Discovery of a living coelacanth in 1938 demolished an evolutionary belief.
Coelacanth:
the world’s oldest fish?
Quick-read this article:
Evolutionary scientists used to think that amphibians evolved from
a group of fishes that included the coelacanth, which was known
only from fossils. But they dropped this idea when living
coelacanths were found from 1938 showing no evidence of evolution
from the oldest fossil coelacanths to the living examples.The
evidence from the coelacanth is good evidence for creation, for it
shows that DNA, the genetic code, has remained stable throughout
time.
When a living coelacanth fish was found in 1938 it was hailed as the scientific sensation of the century. Until then, the coelacanth (pronounced SEE'-luh-canth) was known to science only from fossils. Scientists generally believed coelacanths had become extinct 60 or 70 million years ago. Since 1938 many more living coelacanths have been caught.
All coelacanths, living and fossil, are members of a group of fishes called Crossopterygians. It is this group that most evolutionists believe evolved into amphibians and all land vertebrates — including humans.
Before the discovery of
living coelacanths (photo at left shows museum official Marjorie
Courtenay-Latimer with the 1938 specimen), evolutionists assumed
that the fish's internal organs would be “part way”
evolving from those of ordinary fish to those of amphibians.
But the living coelacanths showed no evidence that their soft parts were starting to adapt for use on land. So it was conceded that the coelacanth was obviously not the ancestor of amphibians after all.
Did anything evolve?
So evolutionists looked for another type of fish that would fit their belief that fish evolved into the creatures that dwell both on land and in water — the amphibians. There was no strong evidence, but they decided that another member of the Crossopterygian group of fishes — the rhipidistian — might have evolved into an amphibian.
How did they decide that rhipidistian fishes could have evolved into amphibians? The idea grew out of their study of similarities in skeletons of rhipidistians and what they believe were “early” amphibians. But in reality there is a vast difference between rhipidistians and amphibians.
Using even the evolutionists' time scale, which some
scientists dispute, the coelacanth is the same fish it supposedly
was hundreds of millions of years ago. It is surely strange that
the coelacanth could remain so stable all this time, both
genetically and morphologically, while its cousin the rhipidistian
was supposedly evolving the mind-boggling number of changes
required to transform it eventually into a human.
The evidence from the coelacanth is good evidence for creation, for it shows that DNA, the genetic code, has remained stable throughout time. In other words, the coelacanth has reproduced after its kind just like the Bible's book of Genesis said fishes would!
Photo credits: Drawing of coelacanth by former FishBase artist Robbie Cada; photo of Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer with the mounted coelacanth in 1938, courtesy Goosens family website. (Hendrik Goosen was the fisherman from whose catch the 1938 coelacanth came).
Follow that salmon …
Scientists in Norway had been tracking the migration patterns of wild salmon. Suddenly they became excited when they picked up radio signals from a fish they thought had been lost. The signal led them to the city of Stavanger, on Norway's south-east coast, where they found the missing salmon. It was dead in a resident's freezer.
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