A report titled “Dinosaur evolutionary tree unveiled” appeared on the New Scientist.com web site on 23 July, 2008. Written by Colin Barras, the article dealt with a taxonomic study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.[i]
A report titled “Dinosaur evolutionary tree unveiled” appeared on the New Scientist.com web site on 23 July, 2008. Written by Colin Barras, the article dealt with a taxonomic study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.[i]
In the research in question a team led by Graeme Lloyd from Bristol University in Great Britain examined the taxonomic (the imaginary evolution classification). Based solely upon similarities between dinosaurs, Lloyd drew up a fictitious imaginary tree, based on no scientific evidence whatsoever, encompassing them all. The New Scientist article suggested that according to this tree, which included 440 of the 600 known dinosaur species, dinosaurs underwent rapid evolution during the first 50 million years of their existence on Earth. Quoting the following words of Lloyd’s, the article claimed that dinosaurs emerged by way of evolution:
It is the most comprehensive picture ever produced of how dinosaurs evolved.
However, the research reported in the article in fact constitutes no evidence for the myth of dinosaur evolution. The “picture of the evolution of dinosaurs” referred to in New Scientist and developed in the research, consists of speculation engaged in by researchers who hypothesise links between fossil remains in the light of their own preconceptions. There is not one piece of scientific evidence to support this imaginary picture. On the contrary, the scientific evidence shows the impossibility of any such evolutionary process.
The fact that living species share certain bodily blueprints and can be categorized hierarchically into such classifications as classes, orders and families, is used as fodder for evolutionist scenarios. Researchers classifying fossil species assume that those closest to one another evolved from a common forebear. Yet they have never been able to produce any explanation or evidence of how one species might turn into another, and merely seek to portray superficial structural similarities in living things as evolution. As well as adopting their theories as dogma, evolutionists assume that species very far removed from one another in morphological terms and between which there can be no transition of any kind are in fact evolutionary relatives. They imagine that this is the only way to convince people of this untrue theory.
There is no scientific foundation to evolutionist claims based on resemblances. Many objects can be classified – vehicles can be categorised as land, sea or air, for example – and these can be further subdivided into smaller and smaller sub-categories. But this classification does not show that the vehicles in question emerged by way of evolution. As the Oxford University zoologist Mark Ridley says in an article published in New Scientist magazine:
The simple fact that species can be classified hierarchically into genera, families, and so on, is not an argument for evolution. It is possible to classify any set of objects into a hierarchy whether their variation is evolutionary or not.[ii]
The clearest example of how classification on the basis of similarities provides no evidence for the theory of evolution is that of the Swedish Carl Linnaeus, the founder of the modern system of classification. Linnaeus was a scientist who believed in Creation from nothing. He openly stated that living things whose similarities could be classified together were an example of Creation.
Another error in New Scientist which needs to be made clear is the distorted logic of the idea that “dinosaurs evolved quickly.” Since the number of dinosaurs emerging in one specific time frame is significantly greater than the number appearing in another period, New Scientist refers to this as “rapid evolution.” The fact is so long as the transitional forms predicated by the theory of evolution cannot be produced, the emergence of species will always represent proof invalidating evolution. The theory of evolution is increasingly unable to account for the sudden emergence of species, and the absence of transitional forms again invalidates the theory. That is why evolutionists, who regard new species as a grave threat to them, hide behind such false concepts as “rapid evolution.” But demagogic, false scientific accounts devoid of any evidence cannot convince anyone. The emergence of new species happens suddenly and flawlessly in natural history. And it always constitutes proof of creation.
In his 1999 book Fossils and Evolution, Tom Kemp, curator of the Oxford University Zoological Collections, summarises the picture as follows:
In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms.[iii]
Therefore, the claims of “dinosaur evolution” and “rapid evolution” in New Scientist have no basis in the fossil record, but consist solely of errors resulting from the power of evolutionists’ imaginations. We call on the editors of New Scientist to cease portraying various hypotheses as scientific facts simply because they favour the theory of evolution. Living things did not evolve from one another in a chance process, but came into existence by Almighty Allah commanding them to “Be!”
[ii] Mark Ridley, ‘Who Doubts Evolution?’, New Scientist, cilt. 90 (25 Haziran 1981), sf. 832 [iii] TS Kemp [Curator of Zoological Collections], Fossils and Evolution, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, s.246, 1999
