Time Travel

[Garland-Green]

I thought we would in this thread go back in time and look at various animals, insects etc. that would have been contemporaries of dinosaurs (said to have gone extinct 65 million years ago) and is said by those who subscribe to Darwinian evolution to have existed millions of years before man. I think you will be surprised to see how many living fossils we have today that have remained unchanged for millions of years.. Are they unchanged because they were created with a blue print (DNA) which allows for variations within a kind, but not for something to become a different species? Will a wasp always look like a wasp? I will leave it up to you to decide if something is amiss with the theory of evolution as we move through the fossil record...

Our first creature is a fish. The Coelacanth.
Coelacanth fossils have been found that are said to be from the Triassic period, some 210 million years ago, and is believe to have evolved into its current form 400 millions years ago. They were thought to have gone extinct 66 million years ago. There was a lot of speculation in the scientific community surrounding the coelacanth. It was thought to have been a transitional form and to have had primitive lungs and a large brain. Until 1938, many evolutionary biologists hypothesized that this life form used the two double fins on its body to walk along the sea bed and was a transitional form between marine and terrestrial animals. As evidence for these claims, those who subscribed to the theory of evolution pointed to the bony structures in coelacanth fossil fins.

However, an event in the Indian Ocean on December 22nd 1938, totally demolished that idea. A living member of the Latimeria species, one of the coelacanth family, which had been depicted as a transitional form that had become extinct 60 million years earlier, was caught in the middle of the ocean! The discovery of a “living, breathing” coelacanth came as a huge shock to many.



Unchanged for 400 million years.

Resources:
How Could Fish Survive Noah's Flood?
Where Are Fossils Found?
Doesn’t the Order of Fossils in the Rock Record Favor Long Ages?
What You Can Never Know Based on a Fossil
A Scientific Defense of a Creationist Position on Evolution
Are there out-of-sequence fossils that are problematic for evolution?
The Miller-Urey experiment

"...what has evolution been doing for the last hundred million years? For example, if apes eventually became humans in just 6 million years, how, with ever-changing ecological pressures, can there be so many plants and animals that are basically unchanged from their forms supposedly millions of years ago?"  

[Garland-Green]

A fossilized paddlefish from the Eocene period. The Eocene period is said to have begun 56 million years ago and ended 33.9 million years ago.

The American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) is a species of basal ray-finned fish closely related to sturgeons in the order Acipenseriformes. Fossil records of paddlefish date back over 300 million years, nearly 50 million years before dinosaurs first appeared.


An American paddlefish today.

 

[Garland-Green]

The next fossil is a needlefish from the Cretaceous (defined as the period between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago).

Needlefish (family Belonidae) are piscivorous fishes primarily associated with very shallow marine habitats or the surface of the open sea. Some genera include species found in marine, brackish, and freshwater environments (e.g., Strongylura) while a few genera are confined to freshwater rivers and streams,




Video from 2012 of a swimming needlefish.

 

[Garland-Green]

This particular fossil is said to be from the Jurassic time period. The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from 201.3± 0.6 Ma (million years ago) to 145± 4 Ma; from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous.

Fossil records of crayfish older than 30 million years are rare, but fossilised burrows have been found from strata as old as the late Palaeozoic or early Mesozoic.Paleozoic was the Permian Period, which began 299 million years ago and wrapped up 251 million years ago.


Australian Red Claw Crayfish

 

[Garland-Green]

Fossil shell of Argopecten eboreus, and extinct mollusk from the Miocene (23.03 to 5.332 million years ago). In comparison; Man is believed by those who subscribe to the theory of evolution to have come on the scene only about 200,000 years ago.



Argopecten purpuratus, common names the "Peruvian scallop", is an edible species of saltwater clam, a scallop, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Pectinidae, the scallops.

 

[Garland-Green]

50-million-year-old gar fish fossil at Leonard Tourné Gallery.

Alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula) are ray-finned euryhaline fishes related to bowfin in the infraclass Holostei (ho'-las-te-i). The fossil record traces the existence of alligator gars back to the Early Cretaceous over a hundred million years ago. They are the largest in the gar family, and among the largest freshwater fishes in North America. Gars are often referred to as "primitive fishes", or "living fossils" because they have retained some morphological characters of their earliest ancestors, such as a spiral valve intestine which is also common to the digestive system of sharks, and they can breathe both air and water

 

[Garland-Green]

Paleocoma is an extinct genus of brittle star that lived in the Jurassic, a period that extends supposedly from 201.3 million years ago to 145 million years ago.

Brittle stars or ophiuroids are echinoderms in the class Ophiuroidea closely related to starfish. They crawl across the sea floor using their flexible arms for locomotion. The ophiuroids generally have five long, slender, whip-like arms which may reach up to 60 cm (24 in) in length on the largest specimens. They are also known as serpent stars; the New Latin class name Ophiuroidea is derived from the Ancient Greek ὄφις, meaning "serpent".


The black brittle star or black serpent star, is a species of marine invertebrate in the order Ophiurida. It occurs in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

 

[Garland-Green]

Sawfish from the upper Cretaceous, Cenomanian, 95 million years old

Sawfish, also known as carpenter sharks, are a family (Pristidae) of rays characterized by a long, narrow, flattened rostrum, or nose extension, lined with sharp transverse teeth, arranged so as to resemble a saw. Several species of sawfish can grow to about 7 m (23 ft). The family as a whole is largely unknown and little studied. The Pristidae are the only living family within the order Pristiformes, whose name comes from the Ancient Greek: πρίστης prístēs "saw, sawyer"


Juvenile smalltooth sawfish, Florida.

 

[Garland-Green]

Horseshoe crabs are marine arthropods of the family Limulidae and order Xiphosura or Xiphosurida, that live primarily in and around shallow ocean waters on soft sandy or muddy bottoms. They occasionally come onto shore to mate. They are commonly used as bait and in fertilizer. In recent years, a decline in the population has occurred as a consequence of coastal habitat destruction in Japan and overharvesting along the east coast of North America. Tetrodotoxin may be present in the roe of species inhabiting the waters of Thailand. Because of their origin 450 million years ago, horseshoe crabs are considered living fossils. (wikipedia)



Supposedly a 150 million year old fossil. It looks exactly like today's horseshoe crabs.

Youtube

 

[Garland-Green]

Fossils of a male and female stingray (Asterotrygon maloneyi) from the Eocene, 56 to 33.9 million years ago.




River stingrays or freshwater stingrays are Neotropical freshwater fishes of the Potamotrygonidae family (order Myliobatiformes).

They are native to northern, central and eastern South America, living in rivers that drain into the Caribbean, and into the Atlantic as far south as the Río de la Plata in Argentina. Generally, each species is native to a single river basin, and the greatest species richness can be found in the Amazon.

 

[Garland-Green]

Pipefish from the Pliocene, extending from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years.


Pipefishes look like straight-bodied seahorses with tiny mouths. The name is derived from the peculiar form of the snout, which is like a long tube, ending in a narrow and small mouth which opens upwards and is toothless. The body and tail are long, thin, and snake-like. They each have a highly modified skeleton formed into armored plating. This dermal skeleton has several longitudinal ridges, so a vertical section through the body looks angular, not round or oval as in the majority of other fishes.

A dorsal fin is always present, and is the principal (in some species, the only) organ of locomotion. The ventral fins are consistently absent, and the other fins may or may not be developed. The gill openings are extremely small and placed near the upper posterior angle of the gill cover.


Freshwater pipefish (Doryichthys boaja).

 

[Garland-Green]

Fossilized wasp said to be from the Eocene, 56 to 33.9 million years ago



The most commonly known wasps such as yellow jackets (picture) and hornets are in the Vespidae family and are eusocial, living together in a nest with an egg-laying queen and non-reproducing workers. Eusociality is favoured by the unusual haplodiploid system of sex determination in Hymenoptera, as it makes sisters exceptionally closely related to each other. However, the majority of wasp species are solitary, with each adult female living and breeding independently. Many of the solitary wasps are parasitoidal, meaning that they raise their young by laying eggs on or in the larvae of other insects. The wasp larvae eat the host larvae, eventually killing them. Solitary wasps parasitize almost every pest insect, making wasps valuable in horticulture for biological pest control of species such as whitefly in tomatoes and other crops.

Wasps are found as 'far' back as the Jurassic fossil record.

 

[Garland-Green]

Harpactocarcinus punctulatus, crab from the Eocene, 56 to 33.9 million years ago.



Cancer pagurus, commonly known as the edible crab or brown crab, is a species of crab found in the North Sea, North Atlantic Ocean and perhaps in the Mediterranean Sea. It is a robust crab of a reddish-brown colour, having an oval carapace with a characteristic "pie crust" edge and black tips to the claws. A mature adult may have a carapace width of up to 25 cm (10 in) and weigh up to 3 kg (6.6 lb). C. pagurus is a nocturnal predator, targeting a range of molluscs and crustaceans. It is the subject of the largest crab fishery in Western Europe, centred on the coasts of the British Isles, with more than 60,000 tonnes caught annually.

 

[Garland-Green]

Fossilized flea, Early Cretaceous - 118 million years old. Displayed in Museum Victoria, Australia.



Fleas are insects that form the order Siphonaptera. They are wingless, with mouthparts adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood. Fleas are external parasites, living by hematophagy off the blood of mammals and birds.

Resource
Parasites—Unwelcome Guests  

[Garland-Green]

Fossilized cockroach from the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous (/krɨˈteɪʃəs/, krə-TAY-shəs), derived from the Latin "creta" (chalk), usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide (chalk), is a geologic period and system from 145 ± 4 to 66 million years (Ma) ago.




Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattodea, sometimes called Blattaria, of which about 30 species out of 4,600 total are associated with human habitats.