Living Fossil Quotes
(From CRSnet)
Niles Eldredge, Curator, American Museum Of Natural History, made the following comments under the heading, Living Fossils, in his book, FOSSILS, 1991.
"...there seems to have been almost no change in any part we can compare between the living organism and its fossilized progenitors of the remote geological past. Living fossils embody the theme of evolutionary stability to an extreme degree. ....We have not completely solved the riddle of living to an extreme degree. ....We have not completely solved the riddle of living fossils. " p.101, 108
He mentions Neopilina as a specific example:
"...were thought to have been extinct by the end of the Middle Devonian [385 MYA]. Modern Neopilina species, however, were dredged from the deep oceans in the 1950's..." p.101
Likewise, P. Arduini and G. Teruzzi cite Neopilina as an example.
"There are also numerous organisms, in the present day fauna and flora, which can be regarded as living fossils; one of the best known among them is Neopilina, the only living representative of a class of mollusks...thought to have been extinct for 350 million years before 1957, when Neopilina was caught off the coast of Costa Rica." PREHISTORIC ATLAS, 1982, p.78
They also cite...
"The Gingko biloba is the sole surviving species of a very old group of gymnosperms which died out 100 million years ago." PREHISTORIC ATLAS, 1982, p.78
Perhaps the most famous example is the Coelacanth. The story of the discovery is dramatically told in the book, LIVING FOSSIL, 1991, by Keith S. Thomson, Ex. Officer, Academy of Natural Sciences. In it he says...
"Off the coast of southern Africa, in the winter of 1938, a fishing boat called The Nerine dragged from the Indian Ocean near the Chalumna River a fish thought to be extinct for 70 million years. The fish was a coelacanth, an animal that thrived concurrently with dinosaurs..." From bookcover.
Thomson also mentions several other examples.
Horseshoe Crab:
"The first members of this group appeared some 424 million years ago in the Silurian and look quite like the modern forms. The last fossils became extinct about 50 million years ago." p.72
Dawn Redwood:
"This species was widespread and reasonably common in the Pliocene of North America... The tree was thought to be extinct worldwide until living specimens were found in central China in 1945." p.72
Perhaps the most dramatic example is the apparent discovery of living Graptolites.
"All paleontologist dream of finding a 'living fossil.' Noel Dilly, it seems has done so... As graptolites are arguably the most important zone fossils of the Lower Palaeozoic (570-360 million years before the present), this is far from an esoteric issue." Nature, Sue Rigby, British Geological Survey, Vol.363, p.209, 3/18/'93
Comment: Potentially, doesn't this mean all diagnostic work using graptolites to identify strata within the geologic column is now subject to reinterpretation?
Return to
Creation Science/Paleontology