Dinosaur,
lizard, turtle, crocodile-all these fall under the class of
reptiles. Some, such as dinosaurs, are extinct, but the majority
of these species still live on the earth. Reptiles possess
some distinctive features. For example, their bodies are covered
with scales, and they are cold-blooded, meaning they are unable
to regulate their body temperatures physiologically (which
is why they expose their bodies to sunlight in order to warm
up). Most of them reproduce by laying eggs.
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DIFFERENT
EGGS
One of the inconsistencies in
the amphibian-reptile evolution scenario is the
structure of the eggs. Amphibian eggs, which develop
in water, have a jelly-like structure and a porous
membrane, whereas reptile eggs, as shown in the
reconstruction of a dinosaur egg on the right, are
hard and impermeable, in order to conform to conditions
on land. In order for an amphibian to become a reptile,
its eggs would have to have coincidentally turned
into perfect reptile eggs, and yet the slightest
error in such a process would lead to the extinction
of the species.
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Regarding the origin of these creatures, evolution
is again at an impasse. Darwinism claims that reptiles evolved
from amphibians. However, no discovery to verify such a claim
has ever been made. On the contrary, comparisons between amphibians
and reptiles reveal that there are huge physiological gaps
between the two, and a "half reptile-half amphibian" would
have no chance of survival.
One example of the physiological gaps between
these two groups is the different structures of their eggs.
Amphibians lay their eggs in water, and their eggs are jelly-like,
with a transparent and permeable membrane. Such eggs possess
an ideal structure for development in water. Reptiles, on
the other hand, lay their eggs on land, and consequently their
eggs are designed to survive there. The hard shell of the
reptile egg, also known as an "amniotic egg," allows air in,
but is impermeable to water. In this way, the water needed
by the developing animal is kept inside the egg.
If amphibian eggs were laid on land, they would
immediately dry out, killing the embryo. This cannot be explained
in terms of evolution, which asserts that reptiles evolved
gradually from amphibians. That is because, for life to have
begun on land, the amphibian egg must have changed into an
amniotic one within the lifespan of a single generation. How
such a process could have occurred by means of natural selection
and mutation-the mechanisms of evolution-is inexplicable.
Biologist Michael Denton explains the details of the evolutionist
impasse on this matter:
Every textbook of evolution
asserts that reptiles evolved from amphibia but none explains
how the major distinguishing adaptation of the reptiles,
the amniotic egg, came about gradually as a result of a
successive accumulation of small changes. The amniotic egg
of the reptile is vastly more complex and utterly different
to that of an amphibian. There are hardly two eggs in the
whole animal kingdom which differ more fundamentally… The
origin of the amniotic egg and the amphibian - reptile transition
is just another of the major vertebrate divisions for which
clearly worked out evolutionary schemes have never been
provided. Trying to work out, for example, how the heart
and aortic arches of an amphibian could have been gradually
converted to the reptilian and mammalian condition raises
absolutely horrendous problems.(Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, Adler and Adler, 1986, pp. 218-219)
Nor does the fossil record provide any evidence
to confirm the evolutionist hypothesis regarding the origin
of reptiles.
Robert L.
Carroll, an evolutionary paleontologist and authority on vertebrate
paleontology, is obliged to accept this. He has written in
his classic work, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution,
that "The early amniotes are sufficiently distinct from all
Paleozoic amphibians that their specific ancestry has not
been established."(Robert L. Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1988, p. 198) In his newer book, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, published
in 1997, he admits that "The origin of the modern amphibian
orders, (and) the transition between early tetrapods" are
"still poorly known" along with the origins of many other
major groups.(Robert L. Carroll, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 296-97)
The same fact is also acknowledged by Stephen
Jay Gould:
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THE SEYMOURIA
MISTAKE
Evolutionists at one time claimed that the Seymouria
fossil on the left was a transitional form between amphibians
and reptiles. According to this scenario, Seymouria
was "the primitive ancestor of reptiles." However, subsequent
fossil discoveries showed that reptiles were living
on earth some 30 million years before Seymouria. In
the light of this, evolutionists had to put an end to
their comments regarding Seymouria. |
No fossil amphibian seems
clearly ancestral to the lineage of fully terrestrial vertebrates
(reptiles, birds, and mammals).(Stephen Jay Gould, "Eight (or Fewer) Little Piggies," Natural History, vol. 100, no. 1, January 1991, p. 25. (emphasis added))
So far, the most important
animal put forward as the "ancestor of reptiles" has been
Seymouria, a species of amphibian. However, the fact that
Seymouria cannot be a transitional form was revealed by the
discovery that reptiles existed on earth some 30 million years
before Seymouria first appeared on it. The oldest Seymouria
fossils are found in the Lower Permian layer, or 280 million
years ago. Yet the oldest known reptile species, Hylonomus
and Paleothyris, were found in lower Pennsylvanian layers,
making them some 315-330 million years old.(Duane Gish, Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!, Institute For Creation Research, California, 1995, p. 97) It is surely implausible, to say the least, that the "ancestor
of reptiles" lived much later than the first reptiles.
In brief, contrary to the evolutionist claim that living being
evolved gradually, scientific facts reveal that they appeared
on earth suddenly and fully formed. |