New Living Fossils Are Just Like Their Present Cousins

A present day beetle, Image courtesy of Udo Schmidt, CC By-Sa 2.0.




Joel Kontinen

“It is well-known that living fossils exhibit stasis over geologically long time scales. Examples are the panda and ginkgo. Now, two tiny beetles trapped in 99-million-year-old amber may join this group.”

“An international team led by Dr. Cai Chenyang, from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported two new and rare species of the extant family Clambidae from Burmese amber: Acalyptomerus thayerae and Sphaerothorax uenoi.“

“Both species are extremely morphologically close to their living counterparts, and can be placed in extant genera.”

Fossils trapped in amber tend to be problematic for Darwinians, as – regardless of their assumed age – they almost always show a profound lack of change.

Practically all insects trapped in amber look the same as today’s animals. Creatures like ticks, beetles, spiders, wasps or ants defy Darwinian expectations by their stasis or lack of evolution.

While the dates are inflated, the discovery shows that life in the fallen world had its disadvantages.

Source:

Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2019. Two tiny beetle fossils offer evolution and biogeography clues. Phys.org (18 January).