trick that lets elephants pick up almost anything. New Scientist (9 January).

Intelligently Designed Zebra Tail Is An Amazingly Effective Fly Swatter

The zebra tail can swing really fast.




Joel Kontinen

How do zebras and giraffes keep flies and mosquitoes away? They resort to a clever trick: they swing their tails “three times faster than a gravity-driven pendulum.”

Writing in Science, Elizabet Pennisi goes on to say:

“The tail works like a double pendulum in that it swishes from where it sticks out of the butt and then from another pivot point where the bone and skin part of the tail ends and the hair begins … Because of that second pivot, the tip can swing at a different speed or even direction than the rest of the tail. This flexibility enables the animal to interrupt its swishing and use both pivot points to take aim and powerfully swat the intruder before it has a chance to bite.”

God knew that in a fallen world zebras needed to have a mechanism for protecting themselves from insects.

The tail is not the zebra’s only defensive weapon. Its stripes also keep insects away, making it difficult for them to find a safe landing place.

Source:

Pennisi, Elizabeth. 2017. Watch a zebra turn its tail into a surprisingly effective fly swatter. Science (6 January).

Amazing Design Boosts Butterfly Flight

Long distance flier. Image courtesy of William Warby, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).



Joel Kontinen

Butterflies are designed to be effective fliers.

Notwithstanding their tiny brains, they are superb navigators.

A fresh study highlighted yet another of their amazing traits. Their tiny, 0.1 millimetre long scales on their wings are there for a purpose.

An article in Science states:

“Those incredibly tiny scales … are arranged like roof shingles on the wing, making it a little rough. But until now, no one knew how that roughness affected flight. So a group of engineers filmed 11 free-flying monarch butterflies, first with their scales and then after their scales had been stripped off. Using a special chamber with 22 cameras to track the insects with submillimeter precision, they found that the scales boosted climbing efficiency between 16% and 82%, they reported today at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.”

The article also included a biomimicry dimension. It went on to say that engineers might use this design to improve small flying robots.

Biomimicry or copying intelligent designs seen in nature is a big challenge to Darwinian evolution.

We should not forget that if something works, it has to be designed.

Butterflies are designed very well.

Source:

Pennisi, Elizabeth. 2017. Scaly wings help these butterflies soar. Science (5 January).

Darwin Gave Us a False Idea of Races

They all belong to the same human race. Image courtesy of G. Mützel: Nordisk familjebok (1904), vol.2, Asiatiska folk, public domain.




Joel Kontinen

Darwinian evolution has a huge problem with credibility. On April’s Fool Day in 2009 National Geographic published the images of four of the most famous hoaxes in science.

Three of them were assumed transitional forms: Piltdown man, Archaeoraptor liaoningensis and bigfoot (an imaginery apeman).

In a recent article on The Conversation, Darren Curnoe highlights yet another hoax that we can thank evolutionists for: the view that there are several human races. This easily leads to racism.

This view was introduced by Charles Darwin in his book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871):

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.” (vol. 1, p. 201).

Descent of Man inspired many other works. The book that John Scopes of the monkey trial fame used in his classes was Hunter’s Civic Biology (1914). It includes some interesting details about humans:

"At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; The American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America."

Curnoe, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, suggests that the very idea of different races is “the biggest mistake in the history of science.”

I would disagree. I would say that Darwinian evolution is the biggest mistake. Others, such as eugenics, are the fruit of evolutionary thinking.

Bible-believing Christians would not be surprised that there is only one human race to which we all belong.

After all, the apostle Paul says (in Acts 17:26) that all humans are the descendants of one man, and Genesis 3:20 tells us that Eve was the mother of all people.

Modern genetics has finally caught up with this biblical truth.

Source:

Curnoe, Darren. 2016. The biggest mistake in the history of science.. The Conversation (December 20):

Bizarre Walking Fish Is Not a Transitional Form

Red-lipped Batfish (Ogcocephalus darwini). Image courtesy of Rein Ketelaars, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).




Joel Kontinen

Some fish are bizarre creatures (see photo here). They might choose to walk on the ocean floor instead of swimming.

But they don’t have legs and cannot thrive on land.

Mudskippers, for instance, would dry up and die if they were to live exclusively on land.

The assumed transition from sea to land doesn’t work, either, as evolutionists will acknowledge that Tiktaalik roseae was not the earliest creature to step on land.

Source:

Live Science. 2016. Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish. (26.12.).

Strong, Smart and Small: Tiny Molecules Can Build Huge Structures

Plants can be amazingly strong.





Joel Kontinen

Some materials found in nature can be astonishingly strong. Just think of a spider’s web, for instance. A recent example is a smart “glue” that keeps a plant’s cell walls together.

Science Daily summarises the findings of a paper published in the journal Nature Communications:

“Molecules 10,000 times narrower than the width of a human hair could hold the key to making possible wooden skyscrapers and more energy-efficient paper production, according to research… The study, led by a father and son team at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge, solves a long-standing mystery of how key sugars in cells bind to form strong, indigestible materials.”

Cellulose and xylan are the most common large molecules or polymers that abound in the cell walls of plants.

Researchers knew that these molecules could somehow stick together to form strong cell walls, but until now they did not understand how they did it.

Professor Paul Dupree of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, says:

“Cellulose induces xylan to untwist itself and straighten out, allowing it to attach itself to the cellulose molecule. It then acts as a kind of 'glue' that can protect cellulose or bind the molecules together, making very strong structures.”

Which evolved first?

It seems that this is yet another of the chicken or egg dilemmas that Darwinian evolution can’t explain.

We have just begun to understand the mysteries of trees and the amazing properties of the creatures that use their produce for food.

Source:

University of Cambridge. 2016. Glue' that makes plant cell walls strong could hold the key to wooden skyscrapers." Science Daily. (21 December).