”37-Million-Year-Old” Catfish Fossil Found in Sahara

Catfish. Image courtesy of Derek Dsouza, Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

We might not expect to find fish fossils in the Sahara Desert, but recently researchers dug up a 2-metre (6.5 ft.) long catfish in Wadi Al-Hitan, southwest of Cairo.

It is roughly the same size as today’s largest catfish.

The creature is assumed to be “37 million years” old. Clearly a catfish, it was named Qarmoutus hitanensis.

Evolutionists believe that Sahara was once covered with water. We would agree, although they tend to give inflated dates.

The real watery episode occurred around 4,500 years ago.

The entire world was then covered by water. Thus, we should not be surprised if fossils and huge animal graveyards are found all over the globe.

For Darwinists, fossils are often found in the wrong places. Here are some examples:

Dinosaurs in Alaska, turtle fossils in the Andes, a whale graveyard in the Atacama Desert in Chile, a fossilised tropical forest in Norway and pollen from tropical trees in Antarctica.

The catfish fossil is not the only evidence for Noah’s Flood in the Sahara. The Aloba Arch in Chad, an imposing natural formation, also looks like it was carved by huge amounts of water.

Source:

Drake, Nadia. 2017. Giant Catfish Fossil Found in Egyptian Desert. National Geographic (10 March).

Our Designed Bones Inspire Crack-Resistant Supersteel

Our bones inspire supersteel. Image courtesy of Sklmsta, Public domain.




Joel Kontinen

We are full of superbly-designed parts. From the tiniest nanomachine in our cells to our eyes, brain and big bones, everything in us is made wonderfully.

Even sceptics have a hard time in trying to doubt design in us, as design is so obvious that engineers are drawing inspiration from our body parts to build better devices.

An article in Science reports on “supersteel”, the latest invention based on the human body:

“Our bones are light, tough, and fracture resistant. That’s because of the hierarchical way in which they are built. On the nanoscale, tiny collagen fibers have a laminatelike arrangement, with different layers of fibers oriented in different directions. On larger scales, bones have a latticelike structure and different patterns of voids that make them light and strong. These structures ensure that bone resists the propagation of cracks in any one direction.”

Researchers think that if they mimic the structure of our bones, they could produce a sturdier material than conventional steel. They believe that it is “far more resistant to cracks created by metal fatigue.”

This has far-reaching implications:

“That could allow engineers to use the material to build everything from bridges to spacecraft that are less susceptible to catastrophic failure, which can happen when a tiny crack becomes a full-blown fracture.”

3,000 years ago King David said, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:14, NIV).

Source:

Service, Robert F. 2017. ‘Supersteel’ modeled on human bone is resistant to cracks. Science (9 March).

Weird Tully Monster Defies Darwinian Classifications

Reconstruction of T. gregarium. Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).




Joel Kontinen

Some animals are so weird that they don’t fit into evolutionary classifications.

Of today’s creatures, the duck-billed platypus, the spiny anteater and the aardvark are huge puzzles for Darwinians.

There are more in history.

Last year researchers claimed that they had solved the mystery of the Tully monster or the Tullimonstrum gregarium. They believed it was related to lampreys.

However, recent research led by Lauren Sallan (University of Pennsylvania) suggests that this isn’t so. Science Daily quotes him as saying:

"This animal doesn't fit easy classification because it's so weird… It has these eyes that are on stalks and it has this pincer at the end of a long proboscis and there's even disagreement about which way is up. But the last thing that the Tully monster could be is a fish."

Evolutionists believe that T. gregarium lived “300 million years” ago. It probably grew to roughly 35 centimetres (14 inches). But what it was remains an enigma.
.

Source:

University of Pennsylvania. 2017. 'Tully monster' mystery is far from solved, group argues. Science Daily. (20 February).

“105-Million-Year-Old” Beetle Shows Lack of Evolution

Beetles come in many shapes and sizes, but they have been beetles for a very long time. Image courtesy of Didier Descouens, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).



Joel Kontinen

Amber might soon become a source of cognitive dissonance for evolutionists. It often shows that Darwin was wrong about change.

Regardless of their assumed age, practically all insects trapped in amber look practically the same as today’s animals, whether they are spiders, wasps or ants.

This stasis is also seen in bird wings and flowers, regardless of whether they’re supposed to be 15 million years old or 100 million years.

New research adds yet another insect to the list:

“Named for Charles Darwin, the only known specimen of a newly discovered beetle, Darwinylus marcosi, died in a sticky gob of tree sap some 105 million years ago in what is now northern Spain. As it thrashed about before drowning, more than 100 clumped pollen grains were dislodged from its body and released into the resin. Five grains remained stuck to the beetle itself. Preserved with the beetle in the now-hard amber, the grains reveal that the beetle had been chewing a pollen meal with its jaw-like mouthparts just before it died.”

Symbiosis is a term that comes from the Greek noun συμβίωσις ‘living together’. It describes a win-win relationship involving two different species that both benefit from the relationship. An example would be figs and fig wasps. Without fig wasps we would not have figs, and without figs we would not have fig wasps.

This might also apply to Darwinylus marcosi, the recently discovered beetle, although some plants can be pollinated by a variety of pollinators.

Once again, research shows that animals haven’t changed their habits for aeons. This is exactly what we would expect, as Genesis describes real history, including the account of creation, with animals producing after their kinds.

Source:

Smithsonian. 2017. Mid-Mesozoic beetle in amber stirs questions on rise of flowering plants and pollinators: Smithsonian scientist, collaborators point to growing evidence of rich insect pollinator relationships in deep time. Science Daily. (2 March).

French Team Claims to Have Partly Solved Darwin’s Abominable Mystery (i.e. the Origin of Flowering Plants)

Welwitschia mirabilis. Image courtesy of Michael O'Brien, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

For Charles Darwin, the origin of flowering plants was an abominable mystery. Beauty did not fit in well into a worldview where there was no design and no Creator. What is more, flowers tend to be very complex.

Evolutionists belief that flowering plants or angiosperms evolved from “simpler” plants called gymnosperms.

Recently, French researchers discovered that a hardy desert plant known as Welwitschia mirabilis might shed light on Darwin’s abominable mystery.

W. mirabilis is a living fossil that obviously can live for a thousand years despite very arid conditions.

Science Daily gives us some background information:

“Darwin long pondered the origin and rapid diversification of flowering plants, describing them as an ‘abominable mystery.’ In comparison with gymnosperms, which possess rather rudimentary male and female cones (like the pine cone), flowering plants present several innovations: the flower contains the male organs (stamens) and the female organs (pistil), surrounded by petals and sepals, while the ovules, instead of being naked, are protected within the pistil.”

Then the article describes the proposed solution to the Darwinian dilemma: Welwitschia mirabilis:

“Like other gymnosperms, [it] possesses separate male and female cones. What is exceptional is that the male cones possess a few sterile ovules and nectar, which indicates a failed attempt to invent the bisexual flower. Yet, in this plant (as well as in certain conifers), the researchers found genes similar to those responsible for the formation of flowers, and which are organized according to the same hierarchy (with the activation of one gene activating the next gene, and so on)!”

We would not expect to see an exclamation mark at the end of a paragraph in a scientific article, but there it is.

The article goes on to say:

“The fact that a similar gene cascade has been found in flowering plants and their gymnosperm cousins indicates that this is inherited from their common ancestor. This mechanism did not have to be invented at the time of the origins of the flower: it was simply inherited and reused by the plant, a process that is often at work in evolution.”

It’s a clever explanation in which facts and wishful thinking mesh.

While W. mirabilis might resemble some flowering plants, it does not follow that it shows how flowers evolved from gymnosperms.

Flowers appear suddenly and fully formed in the fossil record.

Even the earliest flowers look very modern.

Source:

CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange). 2017. Where do flowers come from? Shedding light on Darwin’s 'abominable mystery'. Science Daily. (24 February).

Incredibly Beautiful Deep Sea Creatures Defy Darwinism

Yellow zoanthids. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2017 American Samoa.





Joel Kontinen

“Stunningly beautiful” might not sound very scientific but it is an authentic and accurate description of one of the deep-sea creatures NOAA’s recent expeditions have filmed.

We might think that the watery world several kilometres below the surface would be dull and grey, but it is not.

It appears to be a big Darwinian dilemma.

The creatures, including octopus, jellyfish, sea butterflies and others, are astoundingly beautiful.

Louis Armstrong recorded the song What a Wonderful World in 1967, and it now seems that the world is even more wonderful than we could have imagined.

As the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes puts it, “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (3:11, NIV).

Source:

NOAA Okeanos Explorer. 2017. Daily Updates.

UFO in the Sea Is a “Cosmic Jellyfish”

Cosmic Jellyfish. Image courtesy of NOAA.





Joel Kontinen

We have just begun to discover some of the most astounding and weird deep-sea creatures, thanks to the expeditions carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for instance, a ghost octopus, a deep-sea jellyfish, a sea butterfly and even Christmas lights.

During its ongoing Samoa Expedition, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) spotted a weird jellyfish at 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) below sea level.

These discoveries challenge Darwinian assumptions. Why would nature care what creatures that practically no one ever sees look like?

They remind us of God who created everything beautiful.

Source:

Ghose, Tia. 2017. Mysterious 'Cosmic' Jellyfish Spotted in Remote Ocean Depths. Live Science (1 March).