The Turkish newspaper Vatan carried a report titled ?The Fossil That Has Confused the World,? taken from the 7 April 2006 issue of the journal Nature. The article claimed that a fossil discovered in Arctic Canada was ?the missing link in the chain of life from water to land.?

The Turkish newspaper Vatan carried a report titled “The Fossil That Has Confused the World,” taken from the 7 April 2006 issue of the journal Nature. The article claimed that a fossil discovered in Arctic Canada was “the missing link in the chain of life from water to land.”

This report ignored a great many scientific facts, and was obviously prepared with the aim of spreading classic “evolutionary propaganda.” As they have done so many thousands of times before, evolutionist paleontologists again rely on a few bone fragments and engage in totally imaginary interpretations, completely devoid of any scientific foundation. Furthermore, this is now being attempted to be passed off as “a significant discovery in the name of evolution.”

The living fossil Coelacanth refutes evolutionist claims

The claim was put forward in the article that the fossil Tiktaalik roseae, meaning “large, shallow-water fish,” was “the first and only evidence of the supposed transition of finned fish to terrestrial animals.” This is a tactic that evolutionists have tried before. Until very recent times, evolutionists portrayed the Coelacanth fossil as the most important evidence of their claims regarding a transition from water to dry land, and in just such confident language. Until 1938 many evolutionist zoologists assumed, based on the two paired fins on its trunk, that the Coelacanth walked across the seabed and was an intermediate form between marine and terrestrial animals. As evidence for these claims, evolutionists pointed to the bony structures in the Coelacanth fossil fins, which were open to interpretation. However, the capture in 1938 of a living specimen of this fish totally refuted this intermediate form claim. More than 200 Coelacanths were caught in subsequent years, and it was realized that the creature was a deep-sea fish with very complex features.

The Tiktaalik roseae fossil that evolutionists are currently proposing as the most important intermediate form has also been exposed to evolutionist propaganda techniques. Although the fossil exhibits no scientific evidence to indicate that it might be an intermediate form, attempts are being made, based on interpretation alone, to suggest that it represents the most significant evolutionary discovery regarding the supposed transition from sea to land. Evolutionists base this claim mainly on the similarity between this creature’s skull and that of a crocodile. Living things may have similar characteristics but this constitutes no evidence for evolutionary claims in terms of genetics and anatomy, and this has been proven by modern science and even admitted by some evolutionists. Indeed, the journal Nature, which first announced the fossil in question, said this during the interpretation of it:

The concept of “missing links” has a powerful grasp on the imagination. . . (Per Erik Ahlberg and Jennifer A. Clack, “Palaeontology: A firm step from water to land,” Nature 440, 747-749, 6 April 2006)

Darwinists have evidently been exercising their imaginations with regard to Tiktaalik roseae.

The transition from water to land error

It was claimed in the article that the fossil discovered has semi-fish and semi-terrestrial characteristics, and that this extinct life form is “a crocodile-like vertebrate with four limbs that served both as fins and feet.”

In order to understand the invalidity of this claim it will be sufficient to examine just why the myth of a transition from water to land is impossible.

Tetrapod is the general name given to terrestrial vertebrates. The classification includes amphibians, reptiles and mammals. The evolutionist hypothesis regarding the origin of tetrapods is that these life forms evolved from fish living in water. However, this claim is physiologically and anatomically inconsistent and also has no basis in the fossil record.

In order for a fish to adapt to life on dry land it needs to undergo very great and very different changes, regarding such features as the respiratory system, excretory mechanism, skeletal structure and kidneys. Gills have to turn into lungs, fins must acquire the properties of feet capable of weight bearing, kidneys need to form to dispose of bodily wastes, and the skin must develop a water retaining property. Unless all these changes take place, a fish will die within a few minutes at most after emerging onto land. All these changes need to happen at exactly the same time, yet it is clear that such a change is impossible.

As we have seen, the article does not contain objective facts, but evolutionist propaganda consisting of obscure expressions devoid of any scientific basis. For example, the fiction that “fish slowly acquired the ability to live on land, changed in line with climatic and geographic conditions, and developed new abilities and organs” is completely unscientific and merely an imaginary, evolutionist scenario.

Analyses of this kind carry a “Lamarckian logic.” Because at their root lie the concepts of “the development of employed organs” and their transmission to subsequent generations. This theory of Lamarck’s, which was expelled from science a century ago, would seem to still be having a great influence on evolutionist biologists’ subconscious minds.

Indeed, in the journal Nature, which the article in question was based on, no scientific explanation is offered for the claim that the fossil’s fins have terrestrial features, and scenarios along the lines of “the animal had a bony shell and fins, but its front fins were modified to turn into jointed limbs ... and the small gill-like slits on its head were modified to become an ear...” are portrayed as its scientific basis. However, not the slightest explanation is provided as to how gills could turn into such completely different organs as ears, or how an animal that had lost its gills could possibly survive without drowning. The claim that the animal had previously possessed gills is attempted to be backed up with illusory similes, devoid of any foundations, such as “gill-like slits...”

However, there is no trace of a gill in a process of transition. No soft tissue specimens from the animal in question have been left behind in the fossil record. No such inference can be drawn from the remaining bone fragments. The Coelacanth, which for years was a vehicle for evolutionist propaganda, was one result of such biased evolutionist interpretation of fossils. Evolutionists would admit that this fish was not an intermediate form only after a living specimen was caught. In fact, some evolutionist scientists have even stated that their evolutionist colleagues generally misinterpret such bone remains. For example, the world-famous paleontologist Richard E. Leakey and the science writer and evolutionist Roger Lewin have stated that no definitive conclusion can be drawn from inadequate fossil fragments.In People of the Lake,Leakey and Lewin said that since the fossil findings were highly insufficient the way was open for different interpretations to be made. Another element making the matter even more difficult, they went on, is the existence of a certain amount of difference in appearance in every animal species, and said that other people around us represent a living example of this. According to Leakey and Lewin, if such variables in extinct species were great, then the differences in the bones they have left behind might mislead scientists into thinking that they were dealing with several different species rather than only one. For that reason, if we were to ask six researchers to classify the fossils as they considered appropriate we should not be at all surprised if each one made a different determination. They concluded by saying that some people would certainly be unable to agree on which group to include a specific fossil in.

Fossils have proven that living species on Earth have never changed or turned into one another. Ninety-nine percent of the fossil record has been unearthed over the last 150 years and has documented that living species have not undergone the slightest change for hundreds of millions of years. There is not a single intermediate form fossil from among 100 million fossils belonging to 250,000 different species catalogued by scientists to date (New Scientist, January 15, 1981, p. 129) that could support evolution.

Robert L. Carroll admits this, albeit reluctantly, in the words,

We have no intermediate fossils between rhipidistian fish and early amphibians. (R. L. Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1988, p. 4)

Conclusion

It is evident that the fossil described in daily Vatan provides no evidence at all for the theory of evolution. The fact that such fossil findings are portrayed as significant proofs of evolution and supposed missing links by the Darwinist media stems solely from philosophical presuppositions. Our advice to Vatan is that it avoid carrying such misleading information for the purpose of keeping Darwinism, a totally unscientific thesis, on its feet.

The Fact of Creation is on display all over the world in fossil findings and living fossils. Modern science reveals that God has created all living things. This fact is set out in the Qur’an:

"". . . Both creation and command belong to Him. Blessed be God, the Lord of all the worlds."" (Qur’an, 7:54)